Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Thus, Dr. Wilts but squinted at Xavier, and greeted him with a smile, and reached out to shake hands,—apologizing for the greasiness of his own, and for the fact that, grown “stout” and “elderly,” he found it too much effort to rise from his seat. While Xavier blushed in confusion and discomfort, the white-haired gentleman snapped his fingers at a servant, that a second chair be brought for his guest, and a fresh bottle of champagne: for, as he smilingly explained, it was at this hour he oft-times lapsed into melancholy and restlessness, a night’s arduous labor being accomplished, and the dawn, when he might sleep the sleep of Death, yet far distant.

  “For old Doc Wilts is kept wondrously busy, despite his age, and the weakened condition of his legs,” he said, with a wink for Xavier, “there being no end to them, the requests from patients to be granted Life yet longer.”

  So it was, a servant brought Xavier, not a chair, but a metal stool, upon which he seated himself with some reluctance: and a second bottle of champagne was uncorked, with little ceremony. It was Xavier’s hope that he might at once inquire after Ellery Poindexter, and mince no words, but, alas, Dr. Wilts seemed so genuinely desirous of talking,—nay, of chattering—he found he could get very few words into the conversation, and these, as it were, slantwise!

  It was the women who kept the elderly Wilts running, as he phrased it; nay, that was unfair,—it was the men too: women and men alike, embarked upon a single folly. For they were insatiable in their appetites; and not even the terrors of disease could dampen their ardor. Ah, the things he saw!—the things he was obliged to treat, or to make an outward show of treating! Pustules, and tubercles, and blobs, and lesions, and tumors, and scales, and crusts, and fissures, and scars, and papules; and blindness; and nocturnal convulsions; and, finally, idiocy and Death. Yet they were insatiable: they thought little of what lay ahead, or, at the very most, they put their faith in mercury treatments, and in Dr. Wilts himself. “Even your brother,—what is his name?—one of your older brothers—even he!” Dr. Wilts said with a sigh: yet smilingly, and, withal, with such an air of philosophic equanimity, one could not believe he was greatly concerned.

  Before the startled Xavier could ask about his brother, however, Dr. Wilts, grown warmly garrulous with the late hour, and the pleasure of youthful company, and, not least, food and drink, shifted of a sudden to a topic that evidently stirred his especial ire: the distinguished reputation his colleague Colney Hatch had enjoyed through the Valley, for so many decades: while he, Holyrod Wilts, the scorned, the disparaged and disgraced, had in truth been a colleague of his,—having supplied his laboratory with many a scarcely cooled corpse, on a regular basis. Thus, the cruder sort of sensibility saw one gentleman as a loathsome bodysnatcher, and the other as a prominent man of science—! And, so far as ministering unto the female sex in their greatest hour of need,—in their anguish, and humiliation, and physical terror—Dr. Wilts believed it was he, and not his respected colleague, who had, over the years, performed the most absolute good: for an honest compendium of statistics would surely reveal to the world, that many more of Hatch’s female patients had died, than had Wilts’s.

  Before Xavier could respond to these amazing disclosures, yet alone draw breath to make his inquiry, the elder gentleman, now grown somewhat impassioned, shifted to yet another subject, Death: about which, as he claimed with a lewd wink in Xavier’s direction, he suspected he knew far more than a youth of Xavier’s age,—whether he be a professional detective, or no. (It was soon revealed, to Xavier’s surprise, that Holyrod Wilts had evidently followed his career with interest and sympathy; and had not been so wounded by Winterthurn City’s disapproval of his own career as to fail to take civic pride in the sole Kilgarvan,—after “that old hellfire Erasmus”—who had achieved a modicum of public renown in the world beyond Winterthurn. “For, never doubt that we are all quite boastful of you, my boy,” he said, carelessly splashing more champagne in Xavier’s glass, “even those who count themselves your enemies, and wish you ill.”)

  Now fairly inebriated, Dr. Wilts laid a paternal hand on Xavier’s arm, and brought his flushed face close to his, and began, in a lyrical tone, to rhapsodize on Death: which is to say, both the Idea of Death and Death in Itself,—two very different matters, as he scarcely needed to point out. (“Indeed,” he said in an aside, “the physician chuckles at the philosopher’s spurious authority, in speaking of such things: for, as I told your late uncle, Simon Esdras, upon several occasions, the Idea of Death has as much to do with Death in Itself as the word oyster has to do with eating the tasty little devils—!”)

  The experience of a long, turbulent, and, withal, courageous life, as a general practitioner, amongst all classes and species of Mankind, had taught Xavier’s host that, though Death disguised itself in a protean manner, it was, in truth, naught but a single essence,—a single determined force: now seeking entry at one moment in Time, now, with equal ferocity, at another; now attempting to enter its victim by way of this orifice, and now that; by this means,—whether “natural,” or “unnatural”—or by that. Xavier Kilgarvan, as a detective, was pledged to seek out the cause of death in terms of its literal agent: for common belief required that a murdered person necessitate a murder: that this murderer be wicked, and must be removed from the community: and that, once he was removed, the community would reside again in health, and justice, and good cheer, and whatever,—the agent of Death being conquered. But it was quite otherwise,—thus Dr. Wilts said, with a wink, and a squeeze of Xavier’s arm—it was quite otherwise, so far as he was concerned.

  “On the one hand,” Wilts said, “we have this wondrous force, Death, whose strength is incalculable,—whose strength, it might be said, fills all of the universe, and all of Time: while on the other side, in feeble ‘opposition’ to it, we have a frail organism, indeed,—the human body. Protected by the skin, that thinnest and most easily violated of membranes; alerted against danger by the senses, known for their fallibility; and guided through life by the energies of the brain, ever susceptible to distraction, error, and breakdown: is’t not a miracle, indeed, that our species has survived to this day, ill-equipped as it is, by and large, to do battle with so powerful an adversary? Ah, the numberless hopes and stratagems, throughout history,—the prayers, and pleas, and superstitions, and bargains; the rituals, and customs—the countermeasures, the philosophical devices whereby Death is forestalled but a little while, as if it were a game, indeed, with rules of fairness and justice, which, if obeyed, one might win—! My dear boy,—I hope I am not impertinent, in speaking thus, for I do feel affection for you—my dear Xavier, you, of all persons, as a ‘professional detective,’ employ your best energies in the struggle to understand how it was, that Death finally entered through one or another doorway; and it is your hope as well, I assume, that, by so understanding, you will prevent another assault,—another victory by the adversary. Yet, even as you barricade the door, another is being slyly tested; and perhaps even unlocked from within. For like cries out to like, for consummation,—and Death’s ancient properties, in Life, insist upon their claim. The physician, like the detective, rushes hither and thither, to stop up this hole, and that; to deal with this emergency, and that; to see whether ’tis pneumonia this time, or heart failure, or cancer, or,—why, I know not—snakebite: the pretense being, there is not a single omnipotent adversary, but numberless adversaries, who might be conquered. Nonetheless, my detective friend,” Wilts said, bringing his flushed face so close to Xavier’s, he seemed about to embrace or kiss him, “nonetheless, I do admire you: and wish to congratulate you for your heroic optimism, and your abiding faith in Mankind.”

  This remarkable speech so discountenanced Xavier, he could not summon forth the strength to reply, for some pained moments: his poor skull ringing, and his eyes spilling tears: and the sensation of nausea rising so powerfully in him, he was in terror of making a sudden movement, and provoking a spasm of retching and vomiting. Unhappy Xavier! What remained there to say, or even t
o think after Holyrod Wilts’s testimony!—which predicament the detective seems to have dealt with in the only way he knew: by turning his mind to a familiar issue.

  Thus it was, he held himself very still; his dried and cracked lips moving, it seemed, in a semblance of childlike prayer; and, after a sufficient pause, finally made his long-planned inquiry regarding Mr. Ellery Poindexter,—whose guilt, he said, he did not doubt.

  Amazing, then, was Dr. Wilts’s reply, and altogether unexpected: for the white-haired old gentleman fell in with Xavier’s mood at once, sneering, and nodding vehemently, and saying that he was correct,—he was quite correct: for he did not doubt Poindexter’s guilt either, on any score; and wished the scoundrel all the bad luck due him, and more. For it was several years ago,—at least five, Wilts frowningly thought—that he had done Poindexter a prolonged service out here in Rivière-du-Loup: attending his mulatto mistress in her final illness, and even delivering her sickly bastard child: spending weeks,—nay, months—on this fool’s errand, when it was no secret that the woman was doomed, as she suffered from a bone marrow disease for which there was no cure. That aspect of the piteous case Wilts minded less than the fact that, after the woman’s death, Ellery Poindexter, out of sheer obstinacy, had refused to pay a penny of his fee—! “He blamed me for the whore’s death,—as if anyone on earth could have saved her,” Dr. Wilts said angrily. “And ’twas whispered, too, the madman blamed me for the condition of the bastard son: one of those diseased whelps, born prematurely, and so wizened and pinched, it should never have been allowed to draw breath: but might better have ended in the bottom of a bucket—!”

  Thus Holyrod Wilts raved, the while Xavier stared, and blinked, and listened hard: unable to believe his great good fortune in that, at last, Ellery Poindexter’s secret was being revealed.

  For it turned out that Poindexter had set up his mistress (“a golden-skinned Barbados wench, and most attractive”) in a stone cottage hardly a mile from the Hotel Paradise, where they had met: and that, after her death, he continued to finance a small household, consisting of a Negro nursemaid for the sickly child, and one or two other servants. Dr. Wilts, who had delivered the infant, recalled it as “dusky-skinned”: though not black, or predominantly Negroid, it could certainly not pass in white circles; and would have to be hidden away forever. “As to how Poindexter has fared in the years since his sordid ‘tragedy,’” Dr. Wilts said, with a discernible curl of his lip, “I neither know nor care, for I have broken off relations with the wretch entirely. It surprises me not a whit that his wife has been murdered,—his wife and her lover, as rumor would have it; and I cannot feel sorry for him, or for anyone connected with him. Indeed, yes, I wish Poindexter all the suffering due him,” the white-haired gentleman said, gripping Xavier’s arm hard, “and if it is suffering you promise to bring him, I can give you precise directions to his nigger household,—his ‘honeymoon cottage’ that was.”

  Which impassioned offer, Xavier Kilgarvan could hardly refuse.

  The Honeymoon Cottage.

  Poindexter’s Defeat.

  The End.

  So it came about, that Xavier Kilgarvan’s spirited pursuit of Ellery Poindexter ended, abruptly, and most unexpectedly, but a few hours following his conversation with the infamous Dr. Wilts: not entirely as Xavier would have wished it, but, alas, with the villain’s violent death.

  For, while peering into the interior of the “honeymoon cottage,”—an unprepossessing stone house, of weatherworn façade, on the bank of the Loup River—Xavier was taken by surprise, by a sudden commotion behind him: and turned to see, hurtling toward him, his sallow face contorted with rage, Ellery Poindexter himself!—crying, “You—it is you! Here! Of all places, here! Ah, I cannot bear it! I will not bear it—” Thus, choking on his words, scarcely able to draw breath, the enraged Poindexter threw himself upon his adversary, with the unmistakable intention of killing him.

  Yet, within a few minutes, as it so confusedly transpired, not Xavier Kilgarvan lay dead in the sullied snow close by the house, but Ellery Poindexter himself,—his puffy face so mottled in shades of red, and crimson, and sickly white, and his expression so wildly deranged, it seemed he must have murdered himself: suffocating, as it were, upon his own fury: with a final snarled curse against Xavier on his lips,—albeit too faint to be clearly heard.

  “Why, can it be?—can it be? He is dead? Poindexter,—dead?” Thus the dazed Xavier Kilgarvan queried himself, rising shakily to his feet, and crouching over his adversary’s lifeless form. “And it is all over—?”

  AS THE PRECISE CIRCUMSTANCES bearing upon this felicitous death have ever been confused, and the chronological sequence of events knotty in the extreme,—there having been no detached, disinterested, and unfailingly reliable witnesses—it were best for me to set forth, as simply and directly as possible, all that is known of that windy December morn.

  When, at last, Xavier left the overheated confines of the Hotel Paradise, he betook himself on foot, with no delay, to the easternmost edge of the straggling village of Rivière-du-Loup, where, as Dr. Wilts had said, Ellery Poindexter had established his secret household: this, evidently, in a narrow two-story house, with badly rotted shutters, and a chimney in need of painting. Save for a light that burned within, in what appeared to be a kitchen, Xavier would have believed the house to be uninhabited: for it possessed a bleak air indeed, and scarcely one proportionate to Ellery Poindexter’s wealth. (“This, then, is the abode of his shame,” Xavier thought, with a pang of gratification.)

  No sooner was Xavier within a hundred feet of the stone house, atop a snowy wooded slope, than he realized he was wanting his binoculars; and would be greatly disadvantaged without them. (Nor could he recall, for an anxious moment, whether he had even brought the binoculars along with him the previous night; whether he had forgotten them, or mislaid them; or had had them stolen from him, by one of the treacherous damsels of the Paradise—! For, it seems, the haphazard episodes of the night had had a deleterious effect upon his memory and his ratiocinative faculties; and his strength had been so steadily ebbing from him, for a period of many weeks, it might be said that the detective was not himself at this time,—albeit the effect of the wind-rocked December morn, with its savage blue sky and yet more savage sun, should have been tonic, and roused him from his somnolent state.)

  Lacking his instrument for surveillance at a distance, Xavier was required to approach the house, as cautiously and as stealthily as possible: and taking pains that he should not be espied. In driving out from Winterthurn City the evening before, he had neglected to dress himself adequately, in the warmest of his several topcoats; and now he so felt the piercing cold, he could scarcely control his shivering. His hat had been misplaced, and, it seems, his gloves; even the red wig had vanished,—left behind, perhaps, when he had fled the bed-chamber of the black-haired woman. And it struck him as a painful,—nay, a very nearly preternatural—phenomenon, the violence with which diamond-hard grains of light were reflected from the snow, causing his weakened eyes to water.

  “Yet, am I really here, at last? Shall I see, now, at last, one of Poindexter’s most shameful secrets?” Thus Xavier inwardly marveled, the while his faint breath steamed about him, and he had all he could do, to keep from slipping and sliding on patches of ice.

  Then, peering through a ground-floor window, he saw, of a sudden, a full-bodied female figure stooped over a baby, or a very small child, secured in a high-chair.

  The woman was black,—wondrously black—large, and slack-bodied, and altogether oblivious of his presence: in her mid-thirties, perhaps: possessed of ample swaying hips and an immense bosom, and fine-frizzed hair caught up in a red scarf. So deeply absorbed was she, in her task of feeding the child, not a thing else might have distracted her. Ah, how Xavier stared!—blinked and stared!—finding himself quite mesmerized, as if it were a distinct privilege for him to be standing here, shivering in the cold, and gazing into the kitchen of a weatherworn little house he k
new naught of, for a purpose he could not readily recall.

  In a brash movement Xavier drew as close to the window as he might, to note that the child, though hardly more than the size of an eighteen-month infant, was surely much older, to judge by its face,—four or five years, perhaps: but indisputably sickly, with underdeveloped, and even wizened, limbs: its fine features pinched: its expression listless and apathetic: and, most pitiable of all, its beautiful eyes set deep in their sockets, and not perfectly in focus.

  “Poor thing,—that you are his,” Xavier murmured aloud, with anxious-knit brows. (For Poindexter’s bastard, though possessed of faint Negroid features,—about the lips predominantly—had otherwise the quality of an angel-child, a cherub, amazedly blighted by the hand of his Maker, as if in wrath, or in violent whimsy: possessed of a distinct beauty, delicate and unearthly, yet, as it was the product of disease and infamy, doomed.)

  “His,” Xavier numbly repeated, “though you are no more stamped with your father’s features than,—than,—”

  Xavier’s whispered words trailed off into silence; and, the while he stood gazing into the warm-lit kitchen, the teasing admonition came to him, he knew not whence, or why,—Heaven will never be any closer than it is, at the present moment.

  It struck him then, though not with the force of a blow,—with the frisson, perhaps, of a feather, lightly drawn across the skin—that Ellery Poindexter might perhaps have been hidden away in this secret abode on the afternoon of the murders: and was too shamed,—too proud—to confess his whereabouts.