Mystery brt-2

by Peter Straub

  Kingsley paused a second, and said, “I believe it is, yes.”

  “Maybe he’s visiting my mother,” Tom said.

  “He always informs us when he does not plan to dine at home,” Kingsley said, and both his voice and his language sounded even stiffer than usual.

  Neither Tom nor the old butler said anything for a moment.

  “Is he really not there, Kingsley,” Tom said, “or is he just unavailable?”

  There was another brimming pause until the butler said, “It’s as I told you, Master Tom.”

  “Okay, tell him I have to talk to him,” Tom said, and they both hung up.

  The endless afternoon passed into an endless evening. Tom realized that he was starving, and could not remember if he had eaten lunch—he could not remember eating anything all day. He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator—most of the food Barbara Deane had bought for him was still on the shelves, preserved in the supermarket wrappings. I ate her food once before, he thought, and it didn’t kill me.

  He scrambled two eggs in a bowl, buttered two slices of whole wheat bread, cut slices off a garlic sausage and dropped them in the sizzling pan with the eggs. He turned the edges of the solidifying egg over the sausage, and after a few seconds, turned the whole thing out onto a plate. He ate in the kitchen and put the pan, bowl, plate, and his utensils into the sink and ran hot water over them.

  Outside, sunlight still fell on the lake, but the shadow of the lodge darkened the deck nearly all the way to the pier. Tom pulled the living room curtains shut, and went to the desk and called the police department.

  “Is Chief Truehart back in the office yet?” he asked.

  “Is this Mr. Marlowe?” Spychalla asked. “Where are you calling from, Mr. Marlowe?”

  Tom hung up and called his mother. No, her father had not been over that afternoon; no, she did not know where he might be. He was very busy with new plans for the Founders Club, and she had not seen him for days. Victor was out of town, doing something in Alabama for the Redwings. “Are you seeing all your friends?”

  “I’m pretty busy,” he told her.

  Tom sat at the desk with the telephone before him, watching the shadow of the lodge slide across the deck and begin to darken the pier. Fish jumped silently in the lake. The air went grey. Inside, it looked like night.

  When the sky began to darken, he put on a sweater and went out on the deck and locked the door behind him. Lights shone in the Langenheims’ windows and reflected in narrow yellow lines on the water. Tom walked fast around the bottom end of the lake under a rising sliver of moon, passing the empty lodges—hurrying past the Langenheims’—until he came to Lamont von Heilitz’s place, where he wound through trees and came out on the sandy shore of the lake. The old lodge looked like a haunted house in a movie—like Norman Bates’ house, in Psycho. He jumped up on the stubby dock and walked out to the end and sat down on cool wood to look at the windows of the club.

  The Redwings and their guests sat at the long table just inside the terrace. Tom could see the backs of the people on the window side of the table, Sarah Spence, Buddy, Fritz, and Eleanor Redwing. Across from them, Tom could see only the heads of Sarah’s mother, Fritz’s father, and Katinka Redwing. Ralph Redwing and Bill Spence sat at either end of the table. Marcello, his tuxedo shirt unbuttoned to his sternum, was passing out the giant leaves of the menus. When he came to Katinka Redwing, he bent down and whispered in her ear, and Katinka made a cat face. Buddy Redwing put his hand on Sarah’s back and caressed her from the nape of the neck to her waist.

  Marcello brought two champagne bottles in a silver bucket, and Ralph Redwing and Bill Spence each made toasts. Fritz’s father made a toast, and Buddy’s hand, fat as a starfish, slowly circled on Sarah’s back. Fritz made a toast, which Tom wished he could hear. Buddy pushed back his chair, stood up, and made a speech. Marcello circled the table, filling glasses. Everybody was watching Buddy—they laughed, looked solemn, laughed again. Mrs. Spence waggled her glass in the air for more champagne. When Buddy sat down, Sarah kissed him and everyone applauded. She put her arms around his neck. Fritz’s father said something, and everybody laughed again.

  They ordered. Two more champagne bottles came. The fat brown starfish prowled across Sarah’s back. Whenever Sarah turned to look at Buddy, her face glowed.

  This was how it worked, Tom thought. The Redwings gobbled up food, drink, real estate, other people—they devoured morality, honesty, scruples, and everybody admired them. Sarah Spence could not resist them because nobody could.

  Buddy was waving a fork, talking, and Fritz stared at him as adoringly as a little dog. A greedier, more adult version of the same expression came into Mrs. Spence’s face whenever she turned to Ralph Redwing. Sarah’s right hand, a slimmer, whiter starfish, rested between Buddy’s shoulder blades.

  Tom sat on the deck and watched them finish their dinner. There were two more bottles of champagne, coffee, desserts. At last they all stood up and drifted away from the window. A few minutes later, Tom saw them moving slowly on the track between the clubhouse and the compound, calling out good-byes loud enough to be heard across the water.

  Lights came on in the upper windows of the lodges in the compound. A light switched on in the second floor of the Spence lodge. Birds called to each other, and a frog splashed in the reeds at the narrow end of the lake.

  A car started up behind the compound, then another. The beams of headlights swept across the track between the compound and the club, and then shone upon the trees on the club’s far side. A long black car came around the clubhouse, its headlights angled down the narrow road. It circled the top of the lake, and as it swung to go up the hill, Tom saw two heads side by side on the front seat, one dark, one blond. Another long car followed, this, too, with a dark and a blond head in the front seat.

  The lights in the club dining room went out, and long blocks of yellow vanished from the surface of the lake. Tom walked the long way back to his lodge.

  He cut across Roddy Deepdale’s lawn and came up to his dock along the shoreline. He sat on the wood and swung his legs up, then took off his shoes. The shoes in his hand, he moved up to the deck, knelt in the darkness before the back door, found the lock with his fingertips, and slid in the key. He turned the knob and opened the door as softly as possible. Inside, he closed the door and turned the lock. Cold moonlight lay across the desk and washed the colors from the hooked rug.

  Tom moved to the open door into the sitting room, and crouched over. Holding his breath, he slid into the big room, and stood, crouched and motionless, listening for any movement. The sitting room was dark as an underground cave. Tom waited until he was sure he was alone, and then he straightened up and took another step into the room.

  The beam of a flashlight struck his eyes and blinded him.

  “If I were you, I’d be careful too,” a man said. “Just stay there.”

  The flashlight went off, and Tom instantly went into a crouch and began to rush into the office. A floor lamp snapped on. “Not too bad,” the man said.

  Tom slowly straightened up and turned around to face him. All the breath left his body at once. His hand still on the chain of the floor lamp, wearing a dark blue suit and gloves that matched his grey double-breasted vest, Lamont von Heilitz smiled at him from a couch.

  “You’re here!” Tom said.

  The Shadow pulled the lamp chain, and the room went dark again. “It’s time we had another talk,” he said.

  Tom groped forward. He bumped against the back of a chair, felt his way around it, and sat down. His own breathing sounded as loud as Fritz Redwing’s on the telephone that afternoon. “When did you get here? How did you get in?” As Tom’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, the long slender shape of von Heilitz’s body took form against the paler couch. The detective’s head stood out against the curtains behind him like a silhouette.

  “I got in about an hour ago, by slipping the lock. You didn’t go to dinner at the club, I suppose
?”

  “No. I went to your dock and looked through the windows into the dining room. I didn’t want Jerry Hasek to find me here, and I wanted to know what was going on—I’m really glad you’re here. If I could see you, I’d say that it was great to see you.”

  “I’m relieved to see you too, at least as well as I can. But I owe you an apology. I should have come for you long before this—I wanted you to find out whatever you could, but I underestimated the danger you’d be in. I never thought they’d shoot at you through windows.”

  “So you got my letters.”

  “Every one of them. They were excellent. You’ve done very good work, Tom, but it’s time to get back to Mill Walk. We’re flying back at four in the morning.”

  “Four in the morning!”

  “Our pilot has to file his flight plan and get everything ready, or we’d leave earlier than that. We can’t take the risk of staying another night.”

  “You don’t think a hunter shot a stray bullet through the window.”

  “No,” von Heilitz said. “That was a deliberate attempt on your life. And you upped the ante by looking into that machine shop. So I want to take you to a safe place now, and make sure you stay alive until we get on that plane.”

  “How do you know about the machine shop? I haven’t even mailed that letter yet.”

  Von Heilitz said nothing.

  “How long have you been here? You didn’t just get to Eagle Lake an hour ago, did you?”

  “Did you think I’d send you into this lion’s den alone?”

  “You’ve been here the whole time? How did you get my letters?”

  “Sometimes I went to the post office and picked them up, sometimes Joe Truehart brought them to me.”

  Tom nearly jumped off his chair. “That was you I followed—that was you carrying the flashlight.”

  “You almost caught me too. I went to my lodge to pick up some things, and I don’t see as well at night as I used to. Let’s go, shall we? We ought to get back, and I do want to see more of you than that glimpse I had when you came creeping in. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Von Heilitz stood up. “You’ll see.”

  Tom watched the dark blur of the older man move toward him. His white hair shone in the moonlight. “That house in the clearing,” Tom said. “Mrs. Truehart’s cabin.”

  The tall shape before him tilted forward, and the white hair gleamed. Von Heilitz grasped his shoulders. “She probably wants to apologize to you too. She doesn’t normally scare away visitors with a rifle, but I didn’t want you to know I was there.” He squeezed Tom’s shoulders and straightened up.

  Tom followed him into the study, and in the moonlight, von Heilitz turned and took him in, smiling. “I can’t get over it,” Tom said.

  “You’re what I can’t get over,” von Heilitz said. “You’ve done everything I hoped you would, and more. I didn’t expect you to solve any burglaries while you were up here.”

  “I had a good teacher,” Tom said, feeling his face get hot.

  “More than that,” the old man said. “Now open that door, will you?”

  Tom unlocked the back door, and von Heilitz moved outside. Tom followed after him, and knelt to lock the door with the key again.

  Von Heilitz placed his hand on Tom’s shoulder, and left it there as Tom stood up. He did not remove it even when Tom turned to face him at last, and the two of them stood in the moonlight for a second, looking into each other’s faces. Tom still felt the shock of pleasure and relief of seeing von Heilitz, and blurted, “I don’t think Anton Goetz killed Jeanine Thielman.”

  Von Heilitz nodded, smiled, and patted Tom’s shoulder before he lowered his hand. “I know.”

  “I thought—I guess I thought you might be angry or something. It was one of your most important cases—I know what it meant to you.”

  “It was my single biggest mistake. And that’s what it means to me. Now you and I are going to put things right—after all this time. Let’s go to Mrs. Truehart’s, so we can talk about it.”

  Von Heilitz jumped neatly off the dock and began moving toward the shoreline. At Roddy Deepdale’s, he led Tom across the grass toward the track. They cast identical long shadows in the moonlight. Neither of them spoke until they came to the opening of the path into the woods behind the Thielman lodge. Von Heilitz switched on his flashlight and said, “Tim Truehart arrested your friend Nappy, by the way,” and plunged into the woods.

  “He did?” Tom followed. “I didn’t think Spychalla would give him the message.”

  “He might not have if Chet Hamilton hadn’t been curious about why you were asking directions to Summers Street. He drove out there not long after you did, and got close enough to see Nappy stacking boxes outside the shop. He just turned his car around and went to the nearest phone. Spychalla couldn’t ignore two calls.”

  “But what about Jerry?”

  “Nappy is still claiming he did all the burglaries himself. He’ll change his mind when it finally hits him that he’ll serve a lot less jail time if he turns in his friends. Spychalla is looking for Jerry Hasek and Robbie Wintergreen, but so far he hasn’t found them. This must be where you got lost the other night.”

  The flashlight shone upon smooth grey-brown tree trunks. He moved the beam slightly to the left, and the narrow path reappeared, wandering deeper into the woods. “It looks like it,” Tom said.

  “I was sorry to have to let that happen.” Von Heilitz followed the bend in the path.

  “So why did you?”

  “I told you. Because I wanted you to do just what you have done.”

  “Find out that Barbara Deane killed Jeanine Thielman?”

  The light stopped moving, and Tom nearly bumped into the old man. Von Heilitz let out a loud, explosive laugh that sounded like “WHA-HAH!” He whirled around and shone the light on the middle of Tom’s chest. Even in the darkness and with his face hidden behind the glare of the light, he looked as if he were suppressing more explosive laughter. “Excuse me, but what makes you think that?”

  As irritated now as he had been relieved before, Tom said, “I looked into a box I found in her closet, and along with some old articles that almost accused her of murder, I found two anonymous notes. Jeanine Thielman wrote them.”

  “My God,” von Heilitz said. “What did they say?”

  “One said ‘I know what you are, and you have to be stopped.’ The other one said something like, ‘This has gone on too long—you will pay for your sins.’ ”

  “Extraordinary.”

  “I guess you don’t think she killed Jeanine Thielman.”

  “Barbara Deane never killed anybody in her life,” von Heilitz said. “Did you think that Barbara Deane also killed Anton Goetz? Hanged him with his own fishing line?”

  “She could have done it. He might have been blackmailing her.”

  “And she just happened to be waiting in his lodge to make a payment when he arrived with the news that I had accused him of murder.”

  “Well,” Tom said. “I guess that part was always a little shaky.” He did not feel angry anymore—he was relieved not to have to think of Barbara Deane as a murderer. “But if she didn’t do it, and Anton Goetz didn’t do it, then who did?”

  “You told me who killed them both,” von Heilitz said.

  “But you just said—”

  “In your letters. Didn’t I say you accomplished just what I hoped you would?” Von Heilitz lowered the flashlight, and Tom saw him smiling at him.

  Something else is going on here, Tom thought. Something I don’t get.

  The detective turned around and began moving quickly down the path through the woods.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

  “In time.”

  Tom felt like screaming.

  “There’s something else I have to tell you first,” von Heilitz said, still moving rapidly down the path.

  Tom hurried after him.

  V
on Heilitz did not say another word until they had reached the clearing. Moonlight fell on the Truehart cabin, and washed the flowers of all their color. The old man turned off his flashlight as soon as Tom stepped off the path to the grass, and their shadows lay stark and elongated over the silvery ground. The whole world was black and grey and silver. Tom stepped toward him. Von Heilitz crossed his arms over his chest. All the fine lines in his face were deepened by the moonlight, and his forehead looked corrugated. He looked like a person Tom had never seen before, and Tom stopped moving, suddenly uncertain.

  “I want so much to do this right,” von Heilitz said. “If I botch this, you’ll never forgive me, and neither will I.”

  Tom opened his mouth, but could not speak—a sudden deep strangeness stopped his tongue.

  Von Heilitz looked down, trying to begin, and his forehead contorted even more alarmingly. When he spoke, what he asked astonished Tom.

  “How do you get on with Victor Pasmore?”

  The boy almost laughed. “I don’t,” he said. “Not really.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know. He sort of hates me, I guess. We’re too different.”

  “What would he say if he knew that you and I know each other?”

  “He’d carry on, I guess—he warned me away from you.” Tom felt the old man’s mixture of tension and earnestness. “What is this all about?”

  Von Heilitz looked at him, looked at the silvery grass, back up at Tom. “This is the part I have to do right.” He took a deep breath. “I met a young woman in 1945. I was much older than she was, but she appealed to me a great deal—enormously. Something happened to me that I had thought would never happen. I started by being touched by her, and as I got to know her better, I began to love her. I felt that she needed me. We had to meet secretly, because her father hated me—I was the most unsuitable man she could have chosen, but she had chosen me. In those days, I still traveled a great deal, but I started refusing cases so that I wouldn’t have to leave her.”

  “Are you saying—”

  He shook his head and walked a few steps away and looked at the forest. “She became pregnant, and didn’t tell me. I heard about a very exciting case, one that really intrigued me, and I took it. We decided to get married after I came back from the case, and to—to lessen the shock, we went out in public for a week. We attended a concert together, we went to a restaurant, we went to a party held by people who were not in our own circle, but who lived on another part of the island. It was such a relief to do things like that. When I left for my trip, I asked her to come with me, but she felt she had to stay at home to face her father. I thought she could do that. She had become much stronger, or so I thought. She wouldn’t let me deal with her father, you see—she said there would be time for that when I came back.”