The Memorial Hall Murder by Jane Langton Page A

exercise. Now, there’s another thing, Mr. Ratchit. All we want is a simple pine box.”
    â€œA pine box? Oh, no, you don’t want a pine box for a VIP like that. I suggest this casket here. Solid walnut. Solid brass handles.” Mr. Ratchit handed Homer a pamphlet. “After that you go into your metal caskets. Light gauge. Heavy gauge. Solid copper. I mean, I understand from the papers he was really an important member of the university personnel.”
    â€œNo,” said Homer, closing his eyes and speaking through his teeth. “We want a plain old-fashioned ordinary box. A plain pine box. And then there’s the matter of the embalming. There’s to be no embalming.”
    â€œNo embalming? They must be out of their mind! It’ll swell up! It’ll stink! Well, we’ve got it in the fridge. Maybe it’ll keep. Let’s hope it’s cool on Sunday.” Mr. Ratchit reached over and poked Homer in the chest. “You know, you’re not in such great shape yourself, friend. Three quarters of an inch of blubber there. Maybe an inch. You ought to get out in the open more, you know?”

Chapter Twelve

    Homer and Mary Kelly came to the church early because Mary was going to sing with the chorus. Mary dodged around to the back, and Homer started for the front, but early as he was, he suspected he might be too late to get a seat. People were streaming into the building from every direction, crowding on the stairs, pressing thickly into the doorway. Most of them were students, or people the same age as the students. Some of them looked bizarre to Homer’s innocent eye, a motley lot, a little odd and wild, dressed in the fantastic plumage of street people selling bangles or handing out religious pamphlets in the square.
    Homer waited patiently on the stairs, moving slowly upward one step at a time. To amuse himself he studied the delicate white spire, floating above the roof like a piece of intricately cut and folded paper. The spire was too light for the monumental pillars of the porches, he decided, but the building itself was in keeping with the other buildings in the Yard. It was better matched to the local architecture than was Memorial Hall, over there across Cambridge Street. But this church was a war memorial too, he knew that. When he squeezed through the vestry into the main body of the church, he saw the tablets on the high south wall, recording in gold letters the names of the Harvard dead in World War II. World War I had a room to itself, off to the side. He could see it through an open door, all polished marble and solemn inscriptions and flags.
    The church was nearly full. The ushers were seating people in the rear seats under the balcony. Homer sat down in the last row and took off his coat and looked around. The place was luminous and white. Through the tall windows light flooded the high ceiling and the massive white columns and the rows and rows of white-painted pews. Hot air warmed the church, blowing out of the registers under the windows, and the great space was comfortable with red cushions and red carpets. Not dark and drafty like Memorial Hall, where there was nothing to sit down on while you contemplated the martial sacrifice of those who had gone before. But this building. seemed to expect a well-groomed sort of mourner. It wasn’t a primitive holy place like Memorial Hall, where some remnant of the bloody superstitions of the Middle Ages seemed to stain the dark tracery of the woodwork, matching the carnage of the battles in which those young Union soldiers had died. Of course, the two world wars had been worse, if anything. But the polite perfection and bright light of this handsome building gave no hint that mankind could ever under any circumstances be anything but reasonable and heedful of the requirements of etiquette. It wasn’t like Memorial Hall, where the air was thick with myths of death and resurrection.
    Homer stared at his big