On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  “One of us won’t be wearing eau de skunk, and that’s me,” Carmine said, scowling. “There must be another way.”

  “Not without tipping Ponsonby off. We can’t kidnap the dog, that’s for sure. This isn’t some yokel with a half-baked plan, this is an M.D. who’s been ahead of us every inch of the way. If the dog goes missing, he knows we’re on to him, and that will be the end of his abductions,” Patrick said. “The ace up his sleeve is his tunnel door in the reserve, and we have to make him think it’s still his secret. He may be protecting it — trip wires, alarm bells or buzzers you step on like a land mine, a light up a tree — before you go near it, check it out, for God’s sake. So sure, he’ll be using the dog. How, I don’t know, just that he will. If I were he, I’d slip a little Seconal in Claire’s last drink for the evening.”

  “Patsy, you are so devious!” said Silvestri, grinning.

  “Not in Carmine’s league, John. Come on, everything I’ve said is logical.”

  “Yes, I know. But where do we find eau de skunk?”

  “I have a whole bottle of it,” Patrick said with a purr.

  Carmine looked at Silvestri, menace in his face. “Then the Holloman police budget will have to include literal gallons of tomato juice. I can’t ask Abe and Corey to dab eau de skunk behind their ears without offering them a bathtub full of tomato juice in the mornings.” He frowned, looked frustrated. “Do we have a bathtub anywhere in the cells, or just showers?”

  “There’s a big iron tub in a room out the back in the old part of the building. Right about the time Leonard Ponsonby was clubbed to death, it was used to pacify lunatics before they got sent off with the men in white coats,” said Marciano.

  “Okay, have someone scrub the place out and disinfect it. Then I want that tub brimming with tomato juice, because I think Abe and Corey both have to wear it. If they’re forced to split up, the dog won’t smell the clean one.”

  “It’s a deal,” said Silvestri, his expression indicating that he deemed the meeting over.

  “Whoa! We can’t break up yet,” said Carmine. “We still have to discuss possibilities. Like, is Ponsonby working alone, or does he have an accomplice we know nothing about? Assuming that Claire isn’t involved, why suddenly do we dismiss the likelihood that there are two Ghosts? Ponsonby does have a life outside the Hug and his home. He’s known to go to art exhibitions, even if that means he takes a day or two off work. From now on we tail him wherever he goes. Our best people, Danny, our very best. Smooth as silk, male and female — and no clumsy two-way radios. The new lapel mikes to switch personnel, so no relief tails are to get out of radio range — the devices are as weak as weasel piss. Our technical stuff is improving, but we could really use a Billy Ho and a Don Hunter. If the Hug does fold, John, it might be a good idea to bring them on board. Attach them to Patsy’s department, which maybe ought to incorporate the word ‘forensics’ in its name. And don’t say it, John! Find the money, goddamn it!”

  “If Morton Ponsonby were alive, we’d know the identity of the second Ghost,” said Marciano.

  “Danny, Morton Ponsonby is not alive,” Carmine said patiently “I’ve seen his grave, and I’ve also seen his autopsy report. No, he wasn’t murdered, just dropped dead very suddenly. No poisons detected, though no real cause of death found.”

  “Mad Ida might have struck again.”

  “I doubt it, Danny. Apparently she was a little thing, and Morton Ponsonby was a healthy male adolescent. Hard to smother with a pillow. Besides, no fluff in the airway.”

  “Maybe there was a fourth child,” Marciano persisted. “Ida mightn’t have registered its birth.”

  “Oh, let’s not get carried away!” Carmine cried, clawing at the air. “First off, with Leonard dead, who was to father this mysterious fourth child? Chuck? Get real, Danny! The presence of a kid gets known — these weren’t newcomers to Ponsonby Lane, they owned Ponsonby Lane! Been in the district since shortly after the Mayflower. Look at Morton. Off the planet, but folks knew he existed. There were mourners at his funeral.”

  “So if there’s a second Ghost, he’s a stranger to us.”

  “At the moment, yes,” said Carmine.

  Chapter 27

  Wednesday, March 2nd, 1966

  Monday night and Tuesday night passed without incident, save for Abe’s and Corey’s perpetual cursing. To exist in a miasma of skunk was a torment amounting to torture, for no brain in creation had ever managed to do what brains normally did with smells, horrible or otherwise: blot them out after a little time had elapsed. Skunk stuck, skunk was the absolute olfactory pits. Only their affection for Carmine had persuaded them to consent, but once the skunk was applied, they rued it. Luckily the bathtub in the old section of the County Services building was large enough to fit two men in it at one time, otherwise a very old friendship might have soured.

  The weather continued fine and above freezing; perfect for abductions. No rain, no wind.

  Carmine had tried to think of every contingency. Besides Abe, Corey and himself concealed where they had an unobstructed view of the tunnel door, there were unmarkeds on each corner of Deer Lane, on each corner of Ponsonby Lane, one in front of Major Minor’s reception office, one in the spot where Carmine had hidden himself a month ago, and more on Route 133. These vehicles were for effect; Ponsonby would be expecting them because he must have seen the ones on Deer Lane a month ago. The real shadowers were concealed up the driveways of the four houses on Deer Lane. No car was already parked in them; Carmine surmised that the car Ponsonby used was definitely well down Route 133. Though it wasn’t either of the cars in his garage, the station wagon and the red Mustang convertible; they had been there a month ago, and they were there now. Perhaps his accomplice provided the transportation? In which case, Ponsonby walked to a rendezvous.

  “At least you get to wear nose plugs,” Carmine comforted as the three crept up the slope, secure in the fact that Ponsonby was still driving home from the Hug. “I may not be wearing any eau de skunk, but I do have to smell the pair of you. Man, do you stink!”

  “Mouth breathing isn’t much help,” Corey groused. “I can taste the fucking awful stuff! And I finally know why it drives dogs insane.”

  Falling back on the talents of the departmental bird watcher, Pete Evans, they had constructed a good hide twenty feet from the door without a tree trunk between it and them. All three lay flat, but able to take turns in rolling on their sides to prevent their muscles locking up; one man was sufficient to keep vigil provided that the other two were alert.

  There had turned out to be no warning devices, even a trip wire; given his own tumble, Carmine had thought them unlikely. Ponsonby was positive his tunnel was his secret. His conceit on the subject was interesting, as if it lived in a different part of his psyche from Dr. Charles Ponsonby, researcher and bon vivant. In fact, Ponsonby was a mass of contradictions — afraid of picking up a rat, unafraid of police interception.

  While Carmine waited out the boring hours, he pondered on the tunnel. Who had made it? How old was it? Despite cutting off the extra distance ascending and descending the ridge involved, it had to be at least three hundred yards long, maybe longer. Even if it was too small in bore to permit a man to do other than crawl down it on his belly, what had happened to the soil and small rocks taken out of it? Connecticut was a land of dry stone walls because its farmers had removed the stones from their fields as they ploughed. How many tons of soil and small rocks? One hundred? Two hundred? How was it ventilated, for ventilated it must be? Had those two old barns from upstate New York provided the timber for shoring up?

  At 2 A.M. on that cloudy night came a faint noise, a groaning that gradually increased, then changed to the soft whine of well-lubricated hinges occluded by particles of dirt. Dryer than when Carmine had fallen, the covering of dead leaves cascaded to the far side as the door opened toward the three men in their hide. The shape that emerged from a black cavity was just as black; it poised, crouching, gave a tiny m
ew of disgust as a strong odor of skunk wafted its way. The dog’s head popped up, then disappeared immediately. Biddy would not be doing guard duty tonight. They could hear Ponsonby coaxing the dog out, but no dog came. Skunk.

  The arrangement was that Carmine would follow Ponsonby while Corey and Abe remained by the tunnel entrance; he waited with breath suspended as the shape straightened to a man’s height, so dark that it was difficult to see amid the shadowy lightlessness of this moonless, starless night. What is he wearing? Carmine asked himself. Even the face was invisible. And when the shape began to move, it went silently, hardly a whisper of feet on the forest floor. Carmine too wore black, had blackened his face and put on sneakers, but he didn’t dare approach the shape too nearly — twenty feet minimum, praying that Ponsonby’s head covering made it harder for him to hear.

  Ponsonby flitted off down the slope toward the circular end of Deer Lane. Just short of the parking area Ponsonby veered in the direction of Route 133, still concealed by the woods, which continued on this side all the way to 133. Now that the ground was more level, Carmine found his quarry actually harder to see; he was tempted to diverge the short distance to the road, on which he could make better progress, but Holloman Council’s parsimony denied him this. Gravel.

  The sweat was pouring off him, blinding him; he brushed it out of his eyes quickly, but when he looked to where the shape had been at the start of his gesture, it wasn’t there. Not because Ponsonby had realized he was being followed, Carmine was sure. A quirk of fate. He had left his tunnel door open; the moment he thought he was followed, he would have returned to it, and in that direction he definitely hadn’t gone. He was still heading for Route 133, lost in the darkness.

  Carmine did the sensible thing, took to the gravel and ran as quietly as he could toward the humdrum Chrysler parked on Deer Lane’s forested corner.

  “He’s out, but I lost him,” he said to Marciano and Patrick after he climbed in and shut the back door gently. “Ghost is the right word for him. He’s wearing black from head to foot, he makes no sound, and he must have better eyes than a night bird. He also must know every inch of this forest. There’s nothing else for it now, we have to wait for him to come home with some poor, terrified girl. God, I didn’t want it to go that far!”

  “Do we get word out on the radio?” Marciano asked.

  “No, since we have no idea what kind of vehicle he’s using. He might have something sitting on his dashboard good enough to tune into every band we have. You wait here until I buzz you on my two-way that he’s back at his tunnel, give me ten minutes, then you and the rest close in on the house. That’s still best.”

  Carmine got out of the car and took to the trees, working his way back to the parking area and then up to the hide.

  “I lost him, so now we wait.”

  “He can’t be going far,” Corey said low-voiced. “He’s too late to get farther than Holloman County.”

  When Ponsonby returned around 5 A.M. he was a little easier to see; though the body slung around his shoulders was wrapped in black, it gave him more bulk, added noise to his footsteps. Instead of coming up from Deer Lane, he approached the gaping door from its side, dumped his cargo on the ground in front of the hole and insinuated himself into it before dragging the bundle down in his wake. The door closed, apparently worked by a lever, and the night went back to its usual foresty sounds.

  Carmine’s finger was actually on the call button of his two-way to send Marciano the signal when he heard something: he froze, nudged his companions to keep still and quiet. A figure breasted the ridge above and began the descent to the door, led by the panting, grizzling, reluctant dog, torn between its guiding duties and the unbearable stench of skunk. Claire Ponsonby. She carried a big bucket and a rake. Desperate to get away, Biddy kept whining and straining at its harness while she hung on to the loop, forced to work one-handed, trying to persuade the dog to stay. First she used the rake to cover the door with the leaves already heaped to one side, then she emptied her bucket of leaves on top of them and raked again. Finally she gave up fighting the dog, shrugged and turned to let Biddy lead her up the incline.

  “What do we do now?” Abe asked when the sound of her progress had died away completely.

  “We give her time to get back to the house, then we call out the troops as planned.”

  “How did she know where to bury the evidence?” Corey asked.

  “Let’s find out,” said Carmine, standing up and walking to the camouflaged door. “That, I think.” His foot lifted a piece of plumber’s pipe, apparently painted a mottled brown, though it was hard to tell in the absence of light. “The dog knows the way to the door, but it can’t tell her when she’s reached it. When she feels the pipe she knows she’s at the top edge of the door. After that, easy. Or it would have been on other occasions. Tonight she had a spooked dog to deal with, and you could see that it really threw her off.”

  “So she’s the second Ghost,” Abe said.

  “Looks like it.” Carmine pressed the button on his two-way. “Okay, are we ready for the trip to hell? We have nine minutes before Marciano moves.”

  “I hate to undo all Claire’s good work,” Corey said with a grin, scraping leaves aside.

  The tunnel was large enough to crawl on hands and knees, and was square; easier, Carmine supposed, to shore up with the planks that covered walls and ceiling. About every fifteen feet was a small ventilator shaft that appeared to be made from four-inch piping. No doubt the pipe barely poked above the ground, had a grating, and wasn’t uncovered until the moment came to use the tunnel. Tread on a pipe outlet, and you wouldn’t even know you had. Oh, the time! The effort! This was the work of many years. Dug by hand, shored up by hand, the rocks and soil hauled away by hand. In his relatively crowded life, Charles Ponsonby would not have had sufficient leisure to dig this. Someone else had.

  It seemed to go on forever; at least three hundred yards was Carmine’s guess. A five-minute hurried crawl. Then it ended in a door, not a flimsy wooden affair but solid steel with a massive combination dial and a wheel lock like a ship’s companionway watertight door.

  “Jesus, it’s a bank safe!” Abe cried.

  “Shut up and let me think!” Carmine stared down the beam of his flashlight, dancing with motes and mites, thinking that he should have known what kind of door it would be to keep contamination out. “Okay, it’s logical to assume that he’s inside and doesn’t know what’s happening outside. Shit, shit, shit! If Claire’s the second Ghost and didn’t use the tunnel, then there has to be another entrance to the killing premises. It’s inside the house and we have to find it. Move your ass, Corey! Move!”

  Another frantic crawl, followed for Carmine by a headlong gallop down the slope to the Ponsonby house. Lights were going on as people woke to the wail of sirens; the lane was choked with cars, an ambulance stood by. Biddy thrashed, snarling, in a dog-pound net, while Claire stood blocking Marciano’s path.

  “Cuff her and tell her the charges, Danny,” Carmine gasped, grabbing at a porch pillar to steady himself. “She covered the secret door with leaves, and that makes her an accessory. But we can’t get into the killing premises from the tunnel, he’s got a bank vault door blocking it. I’ve left Abe and Corey guarding the tunnel — get some men up there and relieve the poor guys so they can wallow in tomato juice.” He rounded on Claire, who seemed fascinated by the handcuffs, feeling what she could of them with spidery fingers. “Miss Ponsonby, don’t make yourself more than an accessory to murder, please. Tell us where the house entrance to your brother’s chamber of horrors is. We have absolute proof that he’s the Connecticut Monster.”

  She drew a sobbing breath, shook her head. “No, no, that’s impossible! I don’t believe it, I won’t believe it!”

  “Take her downtown,” Marciano said to two detectives, “but let her have her dog. Best get her to untangle it, it’s pretty mad at us. And treat her right, make sure of that.”

  “Danny, you and Patrick
come with me,” said Carmine, able to stand unsupported again. “No one else. We don’t want cops all over the house before Paul and Luke start examining it, but we have to find the other door before Chuck can do anything to that poor girl. Who is she?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Marciano said miserably as he followed Carmine inside. “Probably no one in her home is up yet, it isn’t even six.” He tried to look cheerful. “Who knows, we might give her back to her folks before they even know she’s gone.”

  Why did he think it was in the kitchen? Because that was the room wherein the Ponsonbys seemed to live, the hub of their universe. The ancient house itself was like a museum, and the dining room was no more than a place to park their concert hall speakers, the hi-fi and their record collection.

  “Okay,” he said, leading Marciano and Patrick into the old kitchen, “this is where we start. It was built in 1725, so its walls should sound fragile. Steel backing doesn’t.”

  Nothing, nothing, nothing. Except that the room was freezing because the Aga stove wasn’t alight. Now why was that? Discovery of a gas stove hidden by paneling and a gas hot water cylinder in a closet had shown that the Ponsonbys didn’t roast in summer, but summer was a long way off. Why therefore was the Aga out?

  “The answer has something to do with the Aga,” Carmine said. “Come on, let’s concentrate on it.”

  Behind it was its water reservoir, still hot to the touch. Groping, Patrick’s fingers found a lever.

  “It’s here! I’ve found it!”

  Eyes closed, breathing a prayer, Patrick tugged. The whole stove moved outward and to one side on a pivot, smoothly, silently. And there in the stone chimney alcove was a steel door. When Carmine, .38 drawn, turned its knob, it opened smoothly, silently. Suddenly he hesitated, slipped the pistol back into its holster.

  “Patsy, give me your camera,” he said. “This isn’t a shoot-out situation, but Danny can cover me. You wait here.”