by RA Williams
At Bloomfield Centre station, one of St Dunstan’s Ford Depot hacks waited for her. Piling her wardrobe trunks into the back seats, the driver dropped her at St Dunstan’s Peacock Gate before carrying on to the main house with the trunks.
A chorus of chirping from the greening trees along Lone Pine Road welcomed her.
‘Hope springs eternal,’ Elle called back to the blue jays. No sooner did she close the wrought-iron pedestrian gate, with its impressive peacock adorning the crown, than she felt the first spits of rain.
As she slung her bag over her shoulder, the escudos inside shifted with a clink. Passing the dining hall, she continued through the open cloister that was the heart of St Dunstan’s, flower beds overflowing with spring daffodil blooms and forsythia. Water poured into a travertine basin in the quad’s fountain, its gentle burping sound reminding her of the waves breaking on Utila’s beaches.
The memory was short-lived. The sky opened up and she made a dash for St Dunstan’s academic building, pushing open the heavy door. She turned to pan the quad; she couldn’t say why, but ever since leaving Adel, she had felt as though she was being watched. She didn’t spot any threats now, only a lone student scurrying towards the dormitories, his shirtsleeves rolled back, optimistic for milder days.
Nothing much seemed to have changed in her absence. Although she was gone only a month, teaching seemed a lifetime ago.
Closing the lobby door behind her, she saw Charlie Burkhammer leaning over the reception counter, chatting up a female classmate volunteering at the school’s switchboard. Elle couldn’t hear the conversation, nor did she mind it, but by the look on the girl’s face, it was clear she wanted Charlie to buzz off.
A fire in the north wall of the oak-panelled lobby crackled. Setting her bag down, Elle took off her coat and gave it a shake. Drops of rainwater sizzled as they landed in the flames. A clap of thunder caused the lobby’s leaded windows to shake, attracting Charlie’s attention.
‘Hey, Dr Annenberg. Welcome back.’ He ambled across to her, all knees, elbows and ears, a dishearteningly thick pile of papers under his arm. ‘Nice tan.’
‘I’m guessing you received my Western Union from Miami?’
‘Hattie sent word of your telegram,’ he said, leaving the stack of papers on a side table. ‘You’ve been gone nearly a month. We were about to send a rescue party looking for you. But by the look of your tan, I guess you didn’t need rescuing.’
‘I wasn’t able to get a message out of Honduras.’
‘Honduras? I thought you—’
‘Long story,’ she cut in, sitting on a sofa by the fire to unbuckle her patent leather Daisies, leaving them out to dry. Then she took a pair of white plimsolls from her bag, shaking out Honduran sand before pulling them over her bare feet.
‘Three days ago, I was soaking up the sun.’ A flash of lightning lit the room, followed by a not-so-distant crash of thunder. ‘I see the weather has improved since I left.’
‘Expecting a corker of a storm. Looks like it’s coming now.’
Rising from the sofa, she pushed her bag into his skinny arms. He dropped it immediately.
‘Golly. What you got in here, gold bars?’
‘Gold coins, actually.’
The switchboard operator, who was clearly half-listening to the conversation, slid the headphone off her ear.
‘You’re kidding?’
Elle smiled. ‘They’re escudos. For the science institute.’
‘You’re not kidding,’ Charlie said, sweat dotting his upper lip as he hefted the bag into both arms, its contents clinking. ‘I could buy out the Dodge Boys with what’s in here. I always wanted to be an automobile baron.’
‘You’re a good kid, Charlie,’ she said. ‘Don’t make me shoot you.’
He laughed.
She didn’t.
‘Lock ’em in my safe until the science institute can slap together an exhibit.’
Charlie beetled along behind her as she mounted the spiral staircase to the second floor.
‘What have I missed in my absence?’
‘Well, Headmaster Bowie was pretty furious you ditched classes for almost a month.’
‘That boiled owl. What can he do? Ask my father to fire me? That’s a laugh.’
‘No,’ replied Charlie. ‘He asked your mother to fire you.’
‘Gotta give the headmaster credit,’ she said with a smile. ‘Mother would actually fire me.’
They passed under a sculpture of Diogenes projecting off the second-floor landing. She had walked under it a thousand times over the years without giving it a thought. He stood, lantern in hand, looking for an honest man. She couldn’t say why, but in that moment, she thought of Beedham and what he had said to her in parting: One man in his time plays many parts.
‘Your Music Academy season tickets arrived.’
‘Huh?’ she said, jolted back from her reverie.
‘I said, your Music Academy tickets arrived. Are you all right, Doctor?’
‘Yeah,’ she said wistfully, a parting glance at Diogenes. ‘Just looking for an honest man.’
She looked to Charlie.
‘You ever look at something you’ve seen a thousand times and suddenly, you get it?’
He stared at her blankly.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she said after an awkward silence. ‘Anything else?’
‘Oh. Well, the science institute asked for you to return their artefacts you borrowed for your European Ethnology course,’ he replied, following her across the hallway.
‘What else?’
‘Your mother called.’
‘She wants to fire me?’
‘No. She wants you to teach more of the under-fifteen-year-olds when fall term begins. The senior professors are too stodgy, in her opinion.’
‘I’m head of department. How much more senior can she mean?’
‘I think she means senior in age, not position.’
Elle stopped, mind still processing the events of the last weeks.
‘Of course. Sorry, my mind is still in the tropics. Anything more?’
‘I graded all your general ethnology papers,’ he said, dropping her bag to the floor, panting to catch his breath. ‘I had to stay up all night – all night – but they’re finished.’
Turning at the door to the ethnology vestibule, she looked at her student assistant. A lick of sweat dripped from his hairline and down the side of his face. She put her hand over his heart.
‘How much coffee you drink today?’
‘None.’
‘Your heart’s racing like you drank a pot full.’
‘Your bag weighs a ton.’
Giving his arm a conciliatory buffing as they entered the vestibule, she said with a sigh, ‘At least you know what half a million weighs.’
‘A half-million dollars?’
Elle nodded.
‘Gee whiz.’
Behind a wooden desk sat a frumpish woman, pencils holding her coif in place.
‘If either one of you were carrying around a half-million bucks, I’d rob you both and live the rest of my days by a swimming pool in Hollywood drinking rum-runners with Buster Keaton.’
‘Hello, Hattie.’ Elle gave an apologetic smile. ‘I’m so sorry to be returning so last-minute.’
‘I expected you back weeks ago.’
‘We expected you,’ said Charlie.
‘I expected you,’ repeated Hattie, giving him the daggers.
‘You did receive my telegram?’
‘Two days ago.’
‘Charlie, put my bag on Hattie’s desk, will you?’
Hefting the Gladstone onto her desk, Charlie caught his breath as Elle removed the gold coins and stacked them into piles.
‘I’ve been a little busy.’
Hattie stood, mouth agape. ‘I should say you have.’
‘Each coin’s worth roughly thirty-nine grand.’
She could see Charlie doing the maths in his head.
‘Lock them in
my safe, Charlie.’
She turned to Hattie. ‘Could you please put a call in to the conservators at the science institute?’
Looking up from the gold coins, Hattie replied, ‘And Brink’s.’
‘This is just the start. There’ll be more to come. Much more. We’re going to have an exhibit any museum in America would be envious of.’
Between the three of them, they transferred the coins from Hattie’s desk to Elle’s office in one go. After locking the safe, inconspicuously set in the wall behind a shelf, Elle stacked textbooks in front of it. A tennis ball in the corner of the shelf rolled towards her. She caught it as it fell off the edge. It had once been covered in felt, but floating in the North Atlantic, plus the effects of age and her constant squeezing of it during moments of introspection, had worn the fibre nearly bare.
‘Anything more I can do for you, Doctor?’ Charlie asked, standing in the doorway to the vestibule.
‘Don’t breathe a word of this,’ she said, depositing her empty bag on an old red leather armchair she had taken from her father’s den.
‘Mum’s the word. Promise.’
‘Thank you, Charlie. I’d be in dire straits without you.’
She closed her office door, his silhouette peering motionlessly through the smoked-glass windowpane.
‘You’re welcome,’ he said loudly with a sigh, before Elle watched him sulk away.
Drawing back her office curtains, she unlatched the window, lit a cigarette and watched the clouds boiling, flashes of lightning still cracking, lighting up the quad. Blowing her cigarette smoke outside, she turned to lean against the windowsill and tossed the old tennis ball into the air, caught it, then took stock of her office.
Books and papers were crammed into every available nook, untouched since she left. She wasn’t disorganised; a little chaos helped her thought process. In that particular moment, her thoughts were on how hugely suffocating academic life was.
The intercom on her desk buzzed. ‘It’s five o’clock, Dr Annenberg.’
Elle looked to the clock high up on the wall. So it was. Putting the tennis ball back on the shelf beside the safe, she pressed the reception button.
‘Go on home, Hattie. Take Charlie with you.’
‘He already left,’ she replied, and wished Elle a good evening.
Settling into her father’s armchair, she opened her bag, removing the ledger Beedham had given her. Leaning back, she kicked off her plimsolls, sheltering her mind from the storms both outside and in her head by re-examining the ledger’s contents. Nothing stood out. Not as yet.
A clap of thunder woke her. It was dark outside. Rubbing her eyes, she leaned forward and the ledger fell from her lap. As she stood to retrieve it, a lightning flash drew her attention to the windows.
Someone was there. Watching her through her second-floor window. Startled, she leaped back onto the chair. Feet curled up under her, she had to force out her breath and take in a few more before working up the stones to cautiously stand up and approach the window. Rain pelted against the glass. Another flash of lightning lit the quad, causing amorphous shadows to rise and fall from behind trees and fountains. She was spooked. But she couldn’t see anyone.
Suddenly, there was a whirl of movement beside the large bronze globe outside the bay windows of the library below. A student? They were known for doing sillier things than larking about in the pouring rain. Her eyes darted to the wall clock. It was one in the morning.
A shock of lightning came down close, followed by a boom that rattled the windows. She looked again, searching.
Whoever it was had disappeared.
Forcing caution from her mind, she hurried down the spiral stairs to the lobby, pushing open the door to the quad. It was chucking it down, wind howling through the courts and terraces. Prudence be damned, she thought, and she splashed through puddles on the wide flagstone terrace outside the hall, making her way towards the statue.
Lightning illuminated the quad once more. A clap of thunder rattled her teeth. Turning, she looked towards the archway leading away from the quad’s north end. An upright form sank behind a pillar supporting the archway.
She squinted, wiping rainwater from her eyes. It was no student. It was a man.
‘Who’s there?’ she shouted, voice lost to the wind. Another flash of lightning. No figure. Stepping under the arch for protection, the rain momentarily abating, she looked around.
The man was nowhere to be seen. The doors leading into the dormitory and masters’ hall were locked for the night. Instinctively, her eyes dropped to the concrete slab, as they always did when she passed this way. Carved into stone were the words Gateway of Friendship. Then she saw them. On the dry slab: wet footprints.
Someone had crossed through a puddle and stood right here, before turning to make their exit from the quad.
A student would know better than to stand on the slab. It was tradition to avoid it. Upperclassmen took delight in punishing plebs who made such a mistake.
Cracks of lightning flashed through the treeline beyond, revealing a figure running away. Elle hadn’t bothered to put her shoes on before dashing out of her office, and she realised then a pursuit through blinding rain wasn’t a wise idea. She shouted for him to stop, but he disappeared behind a fountain.
Shoes or no, her need to know if it was him who was watching her overwhelmed her usual common sense. Running after him, she paused where Academy and Institute Way met. Prudence was needed, but curiosity and determination won out. She reached the fountain, only to find the man had already gone. Behind it, down a steep embankment, was Lake Jonah – really a concrete-lined pond shaped like a whale. Beyond it was nothing but dense forest, criss-crossed by trails. There was no earthly reason anyone would be there at such an hour.
Yet more lightning. At the foot of the treeline across Lake Jonah she saw him, rain cape warding off the downpour. Bowler hat. Small, round spectacles over a gaunt face. Air of abstruseness.
Her voice echoed across the water and into the trees as she yelled, ‘Crimen!’
He stared at her, unmoving, before shouting back, as the thunder rolled away, ‘Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum.’
A frisson of terror stabbed her. Turning, her bare feet slipping on the wet grass, she toppled down the embankment, rolling across a narrow grass verge before sliding down the concrete edge of the lake.
Suddenly, she was underwater. Cold, black, submerged, back in Titanic’s flooding hold, the watertight door forced open by a sudden blast of seawater. Then she saw him. Balthasar’s adjutant. Bowler hat, round wire-rimmed spectacles, sawn-off shotgun in hand.
Surfacing, she twisted around to face the treeline. He was gone. Swimming desperately to the edge of the lake, her bare feet tried to find purchase on the sloping concrete sides. Twice she fell back into the water before dragging herself out on all fours to the grass verge.
Gaining her feet, head reeling from the onset of hypothermia, she forced her legs to carry her to the foot of the tall trees where she had seen him. Lightning revealed the entire length of the treeline. She was alone.
For a moment, she considered running blindly into the forest, hoping to pick up a trail in the darkness. But she needed to get out of the rain and dry off before she collapsed.
If the air got any colder, she could be dead by morning.
Elle walked across the lobby, shivering. It was just as she put her foot on the stairs to her office that she saw them on the limestone steps: wet shoe prints. Two sets.
Silently, she continued up the stairs, stopping abruptly when she heard a hollow thumping sound. From around the curve of the spiral bounced a little ball. She caught it. A tennis ball, with R.F. Downey & Co pressed into the worn felt. Her tennis ball. How had it come to find its way down the stairs?
At the second-floor landing, she opened a fireman’s provision box on the wall, trying to be quiet, but her shaking hands caused the glass pane in the door to rattle. Retrieving the axe from inside, her attention was
drawn along the landing, lightning streaks through the tall windows on the east wall revealing the door into the ethnology vestibule.
It was open.
She couldn’t remember if she had closed it earlier. Gripping the axe handle tightly, she tiptoed along the hallway, peeking carefully around the door frame. In the darkness she saw Hattie’s desk, askew. Reaching into the vestibule, her hand fell upon the light switch.
It clicked. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing. Electricity was out.
Entering the room, she approached her office door. It was slightly ajar, the lockset bouncing gently against the frame.
Someone was in her office.
With the head of the axe, she gently pushed the door. The windows were open, the wind causing the door to shudder.
A chaotic sight greeted her: the whole office tossed, the door to her safe ripped away and left lying beside her opened Gladstone on the floor. Taking a few cautious steps in, she tripped over her typewriter, which lay where it had been thrown.
As her hands broke her fall, she dropped the axe. It hit the typewriter’s return arm, a ding breaking the silence.
Struggling to regain her feet, a hand tapped her shoulder. She shrieked.
‘What on earth is going on in here, Eleanor?’
Her father stood behind her in his pyjamas, umbrella in one hand and electric torch in the other.
‘Father,’ she gasped, relief flooding her. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was worried,’ he replied. ‘Mother and I expected you home yesterday. I was up at silly o’clock for a cigar and noticed you hadn’t yet come in.’
‘I fell asleep,’ she replied. ‘In the armchair from your office.’
‘Always did like that chair,’ he mumbled. ‘Why are you all wet?’
‘I saw someone out on the quad. I went to investigate.’
He looked around her ransacked office.
‘Didn’t we teach you to pick up after yourself? Here, sit down. You’ve had a bad dream, is all.’
‘Father, I’ve been burgled,’ she replied, shivering.
Taking her by the shoulder, her father stood the footed brass lamp cockeyed against the armchair before sitting her down in it. He went to the small water closet off her office and retrieved a towel for her to dry her hair with. Finding a woollen blanket amid the debris, he wrapped it around her before going to her bookcase, righting a fallen bottle of rye, normally hidden behind a stack of ungraded student papers, and pouring shots into a pair of crystal tumblers.