According to Their Deeds

by Paul Robertson

  “Get on with it,” Mr. Jones said, when Angelo was gone. “I don’t like lots of questions.”

  “I was wondering about Derek Bastien’s desk.”

  No reaction. “What are you wondering about it?”

  “I wonder . . . if maybe there was something questionable about it.”

  Galen Jones shifted his position in the chair; he seemed to have hinges rather than joints. “Now, you think I’d answer a question like that?”

  “I have been thinking about how you would answer it, Mr. Jones. You might not. But Derek is dead, and whoever owns the desk now may not even know about you.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me who knows what.”

  “Did you know Derek at all?”

  For the first time, the sharp eyes dulled. “I got to, a little.”

  “I knew him, too.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  Charles sighed. “You tried to buy the desk at the auction Monday.”

  “You know a lot.”

  “I was there.”

  “It was a nice desk,” Galen Jones said. “I liked it.”

  “I’m sure. You even moved away from Norman Highberg so he wouldn’t see you bid on it.”

  “He talks too much.”

  “He does, but he didn’t see anything, and he didn’t say anything to me.”

  “I didn’t get it, anyway.”

  “It went for over a hundred thousand dollars,” Charles said.

  “A lot more than I could pay for it.”

  “I think it was quite a surprise. Do you have any idea, Mr. Jones, why anyone might have been bidding so much for that desk? Was it a real antique? Or was it a clever copy? And if it was, I’d wonder what happened to the real desk. I assume there was a real desk. Do you know?”

  “Now you’re trying to be tricky, Beale.”

  “I’m not trying to be. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree, anyway. So forget about the desk. There’s nothing I have to say to you about it.”

  “I see.”

  They were both quiet, but neither seemed ready to be finished.

  “What did you think of him?” Jones said at last.

  “He was an interesting friend,” Charles said. “And I’m learning quite a bit about him that I hadn’t known.”

  “He got me talking, a lot better than you are. Too bad he got himself killed.”

  “Got himself killed? It wasn’t his fault. It was a burglar.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have had so much in his house worth stealing.”

  “I’ll remember that for myself,” Charles said. “Well—thank you, Mr. Jones. It’s been very interesting to meet you. I might find another tree to bark at.”

  “You’ve got my number, Beale.”

  “Hey, boss.”

  Charles turned from the just closing front door. “Yes, Angelo, let me guess. You saw that man at the auction.”

  “He went out before you went out.”

  “I just wanted to check.”

  EVENING

  The sky was dim, the streetlights were on. Charles sauntered down to the showroom just as Dorothy came marching in.

  “Just in time,” he said. “I was wondering whether to wait for you here or at home.”

  “I’ve spent the entire afternoon with Elizabeth Roper and Wilhelmina Stratton,” Dorothy said. “We have the banquet completely under control, and I am worn out. They are too much like me, Charles.”

  “I hope it has renewed your appreciation for lackadaisical people.”

  “It has indeed.” She set an armload of notebooks on the counter. “Alice, just set those underneath. I don’t want to see them again until Saturday morning.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Beale.”

  “Thank you. And have you had a useful afternoon?” she said to Charles.

  “More or less, and I can’t wait to tell you about it. Are you ready for a cup of something?”

  “I think I am. I suppose I can put up with your breezes as long as they blow me a whiff of coffee once in a while.”

  “We may set a record for caffeine before this is over,” Charles said. “I also met Mr. Galen Jones while you were gone.”

  “The matchmaker?”

  “Yes. I think I could go to a lamppost and say that I was a friend of Derek Bastien, and first it would invite me to its own private corner, and then it would tell me something that confuses me even deeper. It might also tell me it is only doing that because I am so interesting. I believe we’ve discussed how interesting everyone thinks I am?”

  “We’ve discussed it,” Dorothy said. “Why would anyone find you the least bit interesting?”

  “Because my wife is extraordinarily beautiful.” And then, before she could answer, “She has such a high opinion of me, I must be special.”

  “Then someone is in error,” Dorothy said. “It will take me a moment to work out whom.”

  “Perhaps we should leave before you do, and before anyone comes looking for me.”

  “No one is looking for you.”

  “So far, not. Have we sold anything this afternoon, Alice?”

  “Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.”

  “Ah, now there was a person plagued by visitors.”

  “They were ghosts,” Dorothy said.

  The front door opened. A draft of chill air twirled in.

  “Are you Charles Beale?”

  Charles, Dorothy and Alice all turned to the tall, white-haired man standing in the door. His face would once have been handsome, but now it was worn and hollow. A strange light burned in his eyes. There was something shabby about his dark suit.

  “I am,” Charles said.

  “You knew Derek Bastien?”

  “I did.”

  The man did not move, but was motionless, lit from inside but black-framed from beyond. Charles stepped forward. He held out his hand. “Please, come in,” he said.

  Two steps forward and the man stopped again. He didn’t match Charles’s outstretched arm; he didn’t seem to have noticed it.

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “He told you that he knew me?”

  “He sent me.”

  Charles lowered his hand. He frowned. “Recently?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Charles smiled and stepped around the man to close the door. “I know. What can I do for you, Mr. . . . ?”

  The voice was bass with a couple strings a little too tight. The eyes seemed to focus a little past what he was looking at; which at the moment was somewhere around Charles’s shoulder.

  “You sell books?”

  Charles swept his hand, from left to right, to show the room. “Here they are.”

  The odd-focused eyes only followed the hand and never raised to see the shelves covering every wall. Then they came back to some point inside Charles’s nose. Abruptly he took hold of the hand, jiggled it, and let go.

  “I’m Pat White.”

  “How nice to meet you, Mr. White,” Charles said.

  “Derek had a lot of books.”

  “He did. It was just the antique ones that he’d bought from me.”

  The eyes focused sharply onto Charles’s. “How well did you know him?”

  “Fairly well. I take it you knew him also?”

  “I knew him. I know who killed him.”

  Crash! Alice and Dorothy dropped to their knees to pick up Dorothy’s notebooks that had toppled to the floor.

  After a moment, Charles answered. “I understood that he was killed by a burglar.”

  “Sure.” Mr. White looked around the room, finally noticing the books. The pitch of his voice loosened. “What did he buy from you?”

  “About a dozen volumes, mostly in law and government.”

  “Locke? Burke? Rousseau? Like that?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Sounds right.” The glances were sharp, spearing one volume and then another. “I’d be interested in those authors myself. Or I would have been.”r />
  “What do you do, Mr. White?”

  “I’m retired.”

  “I see.”

  “No. You don’t see. But it doesn’t matter.” He had become just a regular, slightly bedraggled person. He shrugged and his gaze came back to meet Charles’s. “I used to be a judge.”

  “Oh.” Then, unavoidably, Charles’s changed. “Now I do see.”

  “And so does everyone else who reads the Post or watches the news. Well, it’s been a pleasure, Mr. Beale.”

  “It has been. I am glad to have met you, and I mean that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve followed your story in the paper.”

  “Thanks. One of my admirers.”

  “I am, actually. I really would like to talk, Mr. White.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Why did you come?”

  “Karen Liu told me you were asking around. I wanted to see what you were like, and now I have.”

  “You make it sound like I’ve disappointed you.”

  “No. As I was saying, it’s been a pleasure.” This time he started for the door.

  “Perhaps we could have lunch,” Charles said.

  “I’ll think about that.”

  And then he was gone into the night.

  Cautiously, Dorothy stepped up beside Charles.

  “That was the man in the newspaper?”

  “Pat White. The Washington Post always calls him Patrick Henry White. It took me a moment to realize it was him.”

  “The judge. He knew Derek?”

  “Yes. Bar the door before anyone else shows up,” Charles said.

  They both looked at the door, innocently closed. Alice crossed the room, turned the lock.

  “I was joking,” Charles said.

  “It’s closing time,” Alice said.

  “Well. It is. That was an odd visit.”

  “We get all kinds, Mr. Beale.”

  “I guess we do.”

  Morgan came. Charles watched him for a moment counting money and closing the shop. Slowly the air cleared.

  He took Dorothy’s hand. “Now are we ready to go?”

  “I think so.”

  “Has Odysseus reached Ithaca yet?” he asked Morgan.

  “Halfway,” Morgan said. “And the bid is up to seven hundred. Is two thousand still okay?”

  “If I bid too low, I will not get him; if I bid too high, I will pay more than he is worth. So shall I steer towards Scylla or Charybdis? I will stay the course and hold at two thousand.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good night, Alice.”

  “Good night, Mr. Beale. Mrs. Beale.”

  “Morgan, we should get a new Christmas Carol in here right away.”

  “Yes, sir. And may God bless us, every one.”

  “Indeed,” Charles said. “I wonder if Marley had ever been a judge.”

  “Do you still want a coffee? Or is it late enough for dinner?”

  “Just a salad, I think,” Dorothy said.

  “A salad.” Charles set his face resolutely forward. “Fortunately, Alexandria is one of their prime natural habitats. We will hunt one down.”

  They hunted, hand in hand. The first two blocks proved barren, but when they reached King Street there were many brightly lit, fern-filled lairs. A single shot brought down a fine trophy pair: plump, spinachy specimens, with grape tomatoes and blue cheese and raspberry glaze, and crusty floury French bread.

  “Are we calm?” Dorothy asked.

  “Enough.”

  “What was all that with Mr. White?”

  “I don’t know where to begin. He is a haunt of my philosophic musings.” Charles munched an olive. “I meditate on what it would be like to be brought down by your past misdeeds, and presto, my meditation becomes a reality and walks in the door.” He sipped his water. “It’s rare when any part of philosophy actually becomes real.”

  “I think it’s quite a coincidence.” She sounded doubtful.

  “Philosophy doesn’t allow for coincidence,” Charles said.

  “Then what does it allow for?”

  “The evil in human nature. And it only allows for it; it doesn’t explain it.”

  “I don’t think that the evil in human nature is the reason Patrick White fell out of the newspaper and into our shop.”

  “Oh, it is. You could say it’s the reason for most things. But it would be nice to have something a little more specific in this case.”

  “Philosophy or not,” Dorothy said, “I really don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  “You think it’s quite a coincidence, and you don’t think it’s a coincidence at all. Those two statements do not coincide.”

  “The first one is made negative by the tone of voice.”

  “Then let’s see what connections there could be,” Charles said. “He is—was—a judge. He could know people in the Justice Department, and he could apparently know Karen Liu in Congress.”

  “Lots of people know each other, Charles, but not at the same time we’re reading about them in the newspaper.”

  “And he is in the newspaper because . . .” Charles stopped, suddenly somber.

  “What?”

  “He knew Derek, and he is in the newspaper because someone told them something about him. I need to think about this.” He thought. “Now, say you were reading a mystery novel, and something like that happened. Could it be a coincidence?”

  “No,” she said. “Not in a well-written mystery, anyway.”

  “In real life, I suppose it could be. It must depend on how well written your life is.”

  “I don’t think it is.”

  Charles frowned. “My life isn’t well written?”

  “I don’t think it is a coincidence, as I have now said several times. Did he say he knew who killed Derek?”

  “He said that.”

  “Who does he mean?”

  “We would have to ask him. Oh, what does it all mean? Checks to Karen Liu. That article about the wife killing her husband.”

  “What about the other papers?”

  “I’ll need to look at them. I hadn’t wanted to.”

  “Charles, I think you should talk to the police. I really do. I don’t like this talk about killing.”

  “But what will happen if I do? We’d have the front page of the Washington Post all to ourselves for a month.”

  “They wouldn’t have to find out. And is it really your choice to make?”

  “So far. Just think about Congresswoman Liu. I like her. She is a driven person, and she is driven by very good things. I might even be glad she got those checks at that critical time.”

  “That sounds rather shaky.”

  “This is not a firm and stable world we live in. Anyway, I will look at the other papers. Now that I’ve met Karen Liu, and John Borchard, and Patrick White, and Lucy Bastien, the papers might make more sense to me. Once I’ve looked at them, we can discuss what comes next.”

  “And I need to get home,” Dorothy said. “There are still calls to make about Saturday evening. Two hundred people are coming to this banquet.”

  “A blue-blooded and blue-haired two hundred. Yes, make your calls. We want them all to feel very comfortable and happy.”

  “We will. We have a surprise for them, too.”

  “Good. Then let’s get moving and shaking, dear. I will tell you about Lucy and Galen tomorrow.”

  “Galen?”

  “Jones. The matchmaker.”

  “Oh, yes” Dorothy said. “Did you have him look at Angelo?”

  “No, I had Angelo look at him.”

  “Charles, how much would you say that the Enlightenment was based on laws?”

  “Laws written by governments?”

  “No, I mean natural laws. You mentioned Isaac Newton once.”

  “I think natural laws were very important, Derek. Once the Renaissance and the Reformation had overturned so much that people had once accepted, they were looking for someth
ing new to base their understanding of the world on. Newton and Pascal and the rest were describing the physical world with mathematic laws, so why not describe mankind the same way? That’s what the Enlightenment fundamentally was: rebuilding the world rationally.”

  “Then it was fundamentally flawed. Nothing is less described by rules than human nature.”

  “On that, Derek, we completely agree. But what they built is the modern world we live in. We seem to govern ourselves and keep a semblance of order.”

  “Barely. Just barely. It’s touch and go, and we live an inch from catastrophe. Charles, the reason there are no laws that govern human nature is that it is ungovernable.”

  “Some people are less governable than others.”

  “You’re speaking of your own experience?”

  “Yes, my son, as you know.”

  “I do. I know it isn’t an easy subject for you.”

  “No, Derek, but it’s all right. He would be a good example for a discussion of the ungovernable human spirit, but I don’t think I would be objective.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Seventeen. That was fifteen years ago.”

  “Fifteen years might not heal much.”

  “Believe me, Derek. It doesn’t.”

  FRIDAY

  MORNING

  “Let me describe what Derek Bastien looked like.”

  The night had passed, the morning had come, and Dorothy, at her desk, looked very nice herself.

  “Yes?” she said, peering over her reading glasses.

  “I hope you’re not too busy,” Charles said.

  “Please, dear,” she said, “tell me what he was like.”

  “I’d be glad to.” Charles’s gaze drifted. “Did you ever see him?”

  “You introduced me once, but I don’t remember now.”

  “Exactly. Oddly nondescript for such a personality. Or maybe chameleon-like. He could just disappear in a room of people if he wanted.”

  “There must have been something not ordinary.”

  “First was his eyes. They were always studying. When you finally noticed it, it was unsettling for a while. Then his voice. It was deeper than you would think. Rumbly.”

  “And what did you talk about on your visits?”

  “We played chess and discussed human nature. He studied it like a geologist would study rocks. His job was his laboratory.”

  “He said that?”

  “No. I was studying his nature a little myself.”