The House On Gable Street

by Stephen Leather

  ‘How?’

  Nightingale reached into his pocket and pulled out a very old, soft leather bag. He unlaced the top and pulled out a large pink crystal by its silver chain.

  ‘The fuck is that?’ said Cal Wharton.

  ‘This is a divining crystal. It helps me find things. Given enough time, I think I could find them.’

  This time it was Nightingale’s turn to bluff, he had nothing to take vibrations from, no clothes, belongings, hair.

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Cal.

  ‘You don’t have to believe it,’ said Nightingale. ‘I think there’s another way, all I’ll need is the plans of the new house, maybe I can even find some plans of the old one. Maybe I’ll buy a metal detector. Then I get in touch with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, or the State Troopers.’

  The Chief folded. He held his hands up and nodded. ‘Okay. I guess it’s going to come out. What is it you want from this, Nightingale?’

  ‘Nothing from you or your family, it’s too late for that. All I want is to do the job I was hired to do, which is to ensure the Deadmans and their kids can live undisturbed in their house.’

  ‘And how do you plan to make that happen?’ asked the Chief.

  Nightingale lit another cigarette, leaned forward in his chair and started to tell them.

  * * *

  It was two days later that Chief Wharton paid his final official visit to Peacehaven. Nightingale and Deadman were sitting on a bench at the back of the mansion, smoking and surveying the gardens. They were a mess. The excavations had finished, but the repairs wouldn’t be starting for a day or two, just to be certain nothing had been missed. Fortunately none of the current drainage system had needed to be damaged. Even before the Gable Street house had done duty as a baby farm, the old septic tank had long been disused. Disused as far as drainage was concerned anyway.

  The Chief nodded at the two of them, and Deadman waved him down onto the bench next to them. Wharton took out his pack of Camels and lit one.

  ‘I guess that’s it,’ he said. ‘Sorry it took so long. We had to be sure there wasn’t another one.’

  ‘The one they took out was big enough,’ said Deadman.

  ‘Yeah, maybe it had been a communal one in its day, who knows. They’d emptied it first, back then. Couldn’t risk ever having it emptied again.’

  ‘How many of them were in there?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘No real way to know yet, the ME and his guys need to separate them out, then try to put them back together. Could be thirty, forty...’

  ‘My God,’ muttered Deadman. ‘My God.’

  ‘They were the ones she couldn’t sell?’ said Nightingale.

  The Chief winced. ‘That’s a hard way to put it, Mister, but I can’t argue. Doc says some were Downs, others had something else wrong with them. Maybe some just didn’t fit.’

  ‘Wrong color?’

  Another wince, and a sigh. ‘Could be. Could be. Used to call it miscegenation, black boys and white girls. Used to be illegal. Back then.’

  Nightingale nodded. ‘Any way to know whether they were alive when they were thrown into the tank?’

  ‘Doc says no way to tell after all this time. Jeez, I hope not.’ He bent forward and put his head in his hands, He stayed that way for almost two minutes. When he straightened up again, Nightingale noticed his eyes were red. Wharton looked at Nightingale. ‘We never knew,’ said Wharton. ‘She never talked about it, I’m guessing not even to Dad. Not until she started to lose her memory, maybe in her first months at the home. Then she told me. She was haunted by them in the old house, saw them everywhere, so we moved. Then she just saw them in dreams, but not often. But she could never forget.’

  ‘So she was the one who...’

  ‘She said not. Old Doc Perkins was kind of a sleeping partner with her, she said he ‘took care’ of it, but they couldn’t be digging graves.’

  ‘My God,’ said Deadman again. ‘My God.’

  ‘I know,’ said the Chief. ‘Maybe they looked on it as a mercy, A kindness. I don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you never did anything,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘For a start, I guess we didn’t want to believe it, nothing to say it was true and not an old woman’s rambling. Plus me and Cal had power of attorney, the place was already sold, and we didn’t want to dig up a tank full of bodies with people looking on. Cal was in here working on the place, so we thought better to bury it. Landscape over it. Still don’t know how you knew.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Nightingale. ‘Maybe you wouldn’t believe it anyway.’

  ‘Not sure I know what to believe. But I believe I’m finished in this town.’

  ‘Doesn’t have to be that way,’ said Nightingale. ‘It all happened before you were born, Doc Perkins is long gone, there’s no evidence your mother murdered anyone, and nobody can ask her anything.’

  ‘Yeah, but I knew,’ said the Chief. ‘I knew and I did nothing.’

  ‘You were protecting your mother,’ said Nightingale. ‘And nobody has any proof you knew for certain. An old woman with dementia told you something, no reason to believe it. Besides, nobody knows she told you.’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘I won’t be staying long enough to say anything. Anyway, who’s going to believe someone who thinks he sees ghosts?’

  He nodded then smiled. ‘True enough,’ he said. ‘You’d be a lousy witness.’

  Nightingale grinned, and lit another cigarette. ‘So what happens now?’ he asked.

  ‘ME finishes up, coroner brings in a verdict, probably an open verdict, there’s nobody left to ask now, like you said.’

  He stared pointedly at Nightingale, as if challenging him to disagree.

  Nightingale thought that maybe Janet Carpenter might be someone to ask, but the Chief wasn’t asking for suggestions. The quieter he could keep it, the happier he’d be. Wharton went on. ‘Then they get a Christian Burial. Reverend Sharp will probably conduct one service for them all. Not that the poor little devils ever had names. Do you think their mothers knew?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Nightingale. ‘They were probably told they’d been taken for adoption like all the rest. Probably be hard to tell a woman her kid wasn’t good enough and had to be disposed of.’

  ‘Jeez,’ said the Chief. ‘What a mess. Still, at least we can put an end to it now.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Message from Cal,’ said the Chief. ‘Says he’s sorry, let his temper run away with him. Just trying to protect mom.’

  Nightingale rubbed his still tender left ribcage and forced a smile. ‘Tell him I’ve had worse.’

  The Chief nodded. ‘And a message from me, and maybe all those kids that were down there. Thanks, Mister. We’re glad you came.’

  Nightingale nodded, stood up, threw down his cigarette butt and stamped it out, and walked away.

  * * *

  Deadman hadn’t said much at all while the Chief had been there. But now he took a long drag on his latest cigarette, blew smoke and looked at Nightingale.

  ‘So you think there’ll be no more ghosts in the twins’ room?’

  ‘No. I guess that once they were moved, looked after, then it’s over. The proper burial will certainly finish things.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Great, I’ll call Mary tomorrow, hope she’ll be back with them soon. Whatever Wainwright’s paying, it’s nowhere near enough.’

  Nightingale wasn’t sure that Wainwright was paying, but he said nothing.

  ‘I mean it, Jack, you’ve given me my life back again.’

  ‘Should have got there sooner,’ said Nightingale. ‘Disadvantage of being British.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Pretty much everywhere in Britain has mains drainage now, half the population wouldn’t know what a septic tank was. Took me a while.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess being a big country makes that harder here.’

  ‘Apparen
tly.’

  Deadman stopped and looked at Nightingale, as if he was making a decision. ‘You like that MGB, huh?’ asked Deadman.

  ‘It’s a classic.’

  ‘It’s yours.’

  Nightingale smiled. The car he’d always wanted, and in pristine condition. Then he shook his head. ‘It’s a great offer, but I’ve got nowhere to keep it. Plus I do a lot of traveling, it’s not really suited to long distance driving.’

  ‘No problem, Jack. The car’s yours. I’ll just keep it here for you, Come visit and drive it anytime you feel like. We’d be happy to see you anytime. Maybe Sarah would, too.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll do that.’

  The two men got up and started to walk back up to the house.

  ‘I can hardly believe it’s all over,’ said Deadman.

  ‘Is it?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘You said it was.’

  ‘For them. For the twins and Mary. But is it over for you?’

  Deadman stopped and turned to face him. ‘What do you mean, Jack?’

  Nightingale returned his gaze. ‘I think you know what I mean, Jimmy. Maybe it takes one to know one, but I think you were adopted too.’

  ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘Like I said, takes one to know one. And then there’s a photo of two blue-eyed parents, who couldn’t really have had a brown-eyed son.’

  ‘You too?’

  ‘Me too,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘They ever tell you?’

  ‘No, maybe they would have, but like yours they never got the chance.’

  Deadman nodded. ‘Yeah, maybe they would have. There were no documents that I ever found. I was registered as their son on the birth certificate. I guess you showed up with a baby in those days, people didn’t check Mom’s stretch marks. They moved around a lot, maybe I coincided with a move.’

  ‘So how did you find out?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘My aunt, when she took me in for a while. She was the only one who knew, even she didn’t know where I came from.’

  ‘You have a hunch though, don’t you?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe when I first saw the old house and the grounds all those years ago I felt something about it, but that makes no sense. If I was born here I’d have left inside a week.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Nightingale. ‘But sometimes feelings make no sense.’

  ‘Jeez, but for the grace of God I might have been one of those poor kids thrown into the tank.’ He shuddered, ‘Did you ever go looking for your real parents?’

  Nightingale gave that one some real thought. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I never really went looking for them.’

  ‘You think maybe I should keep trying to find my mother? There might still be some way. Maybe Janet Carpenter might know something.’

  Nightingale gave that one even more thought, lighting another cigarette to give himself more time. He turned to gaze at the grounds where the unwanted babies had lain for so long. ‘Jimmy, I don’t know. Your family is here and now, not fifty years in the past. All I will say is, be bloody careful what you wish for.’