Superstition

by David Ambrose

  The bones of that affair are that Wyatt and Cagliostro persuaded a certain Cardinal Rohan, who needed a political alliance with the queen, that they could arrange it for him. All he, the cardinal, had to do was purchase a very expensive diamond necklace on behalf of the queen that she thought it would be indiscreet to purchase herself-on account of such extravagance being bad PR with people starving in the streets, etc. The cardinal fell for it, and handed the necklace over to some mistress of Wyatt's who impersonated the queen in a secret meeting. There is a suggestion that Rohan might have been either drugged or hypnotized by Cagliostro to fall for this imposture. Needless to say, the necklace was never seen again.

  The idea had been that the cardinal, who was thought to be wealthy, would write off the money rather than look like a fool. But it turned out he was broke and couldn't pay the jeweler. When the shit hit the fan, Wyatt somehow got away scot free, while Cagliostro took the fall and went to jail. It may be they made some deal, with Wyatt using his (or his wife's) influence at court to get Cagliostro's sentence commuted to banishment. Thereafter Cagliostro went to Italy, and Wyatt stayed on in Paris with his long-suffering wife, until the revolution and her death.

  There is a suggestion, which I'm looking into, that he might have murdered his English wife, and possibly her brother, before returning to America. But nothing was ever proven.

  This guy sounds like the original all-American hero-right? Incidentally, if you're planning to write about him, it might be interesting to find out where his descendants are now and what they're called-and whether any of that fortune still exists. I'm having Jenny Sterns, who sometimes helps me out, do genealogical checks-assuming you're not going to nickel and dime me on this as you're in a hurry. Will keep you informed.

  Love, G.

  40

  Ward had his manservant prepare a lunch of omelettes and salad. Sam talked about the work of a researcher called Helmut Schmidt, who had used prerecorded random events in the kind of experiments that Joanna had seen demonstrated in the lab when Sam first showed her around. According to Schmidt's results it appeared that subjects were able to influence those random events retroactively: patterns generated months earlier appeared to correspond to an influence exerted only after, sometimes long after, they had been recorded. If true, Sam argued, such results mirrored in a small way what seemed to have happened with Adam.

  “There's an essay on time by the Buddhist writer Alan Watts that reflects what you're saying. He says that we tend to think of everything, including ourselves, as creations of the past, driven along by events that have already happened. But that's an illusion. It's not the present that comes out of the past, but the past that comes out of the present. We see it every day. For example, if I say, ‘The bark of a tree,’ you don't know what ‘bark’ means until I get to ‘tree.’ It could have been the ‘bark of a dog.’ Or take a line of poetry: ‘They went and told the sexton, and the sexton tolled the bell.’ You don't know what the first ‘told’ means, or even how it's spelled, until you get to ‘sexton.’ And you don't know that the second ‘tolled’ is any different until you get to ‘bell.’”

  “But the Adam we created in the present was a decent man,” Joanna protested, “so it was the past that changed him.”

  “We created someone who had to survive in the time and place we put him in,” Ward replied, “and we showed him how to do it.”

  “We didn't exactly teach him how to steal and kill,” she said.

  Sam put down his fork and leaned back, obviously having little appetite. “Don't you remember Maggie's unease about involving our nice, clean-living young Adam with undesirables like de Sade and Cagliostro? It looks like she had a point.”

  “My fault, I'm afraid,” Ward said. “I was the one who brought their names up.”

  “But that's just it,” Joanna said impatiently. “They were only names. How can names have that kind of power?”

  Ward gave another of his faint smiles. “It's been said that the heart of all magic is knowing the true names of things. If you know the true name of your enemy, you have power over him. And if you know the true names of the gods, they must lend you their power.”

  Joanna had placed her phone on the table next to her. Now it rang and she reached for it. Ghislaine's familiar, rapid-fire voice launched straight into the subject without preliminaries.

  “Okay, that family tree we talked about-Jenny's come up with some interesting names. One in particular. Very respectable, very old money.”

  Both men saw the color drain from Joanna's face as she listened, barely saying a word. When the conversation ended, she put the phone down and sat in silence, staring at her half-eaten omelette, saying nothing.

  “Joanna…? Darling…?”

  When she didn't respond, Sam reached out for her hand. She jumped at his touch.

  “What is it?” he asked, concerned.

  “I'm sorry…I'm all right…it's just…”

  She turned her face to him. He could see shock in her eyes. And fear.

  “Tell me.”

  “Adam's granddaughter-one of them-married into a family called Cazaubon. It cemented the merging of two very powerful banking families.”

  “Cazaubon,” Ward murmured. “I know that family-well, one branch of it anyway. Huguenots originally, fled from France in the late seventeenth century to escape persecution by the Catholics.”

  She turned her head and focused on him. “Do you know a Ralph Cazaubon?”

  “Ralph Cazaubon?” Ward thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don't believe I do.”

  “In his thirties, obviously has money-it must be the same family.”

  “Who is this Ralph Cazaubon?” Sam asked, a note of suspicion in his voice now.

  Joanna turned back to him, oblivious of anything except the chilling sense of unease that had been creeping over her since Ghislaine spoke the name.

  “He was at the grave,” she said. “I'd met him the day before, by accident. But the next day, Sunday morning, he was there when I found Adam's grave.”

  She continued to stare at Sam, though no longer really focusing on him as the implications of what she was saying compounded in her mind. “He even phoned me this morning.”

  “Phoned you?” Sam echoed. “What for?”

  “He wanted to…say hello.” She made a vague gesture, feeling guilty suddenly, as though she was hiding something. “He asked if we could have lunch…”

  She was going to say that she'd refused, but Sam spoke before she could get the words out.

  “Do you have his number?” he asked.

  “No, I…it's in my apartment.”

  “He must be listed.” He reached for her phone. “May I?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He dialed information, gave the name and the street and the number of the house, which Joanna found she could remember. There was nobody of that name listed at that address. He put the phone down.

  “Maybe it's listed under a different name,” she said. “He's only just moved in.”

  Sam thought a moment, then got abruptly to his feet. “I'm going over there.”

  “I'll come with you.”

  They gathered up their things quickly, thanked Ward for lunch, then asked almost as an afterthought if he'd like to accompany them. Sensing perhaps that it would be better if they did this alone, he said he needed to get some rest before the evening. They confirmed that they would all meet at the lab at six.

  Fifteen minutes later they got out of a cab on Park Avenue, preferring to walk the last few yards rather than make a slow crawl around two blocks in the one-way system. They looked for numbers to work out which side of the street the house must be on. Having determined that it must be on the south side, they moved to the edge of the sidewalk and waited for a break in the traffic. Just as they were about to step off the curb, Joanna grabbed Sam's arm hard enough to make him almost lose his balance.

  “What on earth…?” he started to say, but then saw she had a ha
nd to her mouth as though to stifle a gasp and was staring at something across the street.

  He followed her gaze, and saw an elderly couple getting into a smart black town car while a driver held open the door for them. They were both short, the woman wearing the kind of expensive fur coat that would draw stares of disapproval and even open hostility in many places these days, and the man a camel-hair coat and black fur hat. They were glimpsed for only a second before they disappeared into the car's interior.

  Perplexed by Joanna's reaction, Sam turned to her, intending to ask again what was wrong. But her gaze was so strangely intense that he remained silent, watching with her as the car drove off. As it passed them, he discerned two vague silhouettes gazing impassively ahead; then it was swallowed up into the flow of traffic going west toward the park.

  Still she clung on to him in fear, her eyes fixed on the disappearing car. He had to speak her name twice before she looked at him.

  “Joanna? Joanna, what is it? Who were they?”

  “Ellie and Murray Ray.” Her voice was flat, like someone in shock, unable to connect with what was happening.

  “Ellie and Murray Ray? The couple from Camp Starburst?”

  She nodded, mute.

  “But you told me he was dead.”

  “Yes.”

  He paused, taking in what he'd just heard. “So obviously she lied to you. That first day we met, you and I, the old woman had just told you he was dead. Obviously she lied.”

  Joanna shook her head. “I checked. I had someone call the hospital.” She looked at him, her eyes seeming to search his face yet unable to focus. “Murray Ray died.”

  They continued looking at each other, neither knowing what to say.

  “Then that wasn't him,” Sam said, suddenly and decisively. “We were…how many yards? Twenty? Thirty? It probably wasn't her either. You couldn't be sure of recognizing anybody at this distance. You saw two people who looked a little like them, and you imagined it was them.”

  She was silent, still pale and clearly shaken, but he felt her grip slacken on his arm.

  “Yes, you're right,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “I must have been mistaken. It was just so weird for a second.”

  He put his arm protectively around her, and they crossed the street. They walked briskly past the spot where they'd seen the couple getting into their car. Joanna turned to look, as though the ghost of the event somehow still lingered in the air. Sam's attention was on the houses they were passing, calculating which one up ahead must be the number they were looking for.

  “One-three-nine…right here,” he said. They slowed outside a big brownstone similar to all the others on the street-except that the windows of this one were shuttered, the paintwork drab and peeling, the whole place exuding an air of neglect as though it hadn't been lived in for years.

  “This can't be it,” she said.

  “It has to be. There's one-three-seven on one side of it, one-four-one on the other. Are you sure it was this street?”

  “Positive.”

  “Well, if anybody's living here, they want to keep it a secret.”

  There was a clatter from the basement area. Two cats scuttled out of a garbage can that lay on its side amid an accumulation of debris that nobody had cleaned out for a long time. The basement window had bars set into the wall and wooden shutters inside like the rest of the house.

  “I told you,” she said feebly, “he's just moving in. When I met him on Saturday he was buying curtains.”

  Sam looked up at the house, its stonework streaked and stained from long neglect, its windows grimy and unwashed. “It's going to be a while,” he said, “before anybody needs curtains for this place.”

  41

  Is this going to take long?” Roger asked. He was subdued, more so than Joanna had ever seen him.

  “Not much more than an hour, I would think,” Ward said.

  They were in Adam's room in the basement of the lab, all of them except Pete, who had not yet returned from his apartment-hunting. He had promised to be there by six, but it was now ten after.

  Roger had listened to the story of the grave, sitting impassively on the old sofa with his arms stretched out along the back. He made no comment apart from a nod of acknowledgment. Nor did the coda about the empty house provoke a response. He seemed resigned to any and whatever fresh absurdities were presented by the situation they were in.

  “So now we try exorcism,” he said, and gave a loud sniff-whether out of disapproval or the beginnings of a cold was hard to tell, but he produced a green and white spotted handkerchief and blew his nose loudly.

  “Do you remember what you said when Drew talked about exorcism?” Joanna asked him. “You said something about complementarity-two ways of describing the same thing.”

  “Yes, I do remember,” Roger said quietly, tucking the handkerchief back in the breast pocket of his old but immaculate tweed suit. “I remember very well-though I'm beginning to think that limiting ourselves to only two ways of describing what's happening here may be unduly modest.”

  Sam looked at his watch. “Time Pete was here. He swore he wouldn't be late.” He walked over to where new video and audio equipment had been set up-paid for, Joanna reflected, by Around Town magazine-and began to check it over.

  “By the way,” he said, almost as an afterthought, “I'm proposing to record this-it's still a legitimate part of the experiment. Ward has no objections. I trust neither of you has.”

  Roger waved a hand indifferently. Joanna said of course she hadn't. She watched Sam as he bent over plugs and switches and control units with tiny flickering lights. There was a hunch to his shoulders, a concentrated smallness in his movements, like a man driven in on himself by circumstances but determined to fight back. She felt a sudden surge of tenderness for him, an impulse to put her arms around him, to tell him she believed in him, and loved him. But she held back. It wasn't the time.

  Sam looked at his watch again. “Almost twenty past. Where the hell's Pete?”

  A phone rang harshly, close enough to where Joanna stood to startle her. It was an old-style wall phone that had always been there, but which she had never seen used. As she was the person closest to it, she instinctively reached out to answer it. Then, equally instinctively, she checked herself and looked over toward Sam in case he preferred to answer it himself. When he made no move, she picked up the handset and said hello.

  There was bad static on the line with a voice behind it that she couldn't make out.

  “I'm sorry,” she said, “I can't hear you. Maybe you should call back.”

  The static cleared slightly. She thought she recognized Pete's voice, but couldn't make out what he was saying.

  “Pete? Is that you? Where are you?”

  She glanced at the others in the room, all watching her, and gestured that she still couldn't hear.

  “What?” she said into the mouthpiece. “Say it again.”

  His words came more slowly now, carefully formed, deliberate. Yet still she couldn't understand them.

  “My what…?” she said, then repeating what she heard, “My…a tarn…can…I'm sorry, Pete, I just can't…”

  Suddenly Sam was at her side, taking the phone from her. In his other hand he held a small cassette recorder like the one she used for interviews.

  “Pete, this is Sam. Just say it, Pete. Say what you're trying to say.”

  He started the recorder and held it to the earpiece as he listened. The others watched with an odd fascination, sensing that something strange was happening but having no idea what. Even Joanna, though she was almost as close to the phone as Sam, couldn't hear anything beyond an incoherent murmur coming through the static.

  Sam kept the phone and the recorder close to his ear until it seemed that what he had been listening to had ended.

  “Pete…?” he said. “Pete, are you still there…?”

  He waited a moment more, then switched off the recorder and hung up the phone.


  “What did he say?” Roger demanded when Sam didn't move or speak. “Where is he?”

  Sam rewound the tape. They all heard the high-pitched twittering of a voice in fast reverse. When it came to a stop he pressed play, and turned up the volume.

  The static was still there, all but drowning out the voice. But it was undeniably Pete's voice, or one very like it. And the words were clear, though ostensibly nonsense.

  “Maya…tan…kee…noh…maya…tan…kee…noh…maya…tan…”

  Joanna saw Ward Riley's face grow tense and the color drain from it as he listened. It seemed as though an understanding of what he was hearing was slowly dawning on him-not certainty, perhaps, but a terrible suspicion. His hand went to his pocket and was visibly unsteady as he withdrew the envelope he'd shown them at lunch.

  While Pete's thin and tinny voice continued to chant out the strange sounds from the tape recorder, Ward tore open the envelope and unfolded the piece of paper it contained.

  His eyes ran over the lines written on it several times. Then he swayed slightly. Joanna thought he was about to faint, but he got a grip on himself, took a deep, unsteady breath, crumpled the piece of paper he was holding, and let it fall to the floor.

  Without a word he started for the stairs, walking like a man-it was the only comparison that came into Joanna's mind-who had just received a sentence of death.

  “Ward…?”

  He paid no attention to Sam's voice.

  “Ward, what is it…?”

  This time he paused, turning to look back at the three of them. He threw out his arms slightly and let them fall back to his sides. It was a gesture of despair.

  “There's no point,” he said, “not now. It's over. I'm sorry.”

  He turned away and continued up the stairs. No one called him back or tried to stop him. There was a terrible finality in the moment.

  Sam picked up the crumpled piece of paper. Roger moved across and peered over his arm at it.