The Ghost of the Mary Celeste

by Valerie Martin

  She glanced up at me to see how I was responding to her story. Wanting to give the thin edge of agitation in her voice room to expand, I said nothing.

  “It was so dreadful,” she continued. “Benjamin’s brother Oliver—he was a charming man, full of gaiety—he had sailed from New York a week later than Benjamin and Sarah. They all had plans to meet in Messina. Oliver had even told his mother what songs he planned to sing at their reunion—she told me that later. He had a fine voice. He and Sarah loved to sing together. What we didn’t know then, when they got that first telegram …” Again she paused, this time to raise her glass for another bracing draft of wine. “What we didn’t know was that Oliver’s ship—it was the Julia A. Hallock—went down in a storm in the Bay of Biscay. He and the first mate clung to some pieces of the deckhouse for four days before Oliver gave up and let go. The mate was rescued not two hours later.” Tears gathered in her eyes and she extracted a handkerchief from her sleeve.

  When a heartfelt account moves the teller to tears, the natural response of anyone with ordinary human feeling is to offer kind words of sympathy and consolation, but my profession precludes such natural expressions, and the sight of tears tends to stir in me nothing so much as a sense of predatory anticipation. I watched Violet without comment. She dried her tears, sniffed mightily, coughed. Her eyes fell upon the journal, which was resting on my lap. “How could that person, that Dr. Jephson, how could he make such a mockery of other people’s suffering? People he didn’t even know.”

  “Did the Briggs family live in New York?” I asked.

  She gave me a look of consternation. She was having a difficult time getting anyone to share her outrage at the scurrilous Dr. Jephson. “They lived in Massachusetts. Why would you think they lived in New York?”

  “I thought you grew up in New York. I seem to remember reading that. Upstate somewhere. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Gloversville,” she said, too quickly. “We lived there until I was twelve. Then we moved to Marion.”

  “I see,” I said. “And that’s where you met Sarah Briggs.”

  “We went to the Academy together.”

  “Do you still have relatives there?”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly and she lifted her chin, contemplating me for a moment before speaking. “I have an aunt,” she said. “But she disapproves of me, so we’re not in contact.”

  “She lives in Marion?”

  “I don’t know where she lives now,” she replied. “Nor do I care.”

  I smiled, thinking of my mother’s sister Claire, who had refused to help us when we were destitute because mother had married, in her view, beneath her.

  “Have I said something funny?” Violet asked, looking pouty.

  “I have such an aunt,” I said.

  A snort of glee escaped her. “Do you?” she said. I nodded wisely. “Bad luck to them both.” She was now relaxed and warmed to me. We were two of a kind—orphans with heartless relations. I wondered if she had any money of her own.

  “May I ask you a personal question?” I said.

  “I think I know what it is,” she replied.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “You want to know if I have an income.”

  It surprised me that she should have guessed my thought. “Yes,” I said. “I understand you don’t charge for the services you render, so I wondered …”

  “I have a little money from my grandmother,” she replied. “Not enough to live on. But I can’t charge for what you call my services because if I did the people who really matter wouldn’t seek me out. They would assume I was a fraud, that I was in it for the money.”

  “I notice at these séances advertised here, the psychics all charge admission.”

  “Exactly. Twenty-five cents. How many of those would one have to do to make up the price of a pair of shoes?”

  “Yes. I had that same thought.”

  “Those people are hobbyists, and many of them are just ludicrous, obvious frauds. They make disembodied hands appear, or instruments play themselves. It’s entertainment.”

  “I see,” I said. And I did, though I didn’t understand why people found being roundly duped an activity worth paying even twenty-five cents to enjoy.

  Violet cast me a look tinged with desperation. “Oh, I wish I could be like you and earn my living by my pen!” she exclaimed.

  “I fear you’d find it dull and tiring.”

  “You’re out in the world, editors send you off to find out things and write up what you find, doors open to you, people respect you. No one patronizes you. Jeremiah said he thought you a brave sort of person. Level-headed and sound.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes. He admires you.” She plucked at her skirt peevishly. “You may be sure no one ever thinks of me as level-headed.”

  “Do you want to be level-headed?”

  She raised her eyebrows as if the question bore consideration, then sighed, dropping back in her chair. “They tire of me,” she said. “At first it’s very exciting and I’m in a trance half the time, keeping them in touch with their loved ones. But after a while …” She raised her hand to her hair, patting a straying curl back into place absentmindedly. “Often the gentlemen develop little crushes on me. At the Bakersmiths’ it was the son. You should see some of the letters I’ve received! Then the wives begin to think of how much good I could do for their friends, a soiree is arranged, and I know I’m about to pack my bags.”

  “They pass you on.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “How long have you been living like this?”

  She sent me the frank look of appeal I’d seen that first evening, when she bent over to pick up her napkin. “Ten long years,” she said.

  “Good heavens.”

  “I’m just a pet. I’m the in-house clairvoyant.” She chuckled sourly. “Sometimes I play the tyrant, just to keep from dying of boredom.”

  I pictured Violet in a tyrannical mood, doubtless a fearsome sight.

  “What do you do?”

  “Oh, I make them wait, or I get headaches and have my meals in bed. I actually do suffer from blinding headaches, so no acting is required. Sometimes I flirt with the husbands until they get so carried away they fear I’ll tell their wives. But I never do. I used to hope one of them might marry me, but now I know, if there’s one thing they dread, it’s scandal. And marrying a psychic would be a scandal, especially if a divorce was involved.”

  “Tell me about the trances,” I asked. “Can you make them happen?”

  “Oh, why is everyone so interested in that? Is that what you want to write about?”

  “Not necessarily. I’m just interested,” I said. “Like everyone.”

  “I have no memory of anything that happens in a trance,” she said firmly.

  “Yes, Jeremiah told me that. It must be like hypnotism.”

  “I don’t know about hypnotism. At first it happened when I was alone, working on my poetry. There would be this lapse of time and when I came back, I’d written several pages I had no memory of writing. And they were messages, but not to me.”

  “You write poetry?”

  This question pleased her. “I do. I always have. I have notebooks full of it. Would you like to see some? I never show them to anyone because I’m afraid they may be very bad.”

  “Why would you show them to me?”

  “That’s a good question,” she said, leaning over her knees to make some adjustment to her skirt. “Perhaps I won’t.”

  I ignored this display of coquettishness, though I could see how well it might work on an interested gentleman. “Do you still receive messages while writing?”

  She sat up straight, folded her hands in her lap, and presented me with the prim expression of an innocent bystander who has just been sworn in to the witness box. “Not much. It’s easier to just repeat what I’m hearing. Evidently the spirits prefer to use me in that way.”

  Everything about this last statement ir
ritated me. “Do they?” I said. “I wonder why.”

  “That’s not something I could know.”

  “It’s so convenient, that part, where you don’t remember what you’ve said.”

  She frowned. “I don’t get to choose whether or not to hear what I hear and see what I see. Do you?”

  “No. But I wonder, why you … I mean, why did these spirits choose you and not someone else?”

  “I suppose because I’m open to them.”

  “Could you close yourself to them? Could you make them go away?”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, I’m serious.”

  “You don’t believe a word I say.”

  “Let’s just say I believe you’re being used, but not by spirits.”

  She was silent. Her gaze was so free of resentment that I was intrigued to hear her next words. “You think I make it all up, just to please people who will help me.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you imagine that possibility has never occurred to me?” she said.

  “Has it?”

  Abruptly she stood up and took a few steps toward the balcony, leaving me with a view of her profile. She took a deep breath, then another, evidently in the grip of a strong emotion. Her long, slender hands clenched into fists at her sides. More tears, I thought, more earnest protestations.

  So I was surprised when she turned to me with dry eyes and an expression of powerful resolution. “I want to stop,” she said. “I want another life. Will you help me?”

  I didn’t tell Violet I was unwilling to help her, but I did point out the unlikelihood that I could. My employment, which she persisted in envying, was a hand-to-mouth affair, and as she had no commercial skills beyond the one that currently provided a comfortable, albeit restricted, existence, there was no definite track that I could set her upon. She had the childish notion that if only her efforts were brought to the attention of the public, she would make her way as a poet. I recommended a course in typing, as it was a skill always in demand. When I asked if she had told Jeremiah Babin, who was in the most likely position to assist her and appeared to have a keen interest in her welfare, of her ambition to find gainful employment, she laughed. “No,” she said. “And don’t you tell him. He would not be pleased to hear it.”

  Our conversation, as I recall it, was amiable, but I could see that she was disappointed, that she had imagined I would be her deliverer. By morning, when she woke with a headache from the port, she would be ashamed of her declaration at the window and resentful of my part in the dissolution of her fantasies.

  When we said good night, I promised to consider her situation and perhaps recommend a course, beyond typing—which clearly had no appeal to her whatsoever—that she might take toward self-sufficiency. As I crossed the hall and let myself in at the door of my room, I reflected that my own situation, which sometimes struck me as arduous, lonely, dull, and pointless, was actually far preferable to the lot of the various citizens whose doings I was, as Violet put it, “on assignment” to investigate. All that day my article about the Spiritualists had been taking shape in my mind, and I had that pleasant, ticklish sensation of mental busyness, as well as a burgeoning confidence that must result, very soon—I could feel it—in my taking up my pen and my notebook and setting out on the journey into print. In my room I paused, admiring the moonlight, like spilled milk, on the desk. The apple I kept at the ready for midnight munching floated in a dark blue pool of its own shadow. I crossed to the balcony and stepped out into the still, warm, pine-scented evening.

  The Spiritualists believe their spirit friends are fond of flowers. Summerland, their dwelling on the other side, is a garden that needs no tending, and they fill their airy rooms with all manner of blooms. As wildflowers are abundant in the woods and fields bordering Lake Pleasant, the guests are in the habit of gathering bouquets and setting them out in vases, pitchers, baskets, or even buckets, at odd places around the camp.

  These portable arrangements were constantly falling over, or they were picked up, refreshed, rearranged, and moved about by passing campers; it was a harmless, charming game they played, one of their more sympathetic practices. I noticed that a new collection of colorful pitchers had magically converged at the end of the bench just across from my balcony. If only they would confine themselves to flowers, I thought. In a dreamy state of mind I turned back to my bedroom, pondering the bizarre revelation that Violet Petra imagined herself a poet.

  I drew the curtain, leaving the door ajar to have the benefit of fresh air. My toilette was a simple washup at the basin, a few strokes of the hairbrush, and a quick change into my dowdy cotton gown. As I slipped beneath the stiff, starched sheets, I imagined Violet, just across the hall. Her gown was doubtless embroidered satin with lace insets across the bodice. She had expensive tastes and habits. At dinner she had pointed out that what I took to be amethysts sparkling on the broad bust of a psychic competitor were in fact “cheap garnets.” She was right to be worried about her future, as she couldn’t afford to live in the style required by the company she kept. For the time being the Babins provided her with a clothing allowance. “Even with that,” she had confided, “I have to have my shoes resoled.”

  In this manner, puzzling over the question of what would become of the fascinating, though often aggravating, object of my investigations, I drifted into sleep.

  I awoke in the oppressive and humid darkness of a deep wood on a cloudy moonless night. For a few moments I lay still, my eyelids heavy from sleep, listening to a repetitive clicking that had summoned me back to consciousness. At length I determined it was coming from the wardrobe. What was it? I also became aware of a hushed whisper, like leaves rustling in a mini-whirlwind, such as one observes of an autumn day. It was the pages of my notebook, I speculated, being riffled by a breeze.

  When I turned my face toward this sound, a current of air brushed lightly across my cheek, like warm caressing fingers, tentative and tender, grazing my brow, lifting a strand of hair loose at my temple. Why was my room so dark? The curtain at the door was a summery voile, and the moon, though not full, had shone brightly when I stood on the balcony, but now my eyes couldn’t penetrate what felt more and more like a swirling current of blackness. It was as if I were in a whirlpool.

  I sat up in the bed, pushing my pillow to one side. The clicking sound must be the wardrobe door, which, unlatched, was knocking again and again against the frame. The whispering intensified and had an impatience about it that made me think of old women defaming some young beauty in a church—I don’t know why this image came to me, but it did. A storm had whipped up, I concluded, and I must feel my way to the open balcony door and close it tightly. I swung my legs over the side, stood up, one hand resting on the bedpost, and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. My movement animated the quarreling currents of air and a kind of pandemonium broke loose in my room. The wardrobe door slammed hard, the hinges complaining at the force. The cyclonic air ripped the curtain, which I could dimly make out fluttering grayly before the door, free of its rod, and sent it rushing toward me, as if to wrap me in its embrace. I heard small objects—my cologne, my hairbrush, my fountain pen, my ink bottle—scattering in all directions from the dresser and the desk.

  I took a step, confident that I would reach the door, which I could dimly see, and close this maelstrom out. Another step. Abruptly something cold and hard struck me on the forehead, as if it had been thrown with pent-up malice by an assailant with excellent aim. I staggered and sat down on the floor. My notebook hurled itself from the desk and slapped me cruelly on the collarbone. I touched my forehead, which felt sore from the vengeful missile. Determinedly I crawled toward the door while a fresh gust lifted the pitcher from the washstand and smashed it against the floor. One of my shoes flew up and slapped me on the hip. I pushed on.

  When at last—though it was not half a minute—I was near the door and could grasp the handle, I found to my astonishment that it was closed. At the mome
nt when my fingers pushed against the panel, determining that the door was tightly seated in its frame, the fury in my room entirely ceased.

  I was so confused that I sat there, my back against the glass panes, staring into the darkness. What world was I in? The room began to lighten, and I made out the apple resting against the leg of the dresser. Of course, I thought. The apple was the missile that had struck my forehead. Carefully I got to my feet and returned to the bed, my mental state still much confounded. As the dawn light gradually flushed up the walls, I sat on the edge of the mattress and surveyed the wreckage of my room. The curtain lay in a twisted skein near the door; my meager possessions were scattered across the floor. It looked as if some barroom brawler with a raging toothache had taken the place apart.

  But he was gone now; the room was quiet and still, the air cool, charged as it is often after a storm. But what puzzled me was that there was no sound of wind or rain outside. The branches of the pine trees shading the balcony were unmoving, not even their needles trembled, as they did in the faintest breeze. I crossed to the door and stepped out onto the balcony.

  It was a soft, fragrant summer morning of infinite sweetness, and the only sound was the soft cooing of a dove, and distantly the sharp rap of a woodpecker investigating a tree trunk. I stepped out to the rail. Surely the ground would be strewn with fresh needles and the flimsy vases toppled, the flowers strewn across the path. I looked down at the bench.

  And there they were, undisturbed, four clay pitchers top-heavy with wildflowers, cheerfully greeting the day, announcing to passersby that the spirits of the dead were welcome in this place, that they might come and stay and do just as they pleased.