Beneath Strange Stars

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  He slipped the parchment into his jacket pocket. After examining the dagger, he placed it in an evidence bag and deposited it with the parchment.

  Earlier, after sending the body to Dr. Huris with a request for autopsy, he had visited the Rapa Nui Hotel with the intent to search Vale’s room, but someone beat him to it — drawers opened, suitcases emptied and their linings slashed, books and magazines torn apart. Finding nothing, Reyes wondered if the killer had had similar luck. Since his inspection of the evidence had led to nothing but bad dreams, he decided to return to the Rapa Nui.

  The first person he interviewed was Marguerite Atwater, a British woman in her fifties who dressed in her twenties. Her hair was too black, her lips too red. The martini in her hand was obviously not the first of the day.

  “I’ve corresponded with poor Thomas about eight years,” Atwater said, “but the first time I laid eyes on him was when he arrived the day before yesterday”

  “You arrived when?” Reyes asked.

  “Two days previously.”

  “Your reason for coming?”

  “Why does anyone come to the Navel of the World?” she replied. She downed her martini and found another waiting, courtesy of the friendly bartender. “That’s what it means, you know, Rapa Nui, the ancient name for Easter Island.”

  “I’ve heard the term,” he admitted.

  “Navel of the World, the Fountainhead,” she continued. “I came to bask in the antiquity of Rapa Nui, to experience astral vortices and distance myself from the modern world.”

  “Have you succeeded?”

  She gazed at Inspector Reyes through her shimmering martini. “I don’t know.”

  “You corresponded with Mr. Vale for eight years?”

  She nodded.

  “He would have been about fifteen then,” Reyes observed.

  “Surprised the hell out of me when I met him!” she blurted

  “What was the basis of your correspondence?”

  “Thomas wrote after a letter of mine was published in a psychic magazine,” she said. “He seemed very knowledgeable and mature; I wrote back.” She shrugged. “Lost civilizations like Atlantis and Lemuria, crop circles, flying saucers — Thomas was well informed and published several newsletters.”

  “What brought you both here at the same time?”

  “What makes you think our being had anything to do with each other?” she demanded.

  “Please, Miss Atwater...”

  She stared into her fluted glass. “I always wanted to visit Rapa Nui, ever since reading Thor Heyerdahl’s Aku-Aku and Colonel Churchward’s histories of Lemuria. I was hypnotized once, at the Hypnotists Club in London, and learned I had been a princess of Lemuria, that I walked on this very island before the ancestors of these decadent islanders raised statues to honor us.” She took a long silent pull from her glass. “I had a holiday time coming up; I had planned on meditating in the Great Pyramid, in Egypt, you know, but then I received a newsletter from Thomas, saying he was going to Rapa Nui. I changed my plans.”

  “Did Mr. Vale know you would be here?” Reyes asked.

  She shook her head, cheeks reddening. “I wanted it to be a surprise. It was a bloody surprise all right, but I can’t say who was more surprised, he or I.”

  “Did Mr. Vale confide in you any fears for his safety?”

  “No,” the woman replied. “We tried to have lunch yesterday, but it was a disaster.”

  “Did you and he have an argument, some disagreement?”

  She drained her glass and clicked it to the countertop. The barman moved to fill it, but Inspector Reyes held him off with a slight gesture.

  “We tried to talk, but I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t read it, couldn’t think of anything except how young he looked,” she said harshly. “We didn’t have as much in common as I thought.”

  Reyes reached into his pocket and withdrew the dagger. “Have you seen this before?”

  “Is that...” She let her question trail into silence. “No, I haven’t. It’s obviously very old and probably used to rip out hearts for some demonic god.”

  She tapped the rim of her glass, nearly upsetting it, but the barman held back.

  “When did you last see Mr. Vale?”

  “Last night, before midnight.”

  “And the circumstances of that meeting?”

  “ It wasn’t a meeting, luv. I was sitting here, he was walking through the lobby.” She sighed. “I was right here.”

  The inspector looked to the barman, who nodded. “Thank you, Miss Atwater. Please do not leave the island until I have concluded my investigation.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it, Inspector.”

  As Inspector Reyes moved to leave Marguerite Atwater to her bottomless martini glass and her dreams of Lemurian grandeur, she placed a hand upon his leg. Her touch was astonishingly soft, and he had not noticed how startlingly green her eyes were.

  “Must you rush off,?” she murmured. “I haven’t had my dinner yet. I thought we might...”

  He slid away from her touch. “I am sorry, Miss Atwater, but I have much work to do.”

  After a moment she lowered her gaze.

  The next person he planned to interview was not in the hotel. The desk clerk revealed that Antoine Reynard had set out upon a hike through the back country the day before and had not yet returned. When he did, the clerk promised, he would inform him.

  He found Professor Henry Stillwell and Clyde Grosvernor in a portion of the hotel which some wag in the 1950s had laughingly christened, The Explorer’s Club. The name stuck Over the years the hotel’s owners had tried to make the sobriquet less ironic, but their efforts had not been entirely successful. Still, a man could come here, have a Cuban cigar, a glass of overpriced brandy and pretend the world still held dark corners yet unexplored.

  Stillwell was a thin black man, thin not quite to the point of emaciation, but almost. He wore a dark suit and a dark blue bowtie. His brass wireframe glasses were fitted with very thick lenses. Grosvernor was much shorter than his companion, portly, his face round and ruddy, his hair white. He wore khaki pants and a multi-pocketed khaki shirt. He sat back in a threadbare yet plush chair and puffed earnestly on his cigar. His right hand rested upon the silvery headpiece of a thin black cane with a stainless steel bushing.

  “Yes, we heard about poor Vale,” Stillwell said. “The murder, I mean. Most upsetting.”

  “Quite,” Grosvernor agreed.

  “So sad,” Stillwell continued. “A very intelligent, if misguided young man.”

  “Misguided?” Inspector Reyes raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “Vale was highly susceptible to the fringe elements of archaeology and history,” Stillwell explained. “With almost no demonstrable evidence, he gave credence to insupportable theories.”

  “The man was a crank!” Grosvernor blurted.

  “Now, Clyde, we can’t…”

  “He believed in Atlantis and that the Sphinx was built by Martians, for God’s sake!” Grosvernor interrupted. “Vale was a stark raving lunatic!”

  “Clyde is a bit harsh,” Stillwell interjected, “but, in essence, he is correct.”

  “What were your connections to Mr. Vale?” Inspector Reyes asked.

  “None,” Grosvernor snapped.

  “There must have been some connection,” the Inspector said. “Both of you were seen in conversation with him.”

  “He wrote us crank letters,” Grosvernor finally admitted.

  “I should explain,” Stillwell offered. “Professor Grosvernor and myself are archaeologists employed at Montauk State University, in New England, currently on sabbatical. About four years ago, we began receiving letters from Mr. Vale.”

  “No doubt he got our names off some crackpot site on the Internet,” Grosvernor grumbled.

  “Or from the academic press,” Stillwell added. “When we foolishly answered a letter, we were deluged with long rambling missives and requests for information.”

  �
�You could have ignored his letters,” Reyes offered.

  “University policy,” Grosvernor said tersely.

  “Any contact might develop into a grant,” Stillwell said. “Anyway, I eventually realized what Professor Grosvernor knew early on, that the young man was, to use the vernacular, a kook. We hardly spoke to him here, actually. Professor Grosvernor sent him quickly packing.”

  “What was Mr. Vale’s specific interest?”

  After a long, awkward silence, Grosvernor said: “Our specialty is the archaeology of the Pacific Basin. It was Vale’s contention that many, if not all, of the islands in the South Pacific had once been part of a now-vanished land mass.”

  “The Great Empire of Lemuria,” Reyes murmured.

  Stillwell looked as if he had discovered a worm in his apple; Grosvernor, half a worm.

  “No doubt you’ve seen one of his obnoxious little newsletters,” Grosvernor said. “He puts them out by the gross.”

  “Or you’ve talked to Miss Atwater,” Stillwell added.

  “You know Miss Atwater?”

  “Only slightly,” Stillwell replied. “I met some years back at a conference in San Francisco.”

  “Are you friends?”

  “Good Lord no!” Stillwell laughed. “I’m not one to speak ill of a lady, but she’s too quirky, and, to put it bluntly, her manner is too predatory for my tastes.”

  “What about you, Professor Grosvernor?” Reyes asked. “What is your relationship with Miss Atwater?”

  “I have no relationship with her,” Grosvernor insisted.

  “None?”

  “Perhaps in her mind,” Grosvernor finally admitted. “I met her at the same San Francisco conference, but I had the good sense to give her the axe from the start.”

  Stillwell frowned but remained silent.

  “Do you suspect Miss Atwater of killing Vale?” Grosvernor asked. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  Reyes shrugged.

  “I’m just saying, she could have,” Grosvernor suggested. “Lunatics, both of them.”

  “It seems odd that the four of you,” Reyes remarked, “should all find yourselves on Easter Island at the same time. Miss Atwater admitted she had come here because of Mr. Vale.”

  “We certainly didn’t, Inspector!” Grosvernor asserted.

  “Did you know Miss Atwater would be here?”

  “No,” Grosvernor replied.

  Stillwell’s lips pursed a bit, parted almost imperceptibly; his breath seemed suspended.

  “Professor Stillwell?” Reyes prompted.

  “I received a letter from Miss Atwater stating she planned a visit here,” Stillwell admitted after a long, awkward pause.

  Grosvernor shot his companion a glance that would have frozen fire solid.

  “Your acquaintance,” Reyes said, “was not limited to the San Francisco conference?”

  “Although she can be quite intimidating in person, she has an engaging epistolary personality.” Stillwell smiled slightly at Reyes’ frown and added, “She’s a good pen pal.”

  “She’s a loon,” Grosvernor grumbled. “Why didn’t you tell me she’d be here?”

  “We had already made our plans, Clyde,” Stillwell explained. “Besides, we’ve both been looking forward to this trip.” Stillwell settled back into his chair with a weary sigh. “I didn’t want to disrupt our plans; I thought we might not see her.

  “On a small island with a single village?” Grosvernor snorted. “You fool!”

  “When was the last time either of you saw Mr. Vale?”

  “Yesterday,” Stillwell replied. “Late afternoon, before the rains. I had returned from the birdman carvings in the cliffs above Bird Island. Vale was just coming out of this room.”

  “Did he say anything?” Reyes asked.

  “We exchanged pleasantries, but that’s all. Very civil,” Stillwell replied. “Earlier, when we met just after our arrival, I had made it clear that there was no room in my universe for his arcane philosophies. I did so firmly, but gently. There was no enmity between us. I do not have an adversarial nature, Inspector, so I always try to avoid confrontations.”

  ”What about you, Professor Grosvernor?”

  “Sometime yesterday,” Grosvernor replied with a dismissive wave. “It was from a distance. After spotting him, I made a conscious effort to ignore him, so I have no idea if he saw me or not. It might have been in the village, maybe here, I don’t know.”

  “Could you be more specific, Professor?”

  Grosvernor tapped his cane and slowly ground the bushing into the carpet. “No, I really wasn’t paying attention.”

  “There’s another guest in the hotel who was seen in conversation with Mr. Vale,” Reyes said. “His name is Antoine Reynard. Do either of you know him?”

  “Tabloid hack!” Grosvernor snapped, again grinding the bushing of his cane into the carpet. “He writes drivel about lost civilizations, flying saucers and other such claptrap.”

  “He is a successful hack,” Stillwell mused. “Professor Grosvernor and I wrote a book about the Ponape Island ruins in Micronesia entitled Occupational Patterns During the Primary Colonization of Ponape in the Sixth Century AD, and it sold a thousand copies, mostly to university libraries. Reynard wrote Ponape: Spaceport of the Gods, and it sold millions.”

  “And the kicker,” Grosvernor added, “is that he quotes us extensively.”

  “Very extensively,” Stillwell said. “Totally out of context, I might add. I wanted to sue him.”

  “Did you?”

  “The university refused to back us,” Grosvernor said.

  “Professor Grosvernor talked me out of it,” Stillwell said.

  “Why help him out with a lawsuit?” Grosvernor asked. “Any publicity, good or bad, will sell books.”

  Stillwell nodded. “Inspector, if I may be so bold. I’ve heard gossip there was some ritual aspect to Vale’s murder. How exactly did he die?”

  “Stabbed through the heart,” Reyes replied. “A single thrust.”

  Stillwell squirmed. “You’ve recovered the murder weapon?”

  Reyes withdrew the evidence bag containing the dagger with the odd handle.

  Stillwell sucked in a nervous gasp.

  “You’ve seen this weapon before, Professor Stillwell?”

  Stillwell nodded. “It’s mine, Inspector. But I lost it.”

  “Did you lose it in Mr. Vale’s chest?”

  “Henry, you’d better postpone answering any more questions until you’ve retained legal representation,” Grosvernor suggested.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Stillwell snapped, his voice carrying an unexpectedly sharp edge. “That knife was stolen from my room yesterday. I reported it to the manager.”

  “When exactly did you last see it?” Reyes asked.

  “Just after lunch,” Stillwell replied. “Professor Grosvernor and I had lunch in the hotel dining room. I had the knife with me then. We discussed it, among other things. Afterwards, I took the knife to my room and hid it.”

  “Where?”

  “Underneath my socks.” He shook his head and sighed. “I guess it wasn’t such a clever hiding place after all.”

  “Who knew you had the knife?”

  Stillwell spread his hands before him. “Anyone who saw us with it at lunch, anyone at all.”

  “Any fingerprints, Inspector?” Grosvernor asked. “Or do you not have facilities.”

  Reyes almost sighed. Most people assumed Easter Island’s isolation precluded access to advanced technology, including modern police forensics. But Reyes had been a detective in Santiago for twenty years, and had within his call to service a doctor, metallurgist, chemist, geologist, several biologists and any number of other specialists living on the island for one reason or another.

  “The surface was too convoluted to retain enough fingerprint identification points.”

  “When will I be able to have my property returned?”

  “When this situation is resolved.”


  “Unless you’re in prison,” Grosvernor grunted.

  Stillwell shot his companion a sour look. “That’s not very damn funny, Clyde!”

  “No, of course not, a poor jest, sorry, old fellow,” Grosvernor said quickly. “It’s not in Henry to kill anyone. He doesn’t have the steel to say ‘no’ to the ravenous Miss Atwater or stop encouraging poor deluded Mr. Vale, much less the strength to commit murder.”

  Stillwell frowned, but murmured, “Thank you.”

  “From where did you obtain the dagger originally, Professor Stillwell?” Reyes asked.

  Stillwell’s eyes gleamed. “From our Ponape excavation, but it’s not of Ponape. An intrusion in the archaeological record, deposited accidentally, or purposely buried. I’ve always suspected it was a hoax that went awry, perpetrated by our sensationalist colleague, Antoine Reynard. It’s wildly at odds with Ponape culture — arcane motifs, undecipherable script, geologically improbable stone. That’s why I have it and not the university museum.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow, Professor,” Reyes admitted.

  “Don’t you see, Inspector!” Stillwell persisted. “It doesn’t fit, therefore it doesn’t belong. The scientific world is lucky it was discovered by us otherwise it might have landed on the cover of the World Weekly News. Then that darn Reynard would have stuffed another million into his pocket. I bet he just simmers every time he thinks about how his little stunt went awry!”

  “Actually not, my dear Professor Stillwell,” said a voice.

  “Reynard!” Grosvernor exclaimed.

  The man in the doorway was slender, dark complexioned with black hair grey at the temples and he sported the loudest tropical shirt Reyes had ever seen upon a tourist’s back. Reynard’s voice, was that of a professional orator, trained to resonate at just the right pitch, able to project to the farthest reaches of even the largest packed auditorium. The man exuded an urbane confidence.