Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Although the Chinese Empire was far larger than the Japanese, even the Chinese understood that Japan was unconquerable, especially because the Japanese were fortifying every island and creeping ever closer to isolated Australia. Once the Low Countries had fallen to Ferdinand, the Chinese and the Japanese had intensified their efforts to annex the former Dutch possessions in Southeast Asia. Again, I wondered how long the Philippines would last.

  It wouldn’t be in our lifetime, but what would happen when the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Austro-Hungarians finally assimilated Asia and what was left of Russia?

  The cab jerked forward and around the circle, turning back onto New Bruges and thence back to the Mall and directly to the B&P station. Although I would have liked to have made some other stops, the stops would not have been fair to those people. So I caught the five o’clock to New Amsterdam.

  CHAPTER NINE

  After my breakfast, exercise, and shower, I dressed and took the Stanley down to the post centre to see what had arrived in my absence.

  As always on Saturday, the square was crowded with steamers, the flagstone sidewalks filled with dark-clad shoppers. I had to park over by the church and walk across the square.

  “Greetings to you, Doktor Eschbach,” offered the young watch officer who had known about ghosts.

  “And to you, Officer Warbeck,” I said politely enough, finally close enough to read his name plate.

  He smiled politely and walked past, up toward the college, while I continued north to the post centre.

  “Good day, Professor Eschbach,” offered Alois Er Recchus with a broad smile as I went up the steps to the post centre. His dull-gray work jacket was thrown open by the expanse of his abdomen, and he wore bright red braces over his gray work shirt and trousers. I hadn’t thought him the type for red, even in braces.

  “Good day. I don’t see the dean.”

  “She’s off to some conference in Orono. Something about the need for interlinking among women in academia.”

  “Interlinking—that must be the latest term.”

  Alois shrugged, smiled, and waddled down toward the hardware store. I went inside and opened my box. Besides three bills and an announcement from the New Bruges Arts Foundation, there was an invitation. The return address was clear enough: the Presidential Palace.

  I closed the box, preferring to wait until I got home before opening anything. After another handful of casual greetings, I retreated to the Stanley and headed back across the river, waiting for several minutes at the bridge for a log steamer to cross.

  Of course, once at home and in my study, I dropped the post offerings on the desk and opened the invitation first. It was standard enough—the envelope within the envelope, the inner envelope addressed to the honorable Johan Anders Eschbach, Ph.D. The wording was also standard:

  President and Mrs. Armstrong

  request the honor of your presence

  at a state dinner

  honoring his excellency, Yasuo Takayama,

  ambassador of

  the Imperial Republique of Japan,

  Thursday, October 28, 1993,

  at seven o’clock.

  Répondez s’il vous plaît.

  A nice gesture, certainly, and my presence might be listed as one of many in the Columbia Post-Dispatch, if that. The timing of the invitation indicated I was a late addition to the guest list, since it was for the coming Thursday. I didn’t have much choice about going, since Ralston had clearly had the invitation sent to get me to the Presidential Palace for further instructions. Things were moving. David would not be averse to my going, even if I had to cancel classes on Thursday and Friday. My students would certainly like the break.

  I set aside the card announcing the New Bruges String Quartet’s performance at the university for Llysette to see; their presence resulted from the dean’s infatuation with strings of any sort. After leafing through the bills, I stuffed them into the top drawer to do all at once later.

  For a time, I sat behind the Kunigser desk and just looked out over the veranda into the patchy clouds in the deep blue of the fall sky. Finally I picked up the handset and dialed in Llysette’s wire number.

  “Hello.” Her voice was definitely cool.

  “Hello. Is this the talented and lovely Professor Doktor Llysette duBoise of the enchanting voice and the charming manner?”

  “Johan. Where are you?”

  “At home. Where else would I be? I took a late train and got home rather late last night—or, more accurately, early this morning. I slept as long as I could, then got up and did chores. I do have a few, you know. Then I called you.”

  “Your trip to the capital? How did it go?”

  “I got paid, or I will. But I’m afraid it may be a dead end. This client wants a great deal, but he isn’t really very specific.” I laughed. “I’ve told you about the type. You know, the ones who want the world, but they only say something like ‘find out what you can.’ Whatever you find is never enough. In any case, if you want to know the details, I can tell you later … assuming that you would be interested in company later.”

  “Johan, I am not feeling terribly well, but it will pass—as these feminine matters do. I would be more appreciating of your company perhaps tomorrow.”

  “How early tomorrow? Perhaps right after midnight?”

  She did chuckle for a moment, I thought, before she answered. “Dear man … you are impossible.” She pronounced “impossible” in the French manner.

  “That’s my specialty—impossibility.”

  “At three, would that be agreeable?”

  “Of course. Have I taken you to the Devil’s Cauldron?”

  “Mais non. The Devil’s Cauldron—what is that?”

  “That is a place up the river valley where the river has hollowed out a cauldron. They say—but I will tell you that tomorrow.”

  “As you wish …” Her voice trailed off.

  “Then I will see you at three o’clock tomorrow, for a drive to the Devil’s Cauldron.” I paused. “I have one other problem. Perhaps you could help.”

  “And so?” The suspicion resurfaced in her voice.

  “Miranda. I remember that she loaned me a book, something she thought I should read. I never did, and now I can’t remember what it was. I think Marie must have reshelved it.”

  “Ah, Johan, and never in all those shelves could you find it. So polite you are … but no one would know if you kept it.”

  “Alas, I would—even if I don’t remember what it was.” I laughed. “I feel rather … rather stupid. Did I ever mention it to you? I hoped I might have.”

  “Non. But outside of the music, I think—I do not know, you understand—but once she asked me to read something by a Doktor Casey, excepting he was not a real doctor.”

  “An Edgar Cayce? Perhaps that was it.”

  “That may have been. I do not know.”

  “I thank you, and I trust you will be much improved by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I also. But also see to your own sleep, dear man.”

  “That I will, even if I must sleep alone in a cold bed.”

  “You will survive.”

  “Cruel lady.”

  “You think the truth is cruel?”

  “Sometimes, and sometimes you are a truthful lady.”

  “Point toujours, I hope. Some secrets I must keep.”

  “Well, keep them until tomorrow, and take care.”

  “You also.”

  I set down the handset and leaned back in the chair for a moment, my eyes flicking across the massive Dutch Victorian mirror set between the windows overlooking the veranda. With its overelaborate gilt floral designs and bosses, it was one of the older items in the house. I kept thinking about replacing it, but since it was literally built into the wall, I had put off undertaking such a chore, and had instead replaced the lace curtains and about half the paintings. I didn’t have to have lace in my study, and even Marie hadn’t said anything about that—but she had
washed and pressed the box-pleated blue curtains.

  With a head shake at what I had yet to do, I slowly got up and walked over to the bookcases, starting at the far right. I always go through things backwards. It’s faster for me that way. I tried to find a book that would suit my purpose, one that would fit the psychic mold, one that Miranda was unlikely to have had.

  When I saw the title after having scanned nearly two hundred books, it didn’t exactly leap out at me: The Other World—Seeing Beyond the Veil. But I pulled it out and studied it. It was a sturdily bound book, published by Deseret Press, but not an original, written by Joseph Brigham Young, a former elder in the Church of the Latter Day Saints and later the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Church.

  After leafing through The Other World, I decided it would do. An entire section dealt with the spirituality of music and the role of music in “piercing the veil.” While it was a gamble, the only one who was likely to call me on it was dead.

  I found some brown paper in the kitchen and wrapped the book in several layers of paper, tying it carefully with twine I had to fetch from the car barn. I debated writing something on the paper, but then demurred. The whole point was not to leave the book, but to talk to young Miller and his wife.

  The day was sunny, and I decided to sit on the veranda and catch up on reading. I had several potential texts to review, although I was dubious about the authors, since they had spent little time in the federal city and not that much time dealing with the environment. I didn’t want to write a text, and the Carson text I was using was badly outdated.

  Comfortably ensconced in the canvas sling chair, I struggled through thirty pages of the Edelson text, but it was too journalistic, sacrificing accuracy to a golly-whiz crusading spirit. After discarding Edelson, I wandered back to the kitchen, made iced tea, and finally walked back out to the veranda, moving my chair into the shade by the dining room windows.

  The Davies text wasn’t much better. While the environmental science was good, he didn’t understand even basic Columbian politics. After forty pages, I set it aside and got more tea. Then I just sat and enjoyed the view and the scent of the fallen leaves, listening to their rustling as the light wind occasionally picked them up and restacked them.

  The more I learned about Miranda’s murder, the stranger it seemed. Why would anyone murder Miranda? There could be reasons to murder Llysette, me, probably Gregor Martin, certainly Gerald Branston-Hay, and those reasons didn’t count normal jealousy, either personal or professional. It was also clear that vanBecton intended to set me up to discredit the president in the undeclared struggle between the Speaker and the president. That meant trouble and more trouble, unless I could come up with a solution fairly soon.

  Could vanBecton have had Miranda murdered, just to set me up? It was possible, but who did the actual deed? I shivered. Who was on whose payroll, and why? I knew the dangers of being on Ralston’s “payroll,” although I’d never received a cent directly, just an early retirement indirectly arranged. I doubted vanBecton had known all the details—until now, when his agents certainly could have found enough to point indirectly at my involvement with the Presidential Palace. There was nothing on paper, but both vanBecton and Ralston were old enough hands to know that by the time you had real evidence, it was too late. That was my problem—if Ralston or vanBecton wanted me framed for something or out of the way, by the time I could prove it, someone would be digging my grave and Father Esterhoos would be saying the eulogy.

  After a deep breath, I drank the last of the iced tea as the sun dropped into the branches of the apple tree halfway down the lawn.

  After a light supper in the kitchen—cold leftover veal pie—I drove the steamer down Emmen Lane, out to the bungalow owned by Miranda Miller, noting the lights in the window. The curtains were white sheers, not the white lace of New Bruges. I pulled into the paved area beside the house next to the steamer that had been Miranda’s. Knocking on the door, the wrapped book in hand, I waited until the young, clean-shaven man I had seen at the memorial service opened the door.

  “Doktor Miller? I’m Johan Eschbach. I teach in the Natural Resources Department. I saw you at the service, and I wanted to return this.” I held up the package. “I would have just left it, but since you were here, I didn’t want to slink away and leave you with something else to worry about.”

  “Please come in, is it … Professor?” He stepped back.

  “Technically, Doktor or Professor, but …” I slipped into the small foyer, but waited for an invitation to go farther.

  “I’m Alfred.” He turned to a young woman in slacks and a cardigan sweater over a synthetic silk blouse. “This is my wife, Kristen.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” I bowed. “I wish it were under other circumstances.”

  “So do we,” she answered in a calm but strong voice.

  “You are Miranda’s younger son?” I asked, again lifting my package as if unclear what to do with it.

  “The medical doctor,” he acknowledged with a brief grin that faded almost immediately.

  “She was proud of you,” I said. After a brief pause, I added, “But I am wasting your time, and I had just meant to drop this off.”

  “What is it?” asked Kristen Miller.

  “It is a book she had suggested I read, that I might find interesting. Something called Seeing Beyond the Veil.”

  “Mother—she was always looking for something beyond.” Young Alfred shook his head as he took the wrapped book. “I appreciate your kindness in returning the book.” He gestured toward the sofa and chairs. “At least sit down for a bit. You don’t have to run off immediately, do you?”

  “No. I would have returned the book sooner, but I had to take a short trip yesterday—I do some consulting in addition to teaching. I did not think it would have been appropriate to descend on you Thursday night.” I took the couch, since it was lower and left them in the more comfortable superior position.

  The couple sat across on a set of wooden Dutch colonial chairs on each side of the copper-bound table.

  “Could you tell us anything else about … about …”

  “Perhaps a little,” I offered over his hesitation. “I was leaving my office that night when I felt something strange, and I thought I saw a ghost. I heard, I think, the word ‘no’ whispered, and then her ghost was gone.” I shrugged. “I do not know if that is much help. I cannot say I knew your mother well, except that once or twice she and I and others shared a luncheon.” I frowned. “Do you not have a brother? Is he not well, or his business …?”

  “Frederick.” Alfred glanced at Kristen. “I suppose it’s no great secret. He is—was—in the electronics import business in San Francisco. He liked to import the latest Bajan designs. The last time he went to Los Angeles … he did not come back. He was imprisoned for some form of export violation.”

  “When did this occur?” Despite my best resolve to appear disinterested, my eyes scanned the room, and I noted absently that the white enamel of the windowsills had begun to chip and appeared soiled. No, Miranda had not been Dutch.

  “Almost a year ago. It was September 17. I remember because it was the day after Mother’s anniversary.”

  “That must have been doubly painful for her.”

  “It was,” said Kristen.

  “The entire episode does not sound …” I shrugged. “Your mother struck me as a careful person. Was not your brother much like her?”

  “Rick? Of course. I mean, he did have some wild ideas about electronics, but he knew what sold, and Rick was very careful. It’s some sort of excuse, something.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” added Kristen. “Rick reported everything.”

  “He was almost paranoid about being careful,” confirmed Alfred.

  “These are strange times. I would never have thought of a murder here.” I shook my head. “That makes no sense, either.”

  “A jealous lover—or would-be lover, do you think?” asked Kristen, looking intently
at me.

  “Kristen …” muttered Alfred.

  “One never knows, lady. But in response to the question you never asked, I was widowed several years ago. Currently I am attached to Doktor duBoise, and she is the only one with whom I have been, shall we say, intimate.”

  Alfred blushed, and Kristen nodded.

  “How did Doktor duBoise and Mother Miller get along?”

  “They were professional colleagues, but not friends. They seemed friendly.”

  “Were there … other men?” asked Kristen.

  I liked the young lady’s directness, and I answered directly. “I know Professor Miller had luncheon occasionally with Professor Branston-Hay, but I was led to understand that such was merely friendship. He is a Babbage type and, I think, thoroughly devoted to his wife, or as devoted as any Babbage type might be to mere flesh and blood. There are few unattached men here in Vanderbraak Centre,” I added.

  “So Mother wrote,” commented Alfred.

  “But it makes no sense,” protested Kristen. “No one had any reason to kill her, not that the watch or anyone we’ve talked to can discover. She was lonely, but not totally alone. She could be a shade self-pitying—”

  “Kristen …” murmured Alfred.

  She glanced at him. “Mother Miller is dead, and I loved her, but there’s not much point in sugarcoating her character. She was raised to be wealthy, and that all came apart when your father died. She worked hard, and she got you and Rick through your educations, and if she had a trace of self-pity, well, I think maybe she deserved it.” She took out a plain white handkerchief and blew her nose, then continued as if she had never stopped. “Besides, no one ever murdered someone for feeling sorry for themselves. There has to be a reason. She had friends and men friends, but no lovers that anyone could even hint at. She was not robbed, or attacked in … untoward ways.”