But though Bey was clearly sincere, there was something about what he’d just heard that didn’t ring quite true, and he frowned briefly in a futile attempt to grab hold of it for a closer look.
“The bowl, Mr. Vicar,” Bey said in a clear demand, impatience coloring his voice.
John turned. “No,” he answered with courteous regret.
The young Egyptian recoiled as if struck. “But I have told you — ”
“Yes, you have,” he said quickly. “And so has Reskin told me something, and so has Mr. Isle. All of it different. I think, for my own peace of mind, I should speak with Edmunds and Thornbell first, don’t you agree? After all, Mr. Bey, you expect me to take your word — forgive me, but a stranger’s word — for something I do not yet know anything about. Would you, if you were in my position?”
Though the man’s expression was impassive, the answer was clear in the slight narrowing of his eyes. Yet he did not argue; he merely bowed his head in acquiescence and followed John to the front door, looking neither left nor right until he was standing on the porch. Then he turned and seemed to grow taller in his dark indignation.
The wind had risen again; a scurry of leaves across the lawn, a scratch of shrubbery against the house.
“I would speak to them soon, Mr. Vicar,” he said. “Very soon.”
John leaned against the jamb. “I sense a threat, Mr. Bey.”
“I do not threaten. I am only an agent.”
And without explanation, he strode down the walk to the wall, hesitated, then turned left and disappeared behind the reach of the shrubs.
Slowly John pulled his hands from his pockets and forced them to open, forced his temper down, and told himself it would not be a good idea to chase after the man and beat him senseless for his arrogance. Whether the Egyptian had legitimate claim or not, no one was going to issue threats in his house.
“Wonderful,” he muttered then. “Wonderful.”
And saw Betty ride past on a high-prancing grey, waving to him as she headed toward the valley. He waved back half-heartedly and had just closed the door behind him when he heard Mrs. Karragan scream.
Freddy Jones didn’t like the woods anymore. The trees were always trying to grab him, the rocks were always trying to trip him, and the invisible monsters that lived deep in the ground were always trying to eat him. They never had before. They had always run away when he came by, but not anymore. Not since a long time ago when that mean man took over the house by Aunt Gert’s.
But today he had to face them. He had to see his Aunt Gert because he had to tell her what had happened the afternoon before, while he was at work, keeping the cemetery clean, just like he was supposed to.
It was terrible.
He was just raking the leaves when suddenly a dark man had come up behind him. When he turned, so scared he almost cried, the man put a coin in his hand and had spoken to him so softly he hadn’t been able to move. And when he came back from wherever he had gone in his mind, they were gone.
He looked and looked, but they were gone, and he couldn’t see what they had done. He didn’t say anything to Mr. Emmett the caretaker because he didn’t want. to get in trouble. And it wouldn’t have bothered him if it hadn’t been for the dreams. All those terrible dreams about monsters and dying and strange people in strange clothes, dreams that made him cry most of the night.
And that morning when he came to work and started raking the graves near the back of the Park, he remembered the dark man and remembered the terrible dreams, and he had lost his breakfast right there on the ground, and then he had run away because he knew that if he didn’t, someone would see him and blame him. They would say it was dumb old Freddy who let those people in, dumb old Freddy who let them in where they didn’t belong.
People whose faces he couldn’t even remember.
And he knew what they would say then: dumb old Freddy, time to lock him away.
His old coat flapped against his legs. His scarf was pulled high over a lop-sided face webbed with tiny scars, showing only the eyes, giving him the only disguise he could think of so they wouldn’t take him to jail.
He ran the secret way, up the steep hill behind the graveyard and over the wall at a place where an oak tree had died and fallen against it. Through the woods that didn’t like him anymore. Hiding behind rocks when he thought he heard voices; jumping into a dry creek bed when he thought he heard someone chasing him.
He ran as hard as he could until he reached the place where the railroad tracks began the climb over the hill. He thought maybe he should cross over them and hide in the mine shaft no one used anymore. But it was too dark there, so he headed south along the rails, waiting a very long time in the bushes where the Pike crossed over, shaking and whimpering and nearly crying out when a lady on a beautiful big horse rode over the tracks to the road on the other side. She didn’t look very happy. He hoped she wasn’t sad. But there was nothing he could do to cheer her up now because he had to get to Aunt Gert’s before the rain came.
So when the lady was far away, he ran, as hard as he could.
And when he tripped and fell, he said all the bad words he knew because it hurt and he was stupid.
And when he looked up and saw what was left of Aunt Gert sprawled on the rails in front of him, he acted just like a little boy.
Freddy Jones screamed.
Chapter 7
Mary Karragan screamed.
She was in the kitchen polishing the crystal, and had gone to the sink to get herself a glass of water. A gust of wind slapped a snakelike branch of forsythia across the window over the sink, and when she’d looked up, startled, she saw a face staring in at her, eyes in a squint, stringy hair poking out from beneath a black bowler.
She backed away, threw up her hands and screamed again when the face vanished just as John raced in from the foyer and demanded to know what was wrong. A trembling finger pointed at the window, and he flung open the back door, reached around the jamb, and grabbed a brown suited man by the shoulder.
In a single motion the man was inside, Mrs. Karragan was reaching for one of the long knives hanging from the board over the counter, and John was angrily slapping the man’s hat from his head.
“Cab,” he said, “what the hell are you doing, sneaking around here like that? You scared the woman half to death, for crying out loud.”
The little man snatched up his bowler and dusted its crown. “Sorry,” Cab Planter said sullenly.
“And what’s wrong with the front that you had to come around here,” he demanded.
“I saw you were busy with that foreign guy. I thought I’d just come around here. I didn’t mean anything.”
“Right,” he said. “Well, you’re here. What do you want?”
“Came to get you.”
Mrs. Karragan glared at him, the carving knife still in her hand. “Whatever for?” she snapped. “Mr. Vicar here hasn’t got time to be fooling around with the likes of you, Cab Planter.” She took a menacing step toward him, and he backed timidly away. “Out with you!” she ordered. “Out of this house before I do you for lunch.”
John immediately pitied the pudgy policeman and gave his housekeeper a look that only made her scowl all the more.
“It ain’t right,” she said, standing her ground. “You got more important things to do than keep company with the likes of him. What would your father think?”
“He’d be pleased I wasn’t getting in trouble,” John said, waggling a hand behind him to send Planter around the table and out of the room. “Now I can’t very well get in trouble talking with my friends on the force, can I?”
“It still ain’t right.”
“At least,” he said as he backed toward the door himself, “let me hear what he has to say. It’s only common courtesy.”
“Common is right,” she sniffed in disdain, and whirled when the back door opened and her husband came in, slapping at his livery to rid it of the dust the wind had taken to it. “And where have you been, Mr
. Karragan, while I’ve been attacked and god knows what else?”
John left them to it and hurried up the corridor to the sitting room in front, where Planter was standing in front of one of the high windows, looking out at the brewing storm. He turned as John walked in and held his hat nervously in front of his chest.
“Sorry, Mr. Vicar. I didn’t mean — ”
“That’s okay,” he said with a wave of his hand. “What’s the problem, Cab? You don’t look well at all.”
Planter, jowls quivering as he turned his head side to side, cleared his throat several times before saying, “Freddy Jones.”
“Oh good lord, what’s he done now?”
“He hasn’t done anything that we know of, except that he found his aunt, just a little while ago. She was on the tracks, down near that professor’s cottage, that Reskin fella?”
John waited.
“She’s dead, sir,” the policeman continued. “Doc Gravell says she looks like she was hit by the midnight train.” He shuddered. “He’s right. It’s an awful sight. Godawful mess.”
“But why come to me?”
“It’s Freddy. He says she wasn’t hit by any train. He says she was killed by a monster.”
John nearly laughed aloud, stopping himself when Planter refused to meet his gaze, and it didn’t take long for him to realize the implication.
“No, absolutely not,” he said sharply. “That’s impossible. You’ve known Freddy as long as I have, Cab. He may be a bit feeble-minded, but he couldn’t have taken the old woman’s life. Jesus, he worshipped her. You know that.”
Planter nodded miserably as he slipped on his bowler. “I know, I know. But I did some checking, and there wasn’t a midnight train, nor has there been any this morning. There are repairs down the line.”
“I see.”
The detective sighed loudly. “Mr. Vicar — ”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cab,” he said with a smile, “how long do we have to know each other before you start calling me John?”
Planter looked shocked at first, then sighed in relief. “John it is, then.” He managed a brief smile. “There’s something else.”
John waited.
“I went over to Reskin’s place. To see if he’d heard or seen anything?”
“He’s been gone for quite a while, I understand, Cab. Or so Jeffrey Isle tells me.”
“So I’ve been told. He’s surely gone now — his door’s been smashed in, and the place is a shambles.”
John shook his head slowly. “You’ve got yourself a mess there, Cab, no mistake about it.”
The detective agreed. “And I don’t mind telling you I’m stuck. Reskin I can deal with later. It’s Gert I’m concerned with now. And I know it’s early yet, we just finding her and all, but John, you should see her. She looks . . . she looks as if she was clubbed to death, and I’ll be damned if I know how.”
Part of him was ashamed for the excitement he felt, but his curiosity soon drowned that feeling. “No weapons?”
“I still have men searching, but so far, nothing.” He held out a hand. “Look, I do wish you’d come with me. Freddy won’t talk to anyone but you. And we can’t get anywhere with him on our own.”
John hesitated only long enough to know that the Karragans were still arguing back in the kitchen, a battle that would most likely last well into the night. With a nod to Planter he grabbed his topcoat from the rack near the door, snatched down a hat, and waited for him to join him.
Then, grabbing the detective’s arm, he hurried down the walk to the closed police carriage waiting by the gate, and once seated inside, he pushed his hair out of his eyes and said, “You still have Freddy, I take it?”
“Yes sir. Miss Jerrard brought him in.”
“What?”
“That’s right. Seems she was coming back from checking her horses when she heard him yelling and crying. I don’t know how she did it, but she got him to come in with her.”
Amazing, he thought.
“Are they still there?”
Planter ducked from a leaf that seemed to aim at his eyes. “Miss Jerrard’s left. But Freddy’s still there. To be honest, we couldn’t get him out of the station if we tried.”
The carriage lurched forward, the black in the traces tossing its head anxiously as thunder once again rolled over the valley. Though a few minutes shy of noon, the morning was nearly dark enough for midnight, an unnatural shimmering dark that now and then brightened to silver as the clouds thinned, now and then shaded to an unnerving grey. Dust rose in spinning clouds along the roadside; leaves flailed at the driver; and the faster the carriage went, the more sudden gusts felt as if they were tipping the small vehicle over.
As they passed the entrance to the Avlock estate, he leaned past Planter and peered up the curving drive. Though the evergreens lining the drive were whip-snapped by the wind, he could see that nearly every window in the house was lighted, and a groom was trying to pull a pair of frightened greys toward the stable in back.
Then the trees took over again, and he slumped back.
The wind made conversation impossible, and he contented himself with wondering how Betty was, how she had taken seeing what was apparently a gruesome killing. He hoped then she hadn’t left town; he had a feeling, nothing more, that seeing her would do him a lot more good than talking with Freddy Jones.
The wind paused.
The carriage plunged on through the shifting dark.
And the only sound was the rattle of the wheels, the crack of hooves, and the thunder answering them, without a flash of lightning.
Freddy was huddled as best his tall bulky frame would permit on a ladder-back chair in an office off the waiting room. His scarf was still wrapped about his face, his coat buttoned to the neck, and one hand kept raking his sodden hair away from his face.
When he saw John walk in, he leapt to his feet; when he saw Planter just behind, he fell back again with a groan and covered his eyes.
John looked to the policeman, who only tossed his hat on the scarred desk and sat behind it; then he grabbed the only other chair in the room and pulled it to him, turned it, and sat with his hands folded across the back.
“Well, Freddy,” he said kindly, “what’s all this I hear about you today?”
“I didn’t do it, Mr. Vicar,” Jones insisted, his voice catching, his eyes filling.
“I’m sure you didn’t. And I don’t think Mr. Planter here thinks so either.” Freddy’s expression was doubtful when he lowered his hands, but he pulled down the scarf just enough to free his mouth. “It was him.”
A glance to Planter to keep him quiet; a smile for the obviously terrified man.
“Freddy, look, I know you’ve probably done this a hundred times already today, but why don’t you tell Detective Planter and me what happened, all right? I won’t say a word until you’re finished, I promise. All you have to do is start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
“You’ll laugh. “
John put a palm against his chest. “I swear I will not. I give you my word.”
And he waited patiently while Jones worked at his courage, his gaze darting from corner to corner, his eyes closing every time a clap of thunder shook the building.
“Yesterday I went to work,” Freddy said then, whispering so softly Planter had to lean over the desk to hear him. “I do my work right, and I work hard because you got me the job and I don’t want you get mad. Aunt Gert says I should be grateful for your help, and I am. I really am. So I got my things from Mr. Emmett’s shed and I went right to work. I didn’t stop for nothing. I took away all the dead flowers and all the dead leaves and I — ”
“Jones, get to the point,” Planter said impatiently.
Freddy started.
John warned the detective with a look and with a flick of his hand encouraged Jones to continue.
“Well, after them that came to put their loved ones away — that’s what Mr. Emmett always calls them, their loved
ones — after they went away, I went back to work. I don’t like to work when there are prayers around. Aunt Gert always says that’s disrespectful, and I’m not disrespectful of the dead, no sir, I’m not. So I did my work, Mr. Vicar. I did my work good.”
John nodded, tilted his head as if listening harder, leaned back, leaned forward, and did nothing to stop the man from giving him a minute-by-minute account of his day, up until he’d left work and went to his room in the basement of the Brass Ring. Then he grew fearful again, pulling up his knees as if trying to curl into a ball.
And he began babbling.
He spoke of unseen monsters that chased him in his dreams, monsters in the woods that tried to eat him alive, and monsters in the cemetery that stalked him over the graves; he cried when he tried to explain how he’d found his aunt, and he cowered when thunder rattled the windowpane behind Planter.
“Freddy, get hold of yourself,” the detective snapped when he could take it no longer. Jones froze, lower lip trembling, hands clasped about his knees.
In that moment John felt sorry for the policeman — the only account of a terrible event had to come from a man hysterical with fear and grief, a man who at the best of times had little use of his brain.
“Freddy,” he said, over and over until Jones finally calmed down. “Freddy, can you . . . did you see this monster?”
Planter snorted.
Jones nodded, then shook his head. “It was dark, Mr. Vicar. My dreams were really, really dark. I could hardly see him at all, but I knew he was there.”
“But dreams aren’t real, Freddy, you know that. They’re just in your mind.”
“I know.”
“Well, then?”
Freddy gnawed at the tip of his thumb, his knuckle, looked over his shoulder at Planter, who was staring at him without expression. “When . . . when I found Aunt Gert?”
John nodded, hoping the man knew that he understood the pain.
“I knew the monster had been there, Mr. Vicar. I knew it wasn’t a dream.”
They waited, only half-hearing voices at the front of the building, footsteps in the corridor outside the office.
The Universe of Horror Volume 3: The Long Night of the Grave (Neccon Classic Horror) Page 5
