“Would you mind holding off long enough for my wife and me to have a little talk with him?”
“Not without my being present.”
“Of course not, I know the rules. I was just thinking we might be able to supply a little more background, maybe speed things up so we can all get out of here. Sarah and I still have to drive out to Ireson Town and pick up our own kid before he drives my sister nuts.”
“Okay, Bittersohn, just so you don’t try sticking the department with a bill for your services. Stay here, I’ll go get Arbalest.”
He’d left the photograph lying exposed on the desk. When Arbalest caught sight of it, he fell apart again.
“Then it’s true. Oh God, why is this curse come upon me? Why? Why?”
Max got a chair under the hysterical Resurrection Man before his knees had quite finished buckling. “Take it easy, Arbalest. Want a drink of water? Brandy?”
“No, no, where did you get that photograph?”
“You know who it is?”
“Of course I know. I had to sit frying under a ghastly great light while the photographer fiddled around, then my ayah took me back the next day before the sun was even up. I had to sit still forever and ever while somebody else painted in the colors. I’d no idea what it was all about. I was five, I think. That was right after we’d seen the man, I remember distinctly. How could I forget?”
“What man was this?” barked Levitan.
“The one who wanted to talk with me and my mother wouldn’t let him. And I wanted him to!”
“You can remember that from when you were five?”
“Of course I can, I remember things from when I was three. There were two men, both of them tall. I don’t remember much about the other one except that he was thin. I just remember the big, nice one who looked like me. I wanted so much to run to him, but my ayah gripped hold of my hand and wouldn’t let me. Then my mother took the man by the arm and led him away and I felt—I don’t know—lost. It was bad, I dreamed about him for a long time. I still do, sometimes. And then that night, when Carnaby and I came to pick up the elephant candlesticks, here he was, old and fat and getting ready to die, but kind and good, and mine.”
Arbalest fought for control. “I could feel the goodness all around me like a warm, woolly blanket. I looked into Mr. Protheroe’s face and it was the face in my dreams. I saw my own face in his and knew this had to be my father.”
“Did you tell Mr. Protheroe who you were?”
“With his wife sitting right there beside him? What was I to say? Here’s your long-lost bastard, come home to roost? I know I’m naive about some things, Lieutenant, but I’m not quite that big a fool. I just sat here and made small talk and—loved him. For the first time in my life, I was experiencing perfect happiness. I think my father felt something too. And it was even better when Carnaby and I brought back the candlesticks, because my father and I knew each other a little by then.”
“And Mrs. Protheroe had no inkling of what was going on?”
“I’m quite sure she didn’t. I think she was just pleased to watch her husband enjoying himself. I wanted to stay on and on, but I could see my father was getting sleepy and knew I mustn’t wear out my welcome. They both said I must be sure to drop in again next time I came out this way. Now here I am and—”
Arbalest’s face contorted, he couldn’t go on. Sarah went and got him a glass of soda water, and a couple of napkins to wipe his streaming face. She wanted to ask how he’d got on the list for the funeral, but decided a change of subject might be more therapeutic.
“Where did you learn your skills, Mr. Arbalest?”
“In India, mostly. My ayah’s brothers were all fine artisans, they had a workshop not far from where mother and I lived. Ayah used to take me there almost every day, she’d go off to chat with their wives and leave me to watch them working. I was totally fascinated, I’d sit by the hour, hardly daring to move for fear they’d chase me away. When the brothers realized how absorbed I was, they began teaching me things and giving me small jobs to do. I seemed to have a natural aptitude, I learned quickly. Before long I’d become so useful to them that they’d scold me if I didn’t show up early enough.”
“Were they paying you?”
“Heavens, no, they’d never have dreamed of anything like that. Children were slave labor. I didn’t care. It was enough that they wanted me around, for whatever reason. My mother didn’t know what was going on and didn’t care, so long as I was out of her way and not spoiling my clothes. My ayah used to undress me and make me put on a loincloth as soon as we got to the workshop, she’d clean me up and dress me again before we went back to the house.”
“Didn’t you ever go to school?” Sarah asked him.
“Oh yes, in a manner of speaking. My ayah could read and write English after a fashion, she taught me the rudiments. Aside from my looks, my mother was only concerned about my manners and accent. When I was nine she put me in a snotty little day-school for the sons of gentlemen. Meaning, of course, British sahibs. In fact, most of the boys were like myself, half-castes of one sort or another whose parents had big ideas and enough money to pay the fees. They taught us virtually nothing except how to aspirate our vowels and snub the lower orders. I didn’t spend much time at classes, I’d slip off to the workshop whenever I got the chance. The headmaster didn’t seem to miss me, he was drunk a good deal of the time. We boys all learned to speak with a hint of a hiccup.”
“What fun for you. Your mother was fairly well-off, then?”
“I don’t know. It seems to me we lived quite lavishly when I was small. Then things got a bit tight for a while and I had a couple of stepfathers—or was told I had—in quick succession. Neither of them ever paid the slightest attention to me, which was probably just as well. Finally there was Roderick.”
“Another stepfather?” asked Max.
“No, a neighbor. He rented the bungalow next to ours shortly after the second stepfather decamped. He had a son who was known as Barn. I don’t know if that was the boy’s real name or a nickname but he went to my school and was rather a swell. Roderick was a cousin or something to the head, I believe. Barn was two forms above me, so of course he didn’t even recognize me on the rare occasions when we met. As I mentioned, I wasn’t around much. I tended to show up only on days when there were art lessons.”
“Art lessons? What sort?”
“Oh, mostly just looking at prints and getting short preachments about the chaps who’d done them. We young gentlemen were supposed to absorb a little culture along with the cricket. Which I detested, I must admit. Keeping a straight bat was never one of my priorities. But I did like the art master, I suppose I turned him into some sort of father figure. Actually the poor chap was a drug addict, he died of an overdose during my third and, as it turned out, final year. Or so the story ran; we pupils weren’t supposed to know, but of course we did. Or thought we did.”
Arbalest drank some more of the soda water Sarah had brought him. “I was having drug problems myself by then, in a manner of speaking; my mother was high as a kite most of the time. I think Roderick was supplying her, though I can’t accuse him of having got her started. Looking back, I believe mother had probably picked up the habit years before. She’d always been volatile in her moods, I never knew from moment to moment what sort of temper she’d be in. Sometimes she’d forget I even existed, sometimes she’d berate me for hours at a time over nothing at all, sometimes she’d be sweet as honey. During the sweet times, she’d spin me grand stories about her noble father, who’d been a Russian prince and lived in a palace until the wicked Bolsheviks killed him and stole all his fortune except the one great family treasure of which I would some day be custodian. But I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“On the contrary, Arbalest, I think you should,” said Max. “We have reason to believe your own father knew a lot more about this family treasure than your mother ever told you.”
“But how?”
“Trus
t us, Arbalest. We’ll explain in due time. What happened to your mother, and where’s the treasure now? Do you know?”
“Yes, of course I do. I had to know. I got home from school one afternoon—it must have been an art day—and found my mother on the floor, terribly bruised and bloody, trying to crawl to the sofa. Roderick had been there, and had beaten her so badly she couldn’t even stand up. I think both her legs may have been broken, she screamed when I tried to raise her. He’d been trying to get the treasure from her, he was coming back soon to kill her if she didn’t tell him where it was hidden.”
“Good God!” gasped Sarah. “What did you do?”
“I brought water and tried to wash the blood off mother’s face, I couldn’t stand seeing her like that. But she was a raging fury. She pushed my hand away, she would not be mastered, she was ready to die first. I must take the treasure from where she’d hidden it—she told me where—and escape with it, and guard it with my life forevermore. She grabbed my hand—hers was all sticky with the blood, it was dreadful—and pressed it to her heart and made me swear that I’d keep faith with her, or the gods of her forefathers would wreak a terrible vengeance on me. She scared the hell out of me, not to put too fine a point on it. She still does.”
“I can imagine,” said Max. “So what happened after that?”
“I went and got the treasure and stuffed it down my undershirt. I brought her a drink and tried to make her more comfortable, though there wasn’t much I could do. I knew it was no use calling the police, not that she’d have let me anyway. Then Roderick came storming back across the yard between the bungalows. Mother shoved me away and told me to run for it. The last I saw of her as I jumped out the window, she’d taken a cutthroat razor out from under a sofa cushion. She had it open in her hand, and was staring at the door with her lips drawn back in a snarl, her long black hair all tangled around her face and her eyes flashing green fire. I don’t know which of them died first, I never went back to find out.”
“Where was the ayah?” Sarah wanted to know. “Did she escape?”
“She’d been gone before I ever got home. I’m sure her relatives were hiding her, I ran to the workshop and they wouldn’t let me in. They told me to go away and stay away. I could understand. These were poor people trying to make a living, they couldn’t risk having their shop wrecked by a murdering madman. I apologized and left. One chap who’d always been kind to me did slip me a few annas and a couple of chapattis for the road.”
Arbalest tilted his glass to catch the last of the soda water. Sarah offered mutely to get more, he shook his head. “I’m all right now. Shall I go on?”
“Yes, please. What did you do next?”
“Ate my chapattis and thought a bit. I was wearing my school uniform, that would make me an easy target for Roderick to spot. I went to the old-clothes bazaar and traded my fine feathers for a ragged shirt, dirty shorts, and a pair of wornout sandals. I got skinned on the trade, of course, but I was in no shape to haggle. I did persuade the merchant to throw in a pair of battered old sunglasses. I was deeply tanned pretty much all over from working so much in just a loincloth, my hair was black, I could pass for an Indian except for my green eyes. That was why I insisted on the sunglasses. I made him give me a scrap of rag to clean them with. Once I got away from there I wound a bit of the rag around one temple and scratched up the lenses a little more to make them look as if I’d found them on a trash heap. It wasn’t a bad disguise, Roderick was snob enough himself not to believe a boy of my alleged caste would demean himself by dressing down to the level of the street.”
“But this treasure of yours,” said Sarah, “how could you keep it hidden in such a skimpy outfit?”
Arbalest smiled. “Easily enough. Mother had put it in a little leather bag. Lots of Indian people wear charm bags around their necks; I just ripped off another piece of rag, covered the bag with that, and added a clove of garlic I pinched out of a peddler’s basket to keep the evil spirits away. I still wear it, without the rag, of course. See?”
The necktie he wore was sober enough in color but wider than ordinary in shape. He slid the knot down, opened the top buttons of his shirt, and revealed a small soft leather bag hanging on a slender gold chain. “It’s somewhat like having a misplaced goiter, but I’ve grown so used to the bag after all these years that I don’t feel dressed without it.”
Levitan was getting restless. “Could we see your treasure, please?”
“But I—I’ve never shown it to anyone, ever,” stammered the Resurrection Man.
“Look, Mr. Arbalest, you as much as saw your own mother killed over this thing you’re wearing. Now we’ve got two more murders on our hands, most likely with the same motive behind them. One victim was your father, the other his best friend. Open the bag, Mr. Arbalest.”
24
MOVING SLOWLY AND MECHANICALLY, like a man in shock, as he quite likely was, Bartolo Arbalest pulled the golden chain up over his head and laid his charm bag on the desk in front of Max.
“You open it,” he said. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” said Max. “You must have done it often enough.”
“No, never. Not once. I’ve tried a few times, but I always see mother’s face, the way she looked when she handed me the bag, and I—I just can’t. Please, Mr. Bittersohn.”
Max shrugged, fumbling for a moment with the time-stiffened puckers at the mouth, then held the bag upside down and let the heavy stone slide out onto George Protheroe’s blotter pad. It was in fact the size and shape of a large hen’s egg; its many facets gathered the rays from the desk lamp into a cool, still interplay of light and shadow, of color and no color.
“Very pretty,” said Max.
Sarah was staring at the great jewel as if mesmerized. “It’s so clear, so still. What is it, Max?”
“Rock crystal. Mid-eighteenth century, as a guess. Probably cut for some nabob’s bedroom doorknob.”
“What’s it worth?” barked Levitan.
“In dollars? A couple of thousand, more or less. Sorry, Arbalest.”
“No! Oh, my God! All that for—mother, father, Erminie, Mr. Dubrec, all those others, killed for a crystal doorknob. Take it away, for God’s sake! Throw it in the ocean. Throw me in, while you’re about it. I’m not fit to live.”
“Oh, come on, Mr. Arbalest,” said Levitan. “You’ll be okay. Get him that brandy, somebody. I may as well keep this—what do I call it? Crystal doorknob?—for evidence. I’ll give you a receipt.”
“I don’t want one.”
“Sorry, it’s in the rules. You wouldn’t want to get me fired.”
Levitan tore a sheet off a memo pad that was lying on George’s desk and began to write, in a surprisingly beautiful hand. Sarah slipped out to fetch the brandy, and also a glass of soda water just in case. When she returned, Max was asking Arbalest, “Was it on account of the stone that you decided to hire yourself a bodyguard?”
Arbalest shrugged. “I suppose so. Indirectly, anyway. So many awful things had happened, and they’ve been going on so long. Erminie Dubrec was the great love of my life. I wanted desperately to marry her, but I didn’t dare ask. There’d been others before her, you see. Anybody I got close to, man or woman—I’m a sociable person by nature, I need to have people around me. I suppose a psychiatrist would call it a holdover from my ayah’s brothers’ workshop. I drift into friendships, I can’t help it. I form ties, and suddenly they’re horribly, hideously broken. It’s as though I put a curse on anybody who lets me get too near.”
He was crying again. “I have so much love to give, and I’m poison wherever I give it. I’ve signed so many death warrants just by caring for people. Oh, God! I can’t stand any more. I want to die and be with my father.”
That made three who’d loved George Protheroe, all lining themselves up for Charon’s ferry, not counting Anora. Fat old George, of all people. Who would have thought he meant so much to so many? Sarah couldn’t bear to stand here listening to the Resurrection Ma
n’s sobs, she went back to the bar for more soda water. By the time she returned to the den, Arbalest had himself in hand and was answering somebody’s question, probably Max’s.
“No, I didn’t tell Goudge about the crystal when I hired him, I saw no reason why I should. The catastrophic record among my former artisans was reason enough.”
“Have you ever told anybody else?” That was Levitan.
“No, not even Erminie. Nobody has ever known, unless Roderick’s still alive. I can’t imagine my mother survived their last encounter, she’d have been after me to get back her so-called treasure. She’d truly convinced herself that it was a real diamond, you know. One had to believe her, she was so sure. I never doubted her, not for a moment. I’m sure Roderick didn’t either. One believes what one wants to, of course.”
“How would she have known where to find you?” Max asked him.
“I don’t know, but she’d have managed. I used to wonder sometimes if mother was a witch. Anyway, I didn’t get far away those first days. I’d only my feet for transportation, my few annas wouldn’t have taken me any great distance on the train, and I did have to eat. Food has always been a top priority with me, as you can see.”
None of his hearers gave a rap about Arbalest’s embonpoint, they waited for him to go on. He was too courteous not to oblige.
“I wasn’t much worried about Roderick, oddly enough. I kept remembering how mother had looked with that razor in her hand; I felt fairly confident that even if he killed her, she’d have managed to do him some serious damage first. Even if she didn’t hurt him too badly, he’d have wasted a good deal of time tearing our bungalow apart piece by piece with his bare hands, looking for mother’s secret cache before it occurred to him that I might have run off with the boodle. Roderick wasn’t all that swift a thinker.”
“What about his son?” asked Max.
“By Jove! You know, Mr. Bittersohn, I’ve never once in all these years thought about the son’s possibly getting involved. Stupid of me, Barn was a sneaky young devil. I remember coming home from the workshop one time and catching him lurking under mother’s bedroom window with a camera in his hand.”
The Resurrection Man Page 22
