Free The Memorial Hall Murder by Jane Langton

were just nutty calls. We get them all the time. Yes, Judy, you want something?”
    A woman in a blue uniform was looking in at the door. “Excuse me, Pete. We thought you’d like to know there’s been another bombing in Bridgeport. Big insurance company. And the Nepalese Freedom Movement said they did it. It was on the news just now.”
    â€œNo kidding? Well, thank you, Judy. Mr. Kelly, I think they’ve turned their attention elsewhere. It’s the banks that will be getting it next, I’ll bet. They must be through with the universities. It’s funny, though; they never took credit for our bombing. They usually call up some newspaper and give a speech over the phone.”
    â€œWhat about supporters of the movement here in Cambridge? Do you know anything about them?” said Homer. “I understand there are plenty of sympathizers with the Nepalese Freedom Movement among the student body. But I don’t suppose there are any mad bombers in that lot?”
    â€œI doubt it very much. We’ve talked to a bunch of them. Some of our best students are members of leftist groups of one kind or another. And of course when you say the word ‘radical’ around here, everybody thinks of Charley Flynn. He’s an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department. But the trouble is, all these people were friends of Ham Dow. It’s in conceivable any of them would have put his life in danger, let alone blow him up.”
    â€œWhat about people on the scene at the time? Have you got any record on them?”
    â€œOh, my God, there were so many of them. There was such a jumble and confusion of near-witnesses and standers-by and rushers-to-the-scene. Well, you know. You were there. At the time of the explosion the basement was full of people. They poured out of the building from every door. You know: the radio station, WHRB, the copy center, the lecture hall where you were teaching, all those little rooms and offices down there. But when we tried to pin them down—who they were, where they had been at the time, where they lived, and so on—they melted away. And the people we did manage to identify didn’t seem to have the vaguest notion who any of the others might be. Teli me, have you ever heard of Ham’s Rats?”
    â€œHam’s Rats?”
    â€œIt was what they called themselves. A whole bunch of people. Mostly kids, but not all. Some of them were middle-aged, even elderly. People that hung around Ham. A lot of them weren’t even students. They were people he picked up or befriended in one way or another. The trouble is, no one seems to know who they were exactly. Wait a minute, listen to this. Wait till you hear our interview with Crawley, the building superintendent. I’ve got a tape recording right here. Listen to this.”
    Homer sat back and looked at the ceiling and winced, as Mr. Crawley’s whining voice began droning from the tape recorder.
    â€œI don’t know who was in the building. Damned if I know who the hell was downstairs.”
    â€œBut, Mr. Crawley, whoever put that bundle of dynamite and the clock mechanism under the floor of the memorial transept must have known the building very well.”
    â€œWell, don’t ask me. They were all over the place all the time, those kids. ‘What the hell you doing here?’ I says. ‘It’s a free country,’ they says. So I says, ‘Get the hell out.’ Only, next thing you know, they’re back again, all over the place downstairs. And up in the balcony.”
    â€œThe balcony?”
    â€œThat balcony up there. You know. It’s right up over the place where the guy got his head blown off.”
    â€œWho? Who was up in the balcony?”
    â€œSome weirdo. I don’t know. He’s new. Wasn’t there before.”
    â€œWell, what about the night before the bombing? Did you see anybody unusual hanging around the building the evening