Black Light

by Bedford, K. A.

  Inside, Rutherford sat by a roaring fire, reading a book. He got up, “Good morning, ma’am. May I fetch you a warming drink?”

  He was a wonder. “Thank you very much, Rutherford. That would be lovely.”

  “Right you are, ma’am,” he said, heading for the kitchen. I followed him, still much too awake to consider sleep.

  The milk ready, he poured, stirred and presented the finished cocoa, all with flair no-one would believe possible at this awful hour. I asked if he was having one, too, and he said he had just finished his.

  I sent him to bed. I took a seat at the table, and held the hot cup in my cold hands. This time the previous night, Julia and I had sat right here and talked and talked. She seemed fine, and no doubt she had been fine, too. The thing that had now arrived was, last night, still on its shambling way. I shivered, thinking about it.

  So now what? Gordon and I could go over his map with a compass and ruler, and determine the number of properties in the general vicinity of where we had stopped tonight. There shouldn’t be that many. Pelican River was a small place; there could not be more than a handful of homesteads around that area. We could hardly visit each one in turn, knock on the door, and ask the occupants, “Excuse me for asking, but are you involved in demonology in any significant manner?” There were public records about property ownership and titles and such on file in the archives of the Town Hall. We could start there, perhaps. But then, what would we be looking for?

  Sooner or later, I could see, we would find ourselves faced with the prospect of sneaking onto other people’s land in the middle of the night and simply having a look for anything that might conceal a mysterious cellar. I did not relish this prospect. It seemed highly likely that we could wind up not only mauled by large dogs, and perhaps shot at by hostile farmers, but also arrested by the local police.

  I gripped my mug, exhausted but not remotely sleepy. Also nagging in the back of my mind: now that Something had arrived, how long would it be in making its nocturnal visit to my house? I did not like thinking about this. How could one defend against such an unearthly visit? And what if the local elves really were behind it all?

  One plan of action would simply be to clear out for a while. Take an extended holiday somewhere scenic, relaxing and sunny, where a harried author might finish her novel. Except, of course, an aeroplane journey to all such places would take at the very least a few weeks or longer. The prospect of sitting in cramped aeroplanes for all that time lacked a certain appeal. Somewhere in the midst of whatever would happen now, I had to finish the book.

  Tomorrow morning — later this morning — I would work like a woman possessed. Visiting hours at the hospital did not begin until two in the afternoon. This would provide ample work time.

  Sometime after four, I retired.

  Sleep did not come until after six.

  I woke Monday altogether too early considering the aching exhaustion I still felt, and when Rutherford inquired if I would be coming down for breakfast, and even though I could clearly smell bacon sizzling and coffee brewing, I said I might have a sandwich and coffee later. I felt like a load of wet laundry. I could not remember such weariness since my student days at Cambridge. I did ask Rutherford if there was any news, and he said there was not, or at least, not yet. I had hoped to spend today working, but getting organised for it, settling down to it, was nigh impossible. Instead, I spent much of the morning visiting Julia, and we talked about everything other than the matter at hand, the Something that had Arrived. If only I could think about anything at all other than the nagging feeling that whatever I did, whatever actions or precautions I might take, I would soon be dead. How long would the Something take, now that it was here?

  As I settled in the dining room for breakfast on Tuesday, Vicky appeared, looking much more alive than I felt, carrying a modest bundle of post. “Gordon’s been, ma’am!” She curtsied and disappeared.

  Yawning, I checked through the post. A telegram from my publishers, inquiring after the progress of my novel. I put it aside. I could answer it later, when things were quieter.

  Amongst the rest of the day’s post was one from a reader in England, a young scientist named Hastings, studying at Cambridge, who told me I “have not the foggiest notion” about de Broglie’s work on the wave-particle duality of matter and energy, and that it was “dangerous and foolhardy” of me to pretend that I did, and that I should “apologise to all readers of the world” for misleading them. Also, “why did the dog have to die?” I shook my head reading all this — it was in very small, precise handwriting. Well, I said to myself. I did read the latest scientific journals dealing with reports of early research in quantum theory, which did speculate about the possibility of wave-particle duality. Gordon had been only too keen to help me through the more difficult areas. As for apologising to readers everywhere, well, now that was amusing. I would respond to young Hastings later.

  Then there was a letter addressed to Mrs R. E. Black. The postmark stamped on the envelope showed it was posted only this morning here in Pelican River. The stamp, showing a black swan, had been placed upside-down and at an odd angle. The address was typed in fading ink, which was not all that unusual, in mail coming from companies or offices of various kinds. Most ordinary people, though, did not have typewriters, which were expensive and cumbersome. And there was no return address anywhere to be found. The envelope smelled … it smelled of something slightly familiar, but I could not quite place it. Young Hastings’ letter, by contrast, had been drafted on cheap, thin paper, in cheaper ink that reeked of fish. It “felt” cramped and intense, and there was a very faint air of beer about it that did not lend respect. The envelope of this last letter was inexpensive, and pale cream in colour. Opening it, I found a small sheet of octavo bank paper folded twice. Again, there was that familiar but baffling smell.

  Then there was what I found typewritten on that paper:

  WHY WAS YOUR FATHER KILLED?

  Something very cold shot through me. I blinked a few times, and I think I laughed a little, smiling the way one does when things have taken a distinctly strange turn, but you have not yet quite realised how strange, or how disturbing. I read the note once again, and indeed several times. I inspected the back of the small piece of paper, finding nothing but the raised imprint of the typed characters.

  Rutherford appeared, no doubt having heard my uncharacteristic laughter. “Ma’am?”

  Not looking up from the note, I asked him for black coffee. I had a feeling I would need a lot of it before today was done.

  I peered at the envelope again, and tried to identify that odd smell, without success. As Rutherford returned, bearing my coffee and two gingersnaps, I said, “But Father died of heart trouble.”

  “Ma’am?”

  I took a sip of the coffee. It was steaming hot — just right. I showed him the note. Like me he sniffed at it, and exhibited a minute frown. “There appears to be some sort of soapy aroma, as well as something else … ”

  Soap! Yes, he was right. He gave back the note; I had another sniff, and this time could pick out the soap smell: it smelled like the sort of cheap soap one finds in public conveniences. But there was also that other smell, so faint …

  Rutherford said, “I was under the impression that Sir Gustav suffered from a weak heart.”

  “That’s right,” I said, perhaps too hotly. “He collapsed almost exactly a year to the day after Mother passed away. And he’d not been well for months, in any case. It was the grief. He said so himself. Without Mother he wasn’t half the man … ” I felt myself starting to remember that whole terrible time, how I thought I would never stop crying, and how Antony had been such a tower of strength — until he, too …

  I took a few moments to gather my strength again.

  Rutherford waited before asking, “But why would anyone send you such a cryptic letter?”

  I looked again at the envelope. At the local postmark. “All that happened back in England, more than twelve yea
rs ago … ” I was speaking more to myself than anything.

  “Will there be anything else, ma’am?”

  I suggested a sandwich, and more coffee. Rutherford soon brought me an impressive sandwich, stuffed full of last night’s leftovers, and a fresh pot.

  The peculiar note occupied me throughout the morning and two cups of Murray’s blistering best coffee. Once finished, I took the note, thinking I would show it to Gordon. As postman, he would have delivered it, so he might have noticed something odd about it. I had arranged to collect him before visiting Julia, and I was sure he would be at least intrigued. The arrival of this note so soon after the likely “arrival” of the “Thing” seemed ominous, though I suspected it could simply be a bizarre coincidence.

  Correlation does not imply causation, I thought. And yet …

  Rutherford took me out to Gordon’s property. Sitting deep in the well-upholstered rear of the Bentley, I had time to brood. For one thing, I had never had cause to question my father’s death. There had been a post-mortem examination of his remains, which found that he had suffered an extensive failure of his heart. His coronial arteries had been clogged to the point where such an outcome was, the coroner said, “inevitable”. It had probably been something of a miracle that he had lived as long as he had, even as he pined away for Mother. So what was I now to think? My first impulse was to disregard the entire thing as a strange and tasteless prank — except that it seemed like a very specific, targeted prank. Someone wanting to play with me could choose any of a large number of things about me to mock.

  But who here in this tiny seaside town at the most remote end of the civilised world knew more about my father than I did? It seemed to me that if such a note was going to arrive, surely, it would have come from home!

  Rutherford spoke up. “Mr Duncombe’s residence, ma’am.”

  11

  Rutherford got us to Rockingham in short order, perhaps half an hour. I tried to discuss the disturbing note with Gordon.

  I started off by asking him if, when he delivered the item in question, he had noticed anything odd about it. He said no, not at all. “Thought it was an ordinary item of post. Posted locally, of course. Nothing remarkable at all.” He peered at the small sheet of thin paper from all angles, and took his time sniffing it, as I had done, noting both the soapy aroma as well as the other, more elusive scent. He read the typed question several times, a fierce frown knotting his forehead. Gordon did surprise me, though, when he produced a large magnifying glass from his too-large tweed coat’s pocket and inspected both paper and question closely. He mumbled things to himself that I had learned, after all these years, not to ask him to explain. He was making notes, of a sort. Gordon was incapable of reading or studying anything without this mumbling. It had taken me some time to grow accustomed to this practice. When I was at Cambridge University, twenty years earlier, students tormented those unfortunates who made such noises as they read, regarding them as ill-bred simpletons. There was nothing simple about Gordon. He lacked impressive degrees, but I would stack up his accumulated knowledge and wisdom against that of any graduate of any university, and never mind how he went about acquiring that knowledge. At last he said, not looking up from his magnifier, “He’s not a professional typist, for a start.”

  “The uneven pressure of the characters?”

  He looked at me, and pointed at individual letters. “Women trained to use typewriters in businesses are taught at painful length to achieve an even pressure on the keys, in order to produce the best possible result. Even the harder letters, like Q, Z, and the question mark. From what I’ve gathered about such things, this can be tricky, to say the least. The human hand simply does not appreciate such contortions.”

  “So we can rule out aggrieved secretaries?”

  “I think, based only on this evidence, we may have to consider a jealous rival of some sort.”

  “That’s preposterous! I don’t have jealous rivals!”

  “You don’t know that,” he said, reasonably.

  “Who on Earth would want to be my rival? It’s nonsense! If I were writing conventional fiction, on the other hand … ”

  “There are other authors out there working in your field.”

  “And one of them not only knows something about my father’s death, but is also quietly lurking about in Pelican River, plotting evil against me because of my fabulous success? I mean to say … ” I stared out the window, annoyed. In a way it was disappointing not to have jealous rivals.

  Gordon resumed his minute study of the note. “All right. What about this? Look at the ‘A’ in ‘FATHER’ and ‘WAS.’ What do you notice?” He handed me the glass and the note. I squinted into its depths. And noticed what he meant: the ‘A’ was not registering properly, and the triangular space in the top of the letter was mostly filled in — someone had been negligent in his or her typewriter maintenance. Such maintenance was filthy business and something I had almost to force myself to do.

  “It sounds like something out of one of those popular tales of intrigue,” Gordon said, amused despite himself, “but it’s true what they say about typewriters. Find the machine that produced this note, and you’ll find your mysterious correspondent. How said correspondent could possibly know about your father — and be here in Australia, and more than that, they would also have to know how to find me — well, that I don’t know. It does seem rather elaborate to travel all this way just to engage you in clichéd intrigues. If they have something to tell you, why not simply tell you?”

  “Ah,” I said, having thought about this very question. “That’s obvious. At some point there will be a promise of information in return for a sum of money.”

  “You think extortion’s the plan?”

  I nodded, feeling tired. “That’s my thinking.”

  “And then what will you do, if you receive such a demand?”

  I did not know. It had occurred to me simply to take this note to the local police, and see what they might do for me. I had little confidence in them, which seemed reasonable when it always appeared to me that they would far rather spend time fishing or crabbing on the estuary than patrolling through town. “I suppose it will depend on all sorts of things. What they claim to know, how much they want, if there are any threats. Who knows?”

  Gordon said, “We can hardly put a notice in the newspaper asking all Pelican River residents who own typewriters to bring them, say, to your house so that we might inspect them … ” The idea seemed to entertain him.

  “The writer might be using a borrowed machine — or, indeed, a stolen machine.”

  “Which would at least lend itself to the idea that the writer is not a professional typist.” He was making “hmm” noises again.

  “What do you make of the aromas?”

  “Well, there’s clearly a soap of some sort. I would suggest that you’re dealing with a person very conscious of cleanliness, or possibly someone like a cleaner, perhaps … ” He didn’t have to say it.

  “Perhaps someone like a maid, who does a lot of cleaning?”

  I thought about Vicky and Sally, whose lives were almost completely taken up with the many and varied cleaning duties my house required. They were quick and efficient, and they chattered away like parrots when they worked together, but I generally did not think about them much. I had always been extremely pleased with the standard of their work, particularly since neither had had any training as maids-of-all-work before coming to work in my house. I thought I paid them more than the going rate for the work they did, and I thought I treated them well, particularly considering the terrible way the servants in my family’s home were treated. My mother, in particular, was inclined to regard the staff as annoying machines that were always in the way, never did a good enough job, were always after more money, and probably stole things. I was determined, when I moved here, that any servants I might employ would not be treated so poorly. So far, I thought I had done well by them. And yet Sally and Vicky would be close enough
to me to issue mysterious messages. But how would they know anything about the circumstances of my father’s death? And where would they have acquired something as bulky and expensive as a typewriter? Would I not know about such things, since they lived in my house?

  I discussed all this with Gordon, who shared my concerns. One thing he did say, though, was helpful: “The local library, I’m pretty sure, has an old typewriter that it hires out to people, if they need to write something official, that sort of thing.”

  “The library?” I would have to pay a visit to my friend Jane.

  Rutherford announced, speaking loudly over the noise of the wheels, “Entering Rockingham, ma’am!”

  “Thank you, Rutherford,” I said, now wondering if Rutherford ever felt resentful towards me. It seemed inconceivable. Rutherford, since the day I had hired him before I left England, had always demonstrated great keenness for his work, even back when I had had to train him in the buttling arts. His enthusiasm for the work always won me over, even when his technique was somewhat lacking. Then I remembered arriving home in the middle of a grim night, finding him sitting up by the fire, reading a book, awaiting my return. That did not suggest a man resentful of his employer.

  Then Gordon, who had been staring out his window, said, “Then there’s the other matter.”

  “Gordon?” I thought we had covered everything.

  He held the note up. “‘Why was your father killed?’ You’ve said that your father died of natural causes. You’ve said that the coroner assured you of this, because the post-mortem confirmed it. The poor man simply dropped dead one day, probably from pure grief.”

  “That’s right … ” I was starting to see where he was going.

  “But this correspondent of yours is telling you that your father was killed. Do you see?”

  “Yes, yes, I think I do. Is it really possible, though?”