Mystery

by Peter Straub

  “That’d be nice,” he said.

  “What I mean is, you could come to my house for dinner tonight, Tom.”

  “Oh!” He swung his legs over the side of the sofa and sat up, sending dozens of yellow legal-sized papers sliding to the floor. “Thanks! I’d like that.”

  “You’ll come?” He nodded, and she said, “I’m going to be busy today, so if you wouldn’t mind walking to town, I’ll drive you back after dinner.”

  “Great.”

  She smiled at him. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but you look like you could use a break. I’m on Oak Street, the first right off Main Street as you come in, and it’s the fourth house down on the right—number fifteen. Come around six.”

  This reminder that other people met for dinner, had normal lives and saw their friends, made him impatient with his own loneliness. He swam for an hour in the morning, and saw Sarah’s father and Ralph Redwing walking slowly back and forth on the sandy ground in front of the club. Ralph Redwing did most of the talking, and now and then Mr. Spence took off his cowboy hat and wiped sweat off his forehead. Tom breast-stroked silently in the water near his dock, watching them pace and talk. At the club that noon, the Spences joined the Redwings at the big table near the terrace. Sarah looked at him hard, twice, knitting her brows together as if trying to send him a thought, and Buddy Redwing grabbed her hand and pressed it to his mouth with loud growls and smacking sounds. Mrs. Spence pretended to find this hilarious. Tom left unobserved, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to see something fresh in his notes.

  He could see them, the tense, lean young Shadow standing on the edge of his dock, drawing on a cigarette—a Cubeb? a Murad?—and his grandfather in an open-necked white shirt leaning on his umbrella and Anton Goetz holding himself up on his cane, talking at the edge of the darkness outside the club. But he could hear their words no more than he could hear Ralph Redwing issuing orders to sweating Bill Spence.

  Barbara Deane’s house was a small four-room cottage with ugly, dark brown wooden siding, two small windows on either side of the front door, and a massive TV antenna on the top of the peaked roof. She had planted rows of flowers on the edge of her small lot, and a thick bracelet of flowers, pansies, bluets, and lupines grew all around the house.

  “Come on in,” she said. “This isn’t much like the clubhouse, I suppose, but I’m going to try to give you a good dinner anyhow.” She was wearing the black silk blouse, and the pearls were back in place. After a second he took in that she had put on lipstick and makeup. His loneliness recognized hers, and he saw also that Barbara Deane looked very good tonight—not as young as she had seemed in the first seconds of their initial meeting, but young in some internal way, like Kate Redwing, and naturally, instinctively elegant. Elegance had nothing to do with money, he thought, and then thought that she reminded him of the actress in Hud—Patricia Neal.

  “I wish you could have seen this place before the burglars redesigned it,” she said, showing him into her living room. “I used to have a lot of things, but I’m learning to live without them.”

  One of the things she was learning to live without was the television set that had occupied the empty stand beside the fireplace. Some high shelves stood empty too, for she had lost her mother’s antique crystal, and her record player was gone, but a new one was on order in the village; and her family’s silverware and china was gone too, so they would be using some cheap plates from the gas station—you got a free plate with every ten gallons of gas, wasn’t that odd?—and stainless steel utensils she had picked up in the village that afternoon because she couldn’t face making him use plastic knives and forks.

  In spite of what she had lost, the little living room was bright and warm and comfortable, and he sat down on a worn sofa while she opened a bottle of wine, gave him a glass, and went in and out of the kitchen to check on dinner, asking him questions about school and his friends and life on the lake and Mill Walk.

  He told her about the Friedrich Hasselgard scandal at the treasury, but did not mention any of his own conclusions and actions.

  “And if that’s what they tell you,” she said, “then there’s a lot more they aren’t saying. Sometimes I think the only way to live on Mill Walk is to keep your eyes shut and go around like a blind person.”

  In a little while she announced that dinner was ready, and told him to sit at the table, which had been set for two at the end of the living room, near the kitchen. Tom sat down on a metal folding chair—her good chairs had been stolen too—as she carried a steaming tray out of the kitchen, set it on the table, then went back for serving bowls and containers.

  She had made delicate, marinated veal rolled and tied around mysterious fillings, wild rice, potatoes, steamed carrots, a fresh green salad, food enough for four. “Young men like to eat, and it gives me a chance to cook,” she said. The food was better than the club’s, and Tom told her so: after a few more bites, he told her it was one of the best meals he had ever eaten, and that was true too.

  “How did you meet my grandfather?” he asked her.

  She smiled as if at an inevitability. “It was at the hospital. Shady Mount—they needed nurses, their first year, and I had a brand-new nursing degree. Your grandfather was on the board, and he was much more involved in the daily running of the hospital than most of the board members. You’d see him in the hallways and the doctors’ offices—back then, he knew nearly everybody who worked at Shady Mount. It was a real project for him, his first big job after Elysian Courts, and it was on his own territory. He wanted it to be the best hospital in the Caribbean.”

  “In the car the other day, you said that he stuck up for you once when you were in trouble.”

  “Yes, he did. It was very brave of him. I suppose you want to know all about this, now.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Tom said.

  She looked down at her plate, and cut the string around one of the paupiettes. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “A young man had been injured in a gun battle with the police. He was placed in isolation after his operation, and I was his nurse. I don’t suppose there’s any need to go into medical details.” She looked up at him. “He died. Suddenly, and on my shift. I didn’t even know it until I came into his room to check up on him—he had been showing signs of recovery, and I thought he might be able to speak in a day or two. Anyhow, he died, and I was blamed. They discovered that he had been given the wrong medication during the afternoon, and since I gave him his medications, I must have done it. For a while, they were going to take away my nursing license, and I was afraid I was going to be charged with a crime. My name was in the paper. My picture was in the paper.”

  She remembered her dinner, and cut off a small section of veal.

  “And he helped you?”

  “He took care of the charges somehow—he took over the hospital inquiry, and when the panel decided that there was no clear-cut case against me, the police could not charge me with anything. Plenty of other people could have come in and out of that room, and plenty of them did. Of course, I was ruined as a nurse. Glen suggested that I come up here for a time, and he found out about this little house, and I had enough money to buy it, so I came up here for six months. When I went back to Mill Walk, he got me into a midwifery course, and before long I was delivering babies. So I’ve always thought that your grandfather saved my life. He earned my loyalty, and I’ve given it to him.”

  “What did you mean when you said, in the car the other day, that you cleaned up his messes?”

  “I suppose I meant that Glen was the kind of man who always turns to women when he needs help.” She went back to her dinner, another minuscule section of veal, a sip of wine. Tom waited for her to say more. “But I was really thinking of that time he asked me to keep Gloria—he wanted me to go to his lodge and straighten it up for him. He said he’d left some of her things behind, toys and books and clothes, and she would want them. But he also wanted me to cle
an up—literally. The place was a mess. Glen always needed someone to pick up after him. So I cleaned out the ashtrays and straightened things up before I came back.”

  “Were you in love with him?” Tom asked.

  “A lot of people assumed that your grandfather and I were lovers.” She shook her head. “It was never like that. I wasn’t his type, for one thing. And I wasn’t going to pretend to be his type—I was grateful to him, and after a while I began to understand him. And then I understood what my duties were.” She met his glance, and said, “Not to forget what I owed him.”

  “And you never did,” he said.

  “I never could,” she said. “I have no complaints. None at all. I worked as a midwife up here for a long time—I registered with a service, and people got in touch with me by calling the service. I retired about five years ago, and I get a little money from your grandfather for looking after his place. I have more than enough to live on. My life is very peaceful, and I do what I want to do. Such as invite you for dinner.”

  “Are you lonely?”

  “I wouldn’t even know the answer to that anymore,” she said. “Being lonely isn’t so bad.” She smiled at him. “But I imagine that you have all sorts of friends out at the lake.”

  “It hasn’t turned out that way,” he said, and gave her a general description of his difficulties with Sarah Spence and the Redwings. He told her about Buzz Laing and Roddy Deepdale and Kate Redwing, and then about the shot that had come through the window. “So after two police cars showed up at the lodge, my reputation is even worse than before, and I’ve been spending all my time by myself.” He hesitated, then said, “The police chief, Tim Truehart, told me that I should ask you to stay in the lodge, kind of as protection. In case the shooting was somebody trying to get back at my grandfather for something.”

  “And you kept quiet about it for two weeks?”

  “Well, nothing else has happened. And I got sort of busy.”

  “Would you like me to spend the nights there?”

  He said no, it was not necessary, thinking that she would see it as another duty owed to his grandfather.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking of coming back there anyhow in a couple of days. You tell me if you begin to feel uneasy, staying there by yourself.”

  “I will,” he said.

  Their earlier unease had left them, and they talked in the rambling, anecdotal way of people learning to know and like each other. She wanted to know about Brooks-Lowood, and the books and movies he enjoyed, and he asked her about horses and Eagle Lake, and eventually Tom felt that they had known each other a long time. “You don’t have to answer this, of course, but you said you weren’t my grandfather’s type, and ever since you said that, I’ve been trying to figure out what that type was.”

  “I suppose that’s an allowable subject,” she said. “After all, we’re talking about something back in the dark ages. I guess it’s safe to say that he liked very girlish, submissive women. Magda, poor soul, was like that. I only knew one other woman Glen saw, a very poor choice, I thought, a girl who worked as a nurse’s aide—that was how they met, back when Glen spent a lot of time getting the hospital to run the way he wanted it to. She was a pretty little thing, but underneath she was very hard. She came from a rough background, but she could make you believe that she was the soul of innocence.”

  Remembering his mother’s judgment of Nancy Vetiver, he said, “Are you sure about her—that she was hard, I mean?”

  “I’m sure she was calculating, if that’s what you’re asking. She and Glen got what they wanted or needed from each other, and I guess they finally became something like friends. In the end, I suppose he learned that he had to respect her. Carmen Bishop, that was her name—she was about seventeen or eighteen when she started at the hospital.”

  The name meant nothing to Tom.

  “I think I heard that she got him to help her brother—she probably cared for Glen, but she was certainly using him, too.”

  “Seventeen or eighteen,” he said.

  “She might have been older—anyhow, I gather she was a match for him. The funny thing was, I don’t think Glen ever did more than take her out to dinner a few times, so that he could be seen with her. That’s all he ever did with me, which is how some people got the idea we were—you know. I think it was important to Glen to be seen with attractive young women, but I don’t think it ever went any further than that, even with Carmen.”

  She gave him a slice of apple pie she had baked herself, and then wrapped the rest of the pie for him to take back with him.

  It was just past ten when she dropped him off at the lodge, and she told him to call her if he wanted her to begin staying at the lodge. “I know I’ll see Tim Truehart on the street one day,” she said, “and he’ll order me to start taking better care of you!”

  “Oh, you do pretty well,” he said, and she drove away.

  The next day, Tom wrote another long letter to Lamont von Heilitz and carried it up the hill to wait for Joe Truehart. When the mailman appeared, he came out of the trees and gave the letter to him.

  Truehart said, “I hear you think my mom’s gone into the burglary business.”

  “I hear she’s pretty good at it,” Tom said, and Truehart laughed and turned his van around and drove off.

  Tom realized that he had never opened his grandfather’s mailbox—if Joe Truehart had anything for him, he would have given it to him when Tom gave him the thick envelopes for von Heilitz. He did not even know which aluminum box belonged to his grandfather, and had to go down the length of them, reading the names. Finally he came to Upshaw. He tugged at the catch and opened the box. It was jammed with folded pieces of white paper. There were dozens of messages inside the box. He scooped them out and unfolded the top sheet.

  In large flowing black letters that virtually yelled with frustration, it read DON’T YOU EVER LOOK IN YOUR MAILBOX? The word Friday had been scrawled above this sentence, and the name Sarah had been written beneath, in such haste or irritation that it was only a straight line between the large S and the almost embryonic h.

  Tom read through the stack of notes on the way back to his lodge. Then he read them all over again. He felt almost dizzy with joy.

  Inside the lodge, he spread them all out on the desk and read them in order, from My parents ordered me not to see you anymore, but I can’t get you out of my mind, to DON’T YOU EVER LOOK IN YOUR MAILBOX? There was one for every day since the day she had taken him into the compound. Some of them were love letters, outright and frank, the most passionate and personal statements that had ever been uttered to him; some of them burned with resentment against her parents and detailed the events of days filled with almost deathly boredom. One, written the day she had heard about the shooting, was filled with alarm and worry. One of them said only I need you.

  One was a long extended metaphor comparing his penis to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Washington Monument, and the Eiffel Tower, all of which she had seen between the ages of eight and twelve.

  Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? No, I hardly think so, since you’re not very much like a summer’s day, but you do remind me a bit of European travel.…

  He called her lodge, and Mrs. Spence hung up as soon as he gave his name. He called back, and said, “Mrs. Spence, I’m sorry, but this is very important. Would you please let me speak to Sarah?”

  “No one in this family has anything at all to say to you,” she said, and hung up.

  The third time he called, Mr. Spence answered, asked if he wanted a broken arm as bad as all that, and slammed down the phone.

  He changed into his bathing suit and resolutely swam back and forth past their dock, but neither Sarah nor anyone else came through their back door.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Tom tried to concentrate on the pages he had written about the murder, but his attention returned again and again to Sarah’s wonderful letters—she had suggested meetings, made assignations, waited for him on the highwa
y behind Lamont von Heilitz’s lodge, tried to beam into his brain messages about looking at his mailbox.

  He went to the club early that evening and waited at Roddy and Buzz’s end of the bar. He ordered a club soda and ate a handful of goldfish crackers. He nervously downed a second glass of club soda, and ordered a Kir Royale. The first sip made him feel dizzy and light-headed. The Langenheims came up the stairs, nodded at him glumly, and went straight to their table.

  Then Marcello’s resonant voice came up the stairs, and Tom heard footsteps, and Ralph and Katinka Redwing appeared beside him—Ralph gave him a look of utter indifference, and Katinka did not see him at all. Behind them came the Spences. Mr. Spence looked happy and expansive, and Mrs. Spence was saying, “Oh, Ralph! Ralph!” Both Spences saw Tom at the same instant, and their faces went dead. Behind her parents came Sarah, walking upstairs with Buddy Redwing. Buddy said a sentence of which Tom heard only the word “toad,” and Sarah’s eyes flew to Tom’s face, and locked with his own eyes. He felt all of his inner gravity alter, and he nodded three, four, five times, vehemently. Sarah rolled her eyes upward, closed them, opened them, and gave him a small, tucked-in smile of pure satisfaction.

  “I don’t think we’ll go to the bar tonight,” Ralph Redwing told Marcello, “it’s a little crowded, just take us to our table.”

  Sarah was placed next to Buddy with her back to Tom.

  In a loud voice from the head of the table, Ralph Redwing said, “Let’s have two bottles of the Roederer Cristal to begin with tonight, Marcello, we have something to celebrate. These children have just become engaged to be engaged, and we’re all tremendously happy with their decision.”

  Mrs. Spence looked at Tom with narrowed eyes and a gloating smile. He raised his glass to her in a mock toast, and her smile tightened.