Nebulon Horror

by Cave, Hugh

  Chief Lighthill walked about the station house giving orders. He organized a town-wide search and watched it get under way. Then he sat at his desk, in his office, made a fist of his big right hand, and slowly beat the fist on the varnished desk top. It was his opinion, and had been for days now, that Raymond Hostetter himself had taken the baby from the carriage and dropped it in the park lake. He was half convinced, too, that Raymond Hostetter had murdered old Tom Ranney.

  Because, look. The boy had run away from school that day before noon and been missing until he turned up in the park. He said he had walked around town. The hell he had walked around town; the whole department had been out looking' for him, and somebody would have seen him. He was inside somewhere, not on the street. He was in a house.

  So what house had he been going to? Gustave Nebulon's old place, no other. And look again. The most direct route from that house to the park ran along Grove Road where old Tom Ranney lived.

  Could a boy seven years old have murdered Tom Ranney that way, cutting his throat and gouging his eyes out? Yes. Certainly. When drunk, old Tom was as helpless as that baby in the carriage. He had probably been fast asleep on his cot that day, snoring his head off the way he did in the park. The kid probably heard the snoring as he passed the shack. All he had to do was walk in and pick up the knife, which was more than likely right there on the table.

  In Chief Lighthill's opinion what made Raymond Hostetter a prime suspect was the business of the gouged-out eyes. He had been talking a lot with Doc Broderick about the weird happenings in Nebulon. He respected Doc and had sought Doc's advice. Doc had told him about the two little girls and the frog in Elizabeth Peckham's yard.

  Sure, a frog wasn't a man. But kids who could put a frog's eyes out could be expected to go further, maybe, and Raymond was one of the kids who hung out at that house. You had to be suspicious.

  The knife had been checked for fingerprints and there were some on it. Not good ones, but they were something. The trouble there was, the department had no prints of Raymond, and if he went to the mayor about it he would be sticking his neck out. Way, way out. Jesus. Most likely Hostetter would probably let the kid be fingerprinted, all right. He couldn't very well refuse, could he? But he would be furious, and if it turned out the prints on the knife were someone else's, Nebulon would be hiring a new police chief, sure as hell.

  All right, it could wait. It had to wait anyway now because the boy was missing and you couldn't get fingerprints out of thin air. Where was he this time? The same place he had probably gone when he disappeared before? Peckham's house again? Even if Peckham denied it?

  Lighthill reached for his phone again and dialed Doc Broderick's number. "Doc? Lorin Lighthill. Have you got time to talk a little?"

  "Go ahead, Chief."

  "We're in trouble again. Mrs. Hostetter's been picking her boy up at school this week but today she didn't and he hasn't come home. I have a hunch I know where he is."

  "The Peckham house."

  "That's right. Seems we think alike. Now I suppose I can get in there if I insist on it. I mean I can obtain a search warrant if I have to. But I've got an idea I might hit some pay dirt by talking first to some of the kids who hang out there."

  "I agree."

  "You know most of them, don't you?"

  "I think so."

  "How about giving me their names?"

  "Funny thing," Doc said. "Just this morning I made up a list. Felt it might come in handy."

  "Read it off to me, will you?"

  "All right. There are nine I'm reasonably sure of, not counting Teresa Crosser who lives there." Doc read off the names.

  "Where'd you get all those?"

  "Some from the Hostetter boy when I questioned him, but I checked with their parents later to be sure he wasn't lying. Some I got from talking to other parents. Mind you, there may be still others who aren't patients of mine. What are you planning to do? Go around to their homes and question them?"

  "That could be a long job. I'll try the phone. Maybe I won't have to talk to them all."

  "Let me know the outcome, will you? With so many of my kids involved, I have a stake in this."

  "Sure."

  Chief Lighthill drew the phone book to him and began by calling Olive Jansen. He was a frequent diner at the Pink Swan and knew her well. When she seemed reluctant to let him speak to Jerri, he was surprised. "What's going on?" he said. "I only want to ask her if she was at the Peckham house today and saw the Hostetter boy there."

  "She isn't allowed to go there, Chief. Not anymore."

  "Well, all right. But she may know if he went there or was planning to. Just ask her, will you? The boy is missing again."

  He heard Olive speaking to someone but could not make out what was said. Back on the phone, she said, "Jerri doesn't know, Chief. She didn't talk to Raymond in school today."

  The chief made other calls and talked to both parents and children. All but one of the kids were at home, he noted. The mother of Carl Boland said he had gone with his father to a shopping center.

  Raymond Hostetter? No one had seen him since the close of school, it seemed. Nor had any of the children gone to the Peckham house. All right, Lighthill thought, putting the phone down for the last time. So much for that. It's time for a search warrant.

  Within an hour he had one and was on his way, with young Worth Blair at his side.

  It was dark in Nebulon now. There were lights on in the town library and the chief hoped this was not one of the evenings Peckham worked there. She did not work every evening or even every afternoon. There were two assistants. What did she do with young Teresa Crosser when she had to work evenings, he wondered. Take the child with her? Leave her alone in the house?

  He said to Blair, "You as curious as I am?"

  "You bet," the younger man said. He was the kind of fellow you would expect to be curious. At twentysix he was the youngest man on the force and the only one with a college education. In his spare time he wrote poetry, some of which had been printed in small magazines devoted to that kind of thing. Lorin Lighthill liked him and was glad he had been available this evening. Visiting the old Gustave Nebulon house with someone like loud-mouthed Leonard Quigley, say, would not have been the same.

  He stopped in front of the house and noticed there were lights on in the downstairs part. He and Blair went up the walk and climbed the steps to the long veranda. It needed repairs, the chief noticed. Some of the old boards sagged under his weight. Of course, he weighed a lot. He put his thumb on the bell. After a moment the veranda light winked on, the door was opened, and Elizabeth Peckham in a long dark dress stood frowning at him.

  "Yes? Oh, it's you, Chief Lighthill. Good evening."

  "May we come in, Miss Peckham?"

  "What for, please?"

  "I have a search warrant."

  "You what?" Elizabeth's lips came together and she grew an inch. "A warrant? To search my house?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Well! By all means come in, then. Search away to your heart's content. Why you should have thought it necessary to obtain a warrant is more than I can imagine. All you had to do was ask."

  And all you would have had to do was refuse, the chief thought. But he said, "Well, you know, Miss Peckham, we have to follow regulations. Thanks, though." He went past her, followed by Blair, as she stepped back from the doorway. Then he stopped and waited for her to close the door.

  "Where would you like to begin?" Elizabeth asked coldly. "And would you mind telling me what you hope to find?"

  "We hope to find some clue to the whereabouts of the mayor's son, Miss Peckham. He's missing. And perhaps some explanation for his unusual behavior. Let's start right here, shall we?"

  "You certainly won't find the boy in this house. Or anything to explain his actions, either. Do you wish me to guide you?"

  "That won't be necessary. We'll just follow our noses. Don't worry. We won't disturb anything or give you any cause to complain."

&nb
sp; "Then I'll just come along with you to answer any questions."

  The chief glanced meaningfully at Worth Blair but made no comment. He looked along the hall, which was not well lighted, and opted to begin with the living room. Its vast expanse of old dark furniture was fascinating but yielded nothing.

  He did the dining room, inspected the kitchen, and finished the tour of the downstairs by peering into assorted smaller rooms and closets. Then, followed by Blair and Elizabeth, he walked to the foot of the stairs and looked up into darkness.

  "Can we have a light up there, please, Miss Peckham?"

  Tight-lipped and in silence, Elizabeth fingered the appropriate switch. The staircase became a thing of mellow beauty with its hand-carved rail and balusters. The upper hall filled with a warm yellow glow.

  "I am not partial to bright illumination," Elizabeth said. "I assure you, however, that I am not trying to conceal anything."

  "No problem, Miss Peckham," Lighthill said.

  At the top of the stairs he looked to his right, toward the front of the house. A door was open there; a night-light shone dimly in the room beyond. It was a bedroom. He could see a dressing table with a mirror, and part of a bed. On reaching the threshold he saw the bed was occupied by a sleeping child.

  "My niece, Teresa Crosser," Elizabeth said. "She was tired tonight and retired earlier than usual. Must you disturb her?"

  "No need at the moment," Lighthill answered with a shrug. "I'd better talk to her when we've finished, though."

  "Indeed! I don't see what on earth you hope—"

  "Miss Peckham, the mayor's son is one of the kids who've been playing here at this house, and he's missing." Chief Lighthill bore down hard on the word while directing a challenging stare at the woman's face. When at last she stopped staring back at him, he turned to the second of the two doors at this end of the hall.

  This door was dosed, but Elizabeth stepped past him and opened it. She now wore the patiently enduring face of a martyr. "My bedroom," she said frigidly. "If you feel you must."

  He did. It was twice the size of the room her niece used. Indeed, it was as large as the living room or parlor under it. He touched nothing but walked far enough into the room to see what it contained. Mostly it held more of the same dark furniture that Gustave Nebulon must have bought many years ago. Had this been the old man's room? More than likely.

  He walked back along the hall, past the gleaming curve of rail at the head of the stairs, and before him were five closed doors, two on his left, three on his right. These were the rooms she kept closed? They had to be. They were the rooms he had come here to investigate, then. Halting at the first door, he put a hand on the knob and turned his head to meet Elizabeth's gaze again. It was now hostile.

  "May I, Miss Peckham?"

  "I never use these rooms," she said. "Never. All but one are empty. But if you insist . . ."

  As revealed by an old-fashioned light fixture in a cracked ceiling, the first room was certainly empty. Its floor was bare. Its walls were naked except for faded pink roses on peeling paper. Dusty curtains covered the one window.

  The other room on that side was identical. But the chief, on walking into it, bent his knees to examine some streaks of white in the floor cracks. Then he looked up at Elizabeth, questioning her with his frown.

  "It is roach powder. I said I don't use these rooms, Chief Lighthill. I do keep them clean."

  He nodded.

  "I'm sure everyone in Nebulon has roaches at times," she said.

  "I'm sure they do, Miss Peckham."

  The chief's left knee creaked as he straightened. It gave him trouble occasionally, perhaps because of his weight. While rubbing it he looked around. Why, he wondered, had she used the powder only in an area about six feet square in the center of the room? He glanced at Blair, but the younger man seemed not to have noticed anything.

  Lighthill finished massaging his knee and smiled wryly at Elizabeth. "Must be getting old." He walked across the hall and put his hand on the first of the three doorknobs on that side.

  Elizabeth said, "This is the one room that is not empty."

  "Oh?"

  "'When Mr. Nebulon lived here, this was his retreat. His study, if you like. I have not disturbed it in any way."

  The chief nodded.

  "You may think that rather odd," Elizabeth went on. "He was an odd man in some ways. All I ask is that you try not to trouble anything. I promised him I would not." Producing a key from a pocket of her dark dress, she stepped forward. "It is the only room that I keep locked." She turned the key in the lock, opened the door, and switched on a light.

  Chief Lighthill walked into a room about twenty feet square and looked around him. The floor here was covered by a carpet that reached almost to the walls, the kind called an Axminster, with imitation oriental-rug design and colors. In places it was threadbare.

  In one corner stood a large flat-topped mahogany desk with an ornate, high-backed chair behind it. The desk top was bare. The chair resembled a throne, Lighthill thought. Against the wall, within reach of anyone seated there, was a bookcase filled with books. Worth Blair went to it and proceeded to examine the titles without touching the volumes themselves.

  There was not much else. On the other side of the room an easy chair covered in dark brown leather faced the desk. A small round table beside it bore a heavy crystal ashtray and a rack of well-smoked pipes. Two ladderback chairs against the wall looked as though they might collapse if Chief Lighthill trusted them with his weight.

  He did not find it hard to accept Peckham's statement that the room was never used. It had a musty odor that was already making him want to sneeze. It looked unused. Yet there was no noticeable film of dust on anything.

  "I suppose you come in here every now and then to clean, Miss Peckham."

  "Of course."

  The chief glanced at Blair. "You ready, Worth?"

  "In a minute, Chief. Miss Peckham, whose books are these?"

  "They were Gustave's, of course. Everything in this room was his. I have neither removed anything nor added anything. I thought I made that clear."

  Blair said to Lorin Lighthill, "You should look at some of these titles, Chief. Old Nebulon was into spiritualism, it seems."

  Elizabeth said punctiliously, "If by being 'into' you mean he pursued the subject, you are correct. In the last few months of his life he was profoundly interested in many forms of metaphysics."

  "Including life after death, it seems. There must be twenty books here on that subject alone."

  "I think he wanted to believe but was not convinced."

  "He spent a lot of time in this room?" Blair asked.

  "I'm sure he did. At least toward the end. Of course I was not living here then, but I believe his research became a kind of obsession."

  Blair looked again at the bookcase and said to Chief Lighthill, who had stepped to his side, "This is some collection. I'll bet it's as good as you'll find in many a college library." He briefly grinned. "There's even a couple of books here published by the Mason Nicolini Company. You ever hear of them? I bet you haven't."

  Lighthill wagged his head.

  "Not many others have, either. Too small, and they specialize in poetry. I didn't know they published occult things. I sent 'em some of my poems once and got turned down."

  Unless they dealt with police procedure, books were somewhat outside the bounds of the chief's ken. He peered at some of the titles and discovered that most contained words whose meanings he but vaguely understood. He did notice that all but a few volumes had the musty, faded appearance old books usually acquired in a warm, damp climate.

  "Interesting," he said. "Anything else, Worth?"

  "No, Chief."

  "Let's go, then."

  Followed by the younger man, Lighthill walked into the hall and turned to watch Elizabeth lock the door. He gave the remaining two rooms only sufficient time to be sure they were empty as Elizabeth had stated, then aimed a meaningful look at the do
or of Teresa's room, down the hall. "Now, Miss Peckham, if we might just have a little chat with your niece . . ."

  "Must you?" she demanded haughtily.

  "Afraid so, if I'm to do my job. Blair and I will wait for you downstairs." Turning his back on her, the chief went down the stairs with Blair at his heels and walked into the living room. There, seating himself, he watched the younger man sit down, then concentrated, scowling, on how he was to handle the interrogation of seven-year-old Teresa.

  He had never talked with Peckham's niece before. For background information on her all he had was his knowledge of her personal tragedy and scraps of opinion supplied by others he had questioned.

  Those others did seem to be agreed on one point, however: Teresa Crosser was about as cool and smart as a seven-year-old could be.

  The chief stood up when Elizabeth and her niece came into the room. So did young Blair. Tight-lipped, the woman went straight to a chair without even glancing at them. The child halted, leisurely looked them over, then nodded and said, "Good evening."

  She wore a severely plain brown robe and felt slippers of the same drab color—nothing at all little-girlish about her, the chief thought. Both she and her aunt seemed to belong here in this room with its heavy drapes and antique furniture.

  Strolling to a chair on the opposite side of the room from where Elizabeth sat, the child squirmed herself into a posture of prim attentiveness. The chief and Blair sat down again. To test the water before committing himself, the chief said warily, "Teresa, do you know who I am?"

  "Of course." The words were polite but the twist of her mouth plainly asked him how stupid he could be. "You're Mr. Lighthill, our chief of police."

  "Right." He already felt stupid, for some reason, but tried not to show it. "And I'm here this evening because one of your playmates is missing."

  She waited, calmly returning his gaze, not helping him a bit.

  "I mean Raymond Hostetter, the mayor's son," Lighthill said. "Tell me now—just when did you see him last?"

  She looked thoughtful, and then shrugged. "I don't really remember."

  "You don't remember? A friend of yours?"