At the intersection of Crosse and Blackewell Streets in New London, Connecticut, not all that far from US Route Number One North, stands a Howard Johnson's motor lodge and restaurant. It has seven floors, each one as nice and white as the others. It has the traditional bright orange roof. In short, it has all the things you'd expect in a Howard Johnson's. Just why so eminent a gentleman as British/Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein should be staying overnight here rather than at the somewhat more prestigious Holiday Inn across town poses one of those mysteries of our existence the good philosopher/lecturer is by now renowned for. One can only conjecture. Perhaps he feels more at home in a motor lodge named for a real human being than in one named for an abstract expression of temporality, or perhaps he simply arrived here first and went in, seeking no further. In any event, he's here, in our lovely town this evening, just passing through though, on his way, he says, to accept a teaching professorship at Yale University just down the road at New Haven. He's a very tall man, well over six feet three, with a dark suit, a polka dot tie, and a little quaint bowler perched squat atop his bushy gray-black hair, just, or so it seems, ever so little to one side. One can't help wondering if there's significance in that ever so slight lean to the left. Not that we here in New London fancy a communist behind every tree or anything of that sort; it's just that certain of our national leaders have taught us to be just a bit wary of such seemingly innocent things as the cock of a hat in the wrong direction. No, don't get us wrong, we're as sophisticated as any - more so than most; but that little stunt the North Koreans pulled last month demanding all prisoners of war be forcibly returned, whether they wanted to or not - and most of them didn't want to! - well, that left us, understandably, with an unpleasant taste in our mouths. Still, only a fool would accuse so eminent a man as Ludwig Wittgenstein of being a communist. Thank God he's all bedded down for the night though. It was touch and go there for awhile. We all shudder to think what could have happened if Henry Glover had gone off just ten minutes sooner; it might have blackened the name of our town forever.
Daisy - that's Daisy Glover, Henry's first wife - Daisy was just your average frumpy housewife. Of course she wasn't really a Glover any more, not since her divorce came through four years ago, but somehow we all thought of her still as Mrs. Henry Glover. She never re-married, chances are she never would have anyway. She was a nice woman, nice, quiet, respectful, never gave her poor old dad a moment's worry; she just wasn't much to look at. You feel for a woman like that; you don't miss her long though. Poor woman, she never knew how to dress for men. When she was young, and as attractive as she was ever going to be, her dresses were always too long; when she got older, especially this last year or two of her life, and got heavier, it seems her dresses got shorter: little good it did her then though. Most probably it's because none of us ever expected her to marry at all, poor woman, that we just went right along thinking of her as Mrs. Daisy Glover. The truth is, few of us remember her maiden name, and that's odd. But then, marrying up like she did it's only natural her married name would completely absorb her maiden name. Poor woman. We all half suspected something like this would happen eventually. We often spoke of it, sadly too; there was always something sad about that poor woman, being so homely, then marrying up to the Glovers like she did, then having to leave like that, kicked out of her husband's home, divorced, then ending up a waitress at Howard Johnson's. Then ending up out there, like that, all sliced up. Not a one of us can hardly talk about it; it just plain makes us sick whenever one of the motor lodge guests brings it up, as they all invariably do, word traveling like it does. Each one hears about it and wants to know all about it, all the gory details, and comes and asks some one of us to fill them in. What are we going to do? We've got to tell them. It's part of our job. We're here, we've got to stay right here at least till morning. What are we going to do? It's our job.
Your average frumpy housewife comes out, tired, haggard, her dress sticking at her thighs and riding up above the knees, the start of varicose veins visible even under the arc lamp. Her hair's mussed, her waitress cap tilted to the right, a bobby pin poking straight up in the air. She's had two drinks before leaving. Something stirs in the bushes down beside the walk, just beyond where the canopy ends, just to the left of the arc light's reach. The bushes look purplish, but they're not, they're laurel, their leaves falling faster now, which makes the rustling all that more eerie: half dead leaves make a sound when they're stirred like none other on this earth; no word could describe it. Some say it's not so, they don't make any such sound; they do though. Or maybe they don't. Who knows? The woman staggers a little; two drinks do things to her a fifth wouldn't do to some others. She's got high heeled pumps, black; an orange and white jacket over a pale green uniform; and she's carrying a shoulder bag, also black, and shiny. Mascara has run down onto the bridge of her wide, almost Negroid looking nose; she's been crying. A sound startles her; she stops dead. She sees him coming toward her, but she can't scream, she's too scared. The glint of steel pierces her eyes, maybe blinds her temporarily. An eleven inch hunting knife ascends the shafts of light from the arc lamp, then starts the descent. At eight o'clock, if going counter-clockwise, it makes it first entry. The woman still can't scream just yet, none of this is real to her just yet. When she cries out she'll know what's happening to her; it'll be real then to her. She'll know she's being hacked to pieces by a man's hunting knife, a man who previously had only watched her, crouched in the bushes stirring the half dead leaves of the laurels. The tearing of her waitress uniform makes more noise than the slicing of her flesh or the spurting of her blood. It screeches and wails and howls as its rayon, its cotton and its Dacron threads are ripped apart. But for all its shrieking it cuts cleanly, smoothly, easily. Not like the woman's flesh. The blade sticks and jerks about and carries on like a reed on the beach come high tide. The career of this gleaming but steadily wettening blade within the flesh of this woman's body is malignant. More pressure is needed to slice the belly all the way open. The woman has started screaming now, has been for almost half a minute. She seems to be trying to figure a way to struggle, yet she can't seem to find a way, she's got just too big a job on her hands, what with having to hold her belly in at the same time, otherwise it might just slither out and plop down on the walkway at her feet. Only now her intestines have started coming out, her entire life reduced to a sequence of hernias, each already beyond repair by the time her blood soaked hands grab for them. Now the blade is out. The woman has stopped screaming; she just stares, her body sliced open from her diaphragm clear down through her womb. Her wet sticky blood is all that holds her torn uniform to her body. She stares at her husband, then falls backward and dies, her eyes wide open and blood soaked from the gore wrenched loose from her gut when she fell.
Henry Glover couldn't tell us why he did it. He just couldn't tell us. There has to be a reason somewhere for it, but of all people on this earth poor old Henry Glover's the last one to know what it might be. Took him the longest time to even tell us about doing it. Not that he was thinking to get away with it. Not crazy old Henry Glover! It would never occur to him to try and get out of it, even if we hadn't all come rushing out in time to see him standing holding the murder weapon over her. He was just staring, calmly as you please, almost like he was contemplating a piece of artwork or something. No, not crazy old Henry; he'd never try to get out of it. It simply would never occur to him to try and deny his guilt. It's doubtful if he even sees it a guilt anyway. No, he just simply couldn't talk about it, that's all there was to it; simply could not bring himself to talk about it. Who knows, maybe it is a guilty conscience he feels. Poor old Henry. Every time he'd start to tell us what happened he'd begin retching and almost bend over double and have to stop. Then we'd wait a while and try again to question him, then the same thing would happen all over again. Went on like that long into the night till, to tell you the truth, we all began to feel a little sick to our stomachs too whenever we'd start to question him, so we had to let it drop for now. Except for the guests all asking us about it.
Of course I didn't mind explaining about it all to Professor Wittgenstein; even the goriest details, and he wanted them all. They hadn't moved her yet either. He was one of the first to hear the commotion. While she lay there dead, waiting to be taken off, for the longest time he just stood there, in the doorway, with the light from inside behind him and that from the arc lamp in front of him, almost as if he were an apparition trapped there. He could have walked right on over there easy as you please and had the nicest look in the world; but he didn't. Instead, he asked us for every last single solitary detail, no matter how minor, right on down to the condition of her torn clothes. We painted a pretty full picture for him alright, what with each of us remembering some special particular detail. Couldn't anyone have asked for a finer, more complete picture of it than what we gave the good professor. The fact is, he's just retired to his room within the last half hour. We probably talked nearly two hours to him, what with wondering what his opinion of it was and giving him all the details and all. Oh, had to be two hours at least, because it was seven-fifty when the professor says he remembers speaking with Henry Glover in the lounge, not ten minutes before he killed Daisy. That is, before poor old Henry killed her: we wouldn't want to make our illustrious visitor from Cambridge, England out to be a murderer simply through a lapse in syntax, now would we? We questioned Henry for three hours; it's now past one-thirty; so it had to be a good two hours we talked with the good professor.
The only thing he's not sure of is just how long he did talk with Henry. It could have been upwards of half an hour, he says; or as little as just ten minutes. For our part it makes little difference, but these minor details apparently play a very big part in the professor's scheme of things. He puzzled a good fifteen minutes over how long it was. Took off his bowler three times to scratch his head, replacing it each time cocked just that ever so little to the left. Of course, as some of us noted later on, that was to his left, not ours; so maybe he meant it actually to be to the right, as we would see it looking at him. Anyway, that was how we conjectured. He's quite the gentleman though, we all agree on that. All this excitement going on and not once, except for lifting up his hat to scratch, did his clothes ever appear to take on a ruffled or, as we say, a wilted appearance. His shirt was as crisp, his tie as perfectly in place, his coat as unwrinkled as the moment he checked in. Not a spot on his shoes either. Quite a gentleman.
"We introduced ourselves," he said when we asked him if he could recall any of his conversation with Henry. "I remarked his name, I'm afraid mistakenly at first, as I've always had an uncommon taste for honey of the clover variety," he went on to tell us, "but he soon corrected me, for which, needless to say, I was grateful." This wasn't really what we wanted to hear, of course, but as it turned out Professor Wittgenstein had a superb memory for every last detail of conversation. In fact, that was how he was finally able to determine how long he talked with Henry: he gave us verbatim the entire conversation and while he did, though none of us were aware of it at the time, he was actually timing himself to see how long it took him to recount it all. Now that's a memory for you! Where he was sitting, he was facing a clock (we should have known from that), only he wasn't conspicuous in watching it -- but then why should he have been? He saw it, noted the time when he began then again when he finished; and he had specifically asked us not to interrupt him once he began. Now, of course, we know why; but we didn't then. So it was right after the remark about the honey, which incidentally was the only extemporaneous comment he made in recounting the conversation, that he began. We could just all of us picture it in our minds taking place, that conversation between Henry and Professor Wittgenstein, while he was relating it to us. There they were, poor old Henry Glover with his ill fitting baggy suit, his yellowed shirt, no tie, his two days' growth of beard, his haggard face, big dark bags under his eyes, greasy black waves of hair just going every which way, reeking of cheap booze; and the ultra distinguished British professor, all crisp and polished to perfection.
"It stinks," says Henry Glover.
"This age we live in, sir?" asks the professor, like he knows what old Henry's thinking.
"Yeah, this age we live in. It stinks. It's the dark ages. And it stinks like them too!"
"In what sense do you mean that, sir?"
"In every sense but one," says Henry Glover. And honest to God we can just see him there, all of us, just standing there, swaying on his feet, with a mischievous grin on his face -- well, no, not so much mischievous as just plain strange, like he had a special bit of knowledge no one else ever had before or since -- and a twinkle in his eye, his left eye, always the same eye, the other one a blind eye, some say self inflicted during one of his stays in the state hospital, but no one was ever able to verify it though. And him standing there, half turned away from the professor so as to get a better perspective, with that God-awful strange grin on his face, almost like his mouth was drawn to one side by a stroke. "In every sense but one," he says as if it's a secret only he knows. That's crazy old Henry for you alright. Strange part was, in all the conversation the professor related to us, and it must have been the sum total of it verbatim, not once did he repeat himself as having asked what old Henry meant by that weird reply "in every sense but one" -- almost as if he, too, understood what was meant and didn't need to ask. So some of us just plain out and asked him what it meant. He looked up -- or I should say down, considering his height relative to most of ours, even though we were all seated: tall tells, no matter where or what -- looked up and smiled, just ever so slightly like old Henry himself might have done, enough so, anyway, that it sent chills up some of our spines, and several of us glanced over at one another and we pretty much knew we were each thinking the same thing too.
Then he says just that one word, kind of whispers it. "Time," he says. We all smile, kind of like sharing a joke. Then he says, clean out of the blue, "it got him too." We asked what. He says, whispers again, "Time. Time got him. He knew at eight o'clock he would kill someone. He just did not know whom. Whomever would be there, would be killed. Had his wife not happened by, it would have been someone else. Had no one shown, it would have been himself. We bid each other good night at seven fifty-seven. I was on my way to recount Mr. Glover's message to somebody in attendance there that it might be relayed to your local constable. I went over to set my gin and water down, then I had occasion to place a napkin just above my lip, to remove the moisture, then I straightened my tie and breast handkerchief, then I hailed your busboy when suddenly that poor woman's shrieks stopped me cold. I felt I had saved plenty of time to get the deed halted, but unfortunately I had not. I won't bore you attempting to point out the reasons for my not taking the time to try the futile effort of talking him out of it. I'm certain that as men of the world you well comprehend he had to do what he had to do. The impending murder was very real to him, gentlemen, as he spoke to me of it. It had as good as already happened. The acting out of it was merely a formality. A mere ritual, gentlemen, as I'm certain you well comprehend. I must retire now, I have an early engagement in New Haven. Good evening gentlemen."
A most distinguished gentleman, this Professor Ludwig Wittgenstein. It makes us proud to know such a gentleman has passed through our fine little New England city, proud and honored, just as honored as we can be. The entire staff here at Howard Johnson's, one and all of us, feel that something just a little bit perhaps in the way of immortality has been hailed our way this chilly damp November day. It's been a bad year, a dull year otherwise, Ike's election notwithstanding. We were kind of beginning to feel, those of us here in New London, those of us here at Howard Johnson's anyway, that all the great events of the age were just passing right on by us. Now just ever so little bit of it has come our way. Oh we're not overlooking the sadness, the tragedy: poor old Daisy Glover's tragedy. We're not so callous we relish such a terrible thing. Fact is, hadn't it been for the good professor paying us this visit, it would have been a dreadful black mark against us, against our town, at least against this Howard Johnson's franchise here. Just that one little difference though made all the difference; that one little addition to this otherwise grisly chapter in our otherwise monotonous little town's history. Gives it just the right touch, we, all of us, agreed on that one point. It'll sound different now when we tell it and when the local paper picks it up come Thursday. A cheap tawdry little murder, polished to the lustrous perfection of an event. Just like that.
He sleeps now, silent and safe in his room on the fourth floor; a light from the hallway slowly seeps under the door while he sleeps. A kindness of its vigilance. Outside, spotlights illuminate the pale white facade, showing up the dull orange underside of the roof's overhang, but leaving the topside in darkness. Just barely does the blue-purple of the street lamp's arc light poke about along the roof, as if a cat burglar groping its way back down the slick surface. The green street sign with fine white lettering glistens where Crosse Street intersects Blackewell Street. The dying laurels rustle in the wind, and a gentle rain starts to fall. We're all tired; it's been a long day.