The Dark House

by John Sedgwick

  The Mick kicked the door shut behind them. But through the picture window that looked out onto the lot Rollins could see that a light was on inside. The rocker set the girl down on the bed while he swept the curtains shut. In his haste, he left a sizable gap between them, through which Rollins—the binoculars now deep into his eye sockets—could see the man pull his T-shirt over his head and then slide his hands up under the shirt of the blonde.

  A groan, a parted door, bare flesh…

  The tape recorder was still at Rollins’ mouth, still turning, but he had stopped speaking. Hadn’t he seen all this before somewhere? Then the blonde’s head lolled back, and her lips parted—whether from pleasure or surprise, Rollins couldn’t tell—before Jagger toppled her onto the bed. From his angle, Rollins could see only the top sliver of the man’s arched back over the windowsill. But the back rose and fell like a swimmer’s.

  …Strong hands on a slim, bare back, scraping. The whiteness, and the angry streaks of red. A hand in a man’s hair. And the thrashing, the thrashing.

  Occasionally, a slender hand would reach up into view, or, once, a bare shoulder. The movements came faster and faster until, suddenly, the blonde lurched up almost into full view, her mouth wide open, facing the window with a startled look that nearly caused Rollins to drop the binoculars from his eyes and duck. Her shirt was off, and her bra was down around her waist, and Rollins could see her breasts, which were pale and wobbly, with tiny nipples. One arm across her chest to try to cover herself, she reached with the other for the edge of the open curtain. As she did, the rocker sneaked out a hand to cup her left breast from behind. She twirled around to free herself, then, as she fell back, lunged again for the curtain and flicked it the rest of the way across the window, closing out Rollins’ view.

  Rollins watched the curtained window for a half hour in some turmoil. He’d seen it all before. Not this exactly, but something very much like it. But where? He shut off the tape recorder. Not on a pursuit, he was almost certain. In all his years of watching, he’d never seen a sex act before. A remarkable fact, but true. There’d been a drooping erection in the light of a table lamp, and an old woman’s flabby backside, but that was all. Yet something about this scene here at the Overnighter seemed so familiar. Was it the people? Did he know them somehow?

  Once he was in the clear, Rollins doubled back on route 102, crossed over 95 again and, famished, turned in at a pizza place in a row of stores off the highway—the closest thing Londonderry had to a downtown. He hungrily downed a Neapolitan Special with everything. He should not have done what he did. That was obvious. It was a terrible intrusion, a serious violation of his personal code, and risky besides. Still, the sight of the girl stirred him, undeniably. Was it merely because she had awakened a memory? There was something familiar about the way she’d reached desperately for the curtains with her fingers splayed. Perhaps she’d simply awakened his desire to touch Marj, to kiss her, caress her, or more.

  Rollins had had a few sexual escapades back at his old place in the Back Bay. But it always took him a few cocktails to get in the mood. That’s probably why he remembered little beyond the vigor of the act and a short-lived feeling of accomplishment when it was over. Still, he was fairly sure that he himself had never done anything with anyone like the woman in room 29. It was nothing he’d done. Something he’d seen. But what?

  He sat by the plate-glass window, with his back to the counter, where he could sense the burly pizza chef eyeing him occasionally, contemplating a conversation, no doubt. Rollins looked out through the glass to a brightly lit CVS and a small tax preparer’s office that lurked in the blurry distance behind his own pale image. Farther down, just past his reflected shoulder, he noticed Lorraine’s Haircutting Studio, with its tattered mauve awning. It had been pale green before, he was pretty sure. He’d been in there a few times. He must have entered every shop in town in search of people who knew Cornelia and had an idea about what might have happened to her. A good two dozen people recognized the name, but it was distressing to discover how little they knew about her. Mostly, they knew her enough just to say hello at the post office, or in the library, about the only two places she was seen at all regularly. A few had heard she was some kind of writer. (They usually said this with a squint.) Almost no one had been inside her house, or read her poems, or been able to say with any certainty what she was “like,” beyond the default modifier that she was “nice.”

  After he was done with his pizza, he climbed back into the Nissan. It was coming up on eight o’clock. He found a pay phone, and dialed Marj this time. He just wanted to say hello, to reassure himself that he wasn’t as peculiar as he had just begun to feel. But he got her answering machine and didn’t leave a message.

  He tried Schecter again. This time, he got a man’s voice. “Hell-o,” the man said in the brisk way that Rollins had always remembered.

  “Al?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s Rollins.”

  “Well, fuck me. It’s been a long time. Where the hell are you? Sounds like a pay phone.”

  “In Londonderry, New Hampshire.” He had to raise his voice to cover the roar of a truck going by.

  “Shit. Just like old times. That broad hasn’t turned up, has she?”

  “No.” Rollins hesitated. “It’s…complicated.”

  “With you, it always is.” Schecter gave out a dry chuckle.

  Rollins let that go. “I was hoping for a favor.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Some guy’s been following me.”

  “He cute?” The investigator laughed again.

  “It’s serious, Al.”

  “He there now?”

  Rollins’ stomach tightened at the thought. He glanced around. “No, I don’t think so. But I keep seeing him places. He’s been asking questions about me. About where I live, my routine, that kind of thing.”

  “Is there some problem? You screwing his girl?”

  “I don’t even know him.”

  Schecter took this in without comment. “Okay,” he said finally.

  “I’ve got his license plate number. I was hoping you could get me his name and an address.”

  “I’m not in the business anymore, you know.”

  “So I heard. What happened?”

  “A lot.” He didn’t elaborate, except to acknowledge that his wife, Pat, was not with him up there. Rollins felt bad about that. He’d always been fond of her, a slender, big-haired brunette who’d helped out typing up Schecter’s reports. Schecter said nothing about their two children.

  “I got a little boat-taxi business up here,” Schecter said. “But that’s for a couple of martinis, or whatever the hell you’re drinking these days. You got any more information on this guy?”

  Rollins gave him the plate number. Schecter said that he still had a few contacts and to call him back in a half hour. Before hanging up, Rollins asked if he could trace fax numbers.

  “A fax number now? What the hell is going on down there?”

  “I told you, it’s complicated.”

  “Faxes are a bitch. But I’ll try.”

  Rollins had that number memorized, and he recited it. Schecter said he’d do what he could.

  To kill some time, Rollins climbed back in the Nissan, took Mammoth Road going north by the Homestead Restaurant, and drove down to Pillsbury, where in the thickening dusk a few children were still playing in the front yards. He remembered the road well. He must have taken it dozens of times driving to Cornelia’s old house. Now, with the windows down, he could smell the sweet honeysuckle scent in the air. He drove on, as he had so many times before, forked left onto Pelbourne, and wound past a series of historic clapboard houses, all of them set well back from the road. Rollins slowed after the narrow bridge and, about a hundred yards down, pulled up by a gravel driveway that was bounded by a pair of stone pillars, thickly covered now with English ivy.

  He parked by the side of the road. It was quiet and dark along here, overhung by
rustling maples and elms. Only the occasional car loomed up, its headlights blinding him as it rushed past. Rollins stepped out of the car and walked over to the mouth of the driveway. He reached through the ivy to touch the rough stone of one of the pillars, just to feel something solid. He peered up the long driveway. Always before, the drive had been vacant, but there were a couple of cars parked at the end this time. Could the house have been sold? Or—the thought came to him like a rifle shot—had Cornelia somehow returned?

  His pulse quickening, he moved up the gravel drive. With each step, the grounds opened up wider before him—the rolling lawn that went down to the pond, and, up to his right, flanked by a low hill, the handsome Victorian house, its high roof and sharply pointed dormers silhouetted against the late-evening sky. He’d been here as recently as two months ago, and the house had always been dark before, but now light blazed from the windows and spread across the lawn, clear to the trees, and some music—Haydn, perhaps—spilled out into the evening air.

  Rollins ducked down as he reached the cars, to conceal his profile from the glowing house. Neither of the cars was the blue Volvo that Cornelia had owned, but that had disappeared after her. No, these two cars were stolid American makes—a bulky Chrysler and a Ford Taurus. Of course, it was certainly possible that Cornelia had come back driving a different car. Rollins’ mind raced: Wouldn’t he have heard about her return? The news would certainly have made the papers. Surely, someone would have told him.

  He tried the cars’ doors, but they were all locked. He slid a hand under the front and rear bumpers, and around the wheel casings, but he found no Hide-a-Key, at least not in any of the places that Schecter had taught him to look.

  Rollins turned back to the house. The first time he’d come back, when he was doing his research for the Beacon, he’d climbed a downspout for a crack at the upstairs dormers. (He was more daring then.) All but one of those windows had been curtained, but that last one afforded him a glimpse of what looked like a spare bedroom. He could make out a hairbrush, comb, and hand mirror, all laid out formally across a cloth on the bureau. An heirloom set, he assumed, come down from the monied side of her family.

  Another time, he’d gone tramping through the woods with Al Schecter, who pored over small disturbances in the landscape—a mounded rise, a slight dip—trying to determine if they marked a shallow grave. In a few places, Al had actually dug down several feet in search of a corpse, while Rollins stood by watching intently, not sure what to hope for. They never found anything.

  Now the house was so bright that Rollins had to squint as he gazed up at it. Virtually every window blazed with light. Shrouding himself in the bushes, hiding behind the fringe of trees, Rollins circled the house from a safe distance. Few curtains were drawn, and Rollins was finally able to get a good view of all the downstairs rooms—the modern kitchen, the antique-laden living room, the book-lined study, even the bathroom, which was done in blue. A few upstairs rooms were lit, but Rollins couldn’t get a good angle on them to see more than a portion of an upper wall here and there.

  The only people he saw were sitting about a coffee table in the living room, their faces softened by the subdued lighting. As far as he could tell, the individuals all seemed to be country types—three couples in their forties or so. None of them looked much like Cornelia, but she might have changed a good deal by now. He wanted to run back to his car for Marj’s binoculars to get a better look, but he didn’t dare risk being caught on the property with such equipment.

  Rollins was fully aware that he should leave. He had already pressed his luck at the Overnighter. But then he looked again at the house, so alive now, and he needed to be sure. Instead of retreating quietly back up the drive, he followed the curve of the cobblestone walkway to the black front door.

  The babble of voices and music rose as he approached. Rollins reached for the door knocker and brought it down on the door with a boom that quieted the voices and produced some hurried footsteps his way. The heavy door swung open with a rush of air, and an elegant, bony woman in pearls stood before him. “Yes?” she asked.

  “Excuse me,” Rollins said. “I’m looking for Cornelia Blanchard.”

  He’d hoped for a glimmer of recognition, but the woman kept her distance, turning only her ear to him. “Who did you say?”

  Rollins went hollow. “Cornelia Blanchard. She used to live here.” Saying it that way was like killing her, but he kept on. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t intrude. I was driving by, and I saw the lights. She’s a cousin of mine. We’ve been kind of out of touch.” He let his voice trail off.

  Her eyes eased slightly. “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone named Cornelia. You say she lived here?”

  “Yes, until a few years ago, anyway.”

  “And what’s your name?”

  “Edward Rollins. Most people just call me Rollins.”

  “Edie Stanton.” They shook hands awkwardly across the threshold. Then she relaxed a little. “I used to know another Rollins—years ago—Richard I think his name was.”

  “I have a brother named Richard. But he’s out in Indianapolis.”

  “He didn’t go to Penn by any chance?”

  “Yes.”

  Edie seemed suddenly delighted, turning this unexpected encounter into something closer to a family reunion. “How amazing!” she practically shouted. “You’re Richard’s brother?”

  Rollins bobbed his head in acknowledgment, as he tried to accommodate the fact that Cornelia was no longer the topic—he was.

  “My roommate, Jennie Sturgis, went out with him. But that was a million years ago. I suppose he’s married now.”

  Rollins pictured his brother in Indianapolis, the Christmas cards. “Yes. Two children.”

  “Imagine that. Well, why don’t you come on in, have a drink. We’re having a few friends over. Gosh, perhaps you know them?” She laughed a little at the wild improbability of it all.

  Edie motioned for Rollins to come on through a small, dark anteroom into the living room, where the cocktail party was going full force. But the sound ebbed as the guests turned their attention to the late-arriving stranger in their midst. Rollins had the sensation of passing through some invisible barrier. He’d tried to peer into this house so many times. The living room was done in the earth tones that had just become fashionable, with solid furniture and a large woven rug across the broad planks of the wooden floor. Five people were sitting about, and Rollins felt terribly self-conscious to find them all peering at him as if he were an alien being. But then Edie explained, loudly, with possibly a little too much enthusiasm, that he was the brother of an old friend from Penn, and, like magic, all the apprehensive looks suddenly dissolved, replaced mostly by equally disconcerting familiarity. Edie introduced everyone, and Rollins shook hands all round, but, aside from her burly husband, Ben, and the smallish, well-dressed woman to his left, Nicky someone, Rollins lost track of all the names. Ben handed him a drink. Rollins took a gulp of a gin and tonic, grateful for the tangy release it offered.

  “Nice guy, Richard,” Edie was saying. “And so handsome! I had a bit of a crush on him myself.”

  Rollins smiled noncommittally. He and his brother had been out of touch in those years. All he’d known was what his mother had sent him from the Penn newspaper, detailing Richard’s exploits on the baseball diamond as the varsity shortstop.

  “He and Jennie were mad for each other for a few months there. Inseparable. But then Jennie found Roger Morton—you know, the stud on that cable show, Wall Street Today?—and that was it for your brother.”

  “Were you at Penn, too?” Edie’s husband Ben asked, apparently discomfited by his wife’s talk of college romance.

  “No, Williams, actually,” Rollins said.

  “Play any squash there?” A wiry, bearded fellow—Allen was it? Alex?—piped up from across the room. “They’re big on squash at Williams.”

  “And Mt. Holyoke girls,” added another man, whose name Rollins had missed completely. />
  Rollins felt himself color, remembering his own drunken fling with a Mt. Holyoker—a chain-smoker named Andi McCallister—one weekend, which involved his sole experience with cunnilingus. “Richard was the jock in the family.” Then he added, lest he be thought completely useless, “I was head of the film society.”

  Allen or Alex let that pass. “We played Williams, that’s why I asked,” he said.

  “Please, not those Yale squash triumphs again, Alex,” said a mousy woman beside him.

  There was a pause in the conversation, as the initial burst of curiosity about this stranger in their midst subsided. “Rollins is just passing through,” Edie explained. “He says his cousin Cornelia Blanchard used to live here.”

  “That’s the woman I was telling you about.” It was Nicky, sitting on the ottoman immediately to Rollins’ right. “Last month, when you moved in. She’s the one who disappeared. She used to live here.”

  Edie’s features darkened. “Well, the realtor didn’t say anything about it.”

  “Was that Jerry Sloane?” Nicky interrupted.

  “Why, yes, I believe it was,” Edie said. She called out to her husband. “Isn’t that right, dear?”