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  The Escher Twist

  A Homer Kelly Mystery

  Jane Langton

  A MysteriousPress.com

  Open Road Integrated Media ebook

  Contents

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  Afterword

  Preview: The Deserter: Murder at Gettysburg

  Copyright Page

  M. C.Escher

  For fellow enthusiasts Andy, David and Chris

  Two regular tetrahedrons, piercing each other, float through space as a planetoid. The light-colored one is inhabited by human beings who have completely transformed their region into a complex of houses, bridges and roads. The darker tetrahedron has remained in its natural state, with rocks, on which plants and prehistoric animals live. The two bodies fit together to make a whole, but they have no knowledge of each other.

  M. C. Escher

  They have no knowledge of each other.

  Perhaps the city of Cambridge, interpenetrated by the garden cemetery of Mount Auburn, is a double planetoid. The two parts fit together to make a whole, but the city of the living repudiates the city of the dead. As soon as breathing stops and their bodies are cold, the dead are spirited away. Only later do they turn up among the green hills of Mount Auburn as chunks of granite, stiff and upright, their speech reduced to chiseled words on their stony faces. “Hello,” they say on Tuesday, “my name is Chester Smith,” and on Wednesday and Thursday and forever after, only “Chester Smith.”

  In recent years the center of Old Cambridge has become one of the liveliest, noisiest, and most crowded areas in the Boston Metropolitan District, with a proliferation of restaurants, bars, shops and boutiques, thronged with students from Harvard and thousands of other young people attracted to the street scene and the night life, along with hordes of tourists.

  —Blue Guide to Boston and Cambridge

  Afew current residents of Cambridge—

  Leonard Sheldrake, crystallographer, attic apartment, 24

  Sibley Road. Leonard is thirty-nine.

  Eloise Winthrop, Leonard’s widowed landlady, 24 Sibley

  Road. Eloise is eighty-one.

  Maud Starr, proprietor of Twice-Told Togs, Huron

  Avenue

  Leonard Underdown, professor of geology,

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Barbara Strong, resident, Aberdeen Street Nursing Home

  Edward Fell, resident, Aberdeen Street Nursing Home

  B. J. Larkin, landlord, 87 Sibley Road

  And of course there are multitudes of others. Like most cities, Cambridge is not one metropolis but many. Its hundred-thousand multiracial inhabitants occupy every sort of dwelling, from the elegant habitations of Brattle Street and the Georgian dormitories of Harvard University to the three-deckers and comfortable Victorians of farflung neighborhoods east, west, north and south of Harvard Square.

  Six-and-a-half square miles of urban density are relieved by parks and playing fields and by a famous cemetery—

  Mount Auburn Cemetery was established in 1831 by Dr. Jacob Bigelow, whose intent was to create the first garden cemetery in the U.S.… Atop the highest hill … is a tower.…

  —Blue Guide to Boston and Cambridge

  Therefore, in taking a proper census, what about underground residents? Shouldn’t they be included in the total population by some sort of mortuary statistic? After all, there are ninety-thousand expired citizens in Mount Auburn alone, including—

  Professor Zachariah Winthrop, Mrs. Winthrop’s deceased

  husband, Willow Avenue

  Isabella Stewart Gardner, Auburn Lake

  Mary Baker Eddy, Halcyon Avenue

  Harold Edgerton, Story Road

  Buckminster Fuller, Bellwort Path

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Indian Ridge

  Nathaniel Bowditch, Tulip Path

  Benjamin Bates, Founder of Cheap Postage, Pyrola Path

  Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Pyrola Path, a memorial stone

  And then perhaps, by some sort of ectoplasmic reckoning, an all-inclusive census might take into account the ten billion particles of floating brain tissue sloughed off by students passing through Harvard Square—bits and pieces of spectral substance thickening the air, breathed in by all.

  The printmaker has something of the minstrel spirit; he sings, and in every print … he repeats his song over and over again.… The graphic artist … is like a blackbird singing at the top of a tree.… He wishes that the wind would scatter his haves over the earth … not like the dry haves of autumn, but rather like seeds ready to germinate and light as a feather.

  M. C. Escher

  1

  On display in the Cambridge Gallery on Huron Avenue, prints by Dutch artist M. C. Escher. Hours 10—6 weekdays, 10—9 Saturday, 1—6 Sunday. Till July 1.

  The Boston Phoenix

  Love at first sight is folly. Usually the demented people come to their senses, but sometimes only when it’s too late.

  Frieda’s and Leonard’s case was typically instantaneous and ridiculous. Strangers, they met at an exhibition of the work of the Dutch printmaker M. C. Escher.

  The Cambridge gallery on Huron Avenue was not far from Leonard’s attic apartment on Sibley Road.

  There were a lot of other people in the gallery. They kept flooding in the door, coming in from the rain, picking up the free pamphlet and walking slowly through the rooms, moving alone or in clusters, parting and rejoining.

  Frieda and Leonard drifted together before a famous wood-engraving called A Dream. In a Gothic arcade a stone bishop lay on a sarcophagus with an enormous insect crouched upon his breast.

  Leonard spoke up first. “It’s more like a nightmare than a dream.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Frieda quickly. She laughed. “And such a joke.”

  “Because the bug is praying. It’s a praying mantis.”

  “Praying to the bishop.”

  “So much for organized religion.”

  They wandered together through the rest of the exhibition of Escher’s prints. Leonard was familiar with all of them, in fact they were part of his life. But i
nstead of lecturing to Frieda he said outrageous things and made her laugh.

  She was puzzled by the woodcut called Moebius Strip, a latticed figure-eight inhabited by ants. “I just don’t understand it. I mean, I’ve heard of Moebius strips, but I don’t see what’s so special about them.”

  “Look.” Leonard took the gallery pamphlet, creased it sharply and tore off one edge. “You make a twist like this, then stick the ends together to make a loop. See?”

  He held the strip together with ringer and thumb, then made a magical gesture with the other hand. “Presto, behold the impossible. Before the twist there were two sides. Now—here, try it. Run your finger all the way around.”

  “Oh,” said Frieda, “it goes inside and outside.”

  “So there’s only one surface now, not two.”

  She laughed. “It’s bewitched.”

  There were only forty prints in the exhibition, but they took their time. Stopping before the last one, Leonard looked at Frieda and introduced himself. “Leonard. I’m a geologist. Well, actually I’m a crystallographer.”

  At once her cheerfulness faded, and she glanced away. “My name’s Frieda. I’m an artist.”

  Words welled up in Leonard, questions that would have been intrusive if they weren’t suddenly so important. Where do you live? How could there be someone like you? “Are you a printmaker like Escher?”

  “No, no.” She looked across the room as if searching for someone. She seemed embarrassed. “I make drawings. Faces, portraits of people.”

  They turned back to the picture, a lithograph called Bond of Union. The heads of a man and woman floated in space, joined together at top and bottom like strips of a peeled orange.

  Leonard said calmly, “That’s you and me.”

  It was clear that he meant it. “You don’t know me,” murmured Frieda. Her jauntiness was gone.

  “I know all I need to know,” said Leonard. “Except—oh, well, I suppose you’re married.”

  “No. My husband died last year.”

  Leonard tried to hide his pleasure. “You’re very young to be a widow.”

  “Yes, I am.” Frieda made a lame joke of being pitiful. “And I was very young to be an orphan. And very much too young to be—” She broke off.

  Leonard couldn’t help himself. “To be what?”

  “I’m sorry.” Frieda turned and walked quickly away.

  Was she crying? After a moment Leonard followed her out into the hall and waited, keeping an eye on the door where women went in and out.

  He waited and waited, but she didn’t appear. He spoke to the man at the desk. “Did a woman in a green coat leave just now?”

  “You mean two women together?”

  “Two women? I don’t think so.”

  “Well, two women in green coats left a minute ago.”

  Leonard waited a little longer, surprised at the keenness of his disappointment. He didn’t even know Frieda’s last name.

  People came and went. Some of them signed the visitors’ book.

  The visitors’ book—Leonard crossed the hall and looked at it. There were only a few names on the page for today—

  Max Rubin, Cambridge

  Helen Crowley, Medfield

  Mr. and Mrs. Charles Spratt, Weston

  Tyler Biggy, Somerville

  Isaac and Marilynne Jacob, Cambridge

  Frieda was not there.

  Dispirited, Leonard wrapped his checkered scarf closely around his neck and left the gallery, furious with himself. He found Huron Avenue blocked by a jack-knifed truck. Cars were backing up, honking, edging around the obstruction and zooming forward in plunging splashes of foam. A few pedestrians shuffled along the sidewalk, crouching under umbrellas. One of the umbrellas blew inside-out.

  There was no sign of Frieda in her green coat.

  2

  Ten minutes later there were a few more names in the visitors’ book, including

  Mary and Homer Kelly, Concord

  “You see, Homer,” said Mary, urging him along into the first room in the gallery, “this is why we need to move to Cambridge. Cultural events like this.”

  “What about the river?” said Homer grumpily. “The river’s a cultural event. It goes on all the time.”

  “Oh, Homer, you can’t possibly miss the river. Think of last February! Remember how often we had to make four tries to get a car up that icy river bank?”

  “Well, that’s true,” admitted Homer. He cheered up. “Say, look at that. A Moebius strip. Look at the way it twists around on itself. See?”

  “Twists around on itself?”

  “Don’t you know about Moebius strips? Good grief, Mary Kelly, you were an educated woman. Wait a sec. I’ll show you how they work.”

  Homer pawed in his pocket, extracted a Cambridge parking ticket, tore a strip off the edge and demonstrated the strange properties of a Moebius strip.

  “Good heavens,” said Mary. “How can there be such a thing?”

  “Don’t we look like twins in our green coats?”

  “Won’t you take yours off and stay awhile—Cousin Kitty?”

  “No, no, I have to go. That button, dear. Your coat has lost a button. Where is it? You should sew it back on.”

  “It fell off somewhere. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Tell me, dear, who was that? That man you were talking to?”

  “In the gallery? His name’s Leonard. He’s a crystallographer.”

  “Leonard what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s too bad. You know, dear, you’ve got to take an interest. It’s been a year now since Tom died. I thought this man looked quite nice. He’s a good deal older than you, I think, but then you’re not getting any younger. Did you like him?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Frieda impulsively. She looked defiant. “I liked him very much.”

  “Well, then, why didn’t you—? Do you know where he lives?”

  “No, I told you. I don’t know anything about him.”

  Kitty said goodbye, and went away satisfied. This little romance was going nowhere. And the girl was so plain. It was a wonder she’d landed a husband at all. That little episode had been an unexpected blow.

  Downstairs Kitty paused as the landlord came banging in from outdoors and shook out his umbrella, flinging raindrops in all directions. At once his wife popped out into the hall and said tartly, “There’s some woman on the phone.”

  “Oh?” The landlord grinned, pulled off his sopping raincoat and hurried into the apartment. His wife slammed the door behind him with great force.

  Kitty shuddered, then turned to the mirror on the wall beside Mr. Larkin’s door and smiled at her reflection. If she and Frieda were twins in their green coats, it was obvious which was the pretty one.

  Left alone upstairs, Frieda looked out the window at the homely three-deckers on the other side of the street. The pavement was shining, the parked cars gleamed, rainwater dripped from the chain-link fence.

  She took a sheet of paper from her work table and cut a long narrow piece with a pair of scissors. Then she twisted it and taped the ends together.

  There, look at that—it was a Moebius strip, just like Leonard’s.

  3

  Leonard Sheldrake had found a problem for his students in Elementary Crystallography—

  There was once a king with five sons. In his will he ordered his kingdom to be divided among them into five regions, each bounded by the other Jour. Can the terms of the will be satisfied?

  The problem had been posed in the year 1840 by mathematician August Ferdinand Moebius. Leonard made twenty-three copies and slapped them into a folder. Then he walked to the window, stepping carefully around the bucket that was collecting drips of rain from a leak in the roof.

  The storm was over and the sun was out, going down in a flare of red above the splendid chimneys of the house next door. Leonard enjoyed the way the complex rooftops of the houses on Sibley Road had classic crystalline shapes—they
were cuboid, pyramidal, prismatic. He watched as a ragged flight of birds burst into view, flapping hard and fast in the direction of the sunset. Like volunteer firemen, thought Leonard, pulling on their pants and racing to a conflagration on the western horizon.

  It occurred to him that the sun was setting right now over the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, including the unknown place where the woman called Frieda was standing at this moment, or sitting or walking or talking or eating or sleeping.

  There was a draft around the frame of the window. Leonard stuffed the gap with a sock.

  He didn’t mind the bucket and the sock. He felt lucky to have stumbled on this place. The house was rundown, but it had an august address. Sibley Road and the parallel streets between Huron Avenue and Brattle were part of the most fashionable neighborhood in the city of Cambridge.

  The privilege of living here had been like a Boy Scout’s reward. He had helped an old woman cross the street.

  There she had been, old Mrs. Winthrop, frozen with fear in the middle of the dangerous intersection of Brattle Street and Fresh Pond Parkway, with cars honking at her from three directions. Leonard had run out and helped her to the sidewalk, and then because she had seemed so feeble he had walked her home, helped her up the porch steps and saved her from tripping over the head of a wild beast as she stepped into her front hall.

  The head was attached to a tigerskin rug. “Oh, dear,” whispered the old lady. “I always forget.” She sagged against a totem pole.

  Leonard was charmed by the clutter of objects in the dark entry. Spears and primitive musical instruments hung from the ceiling. There was a shimmer of gleaming brass—a hookah, huge trays from Benares. Politely he said, “Wouldn’t you like to sit down?”

  “No, no, I’m quite all right.” The old woman’s cheeks were no longer gray with fatigue. She stood upright and beamed at him. “I want to show you something.”

  Taking his arm she led him across the hall and pointed to a framed photograph on the wall above a bulky handplow from Azerbaijan. “My husband Zachariah among the Zulus.”