Living Spectres: a Chesterton Holte, Gentleman Haunt Mystery

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  A little while later, Maestro sauntered out of the corner and took his place at the foot of the bed, purring loudly.

  Slipping through the ceiling, Holte decided to start with the dimension of ghosts first. There were sufficient questions to put to the various ghosts he had been in contact with that he wanted to begin his interrogations now. Besides, Blessing was still on the train, and would be for a day or two longer, and with the flexibility of time in the dimension of ghosts, Holte was sure he could make more progress there than in a first class railway compartment. He floated through the invisible chaos of ghostly streams and eddies, looking sightlessly for Moncrief or Knott or Overstreet as a place to begin. To his amazement, he found Knott first, drifting with a jumble of hurricane victims and paying no heed to their plaintive, silent howls.

  “Knott?” Holte addressed him from a distance. “I’m Chesterton Holte.”

  “Holte. I remember you, don’t I?” Knott came to as much of a halt as he could in the convoluted mass. “You’re the one looking for Stacy Dritchner, Warren Derrington, and Louise Moncrief, aren’t you? Are you looking for me to learn about them?”

  “I am. I was hoping that you might answer a couple of questions for me.” Holte moved a little farther outside of the cycling current of ghosts. “Not only about Stacy and Derrington and Louise, but connected to them.”

  “You’ve talked to Overstreet, or so he told me a while ago.” There was a guarded quality to his observation.

  “I have, as much as I could.” Holte sailed a little nearer to Knott. “Overstreet was still fairly confused. He hadn’t yet realized that he had been murdered when I spoke to him.”

  Knott did something that was like acquiescence. “He’s beginning to figure that out, and he’s getting angry about it. I hope he doesn’t try anything reckless.”

  “What might that be?” Holte asked, trying to imagine how a ghost could be reckless in the world of the living.

  “I’m not sure, and neither is he. I think he wants to cause some kind of physical scene, or at least make the attempt; he can’t rattle chains and he can’t shove the living down stairs or under a train, not that he wouldn’t like to,” said Knott. “And not that it would do much good Quentin and Nelson are here, both drowned during that hurricane that battered along the outside of the Caribbean a day or two ago. Or more. I’m not really sure of the time. You know how that goes.”

  “None better.” This was the kind of information that Holte was seeking. “Have you seen them?”

  “As much as anyone sees anything in this place. It felt like them, but they were so dazed, I could be wrong.” He drifted a short, non-distance away from Holte.

  “Were they bound anywhere in particular?” Holte asked, keeping up with Knott. “Did they mention their destination?”

  “In this place? There’s no such thing, and you know it. I would have thought that they had a port in mind in the world of the living.” Knott gave another of his non-laughs. “I couldn’t tell you where they are now, but I haven’t seen them since that one time, shortly after they arrived. Not that I’ve made any attempt to search them out. I’ll wait until they remember more of what has happened to them before I speak to them again. I don’t think Quentin wants to talk to me, as much as I want to talk to him.”

  “Why is that?” Holte wanted to keep Knott telling what he knew.

  “I’m not sure—it may be that he hasn’t fully realized where he is yet—but it may have something to do with that antiquities fiddle that he and Dritchner and Derrington worked out with me. Quentin was the one who kept the books, and he did a fine job of it. The government’s after all of us—not that that means anything now. The Attorney General can’t reach us here.” His ghostly non-chuckle troubled Holte.

  “So there was something illegal going on,” Holte said.

  “Depends on what you mean by illegal. We were providing high quality copies of legitimate pieces—nothing shoddy—to people who were inexperienced enough to buy them. I had some of the real thing, but for museum-level prices, and those were the ones we had copied, then arranged for the originals to be sold privately. Getting the copies into the country was a different juggle, but one that worked as well as our methods of importing the originals. Quentin handled the paperwork for Customs; top notch documentation. I was surprised when someone twigged on what we were doing.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because of all the care Hadley and Grimes took with our records and such. What Vincent and Paxton worked out was good enough to pass muster with their own firm—which is saying a great deal. James Poindexter didn’t winkle it out for more than a year of snooping, and Moncrief only scratched the surface of what we had been able to accomplish. Most of their people didn’t cotton on to our game at all.” At the mention of the senior partners of Hadley and Grimes, Knott seemed to contract within himself. “Damned clever, those two pictures of rectitude. I sometimes wonder what their grandfathers would say if they knew what Vincent and Paxton are up to.”

  “I’m afraid that neither of their grandfathers are still here to be asked,” Holte reminded Knott.

  “No; more’s the pity,” Knott conceded. “Do you know when they moved on?”

  “Only that it was before I got here,” said Holte.

  “When was that?” Knott asked.

  “Spring of 1916,” said Holte, hiding his reluctance to talk about his execution. “I got here unexpectedly, so I was extremely confused, not unlike Overstreet. It took me a while to get sorted out. By the time I was ready to begin haunting, it was 1921, and this dimension had been filling up with Flu victims for three years, and I was ready to get on with it.”

  “Oh, yes. That was a bad time. Worse than the Great War,” Knott said, unconcerned. “I’m just as glad it’s over with. Good times are coming back, though we aren’t there to share them.”

  “You haven’t been gone from the world of the living all that long,” Holte reminded him.

  “Not in comparison to some, that’s true. But I haven’t lollygagged about, either. As soon as I realized where I was, I put my mind to finding out how I came to be here, so I can do something about it before I move on.” Knott seemed genuinely optimistic, which surprised Holte.

  “Do you think you’ll be ready to do that so soon?”

  “Yes; why not. Once I settle the matter of my death, there will be no reason to linger here, will there? I might as well get on with the next step as quickly as possible. I intend to resolve all unanswered questions I may have without giving in to the lethargy so many of those here have shown. Eastley, for example, drags around in a state of torpor, feeling sorry for himself. I used to have a high opinion of him, but no more. I cannot look on such passivity with sympathy.” Knott swirled around Holte, disrupting the nearest cluster of ghosts.

  “You must have some books of your own to balance before you move on,” said Holte.

  “I suppose I do. I’ll cross that bridge when and if I come to it,” Knott responded.

  Holte thought Knott’s remarks were a bit cold-blooded, but he kept his opinion to himself. “So in your dealings with Stacy and Derrington, did either of them ever give you a hint of where they might be going when the left the US?”

  “I’ve already looked in most of those places, but not very successfully,” said Knott, making a movement that was very like a shrug. “I couldn’t find any of them, and not for lack of trying. If I think of anything more, I’ll tell you next time I see you…if I remember. I’ve been warned by Moncrief that I may forget.” He was drifting away again.

  “You’ve looked all through Brazil? All through the Caribbean? Where else?” Holte was astonished at the idea of such a thorough search being possible in the short time that Knott had been dead.

  “Most of both. If there is another place I might find them, I haven’t found out where it was. In South America and the Caribbean, I couldn’t pick up scent or sound of them. I had a tingle that might have been Derrington at one point a little while ago
, but it was vague and when I tried to follow it, I couldn’t manage to close in on it.”

  “It was probably a place he had been in his recent travels,” Holte said, by way of consolation.

  “Or intended to go. Overstreet said something about meeting Derrington in Cuba, and I think that was the place where I got the itch. Not that it was an actual itch—you understand, I’m sure. It didn’t last long enough for me to pursue it, so I didn’t linger, and went on toward Brazil. No point in wasting time, was there? I think Overstreet told you about that.”

  “That he did.” Holte could feel a kind of noncorporeal heat building up in Knott.

  “If you catch up with him, will you let me know where he is? I do want to find out whether he or Stacy actually killed me. If they’re both still alive. When I locate them I’ll do something about what they did to me.” There was an undercurrent of fury in Knott’s words, and he began to spin in the greater whirlpool of ghosts that lapped near the two of them.

  “If I find out anything reliable, I’ll let you know,” Holte promised, and moved away from Knott before he became entangled in Knott’s simmering rage. He flowed through the dimension of ghosts, but caught no trace of either Miles Overstreet or Madison Moncrief, and eventually slipped back into the world of the living just as Poppy was getting ready to leave for work.

  TWENTY-NINE

  DICK GAFNEY WAS ON HIS FOURTH CIGARETTE, AND IT WAS NOT YET NINE O’CLOCK. The city room was filling up with reporters, but for once Gafney paid little heed to them. He sat hunched over his typewriter, busily pounding the keys, swearing softly when he made a typo. At one point he almost pulled his master, carbon, and copy out of the platen in order to start again, but instead, caught sight of Poppy heading for her desk, and made a slighting comment about her coming in late. “If you’re catching up on your beauty-sleep, Thornton, it isn’t working.”

  Poppy did not give him the satisfaction of answering back; she took the cover off her Remington and sat down. She had already spent an hour with a Lieutenant Walter Ely of the Coast Guard in the Harbor Master’s office, trying to find out as much as she could about ships unaccounted for after the havoc wrecked by Hurricane Sylvia; Lowenthal had given her the go- ahead to do this as soon as she arrived at seven-forty, and she was not about to waste time wrangling with Gafney, whom she realized had come in late. She took out her notebook and thumbed through four pages of scrawl, trying to decide how best to approach the various reports that Lieutenant Ely had provided, along with his estimate of how long it would be until a more accurate list could be compiled. It was not very much, but it did address the state of the search for missing vessels, storm damage, and made way for other accounts as the week went on; there was enough general interest in that to make Lowenthal accept what she wrote, even if it was not tied to either of her on-going stories. She began preparing to type up her notes as a way to help work through all the material she had, when her phone rang. More grateful than annoyed for this interruption, she picked up the receiver. “Thornton,” she said.

  “Poppy, it’s Loring. I just came from interviewing Genevieve and Tatiana Pearse. Would you have time enough for lunch today? I’ve got some questions I’d like answered, and not by either of those girls.” He sounded a bit out of breath but also stirred up by whatever GAD’s two sisters had told him.

  “If you like,” Poppy answered, relaxing a little from the tension that she had developed while listening to Lieutenant Ely explain the loss of life and ships that had been recorded in the last three days. “Where would you like to meet, and when?” She was cheered by the thought of a delay in writing her story for Lowenthal; she would tell him that lunch with Loring could provide some more recent information on the Pearse investigation.

  “What about Coulson’s Chop House? It’s about half-way between us and it’s open at ten- thirty. How about eleven-thirty? I’ll meet you there. They have some good cherry cider this time of year, if you want something other than tea.”

  “Coulson’s it is. Eleven-thirty.” She took a pencil out and wrote the time and place down on the corner of her desk blotter, next to her most involved scribbles. That done, she prepared to resume work on her notes, and made up her mind that when she handed them in, she would tell Lowenthal about her lunch appointment with Loring. With that thought to buffer her against the appalling statistics Lieutenant Ely had provided her, she continued to transfer them to her story, separating the commercial ships by ports of registry and country of origin, yachts and pleasure craft by whatever information she was given. After that she went on to the vessels that were missing but had not been confirmed sunk. Forty minutes later, she went and knocked on Lowenthal’s door, her article and her notes in a manila envelope, the notes paper clipped together.

  “Come,” Lowenthal bellowed, revealing that he was not in a very good mood. As Poppy came in, he swung around in his chair and glared at her. “What have you got?”

  “Coast Guard reports on ships sunk and missing in the wake of Hurricane Sylvia; the Hadley yawl is on the list,” she said as crisply as she could. She took the seat opposite his, the desk between them, and handed over the envelope. “I can get an update tomorrow or the next day, if you like, or later today if it’s urgent.”

  Lowenthal opened the envelope and pulled out the sheets of paper it contained. He held his arm out to read them, squinting from time to time as he read the pages. “Lots of property damage, it looks like,” he remarked as he reached the end of the story. “Too bad for the Florida Keys, by the tone of it. Over two hundred people missing in the Keys. Not a good sign for Florida in general.”

  “To say nothing of the Caribbean islands,” Poppy added.

  Leaning back in his chair, Lowenthal gazed up at the ceiling. “The Caribbean islands are not that significant to most US shipping companies; no reason to do more than a cursory report on them. What has happened to them is their look-out, even though there may be some businesses here that are connected to various Caribbean corporations; there aren’t enough of them to merit more attention.”

  “That’s true enough,” said Poppy, “but that doesn’t change the impact of the hurricane.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Lowenthal put the papers down. “It also doesn’t change the fact that you handled this well, Thornton, and that’s to your credit. We’ll run it on page one, because it is timely, but below the fold. There’s enough Philadelphia business tied up in east coast shipping that this will make us look on top of things—we can’t leave all the money stories to the Constitution.” His reference to the Clarion’s sister paper was, as always, slightly sarcastic.

  “No, sir. And a hurricane is much more exciting reading than stock market fluctuations.” She offered a facetious smile to show her agreement.

  “Not that most of our readers give a damn about the market, so long as it keeps going up.” He did not bother to apologize for his strong language.

  Poppy waited a second or two, then ventured, “I’d like to have lunch with Inspector Loring today, if that’s convenient. He has some more information about the Pearse investigation.”

  “Such as it is,” said Lowenthal at his most sardonic.

  “Truly,” said Poppy. “Such as it is. But don’t you think that another bit of news will keep the public interested in what’s happening? The Pearses are an important family in this part of the country, and this story has some unusual elements. It means we can avoid the questions about the ransom demands, at least for now, and the Pearses will appreciate that. They want that kept quiet for as long as possible.”

  “Yeah, there’s nothing like leaving out news to sell papers.” said Lowenthal. “Or putting emphasis on things many of our readers aren’t interested in. Such as, it isn’t happening here in the US. Not exactly what I had in mind. We’re supposed to cover Pennsylvania news, or national when it’s appropriate, but Caribbean? Or European?” He mumbled something under his breath, and then said. “Oh, well. Why not? Just make sure you turn in your notes from your lunch to
me. I’m not paying you to flirt.”

  Poppy bit back a sharp retort and stood up. “Thanks, boss. I’ll make sure you have my notes before I leave at five.”

  “See that you do.” He waved his hand toward the door. “Nice work, Thornton. Now get back to it.”

  This second compliment so startled Poppy that she almost walked into the doorframe as she started back to her desk.

  “Oh, another thing,” Lowenthal called after her.

  Poppy stopped. “What?”

  “Do you think that aunt of yours could do a couple hundred words for Friday’s edition?” He asked it so nonchalantly that Poppy knew he had been planning to broach the matter with her since she had knocked on his door.

  “You’d better ask her,” said Poppy. “I can give you her phone number.”

  “I have it already. I’ll give her a call before lunch.” Satisfied that he had accomplished his purpose, he clapped his hands. “Chop-chop, Thornton.”

  “So the boss let himself be finagled,” Gafney said to Poppy as she resumed her place at her desk. “You certainly know how to reel him in.”

  “Not that I did,” said Poppy, doing her best to stay focused on her work rather than Gafney’s carping. “I’ve never had the knack for such persuasion.”

  “Don’t try the innocent act with me, lady. You’re up to every rig in town, and I know it.” He punched his typewriter keys as if they were piles. “He may not understand what you’re doing, but I do. And don’t you forget it.”