Covering up for the sheriff was one of my regular duties. Of course he knew his missus would be at the crime scene as soon as I told him we had another one. He also knew that all the other people who owned a telephone in town would be there, too, all seven of them, except for the two who were now dead, and maybe if we squinted real hard we might even have been able to see them, too, looking wispy and peaked and not quite with us anymore but not quite departed from us either. The sheriff generally put on a show worth hanging around for.
About a week back the first dead telephone owner had shown up, a glass of lemonade in one hand, her telephone receiver in the other. I'm talking about the Widow Brown, who'd received a call from a ghost wanting to know if she was ready to pass over to the other side. Nobody figured that restless spirit was talking about the other side of the river. How did we know it was a ghost? Because everyone else who owned one of those infernal talking machines had gotten a call too. And they all claimed the voice they'd heard sounded too stretched out and windblown to be from this world, though that was about all they could agree on. Votes were split on whether it was a man or woman spirit ringing them up. And poor Etheline Spavins, who was fraying on the edges anyway, she kept changing her mind about even that. All her dithering kept her nipping on her nerve medicine, which she was more than willing to share, kindly soul that she was, though I couldn't help but notice that when she did pass her flask around, everyone's recollections of the voice grew shriller, not calmer.
'Course sensible folks wanted to pin the Widow Brown's end on the Confederate captain who haunted her livery stable. Didn't matter that the widow had been found slumped over her telephone with nary a sword mark or hoof print on her—people figured that Confederate cavalryman finally got some peace. After all, he'd been shot in the back by the widow's husband in the war and followed him home afterward. On moonless nights he was said to prance his white stallion down main street while brandishing a sword and whooping it up worse than ten comancheros. I'd never seen the fella myself, but everyone who had said it wasn't a show you wanted to miss.
But was that Confederate captain the spook who did in Cedric too? That didn't quite make sense, especially with a phantom opera singer waiting in the wings. Naturally half the town—the womanly half—was going to chime in that she deserved her due too.
And that wasn't the end of our visitors from the other side. We had a real bumper crop of them that year, and everyone wanted to nominate their favorite as the culprit. The only one of the surviving telephone owners who didn't have an opinion on the matter seemed to be the sheriff's wife Becky, and that was because she claimed she never answered the phone and didn't care what the local spooks were up to. So far as she was concerned no one in our town ever said anything worth hearing, and that included the ghosts.
"What I want to know,” Rutherford Dewitt stated for the record, “is what the sheriff is doing to protect those of us who are still breathing. We do pay his salary. Yours too, Deputy."
I skipped over mentioning how little they paid. Rutherford wasn't the sort you felt like complaining to. He was too big for most horses to carry and didn't have any more sense of humor than a hangnail. He spent most of his days glowering and talking louder than necessary because he was hard of hearing but wouldn't admit it. I answered loudly that the sheriff was tracking down several lines of inquiry, which went over about as well as a storm cloud on a wedding day.
"He has yet to even come talk to me,” Molly McIntosh informed everyone. She was a slight, pasty-faced woman who'd dressed in black ever since her father had passed on some years ago. “I am all alone down at the lumberyard, you know.” Her voice faded away to a hoarse whisper to add, “Almost."
She didn't want anyone to forget she had her own ghost, of course. You see, except for Becky, all the telephone owners claimed to have spirits plaguing them quite regular, and since everyone but Becky was getting on in years, they couldn't sleep worth a hoot and stayed up half the night, complaining to each other over the telephone about what bedevilment their ghosts had been up to. Molly's restless spirit had been the night watchman at her family's lumberyard. He'd been burned to a crisp in a blaze that twenty years back turned most of her family's business to ash. To hear Molly tell it, that spook never gave her a moment's peace.
"Now now, Molly, you've only got one ghost haunting you. I'd think you'd have the decency to let these lawmen concentrate on my place first.” That was Alfreda Scrim, the preacher's wife, who lived right next the cemetery and liked to reflect that it never rained but it poured when it came to ghosts and such around her house.
"Yes, but Alfreda, you've a preacher to protect you,” Molly reminded. “When the clock chimes midnight, I'm all alone."
"The preacher?” Alfreda harrumphed, having no high opinion of her husband's way with ghosts, or anything else for that matter. “When the clock strikes twelve he's gone to world, and I'm all on my own, same as you, excepting I don't have just one lazy visitor from the hereafter to contend with. I've got a whole graveyard full of unhappy sinners right outside my door. And I have to tell you, lately any time my phone rings after dark, they're stirring. Something about that sound makes them restless. Injun Joe, if you and the sheriff are finally going to start looking for a culprit, I'd say you'd be wise to start in that cemetery."
"As if they could hear the phone ringing above your voice,” Rutherford declared with a snort. Other than Mrs. Becky, he was the only one with a telephone who didn't admit to having a ghost, though everyone claimed he had a pair of them. Two little boys, not more than seven and eight, who'd been known to flicker in and out of sight during lightning flashes. People whispered they were his drowned brothers.
"Couldn't we all just try to not talk about them?” asked a weak, wobbly voice. Naturally that was the local steamboat heiress, Etheline Spavin, speaking. She could lay claim to the best known ghost in town, namely her mother, who'd thrown herself from the widow's walk of their riverside mansion upon discovering that her husband had a whole other family down below Cape Girardeau. All that personal misfortune had settled a great shyness over Etheline, especially when her father abandoned her with an elderly aunt and went to live with his other wife and kids. Etheline turned inward after that and had as little to do with the outside world as possible. In fact, I was shocked to see her in Cedric's overstuffed parlor at all. She wouldn't have been there if her nephew, Perry Woodley, hadn't pushed her over in that high-backed wheelchair that she hadn't left for years. But there she sat, with one of her cats purring on her lap and her eyes darting everywhere as if she could see things no one else could.
"Aunty has something she thought you better know,” Perry Woodley said. Being a lawyer, he had a way of saying things that made people expect the worst.
Everyone turned toward Etheline, though slowly, as if they'd rather not.
"Cedric got a call last night,” Etheline whispered with a wobbly chin. “At the stroke of midnight."
"Does the sheriff know about that?” I said.
"Ask him yourself,” Mrs. Becky answered with a nod toward the doorway, where a white apparition had appeared.
It wasn't any ghost that'd joined us though, only Sheriff Huck with the morning sunlight streaming all around him thick as a hundred flares. He'd taken to wearing a starchy white suit as if it made him shine like some beacon of justice.
"Who's bit the dust now?” the sheriff grumbled, though I could tell what he was really asking was, Why me?
* * * *
Telephones had been around ever since thirty some years back when Mr. Alexander Graham Bell just had to prove he could ship the human voice through metal wires and have it come out the other end. I'm still not sure on what carried it in between, and if I had my druthers, I'd rather not know. Seems to me that people talk entirely too much as it is, and this machine just adds to the racket. The goods news about all that? If it's taken the town of Marquis, Iowa, thirty years to get seven phones set up, it'll probably take nine or ten centuries at least t
o get a phone in every house, so maybe I'm safe.
We wouldn't even have those seven phones if thirty years ago Becky Finn's father hadn't felt a powerful itch to travel all the way to Philadelphia for a chance to see the centennial exposition, and President Ulysses S. Grant, and exactly what rubber from India was. And there was talk of an ostrich egg hatcher that caught his eye too. When he came back with news of what an electric telephone could do, he nearly got laughed out of town until young Jimmy Dubois said that he'd read about Mr. Bell's work in a scientific journal that some gent on a passing steamer had left behind. That had the loafers on Main Street rolling in the dust and holding their sides, hard as they were cackling. It was all downhill from there.
To save face, Becky's father had young Jimmy build a phone line between his house and the Dewitt Drug Emporium so that he wouldn't have to hoof that long three blocks downtown every time he needed another dose of those special salts that kept him regular as the nine-oh-five from Quincy.
Soon as the finer sorts heard that Becky's pa didn't have to go traipsing downtown on a rainy day but could just ring Rutherford up and place an order—well everybody who was anybody had to have one of them dowickets put in their house. The line connecting those seven homes up ran in a big loop, with the Dewitt Drug Emporium marking the beginning and end of it. There were some drawbacks to that arrangement. Say you wanted a private telephone chat? Forget it. Anyone on the line could listen in anytime they wanted. And offer free advice if they'd a mind to, which some did. All they had to do was pick up their receiver and have at it. The Marquis telephone line wasn't any place to keep a secret. On the other hand, it was exactly the place to go if you wanted to fan a rumor, like say news of the town's ghosts doing away with telephone owners.
* * * *
"Anybody touched anything?” The sheriff generally liked to pop a question like that to start things off. It let people know who was in charge.
"Did you want us to?” That was his wife, Becky.
He did his best to ignore her, saying, “It appears Cedric didn't finish his drink.” He strolled behind the dead man, nodding toward the half empty glass. An open bottle of brandy stood next it. “Didn't bother hanging up his phone, either."
"Might have been too busy dying to get around to it,” I pointed out.
"So I hear,” the sheriff went on, ignoring me, “that this is some ghost's handiwork. Anybody care to tell me about that?"
Several did, all at once, so the sheriff suggested at the top of his lungs that they take turns, then pointed at Molly McIntosh to start us off.
"I heard the telephone ring four times,” Molly said.
Four rings was the signal for Cedric's place. Each house had its own signal. “At the stroke of midnight,” Alfreda Scrim clarified.
"And then?” the sheriff prodded because everyone suddenly clammed up.
When nobody rushed in to answer, Becky laughed and spoke her mind. “They all hurried over to lift up their receivers and find out why someone would be calling Cedric at that time of night."
"It could have been an emergency,” Alfreda huffed.
"Turned out it was,” the sheriff agreed. “So what'd you hear?"
Now Alfreda and Etheline both ‘fessed up to hearing the ghost extending Cedric an invitation to join her in the next world.
"Her?” the sheriff pounced.
"Could have been him,” Etheline wavered.
Making a face, the sheriff said, “That's what Widow Brown's ghost said, too, am I right?"
"For once,” Mrs. Becky conceded.
"Did Cedric say anything to the ghost?” the sheriff soldiered on.
There was disagreement, but in the end they decided he'd said nothing, though Alfreda insisted she'd heard him gasp.
Etheline's jaw trembled extra hard, as if she had something to say, but nothing was coming out. Finally her nephew spoke up on her behalf, saying, “My aunty thinks that these ghosts are upset by people using the telephones. The electromagnetic current those phone lines give off doesn't give the spirits a minute's rest. It may be that the only way to stop these terrible deeds is to rip out the telephone lines that are causing—"
"No!” Etheline stubbornly blurted, as if her nephew had willfully gotten her message all wrong. “That's not what I wanted to say at all, and you know it. I wanted all of you to know that being a shut-in such as I am, my only connection to the entire world is through these marvelous talking machines and that I have decided to bequeath my entire fortune to the city of Marquis, to be used for the installation of a telephone in every house hereabouts."
That was more than double the talking I'd ever heard from Miss Etheline in all the years I'd known her, and she sounded more than usual off the tracks too. But considering her health, allowances were made, especially when she seized up and started to cough. Her nephew patted her back gently, saying he best take her home to rest. “Her strength's not what it should be,” he explained
"Poor dear,” Molly McIntosh cooed as Etheline got wheeled away.
"She could be next,” Alfreda Scrim predicted, leaning on her experience as a preacher's wife. “Her color doesn't look at all right."
"I'll send her some salts,” Rutherford boomed.
"I can tell you one thing,” Mrs. Becky judged, casting a thoughtful glance at the back of Etheline's wheelchair. “She knows more than she's letting on."
That was a trumpet call to battle for the sheriff, who straightened up, hitched his thumbs in his vest pocket, and declared, “Oh, folderol. That poor old girl's scared half to death, that's all. I dare say she's just talking to save her own skin."
That put Mrs. Becky's back up considerably, and she let fly, “And how, pray tell, does her promising to buy telephones for this little fly-speck of a town do that?"
"Why, can't you see?” the sheriff asked. “She's trying to warn this ghost not to fool with her because if he or she does, they'll be a lot more than seven telephones around to upset them."
You could almost hear the juices bubbling inside Mrs. Becky's head after being talked to so high handed. Without wasting a word, she sashayed out of Cedric Whipplemore's parlor as if she had far better ways to pass the time than listening to her husband blow hot and cold.
After his wife left, the sheriff sent everyone else packing, too, with instructions to stay away from their telephones.
"Even if they ring?” Alfreda asked.
"Especially if they ring,” the sheriff answered with his steely voice, the one he trots out whenever he wants to promote law and order. “Go on now. Git. Injun Joe and I have our work to do."
So the two of us stayed behind, all alone with a dead man. I can't says it was where I would have chosen to spend my morning, but now and then a corpse, especially a ripe one, has been known to liven up the sheriff. And that was always a sight worth seeing.
First thing the sheriff did was take a seat directly across from Cedric, hold the unfinished glass of brandy up to his nose, and make a face. Sniffing the open bottle of brandy, he made the same face again.
"If I was you,” the sheriff advised, “I'd steer clear of this stuff. Don't smell right."
Then he went to studying the telephone receiver in Cedric's hand, and the wire leading to the phone box on the wall behind the dead man, and finally he bent over and took a peek beneath the table. I didn't bother following his lead ‘cause I'd already checked under there. And besides, he was just testing me. If I'd looked, he'd have given me one of those gotcha winks. Straightening back up, he said, “I do have one little question, Deputy. How did this ghost manage to ring up Cedric? I mean, when did Mr. Bell start installing these dojiggers in the Hereafter?"
"Who said there was one there?” I asked.
"Well where else is this ghost calling from?"
He had me there, so I kept my thoughts to myself while we streeled down to the Dewitt Drug Emporium to find out more about how these calls from the other side were getting patched through to the here and now.
* * * *
The Dewitt Drug Emporium wasn't anywhere near as big as it sounds. The sign out front was barely wide enough to hold its name, and the store wasn't much wider, though it was long. Mostly it was filled with glass cases and cabinets and stout smells that kind of grabbed at you as you passed by.
Way at the back there was a narrow counter where Rutherford stood around all day, patting down his fast-thinning hair and talking to himself rather loud. Behind that counter was a tiny room where Rutherford's assistant lived. That assistant, whose name was Archibald Dewitt, also happened to be Rutherford's cousin, though the two look about as much alike as December and July do. Archibald was a little bit of a fella, all ears and Adam's apple, with a full head of hair that needed wetting down every hour or so. And he was jittery. Maybe because of the way Rutherford was always barking at him to move faster.
"The sheriff wants to know about the telephone,” Rutherford announced about five times louder than need be as we traipsed into Archibald's living quarters. There was a cot, chair, and a couple of hooks for his clothes, and on one wall hung a telephone switchboard with an old kerosene lantern burning above it.
My first good look at the switchboard nearly stole my breath away. The thing brought to mind a grinning skeleton. But once you got used to the tangle of wires and brass facing you, it wasn't anywhere near so scary, more strange and wonderful, in a complicated sort of way. Archibald glanced from the sheriff to me and back again while clearing his throat three or four times before managing to ask, “Cedric?"
"That's right,” Rutherford barked. “So what's on your mind, Sheriff? Those of us still living would kind of like to know."
"For starters, how's this monstrosity work?” The sheriff was standing nose-to-nose with the switchboard, looking as though he was about to tug on one of its wires.
"Well,” Archibald started out, doing his best to pull the sheriff's hand back before he broke something, “whoever wants to make a call cranks up their telephone's handle and picks up their receiver. That rings that bell up there.” He pointed to a little brass box atop the switchboard. “I pick up the receiver on my end here and ask who's there.” He demonstrated. “They tell me, and I say how do and ask who they want to talk to, and they—"
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