Vivisepulture
Page 29
"What," spat out Ms Levinger, "Is going on?"
"Ms. Levinger," Walther said, placatingly, "Let me-"
"This is Mr Stebbins," she snapped. "He is a plumber."
"'Ere, I know you," Stebbins said slowly, squinting at Walther. "You're that poof from the pub."
"There is an entirely rational explanation for everything," said Walther, desperately cheerful.
Ms Levinger regarded him coldly. "Mr Stebbins," she said. "The real Mr Stebbins. Would you care to go about your business while I deal with these… whatever they are?"
Stebbins gave Walther and I a gloating look. He did not realise, I think, that I had been pretending to be him or he would have been more vocal. He was simply enjoying someone else's misfortune.
Ms. Levinger had reappeared with a telephone in her hand and we followed her, Walther and me, into the living room. I had the sense to take my shoes off before getting her carpet mucky, for what it was worth.
"I have dialled the police," she informed us. "One move and I will call. They'll trace the number."
"We do not intend you any harm, Ms Levinger. Possibly quite the reverse," said Walther, smiling in a reassuring manner.
"What the hell is going on?" she demanded. "I should just call the police right now, or throw you out!Who the hell are you and what do you want?!"
She could not get her head round it, how these two people had turned up pretending to be plumbers in the place of one she was expecting. It made no sense to her. It made precious little to me.
"Easily explained, Ms Levinger,” said Walther. “I am of course not Mr Kinlay from the Council and my friend here is not, as you are already aware, J Stebbins Plumbing and Heating. However, we did meet with Mr Stebbins last night, inadvertently, in a public house. He was on the table next to us complaining in a loud voice about having to attend your residence, I am afraid. He indicated that if you had driven off two of his compatriots, men whom he was personally acquainted with, then he would be damned, he said, if he would give you the time of day, and he had a good mind, he continued, to leave you hanging and not actually visit you in any event. That was the tenor of his conversation.”
“So what? You’re trying to tell me you’re just two good Samaritans who turned up to fill in for him?” she asked, but she was interested. She wanted to know what our angle was.
“Not entirely,” Walther admitted. “We are neither of us plumbers. However…” His smile increased, as it usually did when he was being careful. “When we heard Mr Stebbins in full flow, I had a strange feeling. I have learned to trust my feelings, Ms Levinger. In fact I have made a career out of them. Something, my feeling was telling me, was not right. Michael got into conversation with the increasingly inebriate Mr Stebbins, and got your address and name. I thought that if we turned up on the doorstep without introduction, you would not give us the time of day, and so relied on this harmless subterfuge to gain admittance to make our enquiries. Mr Stebbins had already declared, in his cups, that he would not be visiting you. I suppose it is the last time I shall trust the word of a tradesman.”
“Harmless subterfuge?” Ms Levinger said, more stunned than angry now, confronting Walther’s barefacedness. “I’m going to call the police- no, I’m going to call the mental asylum. You’re completely mad.”
“Ms. Levinger,” Walther said, suddenly the great detective, “Can you honestly tell me that you have had no unusual experience in this house?”
For a moment she had her mouth open but was saying nothing, and I realised, with a rush of excitement, that Walther was right, as he always was. Then she glared at him and said, “I’ve had enough of this. If you’re not out of my house in ten seconds I will call the police.”
“My card,” said Walther, producing his real one and dropping it onto a side table.
“Out!” Ms. Levinger shouted, and we made our retreat in double time, virtually stumbling out through her door.
“Well that fell flat,” I said, thinking that I, too, had taken the day off work for this. At least there had been no actual calling of the police, which would have been awkward.
“It may yet stand up again,” Walther said mildly. As usual, he was right.
I got the call from him that Friday.
“Meet me at the Levinger House tomorrow, Michael.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. She may have come round to our way of thinking.”
So I pitched up outside the bungalow that weekend, finding Walther loitering outside waiting for me. Ms Levinger opened the door at our first knock. She looked no more welcoming than the first time around.
“Come in,” she said. It was as if we were exterminators or something – someone that might be needed, but that nobody wanted to see. We followed her through to her living room, of fond memory.
“This,” she had Walther’s card in her hand, “is a joke, right?”
“Quite serious, I assure you,” Walther said. The card announced him to be a paranormal investigator, so I could see her point. “I have a degree in parapsychology from the University of Brent Springs, California, but as it cost me ten dollars to acquire, I would rather convince you by my actual success in assisting you.”
“I need a plumber, Mr Cohen, not the Ghostbusters,” she told him.
“Then why did you call me, Ms Levinger?”
She looked exceptionally stubborn, but she was cracking.
“Mr Stebbins left,” she said.
“The unreliable nature of tradesman does not fall within the bounds of the paranormal, albeit by only a small margin,” Walther said with studied calm. Knowing him, I could see he was on edge, waiting for it.
“I had put the safety chain on,” she said. “In case… you came back. The back door was locked. The safety chain was still on. But he left.”
Walther sat on the arm of her one armchair. “Okay,” he said. “Is there something else?”
I think she went a bit pale at that point. “Something else?”
“Yes, something else. I think I told you that I have very good instincts.”
“I thought you were talking about plumbing, then. But this is nothing to do with the plumbing,” she protested.
“Nevertheless.”
She turned away from us. The transition from hostility to confusion had taken moments. “I… sometimes I have this odd dream…” She hated saying it, I could see, but something about Walther had made it clear that the information was non-negotiable, and she had called him, which meant she needed his help. “It’s just, I kind of wake up…,” she said. “And there’s someone in the room. Someone standing by the doorway, or just outside the doorway.”
“Show me.”
“It’s just a dream,” she insisted.
“Ms. Levinger, if you go to the doctor with a pain, you let him make the diagnosis. Show me.”
She did. Her bedroom door and the bathroom door faced each other across the narrow entrance hall.
“Does this figure do anything, say anything?” Walther asked.
“No- but- It just watches me, and then turns away and goes. And I’m always half-asleep, and so I just go back to sleep. But even if I keep the door closed, sometimes, I know it’s there…” There was a moment’s pause before she added, unconvincingly, “But it’s nothing to do with this-“
“You don’t believe that.”
She scowled at Walther. “It’s just that some mornings there’s… a smell. Like in the bathroom.”
“Let us research,” Walther suggested. “Michael and I will do a bit of digging and see what we can find” He grinned at her horrified expression. “Metaphorical digging, Ms Levinger. Actual excavation should not, I hope, be necessary.” His grin did not fade but by some sleight of face it stopped being funny.
It was show, to some extent. We had already done some work, dug a few holes. Walther and I settled down outside the bathroom door to compare notes.
“Ms. Levinger bought this property three years ago from Mrs Ada Platt,” W
alther said. He looked over my shoulder as I accessed the Land Registry website on my laptop. “Mrs Platt lived here for… nine years before that, my goodness. She bought it from…?”
We shuffled through the online records but there was no mention, and so Walther took my mobile to make some calls. In the interim I went, reluctantly, back into the bathroom. It still reeked, and there was even more filth across the floor and walls, Mr Stebbins’ only contribution before he left.
Left how?
An idea struck me, and I went out past Walther and checked the street outside.
I did not like what I discovered.
“Listen to this, Michael!” Walther said excitedly, when I came in again. “This gentleman tells me that Mrs Platt bought this place from the estate of Joseph Wentworth. Interesting, no? I’ve got the number of the solicitors who dealt with it. I’ll give them a call. I need you to look up newspaper archives – obituaries – nineteen ninety to ninety-three-“
“Hold on,” I said, and went to find Ms Levinger.
I took her and Walther outside. “This is more serious than you think,” I told them, for once able to be the showman. Walther smiled indulgently at me.
I pointed out three nearby vans. One was unmarked, but the other two were clearly labelled: John Pilling Heating and Plumbing Services, and P. T. Stebbins Plumbing and Heating.
“I don’t understand,” said Ms. Levinger, although she did, really. She just didn’t want to.
“Plumbers have been known to down tools in the past,” Walther said quietly. “But paradoxically it involves taking their tools with them. All of your missing plumbers appear to have walked home, Ms. Levinger, or not left at all.”
We went inside then, and Ms. Levinger told us all about white-haired old Ada Platt who had sold her the property. Did she herself know anything about a Joseph Wentworth? No she didn’t. She had only moved into the area three years ago. Walther and I went back to our digging.
Walther failed to get much out of the solicitors the first time round, complaining that the Data Protection Act had made his life infinitely more difficult. I went through the local papers in the early nineties and found no mention of any Wentworth. Walther went off to the town archives to see if he could do better. His instincts can cut to the nub through thirty years of records if he can be bothered.
I was years off. Joseph Wentworth turned up on the 15th of July nineteen eighty-two, following up the initial story eight months before in eighty-one. Both pieces were mere paragraphs.
“He disappears in December eighty-one,” Walther explained, over my phone’s tinny loudspeaker. “Very sad. Christmas coming and… is it?… Yes, his wife had left him. Much sympathy. July and they reckon it’s suicide. Police close files. Poor Mr Wentworth.”
“And then what?” I asked. “That’s years-“
“Sorting out the estate. Not an easy thing to do. Mr Wentworth’s only proof of death is his continuing absence. Now I want Ms. Levinger to do something for me.”
“I’m here,” she confirmed to the telephone.
“I want you to ring the solicitors who did the estate administration and tell them there’s a problem with the house. Tell them you’re ringing on behalf of Ada Platt. That should get through to them. Get them worried. They might tell you something.”
“But that’s…” She looked at me, in Walther’s absence. I shrugged. “I’ll try it,” she agreed.
“Good. I’m on my way back,” Walther confirmed.
I went back into the bathroom. Joseph Wentworth, I thought. Joseph Wentworth, sad and alone after his wife had gone… well perhaps it was a classic ghost situation, but… Walther had said that he had disappeared. No body had been found.
The smell was getting to me. Rot was rot, and I suddenly felt very queasy. The only thing that steadied me was the sheer nastiness of it. A decomposing body does not smell as bad as that bathroom did.
“Joseph Wentworth?” I said, into that stinking silence. Now I’m not psychic. I leave that to Walther. I’m as un-mystical as you can be, which is why I’m useful to him. When I said that name, though, something was there. I just felt a tide of… loathing, cold hate, pour over me, just for a moment. I had something’s attention.
“Time to speak to Mr Wentworth,” said Walther when he came back. Ms. Levinger was diligently talking her way through the channels of the Data Protection Act. It was probably a good time for Walther to exercise his skills while she was distracted. “Just the light kit for now, and we’ll see what we can reach.”
“Are you sure? We don’t know what happened to the plumbers.” I did my voice of reason bit.
“I think something very nasty almost certainly happened to all three of them,” said Walther briskly. “They, however, did not know what they were dealing with. Suicides, Michael. Suicides are a specialist subject. You have to treat them properly. Think of it as talking to someone who’s currently really depressed but liable to fly into a rage if you don’t humour them. Thankfully, as long as you commiserate they’re usually fairly easy to manipulate.”
“Into doing what?”
Walther chuckled. “Giving up the ghost. Going away. The act of suicide itself is usually what creates the ghost: that last moment of utter wretched despair, and perhaps even a moment when, all too late, they change their mind. It happens. Usually a simple laying to rest of the body will assist. We’ll get the whole sorry story, but at the end of it we’ll know where his remains are stashed. Sometimes just letting the ghost go on about its problems is enough to get rid of it.”
“A kind of supernatural agony aunt.”
“If you like.” He looked about the bathroom with distaste. “I’m afraid that as this seems to be the focus, we’ll have to set up her, unpalatable as it may be. I bought these.” They were swimming-pool nose-clips. “They’re not going to help the dignity of the situation but we’ll have to live with it.”
We set up quickly, Walther drawing a circle in the muck on the floor and making a few marks at the cardinal points. We stood inside, awkwardly close, and Walther lit a candle and passed it to me. It was probably scented but didn’t stand a chance in that room.
“Mr Wentworth,” Walther said softly. I looked nervously at the open bathroom door, for the moment fearing Ms. Levinger’s wrath or scorn more than any ghost. I missed whatever it was that Walther felt, but I could guess.
“He isn’t happy,” said Walther. “Being ignored so long will do that for you.”
“Does it make you eat plumbers?”
“It might. Mr. Wentworth, why don’t you come and have a word. You must have something to get off your chest. I’ve a sympathic ear,” Walther said, voice reverential.
I felt something, then, another surge of furious emotion. Walther gripped my hand abruptly, and I followed his gaze to where the filth on the floor was shifting, oozing blobs rolling into others and then falling apart. It looked as though it was trying to form a pattern, writing even, but nothing came of it.
The usual adrenaline rush kicked in, the fight-or-flight demanding to know why I wasn’t running already. That was when Ms Levinger came to the doorway.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.
Walther waved at me urgently, and I said, with a weak smile, “We’re investigating. Our way. If you’d-“
“I talked to the solicitors, like you wanted. They said that it was too late for us to complain about how long it took. And they said it was only when the body actually turned up that they could sort it out so it wasn’t their fault.”
I felt Walther twitch.
“The body?” I asked.
“Mr Wentworth’s body. They got it out of the river, apparently. They knew it was him from the teeth. So suicide, yes.”
“In the river?” Walther hissed, concentration broken. “I didn’t find- it can’t have made the papers… Then why… a suicide’s manifestation is usually at the place of suicide. I’d thought.” He frowned back at Ms. Levinger. “Unless it’s the sewage pipes goin
g out… unless he made his way back- all the way from the river-“
“He’d have to get into the septic tank then. That’s where those pipes have to go,” Ms. Levinger said.
Walther stared at her. “Tank…?”
“Out back, in the garden.” Oblivious to his alarm she said. “It was from whatever was here before the bungalow. It’s bad for a modern house, but I got twenty thou’ off the price because of it so… What?”
“This is getting messy. I think we should-“ Walther said, and then the door slammed shut, cutting off Ms. Levinger and the outside world.
“What is it?” I asked Walther.
“Open the door,” he said urgently.
“But the circle-“
“Damn the circle. Open the door.”
I got my hand on the handle, but the door was stuck. I could feel it pulling but there was a pressure keeping it shut. For a moment I thought it was Ms. Levinger, that she had been behind it all somehow, but then I saw something glisten in a line between door and frame, the sickly slime forming a pressure seal that was strong enough that even I, and I’m no small man, could not get the thing open.
“Walther-“
“I’ve miscalculated, Michael.” There was something raw in his voice, and I turned at it, followed his gaze again.
It came out of the pipes, a thick, black stinking ooze. It was vomited onto the floor in surges, and where it hit, it did not simply pool, but became something, a shape.
It gouted out a hand, made all of slime, as though there was an invisible mould there, holding it in place - except that even as the hand was there it was moving, the fingers pulling at the stained floor. In the next moment there was another, heaved into existence by another slopping rush of thick jelly. They were both crawling forwards, fumbling at the linoleum, and the jelly that was running out of the pipes was still building with shocking swiftness, arms, shoulders, back and neck. I put all my weight to the door and heard the woodwork creak, but it would not budge. It was glued in place by the same poisonous stuff that was mounting up in the room’s corner. I could hear Ms. Levinger’s demanding voice from beyond.