“No. I’m sorry.”
She bit her nether lip, amber eyes pensive. We were close to each other and I entertained the idea of putting my arm around her waist, but entertaining it was as far as I got. Timidity kept me chivalrous.
“What happened to them ultimately?” she asked.
“Oh my! I don’t recall that, either. I have a vague impression of them being hauled out, but beyond that—nothing. They might have been sold to museums, Madge.”
“Yes, they might’ve,” she muttered.
For another moment or two she stood there deep in thought. Then, arousing herself, she slipped by me, entered the dining room and went quickly up the stairs. The library door slammed, putting an exclamation-point ending to our conversation.
I shook my head. Had she been sounding the walls down there? What a mad little creature she was!
8
ARCANE NOCTURNAL ACTIVITIES
Mrs. Binney’s white hair was beautifully waved. She looked just a little like Thomas Jefferson in his best wig. “Two Sunday nights in a row,” she said, resting a scrawny elbow on the transverse of the board fence.
“I’ve heard nothing,” I said. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely!” Her florid face was righteous. She was barely tall enough to see over the pickets. Gasping a few times, she continued, “Somebody was digging. I couldn’t see because it was too dark, but my ears told me what they were doing. If the police had given me any satisfaction the time I called them about the hippies in the park, I might’ve phoned the stationhouse. They didn’t, though, so now I mind my own business, Al.”
“This past Sunday, you say?”
“Yes, and the week before.”
I knew who had been digging the week before—me. But who had been digging last Sunday?
“One-thirty in the morning,” my neighbor declared. “It was vandals, or something worse, desecrating holy ground.”
My eyes went to Norbie’s grave under the pin oak. “Perhaps it was a dog, Mrs. B.”
“With a shovel, Al? A shovel is what I heard. I think they had a flashlight, too, but I’m not sure. I don’t see as good as I hear.” The old doll peered at me for a moment. “Quite a few strange things happening, aren’t there?” she asked slyly.
“Strange things?” I repeated absently, my mind busy with the mystery of the shoveler in the Burying Ground.
“Such as the lady—the one who’s staying with you,” said Mrs. Binney, her mouth as straight as a mail-box slot.
“Ah-ha! That’s the direction of your thoughts, is it?” I said, grinning. “But you give me too much credit, Mrs. B. The young lady is a scholar, come to study my great-grandfather’s books. Miss Clerisy is only in the house in the daytime—worse luck! No, I’m a long way from establishing a seraglio.”
“A what?”
“A seraglio. A harem.”
She gasped, then released a string of short, sharp laughs like flakes chiseled from a piece of flint. “A harem? At your age? Ha, ha! You’re a rascal, Al—you really are. Just like old Mr. Pendleton. A harem! What a notion for a Christian!”
It was minutes before she regained her composure. I could hear the ducks quacking down on Hall’s Pond, while crows and jays squawked overhead and pigeons cooed in the shade of the trees. Captain Kidd, the dachshund, waddled up to his mistress and wagged his pointy tail.
“We had a chat, that Miss Clerisy and me,” Mrs. Binney said, now that she was able to speak once more. “She asked all about you. I couldn’t get away from her for half an hour, and the poor Captain was inside whining for his lunch. She wanted to know all about your family. She also asked about that injury you got in the war. But I didn’t tell her anything, Al.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” I lied, crossing my fingers.
While I was digesting this new piece of intelligence, the old woman suddenly jumped away from the fence.
“Look at that!” she exclaimed, staring at a black ant that was aimlessly exploring the two-by-four transverse. “Where are they all coming from this year? Did you know I’ve got those pesky things on my ground floor? And in the basement, too. I should have sprayed my Hoover before I brought it back into the house after vacuuming the yard to get rid of the fleas.”
I observed the ant, but made no comment.
“If it isn’t one thing it’s another,” she muttered finally. “Don’t, you think it’s an abnormally big ant?”
“No. I’ve see bigger in India,” I replied.
“You never told me you were in India.”
“I was, though—in Poona, Agra, Raj Putana,” I said, rattling off whatever came into my head. “The ants there are bigger than horses.”
“Nonsense!”
“It’s true. They harness them, and they haul logs and things.”
“Bah! You’ll never get me to believe that,” said the old lady scornfully. But after a gasp or two she asked, “What kind of ants could those be?”
It was the question I was waiting for. “Eleph-ants,” I said solemnly.
“Elephants? Oh, it’s another of your silly jokes, Al! Elephants!” She chipped off a second series of dry laughs, shook her head violently, wagged her finger under my nose, and quivering slightly, turned and walked back to her house. Unperturbed, Captain Kidd followed in her wake.
When they disappeared, I inspected the Burying Ground closely. Norbie’s grave, while still exhibiting the faint outlines of the cut sod, appeared untampered with.
Around me, the dandelions murmured.
9
PIQUE
During this entire time, Eulalia behaved badly. She was forever cross, forever critical. The remarks she made about the lady archaeologist were downright scurrilous; I wouldn’t care to repeat them. Nor did she spare me in her diatribes, either. To hear her, you would have thought that I was Eulalia’s enemy instead of her closest friend.
That she had some cause for resentment I must admit. What rankled her was being evicted from the library. She said that I was a traitor, a turncoat, because I had given her room to another woman. Well, I had—but what else could I have done? I certainly couldn’t have left both of them in there, could I? She complained, too, that I didn’t chat with her any more. That was also true, and the reason for it was that she was so bitter, so disagreeable, so abusive.
I tried to placate her. She was implacable. Never would I have thought that such a change could come over Eulalia. Even the picture on her body—the sylvan scene—underwent a subtle transformation; the lines became stark, the colors slightly garish, the expressions of the girl and boy more . . . more mundane, almost vulgar.
How my friend shouted at me! And what murky vices she accused me of! It was a miracle that Madge didn’t hear her down the hall.
I really didn’t know how to handle the situation. I felt guilty, I suppose, because I did have designs (a quaint word, that!) on the Clerisy woman. Still, it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, was it? My impulses were perfectly natural. After all, Madge and I were one kind of being, and Eulalia another. However, my old comrade couldn’t see it that way. Her mind was closed to argument. Indeed, she couldn’t have displayed more jealousy had she been a real woman—that is, a woman of flesh and blood.
10
I AM COERCED
Each Fourth of July the town of Brookline holds a small fete at Amory Park for the local children, and there are sack races, ring tosses and similar competitions for prizes. Free Dixie cups are distributed to all. In the past I’d always attended this celebration, but this year—fearful that Madge might think such behavior childish—I did not. Instead I dragged a deck chair from the garage, set it up on the slight eminence in the backyard and contented myself with watching the festivities from a distance.
The sun was pleasant. Zephyrs brought me the cries of joy and groans of dismay of the young contestants in the meadow, along with the strains of recorded music and the crisp report, now and then, of a firecracker. Above me the sky was a delicious blue, while the grass at my
feet was a rich, rich green that radiated life and energy. About the lawn, dandelions lay like louis d’or on the thick felt of a gaming table.
I was reasonably content. Idly, my mind played with the happy notion of an automobile. I hadn’t owned one in a dozen years, though I still kept my license. With an automobile, I mused, a man can do a great deal—go for little spins, visit people, offer lifts to ladies, and so on. What fun it would be to run up to Maine and see Aunt Beatrice, or to hop off to the Cape or the Berkshires! Yes, why not? A nice shiny car—yellow, or perhaps red. I could whirl about the countryside like Mr. Tchitchikov in his famous troika.
A crow cawed. Instantly (and mysteriously) my brain discarded the subject of automobiles and raised that of an anecdote I’d once read. A certain pope had a tame raven, and this bird stole the papal ring and hid it. The pope, believing a servant had committed the theft, excommunicated the alleged robber. The raven thereupon grew thin and lost both its plumage and its voice. Then one day the ring was found and the excommuncation lifted. In a few days the pet bird regained its flesh and feathers and was cawing more healthily than ever.
As I was debating the possible verity of this quaint story, a voice spoke behind me.
“I want to exhume your great-grandfather, Al,” it declared.
Twisting around, I saw Madge seated on the bench.
“Oh, hello!” I said. Then her remark registered. “Exhume my great-grandfather? Did I hear you aright?”
“Yes. I have good reason to think there’s something of interest in his coffin,” she replied, absently tapping the cane’s ferrule against the sole of her orthopedic shoe. “In his writings he hints at an important discovery he made during his first stay in Egypt. But he’s very coy about it, very secretive. Has anyone ever taken away any of those notebooks? I have the feeling one or two are missing.”
“Not that I know of, Madge.” I moved the deck chair so as to be facing her. “About this discovery, though—I don’t follow you. Why would it be in his coffin, for heaven’s sake?”
“He twice mentions that he plans to take it with him to his grave.”
“Surely he was speaking figuratively, then. He would take it to his grave in the sense that people are said to take secrets to their graves.” I chuckled. “Exhuming him wouldn’t achieve anything. To attain your object you’d have to revivify the old boy.”
The lady didn’t smile. “I’m certain he’s referring to something tangible,” she said, thrusting the tip of her walking stick into the earth.
“Such as, my dear?”
“An artifact, perhaps. An object—maybe more than one.”
“I suppose it’s possible. It’s the sort of thing he might have done—yes.”
“A. Edward Pendleton was a damn strange bird,” she declared. “You weren’t kidding when you said he believed in the old Egyptian religion. The Papyrus of Ani—the so-called Book of the Dead—was his bible. He knew it inside and out, and accepted every word. The same with The Pyramid Texts, another catechism in hieroglyphics. If you don’t mind my saying so, I think he was slightly ga-ga. How a man of his worldliness could swallow that garbage . . .” She let the sentence hang. “Breasted had a high opinion of Egyptian theology, too, seeing in it the beginning of Christianity, but he didn’t actually believe all that mumbo-jumbo.”
“Well, Great-grampy didn’t do things by halves,” I responded. “He used to read to me from The Book of the Dead. Except for an occasional passage, I found it dull stuff, though. That the soul lives after death I quite accept. But the preservation of the body? That makes no sense. The Hindus are wiser. Primal cause, the embracing spirit of the universe, Karma, reincarnation—these are logical concepts.”
“You think so?” she asked, evidently amused.
“Oh, yes. The dead fly off to some other corner of the universe and take on new shapes. There are beings out there in the heavens by comparison with whom men are less than slugs and worms. I’m absolutely sure of it.”
The lady made a rude sound with her lips—rather like a Bronx cheer. “Puerile!” she pronounced scornfully.
“Really? You’re forgetting that almost all the poets believe in the transmigration of the spirit. Pythagoras and Plato believed in it, too, as did nearly every great philosopher. You should read Helen Blavatsky, the theosophist.”
From the playground a shrill cry of triumph arose, followed immediately by a clack of clapping hands.
“I think not,” she answered firmly. “But to get back to the old man. He definitely came across a tidbit. Possibly he found a roll of papyrus, or even a stele, that contained something unusual. Having all these idiotic ideas, he might’ve thought of it as a religious relic or talisman and made arrangements to have it put in his casket.”
I shrugged. “Yes, as I’ve said, that would be like him. However, of what value to science would the article be? I’ve heard there are loads of papyri that have yet to be translated, because it’s such a slow process.”
“True, Al, but those are just commercial records, business ledgers. Pendleton wouldn’t have bothered with anything like that,” she declared impatiently. “And remember, he says its a great discovery. Don’t you see? Have you ever heard of the Gerzean peoples—or the Amratians? They were the civilizations that existed in Egypt before the First Dynasty, before history began. What if he found a piece of writing belonging to them? It would be more sensational than the Dead Sea Scrolls, because it would be the oldest document in the world—the first example of a permanent record, the first literature, the actual start of human culture.”
Her deep voice had risen; her eyes sparkled like orbs of buffed topaz. Abruptly she smiled, saying, “And for me personally, it would be a tremendous coup.”
The smile thrilled me to my core. I sat there silently enjoying it. Then she asked me questions about the funeral. Considering that event had taken place almost half a century ago, I gave her a fairly detailed description of it. One of the facts, at least, I was absolutely sure of: nothing but the coffin had been lowered into the grave.
At length she said, “I want to dig him up as soon as possible.”
“It’s out of the question,” I replied, feeling that we had gone far enough with this nonsense. “Even if I approved—which I most certainly do not—you’d need an exhumation order from the courthouse, and they’d never give it to you for so flimsy a reason, Madge.”
She stared into my eyes with sharp concentration. “There’s no need for an order, Al. You and I could remove him at night. We could carry the box into the basement—it shouldn’t weigh much, now—take a fast peek and have him back in the ground inside a couple of hours.”
I tried to meet her gaze head-on, but I wasn’t able to; its force was positively solar. “Were you the one digging in the Burying Ground Sunday?” I asked.
Without hesitation, she nodded.
“In Great-grampy’s grave?” I pursued.
Her reply was matter-of-fact. “No, I dug under that big tree—where you buried Mr. Hess,” she said.
For a fraction of a second I wondered if I had imagined this shattering rejoinder. Then she added something else—I forget what—and I knew I was facing a hard reality. It was like being knocked on the head. All thought disintegrated; my brain became a jigsaw puzzle swept up in a cyclone, and I could reassemble no small part of it to shape a sensible remark.
“ . . . the newly cut turf, and became curious,” she was saying. “It looked promising. I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but I had suspicions. Mr. Hess, the afternoon I met him, had said he was staying with you indefinitely, yet the next day he had vanished. And that suitcase in the attic had initials on it—N. T. H.—which weren’t yours. What’s more, when I asked about him, you acted decidedly evasive. So I put on some slacks, left the hotel after midnight, got a shovel from that outbuilding”—she pointed at the charnel house with her stick—“and investigated. Why did you kill the man, Al?”
I inhaled deeply in order to steady myself, but nevertheless, wh
en I spoke a quaver modulated my voice. “I don’t know. I . . . it’s not easy to explain. He was . . . he was sick. I did it for his own good.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, it’s true, Madge. He was ill . . . terribly ill, and in the most hideous mental distress. You can’t know how frightened, how miserable the poor fellow was.”
“What did you shoot him with—one of your Great-grampy’s elephant guns?” she asked in a jocular tone. “The skull was half gone.”
Her levity puzzled me, but it encouraged me too. “I used my old Navy .45,” I answered. “He wanted to commit suicide, you see, only he didn’t have the courage. He asked me to do it—not in so many words, but the meaning was clear. Norbie Hess was the closest friend I ever had. In 1942 he saved my life off Guadalcanal. How could I refuse him?”
“He asked you to murder him?”
“Virtually—yes.”
“Virtually?”
“Yes, damn it!” I exclaimed, stung by her disbelief. “Do you think I’m lying?”
She did not reply immediately. Again her lustrous eyes were on me. I had the feeling that she was trying to determine from my words and manner whether I was mad or sane. Another roar went up from the children in the park below, but now the festivities were distant from my mind.
“No, oddly enough I don’t think you’re lying,” she murmured finally. “A quixotic mercy killing. Yes, you could do something like that, Al.”
“Well, it’s what happened—and why,” I said. “Will you tell the police? They’ll raise a frightful row, you know.”
Once more she paused before answering. Then she declared, “It’s nothing to me. Why should I? But won’t they catch you without my help? Won’t they trace him here?”
“No, no, no. It was all quite adventitious, Madge. He told no one he was coming to see me. He came by chance.”
She nodded and smiled. “Then you have nothing to worry about.”
I had not expected such understanding. My heart flooded with relief—and gratitude. What a remarkable girl, I thought. There she sat as calm as could be, her lovely face perfectly tranquil beneath that grand corona of serpentine black hair. Admirable! Any other woman would have run from me in fear.
The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton Page 10