“Did you?”
Rivens looked up sharply. “Pardon?”
“Did you—did she—sign up to that list?”
The colonel stood up, glass in hand, and started to pace. “That night, she started having these pains in her head. Not just migraines or what-not. I thought she’d go mad.
“Called Simsing, of course. He said it would get worse, and there was nothing he, or anyone could do but give her morphine and let nature take its course. I wasn’t going to pass that bit along to the old girl. Felt she had enough to contend with, you know? But, in the end, she made me.
“Hard news to deliver, that.”
Four years ago, Albert wouldn’t have understood. Now he did. “Yes.”
“Lost someone, too, have you?”
“Yes.”
The colonel nodded.
“Did he ask you again, about signing that paper?”
Rivens was standing by the piano now, holding the whiskey in one hand. “He did, yes. Insistent about it, I thought. Said, well, I got the feeling he was trying to make me feel guilty for not wanting him to chop her up there and then, nevermind that she was still alive!” He ran the fingers of his free hand along lid prop. “Never brought it up with her, in the end. No time, really. She was in so much pain, not rational enough to think about it, much less sign anything. Poor girl.”
Tears had formed silently in the corners of his eyes, and now and then, trickled just as silently down the furrows that sadness had formed in his face.
“What happened then?”
“How do you mean?”
“She died. That night?”
“That night, yes,” said Rivens, but Albert, who had already read the colonel’s story, knew he was not saying all. It was right there in the score.
“It must have been terrible to see her . . . to watch her.”
Rivens closed his eyes tightly, as if to blind himself to the image Albert’s comment brought to mind. Tears flowed freely, now, but still silently.
“Pain doesn’t kill.”
“I couldn’t let it go on, could I?” The colonel spat through clenched lips. He sank to the piano bench. “She begged me to . . . to . . .”
“How?”
The colonel froze. He might have been a statue, but for the tears. The battle raging within him shook the otherwise still air of the room. The secret would eventually kill him, one way if he kept it in, another if he let it out. “Pillow,” he said. “A kiss, and a pillow.” He drank down the whiskey at a gulp. “I’d like you to go now.” He didn’t raise his head or open his eyes. “Do what you will.”
Albert stood and stepped toward the door, but stopped when he drew abreast of the quivering wreckage the colonel had become. “I just came to play your piano, Colonel,” he said. “If you turn yourself in, you turn yourself in. If you don’t, I guess no one will ever know. Only you.”
“And you,” said Rivens softly.
“I don’t know anything,” said Albert. “Ask anyone.” He left.
Chapter TwentyFour
Within a few days, Jeremy Ash and Wendell had become fixtures at the inn, as well as on the waterfront, and the road between the two—along which they were shuttled in Truck by the ubiquitous Frenchie to whom, in the face of reason, they entrusted their lives on those occasions.
The fishermen—mending their nets and shaping their ships—with whom they would pass their time, appreciated the quick wit and sharp humor of the legless boy, and came to take as a compensatory appendage the well-fed shadow of the mostly silent Maori. The populace accepted as read the popular gossip that the two were just keeping themselves busy until Albert’s return from wherever he’d got to. “A concert somewhere,” Jeremy had explained. “I don’t know where.”
Even the studious observer would be hard-pressed to detect an agenda in their activities beyond relaxing, ingratiating themselves on the populace and, in the case of Wendell, eating whatever came to hand—not necessarily excluding the hand, some suggested; he was, after all, Maori.
None of the islanders were in the least suspicious that the boy’s seemingly inexhaustible river of questions flowed from anything more than idle curiosity, or conscious of the fact that, beneath the surface, lurked perhaps the most Machiavellian mind they’d ever encountered.
On the fourth night there was a newcomer at the inn. Jeremy Ash eavesdropped from the game table—where he was attempting to teach Wendell chess—as the woman was greeted familiarly and a little stiffly by Milly, who remarked that she hadn’t been expecting her until “the usual time”.
“Plans change,” said the woman. “Is my room available?”
“Well, yes, it is. Always for you—but it hasn’t been aired out.”
“The maid can do that in the morning,” said the woman. “Tonight, I’m too tired to be bothered.”
“Do you want me to have some dinner sent up?”
“Just the usual,” said the woman. “I’ll take a scotch, though, before I go up for the night.” Milly scurried off about to fulfill the directives and, by the time she returned with the drink, the woman had made herself comfortable in a chair near the game board. “Here you go, Elsbet,” she said, handing the glass to the woman.
“Thanks,” said the woman. “I trust you haven’t watered it down more than usual.”
Milly inflated. “You always say that.” She turned to Jeremy Ash. “She always says that. But she’s joking.” She turned to Elsbet. “You’re joking. Tell them you’re joking or they’ll think you’re serious. You know I never. . .”
Elsbet held up her hand. “Untwist your knickers, Milly. Yes, I’m joking.” She drained the glass at a gulp, and handed the empty glass to her hostess who, taking it grudgingly, stomped off.
“And bring me another,” called the newcomer, “when you can spare the effort.” She turned her attention to the game, more specifically to the players, a legless boy—twenty or so, she guessed—and a Maori, perhaps the same age within a year or two either way; it was hard to tell with Maoris. It was clear to see who was the teacher and who the student.
“So this fellow here,” said Wendell, putting a pudgy finger on his king’s knight, “can hop over this bloke.” He pudged a pawn. “And then go sideways one square to the left.” He pudged the target square.
“Or to the right.” Jeremy Ash flicked his finger at the appropriate square.
“Right or left,” said Wendell, hulking a little more deliberately over the board. He made some thinking sounds. “But sometimes, he can go one ahead . . .”
“Or back.”
“Or back,” said Wendell, nodding. “Yes. Ahead or back. One square, either way, then two squares.”
“Either way,” said Jeremy Ash.
“Either way,” said Wendell.
“We’ve gone through this every time you’ve moved him, Otis.”
“I just want to get it good and fixed in my head.”
“Well, if it’s not fixed there by now, it never will be.”
“Handy little bloke,” said Wendell, impervious to the sharp edge in Jeremy Ash’s tone.
“The question is,” said Jeremy Ash, a little impatiently, “what are you going to do with him?”
Wendell smiled, and twiddled the knight then, unexpectedly, swung his hand across the board to his other knight, and moved it ahead one, and left two. “Isn't that checkmate?”
Jeremy Ash, who had been lounging back in his chair, lurched forward so suddenly that he nearly threw himself onto the floor. “That’s not fair! You cheated!”
“Strategy,” said Wendell, and with a flick of his finger, brought the king crashing down.
“Did you see that?” said Jeremy Ash, appealing to the only possible witness, the new arrival.
“Brilliant, I’d say.”
“Brilliant! He cheated!”
“How so?”
“He . . . he . . .”
“He won,” said the woman. “Well done.” Raising the glass Milly had just placed in her hand in Wend
ell’s direction. “Chatham’s own Bobby Fischer.”
“Oh, he’s not from . . .” Milly began, but was interrupted by Jeremy Ash.
“What brings you out here?” he said. “Sounds like you’re a regular.”
“Oh,” she looked at her nails. “I’m with Wildlife and Fisheries. Come out now and then to check they’re all playing nicely.”
“She’s writing a book,” said Milly. “About a bird down on Pitt.”
Jeremy Ash was still studying the board, and wondering how Wendell had managed to beat him. It was then he caught the movement of the woman’s hand in the corner of his eye and, glancing at it, noticed her ring: a Caduceus wrapped around a bird, whose heart was a diamond. The same design Albert had mentioned during their nightly phone call. Wendell noticed at the same time.
“Those are snakes,” he said, pointing at the ring.
She looked down at it as if snakes were an attribute of the ring she’d never noticed. “Yes,” she said. “Caduceus.”
“Most women don’t like snakes,” Wendell announced.
“Can’t say I’m overly fond of them myself,” said Elsbet. She held up her hand and, studying it carefully, turned the diamond toward the light. “It was my father’s,” she said. “He was a doctor.”
“That’s where I seen it!” said Wendell. “On the sign in the parking lot at the hospital. That’s got snakes on it.”
“Very likely.”
“You’re not a doctor then,” said Jeremy Ash, still apparently absorbed by contemplation of his personal Waterloo.
“No. Seems that’s a profession for which having a dad in the business doesn’t carry much weight. I’m just a humble biologist.”
Jeremy Ash challenged Wendell with his eyes. “Another game?”
“Sure. If I can find someone who knows how to play.”
“I’ll play,” said Elsbet before the boy in the wheelchair could unleash his broadside.
“Okay,” said Jeremy Ash. “Otis has to wheel to me to the necessary room first, but I won’t be long.” He took a pawn in each hand, and held it behind his back. Elsbet indicated the left hand, in the palm of which he presented the black pawn. “I go first when I get back.”
It would have been black whichever hand she chose.
When they were gone—and Milly was but a fuzzy memory on the periphery of her consciousness—Elsbet examined the world through the amber fluid in her glass. “Could be liquid gold, or horse piss,” she editorialized. Suddenly, she felt naked and realized she’d forgotten her purse. Not that she had any need of it, or its contents at the moment, or for the foreseeable evening, however, there’s naked, then there’s naked. Placing her drink on the edge of the chess table, she got up and set a course for her room.
“Hurry up,” said Jeremy Ash when, having expertly picked the lock on the door of Elsbet’s room, he pushed it open and motioned Wendell inside. “I’ll stand watch, but don’t mess about. In and out.”
“You can’t stand,” Wendell observed laconically as he set about his errand. From his position by the door, Jeremy Ash could see the purse on the bureau by the window.
“Found it!” said Wendell.
“Shh!”
“What?”
“I said ‘Shh!’”
“I heard that. Why did you say it?”
“Because you’re too loud!”
Wendell considered this. “Okay. But shouldn’t you ‘Shh’ too?”
“What are you doing?”
The speaker was Milly, who had come upon the crime scene from behind, so surprising Jeremy Ash that he nearly jumped and ran despite the lack of legs. Even he was not fast enough to come up with a plausible story on such short notice, and in circumstances that allowed so little latitude for interpretation.
It is difficult for a large Maori in a small room to convincingly play the part of something small and invisible, so when Milly rounded the doorway and saw him standing there up to his elbow in Elsbet’s purse, she immediately leapt to the obvious conclusion which, in this instance, was the right one.
“What are you two up to?” she said in a harsh whisper the inferred she had become part of the conspiracy.
“He’s looking for evidence,” said Jeremy Ash, once he could get the words around his Adam’s apple.
“Evidence? What kind of evidence? For what?”
“No time to explain now. I don’t think Elsbet’s who she says she is, and we’re just having a peek to find out if I’m right.”
“Not who she says she is?” said the innkeeper. “‘Course she is. She’s been coming here forever. Who else should she be?” Pause. “Mind you . . .”
“Mind me what?”
“As to why she comes here, I can’t say as I’ve ever been able to put my finger on it, exactly. Says she’s a marine biologist studying, well, fish and that, but that’s not true. If it was, you’d smell it on her.
“All she smells of is perfume. And not cheap perfume, either.”
Jeremy Ash was about to apply the whetstone of his tongue to a few choice words when—drawing his breath for the purpose—he heard footsteps at the bottom of the stairs.
“She’s coming!” he rasped sharply.
Without a word, Milly marched quickly to the top of the stairs, arresting the advance of Elsbet’s shadow. “I’ve just opened the window in your room to air it out a bit before it gets any colder.”
“Well, that’s good of you,” came Elsbet’s voice from the stairs, as she resumed her advance. “But not necessary, really. Next thing you’ll be putting mints on the pillows!”
“I need to know how long you’ll be staying,” said Milly, positioning herself athwart the stairs. “That’s only fair. In case I get a booking.”
The shadow stopped, with its hand on the shadow rail. “Millicent, in the two years and more I’ve been coming to this inn, I’ve never known it full. In fact, I’ve never known it more crowded—all at once—than it is right now. Are you expecting a sudden rush of tourists?”
“I don’t think I’m being unreasonable,” said Milly. “I mean, you show up out of the blue—and not at your usual time—and there’s food to plan for, and cleaning, and . . .”
“Really, Milly. Since when did you become such a hausfrau?” The shadow wedged its way past Milly and arrived at the top of the stairs at exactly the same moment Jeremy Ash quietly shut the door to Elsbet’s room. He put a great deal of effort into making his face look normal and comfortable, which made it look that much less normal and comfortable. By the time Elsbet arrived at the door and produced her key, his discomposure was compounded by the failure of his usually responsive lie-spinning apparatus to come up with a plausible reason why a: the door was not locked, and b: there was a large Maori inside, probably with his arm still elbow-deep in her purse.
“Isn’t there a gents downstairs?” she said, fitting her key into the lock.
“It’s not working properly,” said Milly, who had been swept along in Elsbet’s slipstream.
Elsbet turned the key, but the door didn’t open. “What do you mean not working properly. I used it not . . .”
“She means not for me—a need more space,” said Jeremy, slapping the wheels of his chair.
“Oh,” said Elsbet distractedly. “Where’s your chess-master. I assume you didn’t crawl up the steps on your own. Milly! What’s wrong with this bloody key?!”
“You just have to turn it the right way, dear,” said Milly. “Here, let me.” She nudged Elsbet out of the way, plucking the key from her hand as she did so. Positioning herself between Elsbet and the door, she unlocked the lock Elsbet had just, unwittingly, locked. “Just a bit of a fiddle. Should work fine now.”
“Well?” said Elsbet, taking the key from Milly’s hand.
“Well what, dear?”
“Are you going to get out of the way and let me into my room?”
“Oh!” Milly lobbed a look of desperate appeal at Jeremy Ash who, taking a page from his own book, spilled himself onto the f
loor, groaning and grabbing at the stumps of his legs. It had worked before. It worked again.
“Oh, my goodness!” said Milly, nearly crushing Elsbet between herself and the doorframe in her haste to be of assistance. “Are you okay?”
Elsbet’s left eyebrow rose skeptically. “How on earth did you manage that?”
“Come down here and help me, Elsbet!” said Milly, straining to lift Jeremy Ash into his wheelchair.
Jeremy Ash let his body go limp. With his muscles relaxed, he was a hundred forty-three and a half pounds of gelatin: no sooner would Milly lift one part, than another part would ooze through her fingers. In the corner of her eye, she caught Wendell trying to escape through the window, and saw that his foot was caught in the curtain. She maneuvered most of herself those parts of Jeremy Ash of which she had hold, into the doorway between Elsbet and her room.
For her part, Elsbet, though one part lifting and two parts groaning, was making no more progress on getting Jeremy Ash back into his chair than Milly had, and he intended to keep it that way. He, too, caught sight of Wendell and his dilemma, and decided it would be a good time to faint.
He did so.
“He’s fainted!” Elsbet attempted to gather the parts in her hands that had gone even limper, and were flowing through her fingers. “Oh, just great!”
By the time the women had wrestled Jeremy Ash back into his chair, the curtain had loosed its prey. The ensuing thud, crack, and crackle—that of tree branches being reduced to kindling by a heavy, unhappy object falling upon them from a second-story window—was deadened by the much more present and persistent moans and groans of Jeremy Ash as he came to and was soon himself.
“Must be the altitude,” he said, massaging his armpits. “Thanks.”
“You need a seat belt,” said Elsbet as she entered her room. “Or some good strong duct tape. Milly, when you said you’d left the window open, I’d assumed just a few inches to let the air in. Look at this!” She crossed the room and shut the window half way. “Most anything might come climbing in!”
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