Into the Dark

by Peter Abrahams

  Ingrid heard the whining sound again. It seemed to come right from the sheep head, almost made her jump. At that point parts of her, maybe led by her feet, had had enough. They tried to take over, race her right out of that room, out of The Cottage, all the way back home. Ingrid got a grip, mastered those rebellious parts, and merely backed away into the hall.

  She walked by the back door, glancing out the round window and seeing only the night. Next came a closed door. Ingrid put her ear to it. Silence. Slow and cautious, she turned the knob, pushed the door open, found herself in the kitchen. The fruit on the table was all rotten. She waved her hand at the hovering fruit flies and they vanished.

  Ingrid went to the corner, crouched down by the dog bowl. Empty. She took off her mitten and ran her finger along the bottom, felt dampness. And what was this? Clinging to her fingertip, a single dog hair.

  She examined it by the light of the old-fashioned oil lamp: a thick sort of hair, dark brown in color. Nigel wasn’t exactly dark brown in color: He had a tweedy coat, like a Scottish heath, Mom had said, whatever that was. Could a dark brown hair like this be part of his tweedy coat? Ingrid didn’t know. She was still thinking about that when she heard the whining sound again. Where was it coming from? She saw another door leading from the kitchen, with stairs rising beyond it.

  Ingrid took the oil lamp and climbed the stairs. At the top she found a bathroom flanked by two bedrooms, each with a low ceiling and a narrow bed. One had a dressing table with a mirror, hairbrush, and framed photograph of a smiling Dieter Meinhof with his arm around the hawk-nosed woman. She had wild hair and was showing her teeth, although it couldn’t be called smiling. Mrs. Meinhof’s a real witch. They were all afraid of her when they were kids.

  Sailing photographs hung on the walls of the second bedroom, huge ocean yachts with Cyrus Ferrand at the helm in every one. Half a dozen trophies stood on a desk. Ingrid picked one up: MAJOR CYRUS FERRAND: CHAMPION.

  She opened the top drawer, saw a check lying on a bunch of papers. Ingrid held the check to the light: a check to Cyrus Ferrand from Bank of America dated the day before for $1,243,799.54; an attached Post-it note read: Quarterly Dividends. Ingrid was replacing it when she noticed a newspaper clipping in the back of the drawer. She pulled it out.

  Not one clipping but three, stapled together at the top left-hand corner, all from The Echo. Ingrid was familiar with each one: CONSERVATION AGENT FOUND MURDERED; ARREST IN THE DEATH OF CONSERVATION AGENT; MURDER WEAPON IDENTIFIED. What interested her now were the comments and markings she saw in the margins, red-pen comments and markings in a spiky hand that pressed hard, sometimes poking right through the paper.

  In the margin of CONSERVATION AGENT FOUND MURDERED, beside the line about the identity of the victim and the location of the body, were the words DAMN IT TO HELL! Was this Cyrus Ferrand’s writing? Ingrid pawed through the drawer, discovered his signature on a letter to some stockbroker: His writing, no question. Had Cyrus Ferrand known Mr. Thatcher? Had they been friends? How else to explain his reaction to the news?

  On the second clipping—ARREST IN THE DEATH OF CONSERVATION AGENT—beside Grampy’s picture, he’d written only this: ??

  And on the third—MURDER WEAPON IDENTIFIED—there were three red exclamation marks: !!! They came at the bottom of the article, just after this sentence: Mr. Hill was issued a Springfield rifle of that type during World War II and Army records contain no evidence that he ever returned it.

  !!!

  Ingrid folded the clippings with care and put them into her jacket pocket. They were evidence, links in a chain. But evidence of what? Think, Griddie, think. But no thoughts came, not even the feeblest little notion.

  And then came the whine again, very faint, almost inaudible; but rising from somewhere below.

  Ingrid closed the drawer and left the room, carrying the oil lamp. She went downstairs and in that back hall, outside the kitchen, saw something hanging on a hook, something long and thin with a leather grip that she hadn’t noticed before. For a moment or two she didn’t know what it was. And then she did: a whip. The lash hung down, the last ten or twelve inches coiling on the floor.

  It wasn’t particularly cold in The Cottage, but all at once Ingrid felt colder than she had outside; her teeth even chattered a little. The whine? Yes, once more, rising from below, beyond doubt. Ingrid walked down the hall, came to another door. She opened it, held out the oil lamp. Its light, not strong, drove the shadows back a few feet, revealing a rough, unfinished staircase, steeply descending.

  Ingrid went down, down to a damp-smelling basement with an earthen floor, cement-block walls, and big shadowy shapes like furnaces and hot water heaters. The light from the oil lamp gleamed dully on a metal ring in the far wall. She went closer, her little light pushing at the gloom, revealing a thick chain attached to the ring, hanging down to the floor, just enough chain to reach—

  Oh, no.

  Just enough chain to hook onto the collar of a dog, lying in a pool of darkness; not enough chain to let him lower his head quite to the floor.

  “Nigel!”

  She fell to her knees beside him, set the lamp on the floor. He looked up at her, his big brown eyes full of some unhappy story he could never tell.

  “Poor Nigel.” She patted him. He thumped his tail on the floor, but just once, and not hard at all. How skinny he was! And what was this? Something over his face? A…a muzzle?

  A muzzle. Anger surged through her. Ingrid was angrier than she’d ever been in her life, shaking with it. She tore off the muzzle, flung it across the room, and went to work on the chain with trembling fingers, trying to unfasten it from Nigel’s collar. At that moment a door opened up above, and footsteps sounded on the floorboards.

  twenty-four

  INGRID WENT STILL, but Nigel did not. His whole body started shaking. Ingrid stroked him, at the same time trying to get that chain off his collar. The footsteps moved overhead, shoe heels landing hard. Overhead might be the kitchen. Uh-oh—whoever it was might notice that—

  Ingrid heard a voice, quite clearly, a woman’s voice from above. Voices carried through walls and floors like that at Grampy’s too, not much insulation in old houses. The woman said, “Strange. Didn’t I leave a…?”

  Silence.

  An oil lamp; and there it was, on the floor beside Ingrid. She pushed it closer to Nigel, worked frantically at the chain, hooked to his collar in some difficult way. Why wouldn’t it come—

  The chain came free; came free, all right, but swung slowly back toward the cement-block wall. Ingrid grabbed at it, just missing. The chain struck the wall, with a sound somewhere between a thud and a clang. But not very loud, surely not carrying as far as—

  More movement above, quicker now. The woman, her voice rising—not at all a musical voice—called, “Fritz?”

  Fritz? Who was Fritz?

  The woman spoke again, her tone now sugary in a sickening sort of way, “Are you misbehaving down there, Fritzie? Must I remind you what happens to bad dogs?”

  Nigel whined, a whimpering, helpless sound. Ingrid never would have thought him capable of a sound like that. “Sh,” she said, very quietly.

  “You know how I hate that wretched whining,” the woman called. After that a pause; Nigel’s ears pricked up just a little, as though waiting to hear something. And then it came: crack!—that sharp explosive kind of crack made only by a whip. Nigel cringed.

  A light went on at the top of the stairs. He cringed some more. A shadow, the shadow of a big woman, loomed down the stairs. Ingrid glanced around, saw a door behind her. She picked up the oil lamp, opened the door: not a door to the outside and escape, but a deep storage room, full of junk. A hard heel clacked on the top stair.

  There was nowhere else to go. Ingrid stepped into the storage room. “Nigel.” She breathed the name. He heard her—she could see that in his eyes—but was too scared to move. Ingrid put down the lamp, hurried to Nigel, took him by the collar, and dragged him inside. As she closed th
e door, she heard those hard footsteps coming down.

  Ingrid noticed a space between the bottom of the door and the floor, wide enough for light to leak out. She turned, lowered her head over the lamp, about to blow out the flame. As she did, her gaze fell on an object standing in the corner: a rifle. And not just any rifle, but an old-fashioned-looking rifle with a brown wooden stock and a skinny black scope mounted on the top, just like the one in the picture Mr. Tulkinghorn had showed her. Was this the Springfield sniper gun that had vanished from Grampy’s tent on the night of the surrender of Bataan, the same night Cyrus Ferrand had made his escape on a commandeered fishing boat? The gun Grampy had never returned, because he no longer had it? The gun that now, so many years later, had been used to murder Mr. Thatcher? But why? Why would Cyrus Ferrand want to kill the conservation agent? Had Mr. Thatcher been bothering the Ferrands too? Wouldn’t the Ferrands, with all the lawyers they could afford, end up getting their own way like they always—

  “Now we will discover what happens to whining dogs.”

  Ingrid blew out the light. For a few moments she was completely blind, down in the basement storage room of The Cottage, Nigel quivering beside her.

  “Fritz?”

  Ingrid heard a soft click, the kind made by a switch, and a ribbon of light appeared under the closet door. More footsteps, muffled on the dirt floor. “What is going—?” Chain links clanked together. Pause. Then: “How did such a stupid animal manage to—What is this? Your muzzle? Bad. Bad. Very bad.”

  Footsteps approached. Nigel shook harder. Sh, sh. Ingrid didn’t say that out loud, of course, didn’t even breathe it this time, just thought sh with all her might, hoping the thought would leap somehow into Nigel’s head, keep him quiet.

  The toes of two shoes appeared in the ribbon of light under the door—not shoes, more like boots, black leather boots with pointy ends. The voice came again, right outside. “You have a friend, perhaps?” Ingrid heard a strange scratching sound, maybe the woman running her fingernail over the door. She pressed her hand on Nigel’s back, thought, sh, sh, oh please sh. Another pause, this one longer. “And the lamp? What dog can make off with a burning lamp?”

  The pointy toes crept back, out of sight. Footsteps retreated. The woman was thinking about that lamp; Ingrid could feel it. Thoughts like: where was it? did she really leave it on the table? or maybe somewhere else? A boot heel came down on a wooden stair. The woman was on her way back up. She was going to double-check, and that would take a minute or two, maybe enough time to find a window and—

  From out of the blue—and for no good reason at this, of all moments, when things were actually starting to look a bit better—Nigel let out a long, high-rising whine, real loud, pretty close to a howl, the kind you could hear from miles away. Ingrid clamped her hand over his mouth, but way too late, and in the process she knocked over the lamp, which shattered all over the place, filling the air with an oily smell.

  Silence. A terrible silence that built and built, like a balloon that kept on inflating. And then: crack! The sound froze Ingrid like a figure in a nightmare. She knew she had to move, try to run, do something right now this very second or it would be too late, but she just couldn’t. The closet door flew open.

  Light flooded in, blinding her for a moment. And in that moment a long-nailed hand reached into the closet and pulled her out by the hair.

  Ingrid tumbled onto the basement floor. Her vision cleared. Mrs. Meinhof stood over her, whip in hand, eyes hard and angry.

  “Who are you?” she said. “How dare you break into my house?”

  Ingrid tried to wriggle away. Mrs. Meinhof followed. “I want my dog,” Ingrid said.

  “Your dog?”

  Ingrid twisted around, looking for Nigel. He was cowering in the storage room.

  “That?” Mrs. Meinhof said. “That is not your dog. It is mine.” She stared down at Ingrid. Recognition dawned in her eyes. “I know who you are,” she said, “The thief who stole him from me last fall, stole him and spoiled him.”

  “That’s not true,” Ingrid said. “I found him.”

  “Liar.”

  “And you don’t deserve him anyway,” Ingrid said. “I’m taking him home.”

  “Never.”

  “Or…” said Ingrid, an idea on the way.

  “Or?”

  “Or I’ll report you.”

  “Report me?”

  “Yes,” said Ingrid. “For the way you treat him.”

  The woman’s eyes shifted.

  Ingrid realized she was on to something, pushed the idea a little farther. “Why don’t you call the police?”

  “The police?”

  “To arrest me for breaking in.”

  Mrs. Meinhof’s eyes shifted again. Then came a surprise: She pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her long black skirt. Mrs. Meinhof thought the police would be on her side? That had to mean she didn’t know that the murder weapon in the Thatcher case was just a few feet away. And that was where Ingrid would begin, with the murder weapon, the second the police walked in.

  The woman punched some numbers on her cell phone: more than the three required for 911. That fact was just striking Ingrid when the woman spoke: “Dieter? Come at once.”

  Ingrid heard a tiny voice on the other end. “Now, Mother? I’m kind of—”

  “At once, do you hear? We have prob—”

  Ingrid didn’t wait to hear more. She rolled away, sprang to her feet, ran toward the stairs. “Nigel!”

  He didn’t budge, stayed exactly where he was, trembling deep in the storage room. Ingrid wheeled around, raced in, and grabbed him. And just as she had him in her arms, she heard another crack, a whip crack like the others, only this time she felt a horrible red-hot pain across her shoulders, even through the padding of her jacket.

  Ingrid fell to the floor. The whip cracked again, just missing, raising dust inches from her face. At that a complete change came over Nigel. He growled and the hairs on his back rose straight up, his chest swelling to twice normal size. Then he charged straight at Mrs. Meinhof. She spun toward him, raising the whip, but not in time. Nigel sank his teeth into her leg and clamped on.

  Mrs. Meinhof screamed in pain, a bloodcurdling scream like she was about to die. Ingrid dove across the closet and grabbed that gun, Grampy’s old Springfield. Bigger and heavier than his .22, the one he’d taught her to shoot, but how different could it be? She found the safety, flicked it off. Mrs. Meinhof flailed at Nigel with the whip, but he wouldn’t let go.

  Ingrid pointed the gun at her.

  “Don’t move,” she said.

  Mrs. Meinhof froze. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would,” Ingrid said. “Now drop that whip.”

  Mrs. Meinhof hesitated. Ingrid’s trigger finger, all by itself, started to squeeze. Could she really do it? The expression in Mrs. Meinhof’s eyes changed, showed real fear. She dropped the whip.

  “Come, Nigel,” Ingrid said.

  Nigel let go of Mrs. Meinhof’s leg and came, but on his way did something amazing. He ducked his head and scooped up the whip, bringing it with him.

  “Good boy,” Ingrid said.

  His tail wagged. Nigel wasn’t stupid; everybody was wrong about that. His mind just worked in its own way.

  Keeping the gun on Mrs. Meinhof, Ingrid walked out of the storage room, Nigel right beside her. She stepped sideways along the wall, past Mrs. Meinhof, toward the stairs.

  “Get in,” she said, pointing the gun muzzle at the storage room.

  Mrs. Meinhof hesitated. Ingrid raised the barrel an inch or two. Mrs. Meinhof limped into the storage room.

  “Close the door.”

  The door closed. No bolt or key or anything to lock it with, but this was good enough: In seconds Ingrid would be out in the darkness, safe and on her way home. She took the whip from Nigel and dropped it into the gap under one of the stairs, out of sight.

  Ingrid climbed up, Nigel beside her. She glanced back at the storage room: door closed. Y
es, safe and on her way home, and more than that, she had evidence: not just the murder weapon, but those three clippings from The Echo. They were evidence too, links in a chain that she was sure told the real story of the murder, if only she could fit it all together. That meant understanding what Cyrus Ferrand had written in the margins.

  DAMN IT TO HELL! beside the article about the murder of Mr. Thatcher.

  ?? beside the notice of Grampy’s arrest.

  !!! beside the identification of the murder weapon.

  Meaning? Didn’t it mean that Cyrus Ferrand was upset about the murder of Mr. Thatcher, confused about Grampy’s arrest, and excited by the identification of the weapon? And therefore? She didn’t know. Something, another link maybe, was missing. Then, just as she topped the last stair and entered the hall, heading for the back door, that missing link started to come, in the shape of a fact she already knew: those two red-and-black-checked jackets, one Grampy’s, the other Mr. Thatcher’s. Add in the related facts of both men’s snowy-white hair and similar size. From a distance—a sniper’s distance—it would be easy to mistake one for the other.

  Meaning? As Ingrid turned the knob on the back door, it hit her: Far from being the murderer, Grampy was the target, the intended victim. She opened the door. But why would—

  “And where do you think you’re going?”

  Dieter Meinhof was coming toward her across the yard, his sedan with the mudded-out plates parked on the other side. Ingrid pointed the rifle at him.

  “Stop,” she said.

  He kept coming.

  “I’m a good shot,” Ingrid said. “My grandfather taught me.”

  He stopped.

  “Hands up,” Ingrid said.

  Dieter raised his hands.

  “Back up to the car.”

  Dieter backed up. Ingrid walked toward the lane, Nigel at her side, forcing herself not to run, to stay calm. Then the passenger door of the car opened, and Cyrus Ferrand stepped out.

  “You’re embarrassing yourself, Dieter,” he said. “It’s not loaded.”

  Ingrid turned on Cyrus Ferrand—a coward and a murderer. He moved closer, slow and calm, but there was something sick and dangerous in that one eye. Could she really do it? Oh, yes. There was lots of Grampy in her. She pulled the trigger.