Quieter than Sleep

by Joanne Dobson

  “Margaret.” I decided to risk speech. “What’s going on here?”

  Margaret narrowed her eyes. She was dressed as she had been at the library, loose gray jacket swinging open over brown crewneck sweater and tweed pants. Her salt-and-pepper hair was unkempt, and her gray eyes were fixed on my face. I remembered seeing her work out on the Nautilus machine, the unexpectedly well developed muscles of her arms and legs gleaming with a faint film of sweat. With that memory, she became even more menacing—a figure of strange camouflaged capacities intent on playing out some murderous agenda that was only now beginning to come clear to me.

  “I know what you’re doing here.” Only the madness in her eyes inflected her words. “You’re trying to destroy her, aren’t you? That is your sole purpose in being here, isn’t it? To destroy her completely.”

  I thought I knew to whom she was referring, but I was afraid to risk a guess. “Who?” I croaked.

  “Don’t play innocent with me. You know who.”

  I gulped. “You mean—Emily? Emily Dickinson?”

  Margaret’s eyes lost a fraction of their hardness. I had spoken the magic name. Her gun, however, remained steady. It was pointed directly at my head.

  “She appeared to me, you know.” She spoke in a tone of intimate disclosure.

  “Appeared?”

  “Yes. Do you doubt that?”

  “Oh, no. No, I don’t.” It was the gun I didn’t doubt. The gun was a palpable fact, and it gave credibility to anything she wanted to say.

  “She appeared to me in her bedroom.”

  “Her bedroom? You mean, at the Dickinson Homestead?”

  I’d been there. Amherst wasn’t far from Enfield, and one of the first things I’d done after moving to the area was to sign up for a tour of the Dickinson house. I’d found Emily’s room poignant, with its artifacts of the poet’s life—the white dress, the shawl, the sleigh bed—but I hadn’t been overcome as one of my fellow visitors had. A scrawny woman with the worst perm I’d ever seen had actually swayed and started to pass out upon entering the poet’s bedroom. She had to be helped to a seat in the hallway and revived with a glass of water. “Ohhhh,” she kept saying. “Ohhhhh. Ohhhhhh.”

  The tour guide, a knowledgeable woman with white hair and no-nonsense country clothes, had glanced at me sideways and rolled her eyes. Like Elvis, Emily Dickinson had her cultists. I’d smiled at the guide. She was handling the situation as if she’d done it before.

  “Yes, at Emily’s home.” Margaret’s plain face had taken on a look of mystical rapture. “I saw her there. I saw her. Have you been to her room?”

  I nodded, encouraged that she was talking to me. Maybe I could form a Dickinson bond with her, and she wouldn’t kill me. Feeble hope, but maybe at least I could buy some time.

  “Do you remember the mirror in the bedroom?”

  I nodded again. An ancient mirror with a dark, crazed surface hung over the dresser.

  “Did you look in it? Really look?”

  “I—I don’t know. I suppose I did….”

  “Thrice….” Her voice became dreamy. “Upon three different occasions—I looked into that mirror and I saw … a face that was not my own.”

  A cold shudder ran down my spine.

  I nodded again but she wasn’t really seeing me.

  “And that’s how I knew that she had chosen me.”

  “Chosen you?”

  “To be her prophet. As Christ chose John the Baptist. To cry in the wilderness.”

  “Margaret.” I wasn’t above hypocrisy if it would save my life. “How wonderful….”

  But the sound of my voice snapped her back to the present moment. Her eyes narrowed. Her gaze hardened. “But you don’t believe that, do you, Karen? This is what you want, isn’t it?” She reached into the pocket of her jacket. “This is what you’ve been looking for. This is what would demolish her.”

  From her pocket she pulled a sheet of thick, old-fashioned writing paper that had been folded over twice. Margaret held the paper by the edges with the tips of two fingers, as if it were somehow contaminated. If my speculations were correct, this would be the missing document from the “Correspondent Unknown” folder.

  The straight narrow line of Margaret’s thin lips was replaced by a twist of the mouth suggesting personal hatred. The blue steel gun never wavered. She unfolded the sheet of writing paper and thrust it in my face, but as I moved to take hold of it, she snatched it away. “Just read; don’t touch,” she hissed.

  I looked at the paper. It was a letter, undated, in brownish ink on a sheet of cream-colored, blue-ruled stationery. The handwriting was fine, flowing, right-slanting, with distinctive looping capital letters—oddly familiar. With a sudden lurch of the heart I recognized it as Emily Dickinson’s. I was right! I looked up at Margaret, my mouth open with amazement.

  “Twenty years and more I pored over those poems as if they were sacred texts, trying to comprehend—to encompass—Emily’s relationship with the Almighty. This was my contribution to the ages—an exegesis of the ultimate mystery as revealed to a sanctified mind. I struggled with each word, as if it alone were the final barrier between me and revelation. Finally, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, I overcame. And I knew that Emily Dickinson was a saint of God. His emissary on earth. And—that she is not dead.”

  “No?”

  “No. Not dead.” Margaret’s dun-colored eyes gleamed. “She lives in the shadow world. In the dark windows. In the world behind the mirrors. And thus I began my sojourn in the wilderness….”

  Her gun hand wavered, as if she were overcome with emotion. I tensed myself for action. But Margaret steadied herself. Her eyes became glittering slits. Her mouth twisted. “And, then, after my long preparation, he comes up with this.” She shook the letter in my face.

  “Randy found this?” My voice was no more than a whisper. “He found a Dickinson letter? In the Beecher archives, right?”

  “Yessss.” She actually hissed. “The destroyer! He was so proud of himself, strutting, like an arrogant banty rooster. Cock of the walk. He told me about it. He thought I would be impressed. But I saw the implications right away—” She broke off.

  “Read it,” she commanded. I did.

  Mr. Beecher, Sir—

  Angels are few. And those—Beyond the Mound.

  Satan flew once. And you Master—bear on silken Wing. Who should Know but I—Lucifer had a Secret. He was scarred too, Master—only, on the Eyes. They opened, he spoke—and he Flew. Daisy’s roots clutch Stone. Angels—too—Thunder from on High. Dear heart—unless you Speak—this is the last.

  Your—Daisy

  My God! This was a letter from Emily Dickinson to her “Master”! Randy had discovered a fourth Master letter, and it had been written to Henry Ward Beecher! Dickinson’s Master was Henry Ward Beecher! This was what Randy had tried to tell me. This was the lethal secret he had blabbed to poor little Bonnie Weimer.

  In spite of the circumstances, I yearned to hold the letter in my hand—a material connection with the woman whose poetry was my passion. The longing for contact was so strong it was almost erotic, as if Dickinson’s hand could reach out of the dusty past and for a brief ecstatic instant caress mine. I glanced up at Margaret, not knowing what to say or do. What did this letter mean to her? One thing was clear to me now: I had stumbled into the middle of a murderous psychotic delusion.

  Margaret placed the letter carefully on an end table by the couch. The gun stayed aimed at me. “I wanted you to see this—before I destroy it.”

  “You can’t destroy it!” I blurted out. “It belonged to her, to Emily. She touched it. Her fingers were right there, where yours are now.” For an instant my concern was more with the preservation of the letter than with the preservation of my own life. But only for an instant.

  “It’s a fraud.” Her colorless eyes were fixed on my face. “A fraud and a delusion. Emily loved only in the spirit. She never knew the filth of the flesh. No man touched her. God was her
Master. God and God alone.”

  Her eyes glittered. In them, I could see insane purpose. I knew then that she would go to any lengths to destroy this letter, to obliterate any memory of it from the earth. Including mine. I could feel sweat breaking out on my forehead and upper lip. Sweat was rolling down the middle of my back. I thought about Amanda, and her image gave me strength. I knew I had to do something to save myself. But what? My usual weapons of wit and words weren’t going to get me out of this alive.

  “Poor Karen Pelletier.” It was the first time I had ever seen Margaret smile. It was an unnerving sight. “She’s about to have a regrettable accident.” She was now perusing the room, as if checking out its lethal possibilities. Her eyes roved, but the gun held steady.

  “Hah!” With a swift movement, she was at Charlotte’s desk, swiping a pile of a half dozen or so books into a heap on the carpet. Dropping into an easy crouch, she kept the gun trained on me while she arranged the books in a loose heap, pages fanned open.

  “These old houses,” she said. “They’re dry as tinder, aren’t they? After a century or so, these old wood floors and walls … I imagine it wouldn’t take much to set one off. Poor Karen Pelletier …” Her smile had become a lunatic grimace in a stony mask. “She’s going to die in a tragic house fire.” My blood turned to ice. Margaret was crumpling papers from the desk and throwing them on her ghastly hearth. I had to do something. Maybe, now, while her attention was diverted …

  I made a sudden dash for the door. A shot rang out. I froze as a bullet splintered the woodwork near my cheek.

  She seemed totally crazed now. Her eyes were fixed, the pupils dilated. “I—don’t want to shoot you,” I breathed a sigh of deluded relief, but she went on. “I’d rather knock you out before you burn. I don’t want to leave a bullet in your body. This is going to be an accident. Enfield College is going to have another tragic loss.” She treated me to a humorless grin. With the gun she motioned me back into the center of the room, and I obeyed. With the clear, precise, absurd detail of extreme situations, I noticed that I stood next to the table on which Charlotte kept her three-volume first edition of Jane Eyre. Its red cloth covers and faded gold lettering reminded me of happier times in this comfortable, book-lined room. Poor Charlotte. She was going to lose her home. Poor Karen. She was going to lose….

  “Don’t—move—again.” From a jacket pocket, Margaret pulled out a flat red-and-white can with a narrow pointed tip. Appalled, I watched her squirt paint thinner copiously over the pile of books and papers. With an added twist to her ghastly smile, Margaret directed one long, last squirt at my eyes. I gasped and tried to dodge the reeking liquid, but a sharp jerk of Margaret’s gun hand brought me up short, and the flammable fluid sloshed over my hair and shoulder. I could feel liquid dripping down my right arm, off my fingers. As I froze, I thought I heard a noise in the dining room, across the hall. A slight scratching sound. Charlotte’s cat, I decided. Then I remembered Charlotte didn’t have a cat. In my terror I must be imagining things. Margaret tossed the empty can onto the drenched heap of books. I thought about how it would explode into tiny lethal fragments in the intense heat of the fire.

  With a peculiar grimace of gratification, Margaret took the Dickinson letter in her left hand and rolled it into a long narrow cylinder. Then she twisted it tightly between her fingers and thumb. “Emily would call this a lamp-lighter,” she said in her flat voice, and smiled again. She pulled out a yellow lighter, flicked it on, touched the flame to the end of the twisted paper. It blazed up instantly. Her eyes never left mine as she crouched, gun steady, to light the pile of paper and books.

  What it came down to, then, was whether I would rather die by bullet or by flame.

  It was no contest.

  Swiftly, I reached over to the table at my elbow, grabbed a volume of Jane Eyre, and hurled it at Margaret with all my might. The book hit her square in the chest. She emitted a sound somewhere between a grunt and a cough as, startled, she lost her balance.

  I took a few swift steps toward the door as Margaret dropped the flaming letter. With a tremendous whoosh, the papers in the center of the room ignited.

  Regaining equilibrium, Margaret whirled toward me and fired the gun. A searing pain invaded my left shoulder.

  As I reeled back from the impact, an amazing vision met my eyes. On the far side of the rising flames, in the elaborately arched doorway of Charlotte’s living room, my library tablemate crouched. Her red hair was disordered, her hoop earring swinging, her gun steadied in a sturdy hand. With her left hand, she motioned me sharply down. “Police!” she yelled. “Freeze!”

  I fell flat as three shots rang out. In the seconds before Margaret’s body toppled heavily on mine, I recognized under the crazy red hair, the wild earrings, and the garish makeup, the plain, reliable features of Piotrowski’s Trooper Schultz.

  Twenty-eight

  PIOTROWSKI was sitting by my bed when I regained consciousness in the ICU of Massachusetts General Hospital. He was wearing his baggy gray suit jacket over his atrocious green-and-red sweater. I blinked and smiled loopily at him. He was a beautiful sight.

  The lieutenant’s expression was solemn. “Dr. Pelletier,” he said, “Dr. Pelletier, I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry?” I couldn’t think quickly enough. “Sorry? What’s wrong? Is something wrong? Amanda—?”

  “No! No, everything’s all right—now. I’m just sorry for putting you in such jeopardy. If I had only known …”

  But I couldn’t really remember having been in jeopardy. My head throbbed and everything was a little fuzzy, including Piotrowski’s anxious face. The last thing I remembered was walking up to Charlotte’s porch and inserting the key in the lock. I figured he needed to know about that. “The … streetlight … was out …” I informed him, owlishly.

  He smiled gently. “Yes, I know.”

  “That’s enough, Lieutenant.” A thin woman in a white coat moved into my field of vision. “We need to have a little rest right now.”

  I spent a week in Massachusetts General being treated for concussion, a gunshot wound in my left shoulder, and minor burns on my right hand. I never did remember how I got the burns. When I fell, did I try to grab the flaming Dickinson letter? I couldn’t have been that stupid. Could I? But, in spite of how battered I was, I was lucky; I was alive. Margaret Smith was dead. Trooper Schultz had shot her twice in the chest. One bullet had penetrated her heart, and she’d died immediately. Margaret’s bullet grazed the officer’s cheek, but I hadn’t known about that. When Margaret fell, her head crashed heavily into mine. Unconscious, I’d missed the fire trucks, police cars, ambulances, the whole cockamamy sound-and-light show of sirens and flashing lights. I figured Amanda would never forgive me: I had stuck it out for three interminable acts, and then missed the thrilling denouement. But at least Charlotte’s house had been spared, as had her Brontë first edition. Thanks to Trooper Schultz’s quick action, the flames had been confined to part of the living room, and the Jane Eyre volume had evidently skittered into the hall after it caromed off Margaret’s chest.

  When I regained consciousness for good, the doctors stopped babbling about “talk and die” head injuries, moved me out of the ICU, and let Piotrowski at me again. This time I remembered most of it. He took me slowly through the entire encounter, bit by bit by bit. It was all news to him. Trooper Schultz hadn’t come on the scene until the minute before I hurled Jane Eyre at Margaret and the pile of books burst into flame. She hadn’t seen Margaret grab me because the porch was so dark, but she had gotten suspicious when she saw me pull down the living room blinds before I turned on the light. That had seemed strange to her: Why would I walk all the way through a dark room and risk crashing into furniture? Schultz had decided to conduct a quiet investigation. It had taken her some time to pick the locks on Charlotte’s kitchen door. When she finally got into the house, she heard Margaret’s first shot and was outside the living room door in time to prevent my death and incineration. But just bar
ely.

  I must have had a flicker of consciousness in the Emergency Room, because I had a vivid memory flash of seeing Trooper Schultz bedraggled and anxious, her right cheek bandaged, her dyed red hair disheveled, her hoop earring gone. I thought now that she must have been terrified she’d flubbed the job. She must have thought her charge was headed straight for the boneyard.

  I told Piotrowski about the manuscript letter and about Margaret’s deranged obsession with Emily Dickinson. It was coming back to me in flashes, and I wasn’t terrifically coherent. But he was very patient. The first time he interviewed me, he had Sergeant Daniels with him to take detailed notes. Then, as I became clearer in my mind, he came back alone two or three times to fill in details. I began to look forward to these conversations; they helped keep the nightmares at bay.

  What we came up with was this: Researching Beecher’s papers, Randy Astin-Berger had recognized the handwriting on the Dickinson letter. He knew his find was a scholarly coup, clearing up a literary mystery over a century old. Randy must have made a copy and kept it from the scholarly world as he thought about how best to publicize it. At the Christmas party, I conjectured to Piotrowski, he got smashed and started dropping hints. When I was too inattentive to pick up on them he got frustrated—”In more ways than one, I bet,” Piotrowski broke in. Then he blushed, obviously afraid he’d offended me.

  “Probably,” I responded. “He had a low threshold.”

  Randy got frustrated, I went on, and disclosed his find to Margaret. She had, as she’d told me, seen the implications instantly. If Emily Dickinson had had a love affair with Henry Ward Beecher, and it were proven, then Margaret’s passion for Saint Emily was groundless, her endless years of work were all in vain; the Emily Dickinson the world would know would not be her Emily, the New England Nun/Holy Virgin/Prophet of God she had constructed in her theological deliberations on Dickinson’s poetry. Her life’s work would have been wasted. Her life’s love would have been all a long, empty dream.