Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  “Why not?”

  “Because the testament isn’t down here.”

  He turned toward her, intrigued by her certainty. “What do you know that I don’t, Aurie?”

  She used a hand to shift the beam away from her face. “For one thing, I know better than to shine a light in my boyfriend’s eyes.”

  “Sorry.” He glanced around. “So, we’re going upstairs?”

  “Two flights.”

  Somewhere up above, a floorboard creaked. Just one, and the sound did not repeat. And then, faintly, it did.

  “The house is settling,” said Eddie.

  “Or somebody’s up there,” said Aurie.

  “Or both.”

  She shifted her beam. “We can’t turn back now.”

  “At least tell me where we’re going.”

  “His wife has it. That’s what the card said, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But his wife is dead, Eddie. She’s a ghost. And everyone who claims to see her sees her in the same place. Her bedroom window.”

  Another creak. “The bedroom,” he repeated.

  “That’s right.” She gestured toward the stairs. “Lead the way.”

  The basement stairs led to a door, but the door was not locked. It opened at the first push and did not even creak. They were in the grand foyer, large rooms on all sides, and the sweeping staircase to the second floor on the north wall.

  “Keep going,” said Aurelia. “I’ve got your back.”

  “Swell.”

  Midway up the grand staircase, they heard another soft creak, this time down below, perhaps in the dining room. More settling, or somebody trying too hard to be quiet? But nobody could have followed them. In the emptiness of the street and the grounds, they would have noticed.

  “A rat, maybe,” said Eddie.

  “Or the ghost.”

  Upstairs, they made their way to the rear of the house. The doors were all open, except one. A moment later, they stood in the bedchamber. Closed for renovation. Their flashlights picked out the bed, four posters, currently without canopy. An old dresser, but not old enough. Incongruously, a file cabinet, with the look of having been moved hastily from somewhere else. So the locked-off room, like the basement, was used for storage. Aurelia moved closer. The beams found the dingy chandelier, then swung jointly toward the door as something skittered in the darkness.

  They stood very still.

  “The ghost,” said Aurie, giggling weakly.

  Eddie, struggling against his own growing fear, gestured toward the square of smeary light from the filthy window. “That’s where she sits and looks out and scares the kids.”

  “You think—”

  “It has to be here. Where his wife sits.”

  Both beams flashed that way, found the settee, and whatever curled on the sagging cushions rose, huge and rotten and fetid, uttering a snarly cry as, eyes redly glowing, it soared toward them through the shadows. They leaped back. Aurelia screamed. Eddie’s head bumped one of the bed posters, and his flashlight went flying. The pain sent him to his knees. The ghost swooped down. Beating devil’s wings struck his face. He grabbed and shoved, was clawed and scratched in return, then saw, by the light of Aurelia’s beam, that he was wrestling a huge barn owl. Eddie ducked away. The owl was as scared as he was. With a final glare, the creature sailed majestically off into the hallway.

  Aurelia knelt beside him. This time her mirth was genuine. She touched his bleeding face. “Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

  “I want you to stop laughing.”

  “Then you have to stop being so funny,” she said, and kissed him anyway.

  They stood and crossed to the settee. It was sagging and sprung. They peered underneath, coughed in the dust, found only mouse droppings. They shook the heavy frame, but nothing fell out. They began tugging at the fabric. Aurelia pricked her finger on a freshly uncovered coil but refused to stop.

  That footstep again.

  On their knees, they swung around, both beams at the door.

  Nothing.

  “We need to calm down,” said Eddie.

  “We need to hurry,” said Aurelia.

  “Why?”

  She shuddered. “Can’t you feel it?”

  And he could, a growing pulsing miasmic stirring, as if the ancient house was slowly waking, its ancient haunts with it. The eaves whispered in the wind, and the whispers were clever and old. Floorboards creaked as the house settled, and the creaking meant that whatever evil the house nurtured was climbing the stairs. They tore faster, desperation in their hands, and found nothing. No envelope, no papers, no hidden photographs. They looked at each other.

  “We were wrong,” said Eddie.

  “We can’t have been.”

  “This is the window where she sits. I don’t know where else it could be.”

  Aurelia stood up, stretched, leaned on the sill. She pointed. “It’s nailed shut.”

  “So?”

  “So—she can’t possibly lean out.”

  “She’s not real. She’s a ghost.”

  “What I mean is, people see her lean out, with the window open. Or they used to, anyway.” She leaned close. “Eddie, these nails are new.”

  He crouched. They were tarnished. “They’re not new.”

  She lifted her light, ran a finger along the paint. “Look at this. Look how it flakes. See? There isn’t any here. Where the nail holes are.”

  “You’re saying—”

  “Somebody drove these in just a few years ago.”

  Eddie’s excitement grew. “And nobody noticed because the room was closed off.”

  “Or, if they did notice, they just thought somebody official had done it.”

  “So what do we do?”

  She tugged. “We take the nails out.”

  Comedy. The nails were driven deeply into the sill, and neither of them had thought to bring a hammer. They hunted around for a tool.

  “The office downstairs,” said Aurie.

  “I’ll go,” said Eddie.

  “Not without me.”

  Halfway down the sweeping staircase, they heard the footsteps again. “No ghosts,” said Eddie.

  “No ghosts,” Aurelia echoed, teeth chattering.

  The door to the office was locked. They forced it. They found desks, file cabinets, bookshelves, boxes of souvenirs to be sold out front.

  “Bingo,” said Aurelia, emerging from the small bathroom.

  A toolkit.

  Back upstairs, the nails yielded easily, and as they lifted the lower sash, the higher one fell, very hard, nearly mashing their fingers. Glass splintered. The sound echoed. Eddie and Aurelia scarcely noticed. Drifting to the floor was a long envelope that had been hidden between the panes, covered by the wood trim where the sashes met when the window was open. Aurelia tore it open, and Eddie extracted the contents: eight pages in Philmont Castle’s tight, spidery hand.

  The testament.

  Eddie beckoned Aurelia, but she was already reading over his shoulder. Here, at last, was the answer—and, God willing, the road to Junie. Together, they read by flashlight:

  My name is Philmont Castle. I am a member of the Bar Associations of the City of New York, the State of New York, and the Supreme Court of the United States. I am writing these words in the hope that, should I not survive, someone will read them and be able to prevent the madness that I have helped to plan. I could do nothing to stop it, because my family stood hostage to my loyalty. I only pray that whoever discovers my testament will have the fortitude to stop what must be stopped. The details I shall disclose will be sufficient to put an end not only to the Project itself, but to the careers of the men who designed it.

  In the second week of August 1952, a meeting was held at the summer home of Burton Mount on Winemack Street in the town of Oak Bluffs on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard, for the purpose of planning a crime of grandeur, audacity, and stupidity, in the name of building a better America. The meeting began with din
ner, but no spouses were permitted. Mrs. Mount was visiting friends on the Island, I believe the Powells. Two maids laid out the food en buffet and then were dismissed. Burton as usual provided an excellent repast, beginning with sautéed scallops and mussels in an excellent cream sauce, bridging the courses with berry-filled crêpes instead of sorbet. Burton next served lobster tails…

  Annoyed, Eddie rifled the pages. How much of the testament was going to be travelogue and culinary description? Aurelia touched his hand.

  “He was writing for the ages,” she said. “He was conscious of his audience.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “You never read Pliny, did you? The Romans used to write this way.”

  But all Eddie knew of Pliny was that Wesley Senior had once cited him in a sermon, drawing from his work some obscure evidence for the existence of Christ.

  …bridging the courses with berry-filled crêpes instead of sorbet. Burton next served lobster tails, followed by a filet mignon, butterflied and grilled just a minute or two past medium rare. Naturally, each course was accompanied by an appropriate wine. After dinner we settled in the parlor with brandy and cigars. The maids had stoked the fire. Burton sat beside it, a cadaverous man with an angry smile. I was struck, even then, by the image of Burton as the devil, welcoming us to Hell. The image turned out to be less far-fetched than I imagined.

  I was one of twenty men present at the meeting. Eight were Negroes, twelve were Caucasians. We were the Twenty, said Burton, flames at his back. We were the Council. He announced that he, along with several unnamed associates, had conceived a plan for setting America on the proper path. The plan was dangerous, he explained. The plan might lead to violence. And yet he was convicted—that was what he said, convicted—that the plan would succeed. Because of the risks, he and his associates would not move forward without submitting their idea to scrutiny. The twenty men present this August evening would judge the plan. We would weigh its merits, said Burton, with the hope of pardoning our offenses. This invocation of the liturgy was intended, I am sure, as a joke. No one laughed except Senator Elliott Van Epp, who sat beside me. Van Epp had indulged too freely in the excellent wines. If we judged the plan unworthy, said Burton, it would be discarded. Otherwise, the men in the parlor would become the overseers of the plan. Burton was a serious man. He was a spellbinder, a man of enormous charisma, and could exercise a near-hypnotic influence on those who listened too closely.

  Burton himself freshened our drinks, pouring from the snifter. He asked if anyone wanted to leave. Now would be the time, he said. No records would be kept. No grudges would be held. The nervous twitter among the guests surprised me. The parlor was full of powerful men, but no one protested the subtle threat. Perhaps we were held by Burton’s charm. Perhaps by curiosity. Perhaps by fear. One had the sense, sitting there, that Burton Mount commanded resources, legions, vast demonic armies, ready to be unleashed upon all those who dared defy his will. One had the sense that our only role was to approve, not to reject.

  There is evidence to support this. After Burton began the formal presentation, Ralph Shands, a jazz pianist of considerable renown, leapt to his feet shaking his fist and said that God would not allow so evil a plan to succeed. Burton rang a bell. A maid appeared with the man’s vicuña coat in hand, although how she could guess that he was leaving us, I have no idea. Two years later, the pianist died of a heroin overdose.

  As to the presentation itself, Burton had divided it, like Gaul, into three parts….

  “Very well done, Mr. Wesley.”

  Eddie and Aurelia spun, trembling beams piercing the darkness, but found no speaker.

  “Put your flashlights on the floor, please.”

  Eddie complied at once. When Aurie hesitated, he snatched hers and put it down, too. He recognized the voice, and knew what they were facing.

  “Eddie,” she began, but he waved her silent.

  “Do you want us to put our hands up now?” he asked.

  A shadow separated from the deeper shadows in the corner behind the chipped dresser. Eddie held Aurelia’s wrist. She jerked her hand free, straightened her clothes. The shattered window allowed a sliver of light in past the decades of filth caking the panes. Not enough for them to pick out much, but the dull metal in the visitor’s hand was certainly a gun. Eddie had no idea how long George Collier had been watching them.

  “No,” the killer said. “Just put the pages on the floor, then step over to the divan.”

  “How long have you been following us?” Eddie asked.

  “I’m not the sort of bad guy who explains himself. That only happens in the movies. The pages, please.”

  “Listen,” Eddie began.

  “Please don’t waste time, Mr. Wesley. If I have to shoot, I’m afraid I will be shooting Mrs. Garland first. Nothing personal.”

  “Not at all,” she said, fingers digging into Eddie’s arm.

  The gun glinted. “All the pages, including the ones you slipped inside your sweater, Mrs. Garland.”

  “Turn your back.”

  “Now, please.”

  Out of ideas, hoping for a miracle, they put the papers on the floor as asked, then stepped back. “Sit,” he said. They did, being careful of the springs. The shadowy figure stooped, the gun trained on Aurelia. Gloved fingers moved. The testament vanished. “Close your eyes.”

  Eddie refused. He stared hard into the darkness, wondering how it would feel, or whether there would even be a sensation. He remembered Vietnam, the bullets knocking chunks from the bodies of brave, frightened young men and whizzing on. A raw rubbery heat rose from his stomach. Where did professionals shoot you? The head, like Jack Kennedy and Martin Luther King? The chest, like Bobby? Aurie shivered in his arms. He was not ready to die, but he was not ready to admit it. At least he was with the woman he loved. She was whispering. Eddie held her more tightly. He heard “protect.” He heard “please, Lord.” A prayer, he realized, with a start. It had not occurred to him to pray. He heard “take care of them.” Aurie was praying not to get out of this mess, but that God would protect her children. His love surged, and, just like that, he removed her fingers and was on his feet, closing the distance between the settee and the place where he had last spotted the gun, ready to take the bullets to buy Aurelia a precious second to jump out the window.

  He dived into the darkness, hoping at least to tackle Collier to the floor before he died.

  And hit the floor himself, lying on threadbare carpet.

  George Collier was gone.

  CHAPTER 60

  Cover Stories

  (I)

  IN AUGUST, a California judge was murdered in a botched effort to free black radical George Jackson from prison. Every revolutionary group under the sun was accused of being involved, including Agony, which many experts thought had died. But the politicians dredged it up, listed the group’s crimes, demanded that the leaders be brought to justice. FBI agents interviewed Edward Wesley at his home in Washington, duly reporting that he denied having had any contact with his sister. They believed him. In fact, the interview was perfunctory. They did not press. Probably they had decided she was dead, and wanted to close the books on Agony once and for all.

  By this time, Eddie and Aurelia had become an open, if occasional, item. People were not sure from one moment to the next whether to invite them to the same party. Actually, they were considered moderately scandalous. Their arrest inside Jumel Mansion back in May had made all the papers: trespassing, burglary, and destruction of public property, pled down within a day to malicious mischief. They paid their fines and were released, but the damage was done, twice over. George Collier had covered his escape by calling the police, and telling them what to look for; and he made Eddie and Aurelia so silly and conspicuous that any effort to explain what had happened would be taken for an absurd excuse.

  “Why didn’t he kill us?” Aurelia had asked as they drove upstate. She was smoking even harder now. Her hands still shook. “He should have killed us.
”

  Eddie glanced at her. “In Vietnam he told me he was under orders.”

  “Whose orders?”

  “Whoever he’s working for. I’m not being facetious. It all gets back to Junie somehow. I can’t work it out, Aurie. I can’t seem to untie the last knot. But they can’t harm a hair on our heads as long as Junie’s at large. I’m sure of that part.”

  “He used to be Senator Van Epp’s bodyguard. So maybe now he works for Lanning Frost.”

  “So what are you saying? That we’re alive because Lanning is still grateful to your husband?” He had another thought. “Besides, didn’t we agree that Lanning is not our actual problem?”

  “Maybe Mr. Collier works for Margot.”

  “But why would Margot want to keep us alive?”

  Aurie grinned. “Happy memories?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m not joking.” She sounded irritated, and told him when he dropped her off that she thought they should have a little time apart.

  “We just had ten years apart,” he protested.

  “Twelve.”

  “You see my point.”

  They were in the foyer of her house. The children were at school. Tonight, with their suddenly infamous mom back home, they would sleep in their own beds for the first time in a week.

  “It’s going to be different,” she promised. “It’s going to be fine. I just need some time to get used to things.”

  She kissed him to prove it.

  (II)

  THE CHILDREN DID NOT KNOW what to make of her. She had left as Mommy and returned as this madwoman whose mug shot was on the front page of the papers, including their own Ithaca Journal. Aurelia sat them down on the bench in the foyer and told them that it had all been kind of a misunderstanding, but after something like this, people would say a lot of things about her that were not true.

  Zora, going on fourteen, accepted this intelligence with grave acquiescence. She believed everything her mother said, always.

  Locke, at thirteen, had a question.

  “Are you gonna marry him?”

  “Marry who?”

  “That Wesley guy. The one who got you arrested in the haunted house.”