On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  There were no photographs whatsoever. The information about the woman and her presumed daughter or relative of some kind was contained in their slender file next to Ponsonby’s thicker one in the January Box 2 archives. All three had died a blunt-instrument death confined to their skulls, mashed to pulp, but the detective hadn’t been smart enough to see that Ponsonby had to have been the first victim; the woman and child looked on, paralyzed with fear, until the woman’s turn came, and then the child’s. Had Ponsonby not been first, he would have put up a fight. So whoever had held the blunt instrument — Carmine’s experienced money was on a baseball bat — had crept up through the snow and struck Ponsonby before he noticed anyone approaching. Another ghost, how extraordinary.

  When he went outside to see the archivists, they had locked up their trailer and gone for the day — half an hour early. Time, John Silvestri, to turn the blinding beam of your duty supervisors upon Police Archives at Caterby Street. The three files in his left hand, Carmine departed too: those cockroaches would not discover any missing files until he chose to return them. A pair of cool little bureaucratic crooks, secure in the knowledge that, provided the records didn’t burn, no one would be interested enough in their existence to worry about them. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  On his way back to the County Services building he called in to the Holloman Post morgue, to find that Leonard Ponsonby’s odd and horrible death had made the front page. Mindless violence outside of domestic crime was almost unheard of in 1930; it was the kind of thing had newspapers screaming about escaped lunatics. Of gangland killings there were plenty during the long years of Prohibition, but they didn’t fall into the category of mindless violence. Indeed, even after it was established that no lunatic had escaped from an asylum, the Holloman Post stuck to its guns and insisted that the killer was an escaped lunatic from somewhere out of the state.

  What with one thing and another, he was late meeting Desdemona in Malvolio’s.

  “Sorry,” he said, sliding into the booth opposite her. “You now have a preview of what life is like when your boyfriend is a cop. Scads of missed appointments, a lot of dinners gone cold. I’m glad you’re not a cook. Eating out is the best alternative, and nowhere better than Malvolio’s, a cop diner. They’ll doggy-bag anything from a whole meal to one spoonfull of apple pie the minute someone raps on the window.”

  “I quite like a cop boyfriend,” she said, smiling. “I’ve ordered, but asked Luigi to hold off for a while. You’re far too generous, never letting me pay at least my share of the bill.”

  “In my family, a man who let a woman pay would be lynched.”

  “You look as if you’ve had rather a good day for a change.”

  “Yes, I found out bunches of things. Trouble is, I think that they’re all red herrings. Still, it’s fun finding out.” He reached across the table to take her hand, turned it over. “It’s fun finding out about you too.”

  She squeezed his fingers. “Ditto, Carmine.”

  “In spite of this terrible case, Desdemona, my life has improved over the last days. You’re a part of it, lovely lady.”

  No one had ever called her a lovely lady before; she felt a rush of confused gratification flood through her, went a bright red, didn’t know where to look.

  Six years ago in Lincoln she had thought herself in love with a wonderful man, a doctor; until, passing his door, she heard his voice through it.

  “Who, Desperate Desdemona? My dear chap, the ugly ones are always so grateful that they’re well worth wooing. They make good mothers, and one never has to worry about the milkman, does one? After all, one doesn’t gaze at the mantelpiece while one is poking the fire, so I shall marry Desdemona. Our children will be clever into the bargain. Also tall.”

  She had started making plans to emigrate the very next day, vowing to herself that she would never again lay herself open to that kind of pragmatic cruelty.

  Now, thanks to a faceless monster, here she was living with Carmine in his apartment and perhaps taking it for granted that he loved her the way she loved him. Words were cheap — hadn’t the Lincoln doctor proved that? How much of what he had said to her originated in his job, his protectiveness, his shock at what had almost happened to her? Oh, please, Carmine, don’t let me down!

  Chapter 25

  Friday, February 25th, 1966

  Day Thirty since Faith Khouri’s abduction would arrive in one week’s time, and no one, including Carmine, had reason to believe that they stood a better chance now to prevent another murder than they had four months ago. When had any other case gone on so long in the face of so much manpower, so many precautions, warnings, such statewide publicity?

  They had agreed that the general procedure would be the same: every suspect in the state would be placed under round-the-clock surveillance from Monday, February twenty-eighth, until Friday, March fourth. That encompassed the thirty-two Holloman suspects. Their act had become tighter, more seamless; in the case of Professor Bob Smith, for instance, Marsh Manor’s deplorable security would be offset by four teams of watchers from the Bridgeport police. Unless he targeted a victim in Bridgeport, the Prof would have to swim the Housatonic River if he headed east, or evade six roadblocks if he headed west. That represented the greatest difference between last month’s plan and this new one: squad cars and uniforms as well as plain clothes and unmarkeds, and roadblocks everywhere. They had agreed at a statewide meeting that if the Ghosts were caught at a roadblock before they had a chance to abduct, then so be it. Any known suspect in a roadblock situation meant a large red mark in the record and concentrated surveillance. If that meant February/March was a bust for the Ghosts, then March/April would see new police methods and possible suspects.

  Carmine himself had decided not to man a watch; it wasn’t likely that the beginning of March would see zero Fahrenheit temperatures, so he was better off somewhere in clear radio contact with everyone else, and with a gigantic map of Connecticut pinned to a wall at his elbow. Two consecutive Ghost strikes in the far east suggested that this time the Ghosts would head north or west or southwest. The Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island state police had agreed to patrol their Connecticut borders thicker than flies on a carcass. It was war to the teeth.

  Thinking more of an evening with Desdemona than about a case grown so stale it was wearisome, late that afternoon Carmine took the Ponsonby case files back to Caterby Street.

  “Do you still have unclaimed personal property going back to 1930?” he asked the Ph.D. half of the archive duo; the peon half was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the police pickup. And damn, he hadn’t remembered to tell Silvestri what was going on out here.

  “We should have personal property going back to Paul Revere’s hat,” she said sarcastically, not amused that he had filched her files, nor worried at her own absence last Monday.

  “These two murder victims,” he said, waving the very thin and unnamed file under her nose. “I want to see their personal effects.”

  She yawned, examined her nails, glanced at the clock. “I’m afraid you’ve left your run too late, Lieutenant. It’s five and the place is closed for the day. Come back tomorrow, we’re open.”

  Tomorrow Silvestri was going to have the whole tale, but why not give the bitch a sleepless night before the axe fell? “Then I suggest,” he said pleasantly, “that first thing in the morning you get your peon to use his pickup legally by delivering the box of personal effects to Lieutenant Carmine Delmonico at the County Services building. If the requested box isn’t delivered, my niece Gina will wind up sitting at your desk. She’s eager for a county job in an out-of-the-way corner because she needs to study. She wants to join the FBI, but it’s one helluva hard entrance exam for a woman.”

  Chapter 26

  Sunday, February 27th, 1966

  At 11 A.M. on the Sunday before surveillance was due to begin Carmine walked into the police part of the County Services building feeling lonely, restless and tense.

  Lonely because last Fr
iday night Desdemona had announced that if the weekend was anything like bearable, she was hiking the Appalachian Trail right up on the Massachusetts border. Since he loved her presence in his bed, this took him aback; nor would she listen to his protests about wasting a squad car getting her there and back again. It worried him that his expectations from this relationship were so different from those he had felt with Sandra. Albeit incongruous in both roles, she had been wife and mother, tucked into a special compartment he never bothered to open while he was on the job. Whereas Desdemona hovered somewhere in his mind all the time, and it had nothing to do with the part she played in his case. Simply, he actively looked forward to his time with her. Maybe it was an age thing: still in his twenties when he had met Sandra, into his early forties when he met Desdemona. As a parent he hadn’t worked out too well, but as a husband he had been far worse. Yet he knew that the answer for Desdemona wasn’t as lover. Marriage, it had to be marriage. Only did she want marriage? He plain didn’t know. Hiking the Appalachian Trail seemed to argue that her need of him wasn’t in the same league as his of her. Yet she was so loving when they were together, and she hadn’t at any time reproached him for neglecting her in favor of his work. Oh, Desdemona, don’t let me down! Stay with me, cleave to me!

  Restless because Desdemona’s desertion had left him with two days to fill in and no one to fill them in with; Silvestri had forbidden him to poke his nose into any case other than the Ghosts, with the single exception of the racial situation if it exploded. And now, with a reasonably fine, above-freezing Sunday, was Mohammed el Nesr busy? Not busy demonstrating or rallying, at any rate. His quiescence was no mystery. Like Carmine, Mohammed was waiting for the Ghosts to abduct another victim this week, freshen up pain and indignation. The big rally would go on next Sunday, for sure. Taking desperately needed cops away from the Ghosts. A pain in the ass, but good strategy on Mohammed’s part.

  Tense because Day Thirty was almost upon him.

  “Lieutenant Delmonico?” asked the desk sergeant.

  “That was me when I last looked,” Carmine said with a grin.

  “I found an antique evidence box stuck behind those packages when I came in this morning. No name on it, which I guess is why you never got it. Then I found a tag with your name on it yards away.” He bent down, fumbled under his counter and came up with a big, square box that looked not unlike those in current use.

  The belongings of the woman and child beaten to death in 1930! He’d forgotten all about them, so absorbed in surveillance planning had he become. Though he had remembered to ask Silvestri to light a fire under the archives bitch and her peon.

  “Thanks, Larry, I owe you one,” he said, picked up the box and took it to his office.

  Something to do with a Sunday morning if your beloved is on a route march through wet leaves.

  No fetid relics of a crime thirty-six years old puffed out of it when he pulled the lid off; they hadn’t bothered keeping the clothes the pair were wearing, which meant there must have been blood all over them, including footwear. Since no one had thought to record the exact distance of “near” Leonard Ponsonby, for all that Carmine knew some of the blood might have been his. No one had even drawn a sketch to show how the bodies had lain in relation to each other. “Near” was as much as he had to go on.

  The pocketbook was there, however. By habit he had donned gloves to remove it gingerly so he could examine it with his more sophisticated eyes. Homemade. Knitted, as women did in those days of no money, with two cane handles and a lining of coarse cotton fabric. No clasp. This woman couldn’t afford even the cheapest cowhide, let alone leather. The pocketbook contained a tiny purse in which sat a silver dollar, three quarters, one dime and one nickel. Carmine put the money purse on his desk. A man’s handkerchief, clean but not ironed; calico, not linen. And, in the bottom, fragments and crumbs of what he presumed were the two cookies. The mother had probably stolen them from the station café so the child would have something to eat on the train, and that might be why they were hiding out in the snow. The autopsies had said both stomachs were empty. Yes, she’d stolen the cookies.

  The carpetbag wasn’t a large one, though it was old enough to have been one of those the northern predators had carried south with them after the Civil War. Faded, balding in places, never elegant even when new. He opened it with gentle reverence; in here resided almost everything that poor woman had owned, and no thing was more touching than the mute evidence of lives long over.

  On top were two long woollen scarves, hand knitted in varicolored stripes, as if the knitter had scrounged for scraps. But why were the scarves in the bag when the weather was so awful? Spares? Under them were two pairs of clean women’s panties made of unbleached muslin, and two much smaller pairs that obviously belonged to the child. A pair of knitted kneesocks and a pair of knitted stockings. On the bottom, carefully folded between torn tissue paper, a little girl’s dress.

  Carmine stopped breathing. A little girl’s dress. Made of pale blue French lace exquisitely embroidered with seed pearls. Puffed sleeves on dainty cuffs, pearl-studded buttons up the back, silk lining, and beneath that, stiffened net gathered to hold the skirt out like a ballerina’s tutu. A 1930 precursor of a Tinker Bell, except that this one had been completely handmade, every pearl sewn on separately and firmly, none of the stitching done by machine. Oh, the things the 1930 cops had missed! On the left breast the word EMMA had been picked out in dark, purplish pearls.

  Head whirling, Carmine laid the dress on his desk and then stood just staring at it for what might have been five minutes or an hour; he didn’t know, hadn’t looked at his watch or the clock.

  Finally he sat down and put the carpetbag on his lap, opening it as widely as its rusting jaws would allow. The lining was worn, had come apart on one side seam; he put both hands inside the bag and felt around, eyes closed. There! Something!

  A photograph, and not taken on a box Brownie. This was a studio portrait still mounted in a cream cardboard folder stamped with the name of the photographer. Mayhew Studios, Windsor Locks. Someone had written what looked like “1928” on the frame below, but in pencil now so faint it was a best guess.

  The woman was seated on a chair, the child — about four years old — seated on her knees. In this, the woman was much better clad, wore a string of real pearls around her neck and real pearls in her earlobes. The little girl wore a dress similar to the one in the carpeting, EMMA showing up clearly. And both of them had the face. Even in black-and-white their skins had a suggestion of café au lait; their hair was densely black and curly, their eyes very dark, their lips full. To Carmine, gazing at them through a wall of tears, they were exquisite. Destroyed in all their youth and beauty, every vestige of it bloodied to pulp.

  A crime of passion. Why had no one seen that? No killer would waste his essence on a torrent of blows were hate not the motive. Especially when the skull under the bludgeon belonged to a little girl. There’s no way these two female creatures weren’t connected to Leonard Ponsonby. They were there because he was there, he was there because they were there.

  So it’s Charles Ponsonby after all. Though he wasn’t old enough to do this. Nor Morton, nor Claire. This was mad Ida a decade and more before she went mad. Which means that Leonard and Emma’s mother were — lovers? Relatives? One was as likely as the other; Ida was ultra-conservative, no touch of the tar brush for her. So many questions to ask! Why were Emma and her mother so destitute in January of 1930 when Leonard was with them carrying $2,000 and flaunting diamond jewelry? What had happened to Emma and her mother between the prosperity of the 1928 Windsor Locks photo and their impoverishment of January 1930?

  Enough, Carmine, enough! Nineteen thirty can wait, 1966 cannot. Chuck Ponsonby is a Ghost — or is he the Ghost, doing all of it alone? How much help does Claire give him? How much help is she capable of giving him? Can one Ponsonby be a Ghost and the other not? Yes, because of Claire’s blindness. I know she’s blind! Chuck could move around in some
secret, soundproof basement and she’d never know. I’m positive it’s soundproof. The screams have to be kept in, and the screams are very loud.

  Charles Ponsonby…A bachelor stay-at-home who couldn’t produce original research to save his life. Always in someone else’s shadow — mad mother’s, mad brother’s, blind sister’s, far more successful best friend’s. Doesn’t bother matching his socks, keeping his hair combed, buying a new tweed jacket. An archetypal absentminded professor, too timid to pick up a rat without wearing a furnace glove, nondescript in that way which suggests a radical failure in ego, despite the veneer of intellectual snobbishness.

  But can this Charles Ponsonby be the portrait of a multiple rapist/murderer so brilliant that he’s run rings around us ever since we discovered that he existed? Seems impossible to believe. The trouble is that no one has a portrait of the multiple murderer except that sex always seems involved. Therefore every time we unearth a specimen, we have to dissect him minutely. His age, his race, his creed, his appearance, the victim type he chooses, the personality he presents to the world, his childhood, background, likes and dislikes — a thousand thousand factors. About Charles Ponsonby we can certainly say that on his mother’s side there is a family history of madness as well as blindness.

  Carmine replaced the contents of the evidence box exactly as he had found them and took it down to the desk.

  “Larry, put this in security storage right now,” he said as he handed it over. “No one is to go near it.”

  Then before Larry could reply, Carmine was out the door. It was time to take another look at 6 Ponsonby Lane.

  The questions milled in his head, swarming wasps in search of the nest called answers: how, for instance, had Charles Ponsonby managed to get from the Hug to Travis High and back again while convincing everyone that he had been in conference on the roof? Thirty precious minutes before Desdemona found him and the others there, yet all six on the roof swore that no one was absent long enough to go to the john. How reliable was the attention span of an absentminded researcher? And how had Ponsonby gotten out of his house on the night Faith Khouri was snatched when it had been so closely watched? Did the contents of the 1930 evidence box represent enough hard evidence to wring a search warrant out of Judge Douglas Thwaites? The questions swarmed.