Thursday, October 10, 1963 (3:48 am)

Rosemary Duncannon had been the New Jersey Military Academy’s head librarian for the past fourteen years, after having previously spent five years as the school’s assistant librarian. During all that time, she had lived in a small house near campus with her lover and best friend, Natalie Coleman, who worked in the Academy’s admissions office. Despite the fact Rosemary had never married (and there was therefore no “Mr. Duncannon”), she had always been known around the school as Mrs. Duncannon. The school’s former headmaster had introduced her by that name on her first day at work 19 years ago, and, since she had not bothered to correct him, the title had stuck.

One of Rosemary’s duties as head librarian was to monitor the cadets’ use of Jessup Hall after class hours. From 3:00 pm (when the last classes of the day ended), cadets were only allowed in Jessup Hall to use the library. To go anywhere else in the building, they needed permission from a teacher. 

To keep track of cadets after 3:00 pm, Rosemary kept a small notebook at the library’s front desk where she noted each cadets’ coming and going. Even if a cadet just asked if he could leave the library to use the bathroom, Rosemary would write down in her notebook when the cadet left and when he came back. A naturally well-organized person, Rosemary took great satisfaction in the completeness of her records. Once a notebook was full, she would put it in a cardboard box under her desk, and she estimated there must be now over fifty notebooks in that box. Although Rosemary knew it would never happen, she sometimes imagined all those notebooks going on display in the library after she retired. She thought that would be a fitting way to commemorate her many years of diligent service.

In addition to considering her organizational skills to be a virtue, Rosemary also took pride in being a solid sleeper. While her lover Natalie suffered almost nightly from insomnia, Rosemary usually fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow and stayed solidly asleep until her alarm went off at 7:00 am. However, ever since Teddy Haswell died, Rosemary had been tossing and turning all night. What was keeping her awake was a nagging feeling that Teddy’s death must have been an accident. Rosemary just could not believe a cadet so cheerful and full of life had killed himself.

 
She had last seen Teddy at 7:44 pm the night he died, when he had asked for permission to leave the library and use the bathroom. Her notebook confirmed the exact time. She remembered he had not seem depressed in the least. In fact, he was smiling and seemed excited about something, certainly not like a boy who was headed upstairs to jump off the roof.

A few minutes later, Stanley Wong, who had been studying in the library all evening, asked if he could go upstairs to see Lieutenant Drake about his application to MIT. Since the Lieutenant had left permission for Stanley earlier in the day, she handed Stanley a green stairwell pass and he left.

Two minutes after that, at 7:52 pm, Donald had asked to use the bathroom. Teddy had not yet come back, and usually Rosemary would not let cadets she knew were good friends use the bathroom at the same time, since she suspected they might be going there to smoke or get into some other kind of trouble. But Donald was a special case. Rosemary knew if she told him to wait until Teddy got back, Donald just would argue and whine until he got his way. Donald had been that kind of boy from his first days at the Academy, and Rosemary had never liked him. She did not believe complainers made good cadets. Besides that, she had always suspected he was responsible for the nickname “Mrs. Dumb Cannon” she knew the boys used behind her back.

To avoid a prolonged argument, she had let Donald go. A minute later, Jerry Stahl left the library. Jerry had said he needed to get his math textbook from his room in the barracks and would be right back. Jerry’s departure would be the last notation in her notebook for October 7.

Shortly after that, Lieutenant Drake came into Jessup Hall and took the faculty elevator upstairs. Rosemary had been surprised to see him, since, when she had let Stanley go upstairs fifteen minutes before, she had assumed the Lieutenant already was in his office. She guessed the Lieutenant came in around 8:00 pm, but she was not sure, since there were no notations in her notebook about it. The notebook was for cadets only.

Another five or six minutes passed, and Lieutenant Drake reappeared from the faculty elevator supporting a barely conscious looking Stanley Wong. Rosemary came out of the library to see if she could help the Lieutenant with Stanley when suddenly she heard yelling coming from Jessup Quadrangle. Once she learned the yelling was due to the discovery of a dead cadet, she had closed the library early and told the remaining students to go immediately back to the barracks.

In had certainly been an unusual night in Jessup Hall, and she had never had a chance to share what she knew about it with anyone. Both the local police and the Army had come to investigate, and she had assumed they would want to interview her. After all, she was the only adult in Jessup Hall at the time other than Lieutenant Drake. If nothing else, her knowledge that Teddy had left the library at exactly 7:44 pm should be useful information for them. 

However, the investigators had never come to speak to her. In fact, she had heard from her friend Florence Kreitzenbach, who was the headmaster, Colonel Overstreet’s, secretary, that they barely had spent an hour on campus. They went to the spot where Teddy’s body had been found, then to the roof of Jessup Hall and then left. As far as Florence knew, the investigators had not spoken to anyone at the school other than Colonel Overstreet. 

Had Teddy left a suicide note? Had he been acting depressed? Was he having trouble in class or did he just break up with a girlfriend? Had anyone seen him on the roof? Rosemary was not sure if these sorts of questions even had been asked. Although she was just a librarian and had never been involved in a suicide investigation, she felt sure this was not the proper way to conduct one.

Rosemary also could not stop thinking that the last four cadets to leave the library that night had never returned. Stanley had an epileptic seizure, Teddy had apparently killed himself and Jerry had discovered the body on his way back to the library. But what about Donald, she wondered. She was sure he never came back to the library, because the next day she had found his copy of A Tale of Two Cities on one of the long library desks. He had written his name on the inside cover. Wherever Donald went that night, she guessed he had been together with Teddy, at least for a while.

So, as far as Rosemary could surmise, a boy who seemed happy and excited was together with his best friend in a near empty school building. That seemed to Rosemary more like a recipe for a tragic accident than a suicide, and, if it had been an accident, how cruel it would be for Teddy’s family to have to live with the belief he had taken his own life.

 
All these kinds of thoughts swirling in her head were making Rosemary an insomniac. Since she was not sleeping anyway, she decided to get out of bed and go downstairs to the kitchen to make a snack. She thought Natalie might have fallen asleep, so she got out of the covers as carefully and quietly as she could and then tiptoed out of the bedroom.

 
When Rosemary reached the kitchen, she started warming milk in a sauce pan to make oatmeal. She had decided it was late enough now that she could go ahead and eat breakfast. Natalie soon appeared in the kitchen doorway as Rosemary was searching in a cabinet for the oatmeal box.

“What’s wrong, Rose? You still thinking about Teddy Haswell?” Natalie asked, as she sat down at the kitchen table.

Rosemary took the oatmeal box out from the cabinet, carried it with her over to the table and sat down next to Natalie. She was not really in the mood to talk, but she knew she could not tell Natalie that without hurting her feelings.

“I just feel like I might know something important,” Rosemary said.

Rosemary already had gone over her timeline of that night with Natalie, and Natalie had not found it especially suspicious. Although Natalie agreed Teddy did not seem like an obvious candidate to commit suicide, she kept reminding Rosemary that a boy could be more depressed than he looked. She also said there could be hundreds of reasons why Donald never returned to the library that night that did not involve him fooling around with Teddy.

“Rose, there was already an investigation. It’s over.”

“But no one talked to me, and I may have been the last person to see Teddy alive. It doesn’t make sense. Don’t they want to know how he seemed before he went up to the roof? Isn’t that important?” Rosemary said.

“I think you need to let this go,” Natalie said, reaching across the small kitchen table to stroke Rosemary’s hand. “Maybe Teddy was having problems at home? It’s impossible for us to know everything that’s going on in these boys’ lives.”

“I know,” Rosemary said.

“And you don’t want to be making any accusations about Donald being involved somehow. His father’s a major donor to the school,” Natalie said. “You know Colonel Overstreet isn’t going to want to upset him.”

“I know,” Rosemary said again.

Although she knew Natalie was right about Colonel Overstreet, Rosemary wished her girlfriend could be more supportive. After all, she was only thinking about Teddy’s family and how they deserved to know the truth. But, since she did not want to say anything to Natalie that she might regret later, she decided it would be best not to continue the conversation any longer.

Rosemary got up from the table, turned off the oven and put the oatmeal box back in the cabinet. She then poured the now warm milk out of the sauce pan and into a glass.

“I think I should try to sleep,” Rosemary said, heading toward the stairs with the glass of milk in her hand. She hoped Natalie could not tell she was irritated with her, since she was not in the mood for a fight.

“Good idea, Rose,” Natalie said, following Rosemary up the stairs.