Dead in D Minor

by David Crossman

  Albert climbed the steps and crossed the porch.

  “Just call if you need any help,” said Heather, wrapping the words around a laugh. “Not one to get on the wrong side of, is our Miss Kitty,” she added in confidence, once they were inside. “She’s run this house like a headmistress. The Judge used to call her ‘Napoleon’.” They walked down the long, cool hall to the kitchen at the back of the house. A radio played unobtrusively in the background. “She was the only person in the world he was afraid of.

  “Truth is, she adored him. Lemon?”

  The introduction of fruit into the monologue caught Albert by both ears and pulled his eyes up off the floor. Heather was standing at the refrigerator with the door open. She was dressed in light blue overhauls and a white t-shirt. A red bandana was wrapped around her head. That was it. No shoes. No socks. No bra. Especially no bra.

  Albert didn’t go without socks. “In my tea?” he asked. Check and double-check; that would be Albert’s credo, henceforth.

  “Yes,” she said into the refrigerator. Albert wanted to stand by the sink, where he could get a better view, so he did. The refrigerator had a light in it that glowed softly on Heather as she took out a big bottle of tea with one hand and rearranged the shelf with the other.

  Albert had never seen so many things in a refrigerator.

  So that’s where they kept vegetables.

  “There are some tea glasses in the cupboard there,” Heather said, with a nod. “Over the toaster.”

  That was good to know, thought Albert, looking at the cupboard. Little bits of information like that might come in handy. You never know.

  “Never mind,” said Heather, setting the tea on the table. “I’ll get them. Kitty! Would you like some tea!”

  Kitty declined from the distance.

  “Did you say yes to lemon?”

  “Yes, please.” Capable. That’s the word he was looking for as he watched Heather flit about the kitchen. No wasted motion. Everything in logical order; tea, lemon, glasses, spoons, napkins. Sit down. Pour out. Sip. Capable. Very pleasant to watch. Other thoughts came to mind, too, but he didn’t know the words for them, only that they made his earlobes burn.

  “Now, about this picture. Male or female?” she said. Her elbows rested on the table so her arms formed an arch at the apex of which her fingers held the tall, slender tea glass to her lips.

  Albert wondered whether pictures themselves had male or female attributes, apart from their subject matter. In France inanimate objects were male and female. The French were like that. ‘Don’t slam the door or the French will surrender.’ Uncle Albert had always said that. Then he’d laugh. Who knew what it meant? “It’s a picture of a girl,” he said. He’d taken a little time to consider the phrasing. She didn’t hurry him.

  “A girl – not a woman?” Heather asked, with a tilt of the head.

  “I don’t think so,” Albert replied, having conjured up the picture in his mind and reviewing it carefully. “No. A girl.” There was a fifty-fifty chance he’d be right.

  “And how did it come to be on your wall?”

  Albert told her.

  “From the attic?” said Heather. “Is there a date on it, anything like that? There’s often a name on the back.”

  Albert hadn’t looked that closely. He should have. “I didn’t look,” he said. He would.

  “If there’s nothing there, you might find the name of the photographer on the photo itself. They often embossed their name on the border, in those days.”

  “The photographer,” Albert echoed.

  “If the picture’s over sixty or seventy years old, well – very few private individuals had cameras in those days. Professionals did most of the picture-taking. How’s your tea?”

  Albert took a sip and didn’t wince. He was getting used to cold tea. “Wet,” he said. It needed more sugar. And less lemon.

  “At any rate,” said Heather, who was having great difficulty pigeonholing Albert. Was he putting her on? Could anyone so prodigiously talented possibly be so oblivious? “The photographer wouldn’t be around anymore, of course. But you might be able to find some kind of records, or something.”

  Talk turned to other subjects. For a while Heather talked about music, and the fact that she had seen him perform once in London.

  “At the Albert Hall, of all places!” she exclaimed with a smile. Albert didn’t get it. He didn’t remember all the places the School had sent him. He just went, played, and came home. The joke faded from her lips and caught somewhere in her throat. “Never mind,” she said. “Anyway, it was very . . . ” Whathad it been? She remembered fumbling for words to describe it to friends at the time. The full force of her vocabulary fell far short. The London Symphony she could describe. Pavarotti, Verde, Mozart, Beethoven, Metha, Casals, Horowitz, Gershwin, demanding as they were of superlatives, were nevertheless within her considerable powers of description.

  But that night, one tiny, awkward man in a bleak shaft of light, slumping over the keys of a grand piano, his nose nearly touching his fingers, as they wove a spell of extemporaneous music that rose to speak to God in his own tongue, had defied description. When the spell was finally suspended, two hours had passed. Four thousand souls had been transformed from an audience, to witnesses.

  He didn’t come back for an encore, despite an ovation she could still hear if she closed her eyes and listened. Her own hands went from tingling to numb, and unconscious tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Later she heard that he’d been long gone by the time the applause died down.

  That was another life.

  “ . . . very nice,” she said. Reddening, she closed her eyes hard and took a long sip of tea.

  Albert had never thought of an audience as made up of individuals. They were a clump, like mangroves. A living, breathing mass that inhabited the darkness outside the spotlight. To think that Heather Proverb had been part of that mass was disquieting.

  Something buzzed in the next room. “Ah! The linens are dry,” said Heather. “Good.” She seemed relieved, as she got up from the table and hastened to the dryer. Laundry must be important to her.

  She stood in the doorway for a while, folding the sheets and chattering about Cornwall and lots of things on which Albert was unable to concentrate. He drank the rest of his tea and watched her. He liked the way she held the sheets between her chin and her chest as she folded them into neat bundles. He’d seen Mrs. Grandy do the same thing. Women were gifted that way.

  He’d have used staples.

  “Would you mind helping me carry some of these upstairs?” Heather said, emerging from the laundry room with an overstuffed basket of neatly folded linens. Albert got up and reached out his arms. “Just take this lot off the top, if you will.” He did. “There. This way.”

  Albert held the laundry in such a way that the topmost sheets were pressed against his nose. They were still warm, and smelled fresh. The same smell he’d noticed Heather having. As they walked down the passage and up the stairs, he noticed another smell, over and above that of the laundry. An ancient smell, permanently resident in the old house; that of the flowered wallpaper and the polished wood floors, of the spotless paint and the deep leather chairs and the residue of Antrims past; their laundry, their meals, their pipes, cigars, port, and perfume.

  The sense of smell was taking on a whole new dimension, now that he didn’t have a cigarette constantly burning below his nose. Much as he would have liked to.

  “Those you’re carrying go in the cedar chest at the end of the hall,” said Heather, at the top of the stairs. Albert peered over the laundry and grunted. Heather disappeared into one of the rooms that stood open on either side.

  Albert raised the lid of the chest as much as he could without spilling the stack of linens, and stuffed them in the crack by handfuls. Housekeeping wasn’t so difficult, as long as you had a place to put everything. He’d have to get some of these for the apartment back home.

  Heather was workin
g her way from room to room down the hall. As she emerged from each room, her pile of linens and bedclothes diminished until it was gone. Unfortunately there was one room left.

  The best laid plans.

  “Okay,” she called from the landing. “Did you manage to get those put away?”

  “Yes,” said Albert, as he joined her at the top of the stairs. “What about that room?” He nodded toward a room off a little hallway to their left, from which another, very steep and narrow set of stairs descended to the first floor. The door to the room was closed.

  “Oh,” said Heather, flushing a little. “That’s the Judge’s den.”

  Albert remembered learning about a man named Daniel in Sunday School. He’d had a den, as well. He kept lions there. Albert stood still for a moment, straining to hear animal noises.

  “Den?”

  “You know,” said Heather, trying not to say what came next, “Study. That’s where the Judge – ”

  “Oh!” said Albert, in much the same tone Balboa employed upon cresting the last set of hills that separated him from the Pacific. “Oh . . . that’s where . . . where . . . ” Ellipses were an important part of Albert’s vocabulary.

  Heather nodded. “Yes.”

  Albert stood still for a moment, staring at the closed door. “In there,” he said at length.

  “Yes,” said Heather. She was staring, too. “You don’t want to, I mean, I have the key, if you’d like to – “

  Albert remained staring, but his mind was miles away. Other murders. Other lives.

  “The police said not to touch anything,” Heather continued. “But I’m sure no one would mind if we just went in and had a look.”

  The import of her words finally seeped through the basement walls of Albert’s consciousness. “What? You’re going to go in?”

  “No!” said Heather quickly. “That is – I thought you might – if you wanted to go in . . . “

  “Me?” said Albert. He wanted nothing less on earth. He’d rather take up dentistry. Why, then, did he remain standing there? Why didn’t his feet convey him down the stairs like his brain was telling them to? Why couldn’t he take his eyes off the door, and why was his heart beating the way it was?

  “I’d go with you,” said Heather as Eve. “I’ll go in first, if you like.”

  Albert, in the role of Adam, just stood there. “No, I’ll go first.” Someone was using his mouth to say foolish things. In the meantime his brain came up with all kinds of things to say instead, but none strong enough to make his jaw move. It just hung open as he stared at the door.

  The key was inserted and turned. The door swung open with a groan and murder beckoned Albert with both lips.

  “This feels strange,” said Heather. She was holding Albert by the elbow, and he felt a little trill of excitement rattle up his arm. That felt strange. “He never let anyone in here, apart from Kitty.”

  “Not even you?”

  “I mean when he wasn’t in,” Heather replied as she tip-toed over the threshold. “Of course, we spent a lot of time going over the family papers and things. Photos and birth certificates, you know? But, it’s strange being in here without him. He liked his privacy.

  “Kitty sent me up once with some hot chocolate. I waited outside the door for a good five minutes before he finally got up and let me in.”

  “Why didn’t you open it?” said Albert. He couldn’t imagine hot chocolate served in a manner that required both hands.

  “It was locked,” Heather replied. “Always locked.”

  “Locked?”

  “Always.”

  “I never had a key ‘til after he died. In fact, Maudanne and Ash Pike were the only ones who did have copies.

  “Ash?”

  “The Judge’s partner,” said Heather.

  Albert wondered if he was any relation to Jeremy Ash, the one-legged boy who, according to the evening news, now inhabited his apartment back in Massachusetts.

  Heather was speaking. “I’ve been in here several times since the Judge died – with policemen and reporters and so on – but this is the first time alone. Well, almost alone.”

  It didn’t surprise Albert that she felt that being with him was like being alone. He often felt that way himself.

  The air in the study was stale and close and smelled like litigation, with overtones of oil, the kind saxophonists use and – oddly enough – just a trace of garlic. Albert sniffed a little more deeply.

  “Odd, that, isn’t it?” said Heather. “The Judge couldn’t abide garlic. Said it reminded him of Henrietta – Marchant’s mother.”

  Finally, something fell into place for Albert. “Marchant was the Judge’s nephew?”

  “Stepson,” said Heather.

  Things fell out of place for Albert. “Stepson?”

  “Henrietta was left a widow after M.W. . . . Marchant’s daddy, killed himself over his gambling debts . . . with the boy to raise. She didn’t come from money, and the DuShanes had died out by that time, so it looks like she latched on to the old bachelor. (I’m speaking from the Judge’s point-of-view, Professor; I only have his side of the story.) It wasn’t a happy union. She was a profligate spender – I’ve heard Marchant say pretty much the same thing – so it’s true he felt he had to keep her on a pretty short leash, financially. And, while he never came right out and said it, I get the feeling she had problems. Alcohol, maybe? I’m not sure. Something like that.

  “The Judge wasn’t a bad man, Professor. I really admired him. But he’s not – was not – the type to provide the comfort Henrietta needed, or the luxury she’d come to expect in the days before M.W. gambled the DuShane’s out of business.

  “I expect what she got from the Judge was more advice than comfort. ‘Pull yourself together, keep a stiff upper-lip.’ That type of thing.

  “Story goes that she dressed him out for being a skinflint one night at a steeplechase banquet. After that, they just retreated from one another; she to one part of the house, he to the other.

  “It comes and goes.”

  Albert inferred from the accompanying sniff that she was referring to the garlic smell, and not the recently departed.

  Heather returned to the subject. “Between you and me, I think that friction with Henrietta accounts for most of the Judge’s animosity toward Marchant. I guess you could say he saw the mother in the son, or couldn’t separate the two. Something like that. I expect that’s why Marchant moved back into the family home as soon as he came of age. Been fixing it up, by degrees, ever since.”

  “But the Judge still left him everything,” Albert remarked.

  “Even bad blood’s thicker than water,” said Heather.

  “But, they weren’t blood relations . . . “

  Heather smiled. “No. Well, family’s thicker than water, then. At least to someone like the Judge.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Henrietta? She died back in the sixties or early seventies. Breast cancer. Anyway . . . ” Her voice trailed off.

  Albert’s eyes tended to glaze over whenever input exceeded his capacity to assimilate. They were glazing over now.

  “I’m sorry, Professor. That’s why they keep family skeletons in the closet, isn’t it? They’re boring.”

  Albert didn’t think it was boring. Hopelessly confusing, perhaps – which accounted for the glazing effect – but not boring.

  Heather sniffed again. “I can’t imagine what else it might be, though.” She peered over his shoulder as he stood in the doorway.

  Odd that two rooms in neighboring homes should smell of garlic, Albert thought. It was odd to him, anyway. Maybe it wasn’t.

  “Over there,” she continued in response to an unasked question. “At his desk.” She reached around the corner and turned on the lights of the brass chandelier that hung in the center of the high ceiling.

  It was a big desk made of dark wood. The surface was covered with a sheet of glass, and on top of that was a big green pad with leather corners that
sat at perfect right angles to the desktop. Running exactly parallel to the front of the desk, a little brass hammer leaned against a plaque that bore the Judge’s name and title. To the right of this, at a forty-five degree angle, was a stand with two gold pens. The Judge was a very neat man.

  Heather followed his eyes. “That’s the pen that was in his hand when I found him,” she said. Albert’s hand recoiled from the edge of the desk. “Oh, it’s alright. They’ve taken the fingerprints and everything.”

  She didn’t understand.

  Suddenly, the crime scene was recreated in Albert’s mind. There was the Judge, slumped over the desk with the knife in his back. But the knife was found in his chest. Albert blinked twice. By the time he focused again, the corpse had re-situated itself. There was the Judge, slung back across the arm of that high-backed leather chair with a knife in his chest. Now he could see the face. It was Tewksbury.

  Albert closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “Are you alright, Professor?”

  Albert opened one eye. The image was gone. He opened the other. Still gone. “No,” he said, but, finding he hadn’t inhaled in some time, there wasn’t enough breath to carry the word beyond his lips. He inhaled.

  “You look like you’ve been hit,” said Heather, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing ever so gently. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

  “I just . . . ” Just what? Had a vision? A hallucination? “I’m okay.”

  For another overstuffed minute or two, Albert stood rooted to the spot, taking everything in. The thick carpet, with its intricate oriental design, was comfortable even through his shoes and socks. It was difficult to determine the color of the wallpaper . . . a darkish greenish, grayish with little tan or pink spots. Too small to be flowers. Just spots.

  The woodwork was white. Of that much he was positive. Or beige. It depended where you looked and how the light hit it. Pinkish whitish with beige. Colors were a problem. It shone with the satiny luster characteristic of over-painting common in very old houses. Sheer white curtains hung on either side of each of three windows in the alcove that overlooked the front yard. White shades hung at half mast. “The Judge was very neat. Wasn’t he?”