Murder On the Way!

by Theodore Roscoe

  I stared at the dead man’s folded hands; wished for a cigarette. Somewhere a clock began to grind and strike; loud voices were coming up the hall. I turned to see Maître Trousellines trot into the library, watch in palm; and then there came herding at his heels such a collection of persons as I never hope to see foregathered anywhere again.

  There were seven of them.

  As Pete suggested afterwards, “Somebody must have left a window open at the zoo.”

  There was Sir Duffin Wilburforce, K.C.S.T., a lank, crickety individual attired in run-down opera cape, rumpled evening clothes, black spats, cotton gloves and one of those peaked plaid Sherlock Holmes caps you’d see with astonishment in England and possibly in cartoons. He strolled forward, fussily chewing the ivory knob of an ebony stick, a diet that hadn’t nourished a pinched, old-maidish face adorned by a wilted horsehair mustache, the type of nose generally characterized as a snout, and eyes that were little triangles of bleared blue, watery under polite brows. I fully expected lines from Hamlet or a bunny out from under the hat.

  He said, “Cheeri-o,” to me, and “Charmed, my dear,” to Pete, bowing at the hips. He twisted a monocle into an eye, and the glass made a weak lamp-bulb screwed to his face; a pale thread of scar running from the corner of the eye down the jawbone was the electric wire supplying current for a quizzical light.

  “I knew your uncle well, my dear. Allow me to present my lamentations. Gad, doesn’t he look natural?”

  An air of the spurious, a sense of illusion had prowled throughout the entire evening, and the arrival of this magician-like character, heralded by a wooden rolling of drums, served the coup de grâce to reality. It was not resuscitated by the seafaring figure who brought up this Briton’s rear.

  I’m sure the mariner was declared by name, but I was to remember him only as “the En-sign,” odor of powerful tobacco, accent first syllable. A square, hearty, copper-faced man wearing what appeared to be the remnants of an American naval officer’s uniform. Gold frogs had frayed on the once blue sleeve and the tunic lacked its buttons, a defect which allowed outsiders a peek at a frankly naked stomach and a chest garnished with curly bronze hair and weather-beaten tattooing.

  Oilskin reefer on arm, one of those cod-liver-oil sou’westers aft on his head, he carried himself with the assurance of a man impatient with small obstacles. At the same time he had a jocund cheek and a sportive Alice-blue eye. There’d been girls in this he-man’s life. His look at Pete plainly said so. Goin’ anywhere, sister? I didn’t like that eye or the heavy revolver slung with nonchalance on his bullet-weighted belt.

  Leaning against a shelf of encyclopedias, he plucked a stubbed pipe from his pants and began to load tobacco as if it were a gun, stuffing ammunition from a red tobacco can. “How they goin’?” he asked me, grinding the words affably through square teeth.

  I could have said, “Not so good,” with some conviction. I was meeting the mourner next in line, the one introduced as Ti Pedro. Ti Pedro, himself, had nothing to say. He was tall and bare, six feet of brass gristle spotted with greenish freckles, a polliwog complexion suggesting fifty-seven varieties of ancestors, all of whom had been champion swimmers. He had the torso physical culturists wish they had when they stand mornings before mirrors preening exaggerated muscles. He was naked to the belt save for tiny gold hoops in his ears and a mysterious trinket that resembled a hardboiled egg suspended by a string from his throat; and he stood, arms folded, and stared too thoughtfully at Pete and me.

  I was reminded uncomfortably that Haiti was an island in the Spanish Main. Ti Pedro, Maître Tousellines confided in a whisper, was a Dominican. A friar? Sacré Dieu, no! An émigré from the country across the border. Santo Domingo was that half. Haiti was this half. And speaking of halves, at some time or other in a brisk and glamorous past, the tongue had been cut from Ti Pedro’s mouth; a mutilation which had promptly deprived him of his speech.

  “And this, if you please, is Ambrose.”

  Well, I didn’t please, but my attitude was lost on the tubercular-looking boy in the green jersey and highwaisted dance-marathon pants who sidled forward to enter the picture. He looked as if he’d been brought up in an atmosphere of cigarette smoke. His hair and eyelashes were white, albino, lending his face a sleepy, feathery look that was nasty. His lips were red, effeminate. Entering the library they were whistling When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder I’ll Be There, inspired I suppose by the occasion, but when his eyes discovered Pete, the tune changed to Looky, Looky, Looky, Here Comes Cookie. He carried a billiard cue in one pasty hand and ran the back of the other across his mouth, extinguishing the whistle as he fanned his eyelids at the girl

  “Geez, it’s been a long time since I seen a pretty twist.”

  Then his eyes were there, here, everywhere, darting about like white mice caged in his head. “Let’s go, Tousellines — that stiff kind of gets me.”

  “They’re getting better as they go along,” said Pete with a tug at my cuff. “Cart, look at these.”

  “These” were an Aunt Jemima done with half a ton of charcoal, and the tame gorilla she was leading by the hand. Only it wasn’t a gorilla, and I was to learn that it wasn’t tame. On closer inspection it was an ebony Jamaican Negro, head woolly as a cauliflower, the face of a suspicious moose pinned to shoulders about four feet wide. Never able to support so colossal a superstructure, the spine had curved, the legs bowed outward in parentheses, giving their owner a rolling gorilla walk that looked at once powerful and demented.

  Maître Tousellines called it Toadstool by name, and hastily introduced its mother, the Widow Gladys. I saw that she was not charcoal but a cargo of moist milk chocolate about five feet tall and as many in circumference, a great southern Mammy with breasts like bass dums, dressed in a tent of soiled chintz and topped by a red and blue polkadot turban. Mouth cut from a watermelon and black seeds for teeth. Five chins dripping slowly in the heat as she took a clay pipe from her teeth and studied us with eyes like tiny cups of tea. Pete tugged my thumb, and I saw with a gulp that the Widow Gladys had lost one arm — the left being a dimple in a bulge of shoulder.

  She cuffed the Toadstool to one side and waddled a step forward to grunt good evening.

  “Cut it short,” Ambrose whined a plaint. “Get the Nazi in here and let’s start the show.”

  Maître Tousellines announced, “This is Manfred,” spurs clinked down the library, and the shadow that came at us was straight off the Unter den Linden. The feldgrauen uniform, the mustache, the trained scowl, the Krupp-gun jaw were ghosts from Berlin, the sort of ghosts that used to haunt the Allied staffs during the war to end wars, the ghosts that are clanking in Europe today, but precisely the kind you’d not expect in the island of Haiti. Stalwart and Prussian from toes to tabs, this exiled War Lord goose-stepped to the fore in a breeze of rum and gave us the glare. He was as drunk as a new saloon. Iron crosses on chest, automatic at hip, he was commanding enough without that angry strawberry birthmark blotched like a piece of liver across his cheek.

  Standing very straight he belched like a blacksmith, “Gesundheit!” and saluted the coffin.

  I remembered with a shock that this was a funeral.

  “Sit down,” Maître Tousellines ordered querulously. “I am going to read the will.”

  There was a scramble for the chairs.

  III.

  Rest in Peace!

  “‘I, Elias Proudfoot, being of sound mind and healthy body —’”

  Three pictures, that midnight, were to hang themselves for good in the gallery of my memory. The first was that row of faces ranged half-moon before the coffin — the Englishman’s basilisk monocle; the En-sign’s blunt pipe; Ambrose’s fluttering eyes; Ti Pedro’s tongueless mouth ajar; Toadstool’s moosy stare; the sweat-pearl necklace under the Widow Gladys’s chins; Manfred’s birthmark glowing like a stove burn — that batch lined up as if to start a game of Going to Jerusalem, and the little black lawyer, front and center, to referee the fun. And then the face of
Uncle Eli with its honed nose poked above the cowling of the casket, that strip of adhesive mending the punctured forehead, the silhouette behind it on the wall.

  “‘Do hereby set my signature to the following last will and testament drawn by me and duly witnessed — ’”

  When the lawyer faltered among “wherefores” and “hereuntos” to draw his own breath, nobody breathed; and the room was an abysm echoing to an outer muttering of drums. Cornelius was a solemnized shadow hovering against the Complete Words of Bulwer Lytton; and Dr. Sevestre stood behind me, legs apart, pitching that metal pea from hand to hand.

  Pete tightened her fingers in mine, while Maître Tousellines, having untangled red tape in the preamble, arrived at the body of his document.

  “‘It is therefore my command that if, when or at such time as I die: A — My body be autopsied and at once embalmed by Dr. Sevestre. B — Burial shall take place no sooner or later than three days after death. C — The funeral be of Voodoo ritual conducted by the hougan, Papa Leo, in manner of the Service Legba. D — That I shall be buried in my rosewood coffin in the assigned spot chosen by me on the morne, the grave to be exactly ten feet deep and the monument immediately mounted on the grave. E — That an iron stake exactly eleven feet long shall be driven down into the grave through the exact heart of the buried casket. Any omission or addition to the above renders this will null and void.’”

  The old lawyer’s voice had ducked into his collar again; he stopped to fish it out. Beyond the window screens the drums were taking a quicker tempo; and an uneasy stir passed down the line of chairs.

  “Well the verdammt old fool!” The outburst exploded from the German. “A stake in the grave, hein? He was afraid they would get him for a zombie!”

  “Stow it, Nazi,” the En-sign advised. “Can’t you see the boss has a relative here?”

  At the word “relative” the mourners leaned forward to stare at Pete. Sir Duffin picked the glass from his eye winked his triangles solicitously. “Pay no attention the Boche, my dear. The blighter is drunk.”

  “Who is drunk?”

  “You are!”

  “Pipe down, swabs, this is a funeral.”

  “Hush yo’ mouf,” the Widow Gladys injected, slaping Toadstool a maternal smack on the ear. The black boy had been googoo-eyeing Pete.

  Ambrose whinnied, “That stiff is givin’ me goose pimples; can’t you snap into it, Lemonade?”

  Maître Tousellines flashed the youth a sour glance; turned several pages of manuscript. “The clauses of will shall be executed, messieurs. It will be necessary drive the stake in the grave.”

  “He was afraid they would catch him for a zombie,” German repeated with a sullen wag of the head. The seven faces stared at the casket. Ti Pedro, the Dominican, fingered the egg on his wishbone, gurgling under his breath. Pete hugged my arm and tried to look as if she’d spent many an evening at similar funerals.

  “But this is most absurd,” the doctor spoke out behind me. “Attend, Tousellines, cannot you omit these details? For the sake of ma’mselle?”

  The lawyer mopped his blue-black forehead with a lavender handkerchief. “It is the will and my instructions were to read the same.” His eyes rolled down the arc of chairs. “Stop that noise, Ti Pedro. Have you forgotten that talismans are against the law?”

  “The hell with the law,” the En-sign objected with a gesture of his pipe. “What is this, anyhow? Did the Old Man leave us anything or not?”

  “We now come to the devisees. To claim heritage they must hear this reading of the will and remain throughout the funeral ceremony. I ask you to give complete attention. It says: ‘To each of the following named who shall remain at Monte Noir for the appointed period of time, I do devise and bequeath as follows: — ’”

  And then it was that the extraordinary cadaver in the rosewood coffin tossed its verbal bomb. One hears the term “mouth-piece” for a lawyer. I know where it came from. Lawyer Tousellines swiveled his eyeballs at Sir Duffin Wilburforce, and it was as if the little black man speaking were the dummy, and the ventriloquist lay in the rosewood casket, jerking the invisible strings.

  “‘To my overseer, Sir Duffin Wilburforce, I leave my entire property, real and personal, valued at one hundred thousand dollars, provided the heir so named does not leave Morse Noir in any way, shape or manner for twenty-four hours after the driving of the stake in my grave. Should the heir so named fail to carry out this stipulation, the estate falls to —

  “‘Number Two: My plantation manager, Ti Pedro, provided be does not leave Monte Noir in any way, shape or manner for twenty-four hours after the driving of the stake in my grave, in default of which the estate falls to —

  “‘Number Three: My master pilot, Ambrose Jones — ’”

  Provided he did not leave Morne Noir in any way, shape or manner for a similar period, in which case the estate went to Number Four: one stable-boy, named Toadstool. If Toadstool defaulted the heritage fell to Number Five: his mother, the Widow Gladys, housekeeper. The En-sign “business manager” was listed Number Six. Captain Manfred von Murda, “bodyguard,” Number Seven. “‘With the estate falling to each so named in numerical succession in event of default by the preceding heir, and lastly to my ward, Miss Patricia Dale. So reads my last will and testament. Hereby subscribed and signed by me: —Eli Elijah Proudfoot.’”

  That was Uncle Eli’s will! Maître Tousellines stowed it under his coat-tails with a nod, and for a minute that funeral parlor had all the atmosphere of a spider’s dream. Rage, disappointment, jubilation, unbelief capered across the features of heirs numbered One to Seven, flushed their faces all the colors of the rainbow. Toadstool leapt to his feet and his mother struck him down. Ambrose was counting on his fingers. “I’m sixth,” came the En-sign’s sardonic drawl. Sir Duffin Wilburforce whipped to his feet, monocle blazing. “Don’t worry, you rotter! Or any of you. It’ll never get to you. I’m first, first, first, d’you hear? It’s mine!”

  Outside the drums were bomming and booming. The mourners shouted. A chair went over. There was powder in that last will and testament, and I wanted most strenuously to get Pete out of there, and by the look in her eyes she wanted to go. But the spider’s dream went into a spider’s nightmare; and an ancient Negro in an unscrupulous flannel nightshirt was to be seen standing in the library door. “Papa Leo!” Maître Tousellines croaked.

  The Haitian priest started forward, chanting. He wore a wreath of yellow daisies on his head, carried a dead white goat under his arm, a big red candle in his hand, and was followed by four black stevedores in nightshirts. These golems came down the library, lifted the rosewood casket to their shoulders without so much as a by-your-leave, and staggered, grunting like piano movers, for the door. Ambrose cried, “Let’s go!” and I felt the way I did when I smoked my first cigar. The mourners dashed out like rats on the heels of the Hamelin piper, and Pete and I were deserted among books and overturned chairs and blue shadows.

  “Those brutes!” She was furious. “All they want is his money. And he — it’s pathetic the way he wanted them at his burial service. Cart, the least I can do is go; see him to his — ”

  We left the château and tagged the processional into the night. The drizzle had terminated. A cheesy moon lurked behind curdled clouds; the landscape was gray. At the bottom of the compound the drums were going like express trains, hurrying the black priest with the candle, the sweating pall-bearers, the trailing crowd.

  That’s the second picture I won’t forget. That funeral cortège. Papa Leo in the lead; the tottering stevedores, casket swinging aloft; those seven outlandish mourners doing no mourning in the wake.

  The parade cut crosslots through the wet, leafy black; taking that path where Pete had thought she was stepping on frogs. When we came to the station where the angel had stood, I saw that the celestial had departed (taking flight, I had no doubt), leaving deep ruts in the mud. Farther on we overtook the angel, impelled uphill by a team of twenty black mules, a great to-do
of equally black muleteers, much cracking of whips and jangling of harness and laying on of hands. Screeching and squealing on wooden rollers, the monument mounted the slope, a knot of glistening darkies shoving and cursing the thing on its way. Picture that, in the moonlight with the drums going.

  Then picture the noble brow of that hill above the bowl of the valley, with a great dead tree standing lonely against the sky, the moon’s rays silvering the skinless limbs, the Caribbean curving beyond. Two half-naked blackamoors panting on long-handled spades, and a black rectangle like a shadow across the earth beneath the tree. I don’t know what morbid impulse moved me, but I remember taking a nervous peek into that grave. A deep excavation with brown puddle water glistening on the bottom.

  Papa Leo, the houngan, hung the dead goat on a limb of the dead tree; then stood over the grounded coffin, waving the dripping candle and singing gulaba-gulaba-gulaba -gulaba like a wattled turkey, while the four pallbearers bayed on their knees: “Moon li mort! Moon li mort!” which was Haitian for “the man is dead.” Meanwhile the angel came barging up the heights, the drums throbbed like aching teeth, the presumptive heirs waited eager-eyed, candle-light fluttered on the wan, green face of the old man in his pink longbox. I wasn’t sorry when the black priest hushed his liturgy, and the pallbearers set to work nailing a massive lid on that rosewood casket.

  I wasn’t sorry to see the coffin lowered into the grave; to hear the hollow thump of earth-clods on its cover. But then we must stand there till the grave was filled, the mound leveled off, the earth packed hard; stand there and watch the business of the iron stake. Maître Tousellines, a shade lighter in color than before, fetched that solid crowbar from behind the tree. The gravediggers produced sledge-hammers. Papa Leo held the monstrous spike in place.

  Whang, bang, whang, bang! You’ve seen them drive tent-pegs in the circus? But this wasn’t the circus. This was a new grave high on a night-swept bluff and an iron post sinking into the dirt. When but three feet of stake remained above ground, its point encountered a subterranean obstruction down below. Pete turned away, and I wish I had. The hammer blows fell harder; there was a sudden give — a sort of whuff! — and the stake drove level to the ground.