The Paperchase

by Marcel Theroux

  ‘What’s up, Nathan?’ I said, overcompensating for my nervousness by being overfriendly.

  ‘My mom said you might need a hand.’

  ‘That was thoughtful,’ I said. I was trying to remember how I’d last behaved when I’d had nothing to hide. ‘You know what, it would be a big help if you could cut the grass – I’ll pay you.’

  I took him down to the shed and showed him how to drive the mower. ‘Take your time,’ I said. ‘If anything gets caught in the blades, do not try to free it, come and get me. I don’t want you jeopardising your future as a concert pianist.’

  He was excited by the chance to drive the mower by himself. I told him to go slowly: I would pay him by the hour. This small act of patronage made me feel better about my criminal activities. I also thought he might alert me if Officers Topper and Santorelli turned up unexpectedly.

  For the next two days Nathan mowed and I went through the inventory, ticking off the items that would have appealed to a sharp-eyed thief. As the fictional burglar enriched his swag bag hourly and I, his accomplice, rummaged around the house aiding and abetting him, it became clearer that Bill Kelly had taken almost nothing apart from my money and travel documents. All the most precious objects remained untouched. Nothing had gone from the cabinets in the library or the packing cases in the cellar. I worked slowly, accumulating a stash of items which I hid in a sea chest in the attic. I erred on the side of caution, but still ended up with a fairly valuable-looking haul, including some nice silver pieces and jewellery. The pistols were less glamorous than the description in the inventory would have led you to believe. They were stubbier, less ornate, rusty and a little greasy. I cocked one and aimed at the wall. The hammer tripped with a satisfying click. The other was faulty and wouldn’t work at all.

  I found myself often distracted by the things that I unearthed: photos of Patrick, a dozen different kinds of Chinese cricket cages, a Victorian toy theatre with a painted proscenium. Meanwhile, the lawnmower buzzed just out of conscious awareness.

  On the second day, I heard the mower stop. It was around eleven-thirty in the morning. I was in the library, sorting through a drawer of cuff-links – the light was better in there.

  Peering out of the window, I saw Nathan, still sitting on the mower, talking to a blonde woman in a frock and pointing towards the house.

  I put the drawer back upstairs in Patrick’s bedroom and came back down when I heard knocking. I could see the woman’s shadow outlined on the mesh of the screen door. She was shading her eyes with her hand and trying to peer in.

  The lawnmower started up again as I stepped out on to the porch. My first look at the woman was enough to disabuse me of the idea that she was a police officer. She was wearing too much make-up, and was too expensively and impractically dressed in a frock and a pair of heels. She had big sunglasses on, and crazy hair in blond corkscrews which were loosely tied back. She was nervous, I thought, but greeted me with an enthusiasm that bordered on the ferocious. ‘Well, hi! You must be Damien.’

  I was taken aback. Something in her manner made me think of a little girl, but she was certainly over fifty.

  ‘Miranda Delamitri,’ she said, giving me her hand. ‘I was a friend of Patrick’s.’ She lifted her sunglasses with her free hand, exposing plenty of blue eye-shadow, and smiled at me. She had great teeth and the time-defying youthfulness of a well-loved vintage car.

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ she said. She didn’t let go of my hand.

  ‘You’re a friend of Patrick’s?’ I said, feeling a little uncomfortable.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She was looking me up and down. ‘You know, you remind me of him so much.’

  ‘It’s probably the clothes,’ I said. ‘They’re his.’

  She gave a little yelp of pleasure. ‘Oh! That shirt was a gift from me! I’m so glad you’re wearing it.’

  I’d found it in Patrick’s closet. Its quality had set it apart from all of the others. By now, Mrs Delamitri had stepped over the threshold into the kitchen. ‘Oh my,’ she said plaintively. ‘And everything’s just the same.’ She seemed overcome for a moment. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a while since I was here. This is rather painful.’

  I offered to get her some Kleenex but she pulled out an expensive handkerchief of her own and dabbed at the corner of her eye mournfully.

  ‘Would you like to be alone?’ I said.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just give me a minute.’ She took a couple of deep breaths. ‘They say you should just let it out, don’t they?’

  ‘Let what out?’

  ‘The grief. The pain.’ She blew her nose silently. ‘How are you coping, Damien?’

  ‘I’m coping,’ I said, with a stab of guilt as I thought of the sea chest full of valuables in the attic. ‘One day at a time, you know. Remembering the good things.’

  ‘And there are so many good things,’ she said with passion. ‘That’s right. What are the good things that you remember?’

  A voice in my head said: pair of early nineteenth-century English duelling pistols with chased silver handles.

  ‘His humour. His kindness. What about you?’

  Mrs Delamitri took another deep breath. There was a slight catch in her voice as she said: ‘His mind.’

  Through the window behind Mrs Delamitri’s head, I could see Nathan raking apples from under the apple tree as I’d asked. If they were left where they lay, they could clog up the blades of the mower.

  Mrs Delamitri wandered into the dining room. ‘I’ve always loved this one,’ she said, gazing at a framed Mughal fan painted with a semi-erotic scene of a woman entertaining her moustachioed lover in a garden.

  ‘You’re welcome to take it,’ I said. As odd as she was, Mrs Delamitri’s grief about Patrick’s death exceeded anything that had been expressed by his own family.

  She looked at me with amazement. ‘I could never do that. He wanted it all to stay together.’ She seemed overcome again. ‘I – oh my. Do you mind if I sit down?’

  I got her a glass of water from the kitchen. Since she seemed disinclined to take off her sunglasses, I switched on the light.

  ‘Patrick and I were close,’ she said. ‘I just wasn’t able to come to the funeral. I hoped he’d understand.’ She dabbed her eyes again. ‘You’re probably wondering what on earth this crazy woman is doing in your house.’

  ‘Just slightly,’ I said as a joke, but she looked puzzled, so I put my arm on her shoulder to reassure her.

  Her sob turned into a chuckle. ‘So like Patrick,’ she said wistfully, holding on to my sleeve as if it were a holy relic, and gazing at me through the big moons of her glasses.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you’ve come. Please excuse the air of chaos. I got burgled earlier this week.’

  ‘How awful,’ she said.

  ‘It’s more of an inconvenience. The police picked up the guy who did it, but he’s insisted he didn’t take anything. It’s all a big pain in the arse.’

  We sat and talked in the library for about half an hour. In spite of her oddness, I couldn’t help liking her. She had met Patrick at a writing class he had taught during the summers in Westwich, she said. He’d had a reputation as a gifted teacher. All of this was news to me. She said he’d also commuted to the mainland to teach at a prison outside Boston, where he was popular with the inmates. Although she didn’t say so, I had the impression that Mrs Delamitri’s relationship with my uncle had eventually transcended literature, but I was trying not to think about the two of them in bed together.

  ‘What was he up to?’ I asked her.

  ‘I think he was doing a little painting, more writing.’

  ‘Any idea what? Not the dreaded dictionary?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t talk about it.’

  The screen door creaked open and then slapped shut. Nathan Fernshaw called out from the kitchen, ‘I’m going home for lunch.’ His head poked round the door of the library ‘I’ll finish the lawn w
hen I get back. Hello, Mrs Delamitri.’

  ‘Hi, Nathan. How’s your sister?’

  ‘She’s good.’

  ‘You two know each other?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ said Mrs Delamitri. ‘We’re old friends, aren’t we, Nathan?’

  Nathan’s bicycle was parked beside the front porch, so I unlocked the front door to let him out. Mrs Delamitri was looking more composed when I got back. She’d tethered up her crispy blond hair and applied a lick of lipstick.

  ‘One of the reasons I came, Damien, is that I have some things of yours. Patrick left them with me, but I’m sure he wanted you to have them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. This seemed very odd to me, it wasn’t like Patrick to let anything out of his sight.

  We went out to her sporty, powder-blue convertible and she opened the trunk. In it were eight green box files of the kind that had disappeared from Patrick’s study.

  ‘Any idea what’s in them?’ I asked, trying to sound breezy, though I felt puzzled and suddenly suspicious.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Letters, I think.’

  Carrying the boxes back to the house, I was dry-mouthed with anticipation. I wanted to open them, but not in front of this nutty woman. I was torn between my eagerness to see what was in them and a fear that the contents would disappoint me. I was sure they were the files that had disappeared from Patrick’s desk.

  We stacked them in the library.

  ‘Well, thank you very much, Mrs Delamitri.’ This definitely seemed like the right place to end her visit. ‘I hope this didn’t take you too much out of your way.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m staying with one of my girlfriends up at War Bonnet.’ She took a long, valedictory look over the bookshelves. ‘I’ve just had a crazy idea,’ she said suddenly. ‘Why don’t you let me buy you lunch?’

  I hesitated. I was trying to cook up an excuse to stay behind and look at the files in privacy, but I couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse.

  ‘Please. It would mean a lot to me.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ I said, half hoping I sounded lukewarm enough to make her rescind the invitation. I didn’t.

  We drove to a fancy upscale place on the other side of the island. It was in a beautiful position, set back from a cliff top. The maître d’ treated Mrs Delamitri with an un-American deference. This, and the fact that she seemed to have booked a table, made me think there was something more calculated about our excursion than she let on. But since she was buying me lunch, it seemed a bit rude to accuse her of boosting my uncle’s papers.

  I said I preferred to eat outside, and the waiter showed us to a table with a fantastic view of the sea. Mrs Delamitri pressed me to order whatever I wanted and chose an expensive white Burgundy from the wine list. I had to restrain myself from glugging it down. I told her the flavour reminded me of English strawberries.

  ‘Life’s too short to drink cheap wine, Damien,’ she said. ‘Now tell me about you.’

  I explained as much as I thought was tactful about coming to Ionia and how I felt that, all in all, it would be good to get back to England. I told her I’d been marooned for a while by the burglary.

  ‘That’s such a shame,’ she said.

  She was skilful at turning the conversation away from herself, and appeared so genuinely interested in everything I had to say that I started to worry I was talking too much. I gathered she visited her friend on Ionia a couple of times a summer. But about herself, and her life in Boston, she wouldn’t be drawn.

  We drank that whole bottle of wine and most of a second. She pressed me to have dessert and ordered me a glass of sweet French wine to drink with it. It tasted of nuts and cream and God knows what else, and must have cost roughly what I spent on food in a week. She just seemed pleased that I was enjoying myself. During a pause after the dessert, I had a moment of inspiration. ‘Did you ever come here with Patrick?’ I said.

  She looked down at her hand. Her painted nails were tracing lines along the tablecloth. She seemed to be struggling with a couple of contradictory impulses.

  ‘I have a confession to make,’ she said, touching her sunglasses nervously. ‘Patrick and I were …’ Her voice dropped as she added, almost in parentheses, ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Damien.’ She made an impatient little gesture with her fingers. ‘… More than good friends.’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

  ‘I’m married, Damien.’

  I nodded and tried to look soberly non-judgemental.

  She went on. ‘I did something rather silly. I wrote Patrick a number of letters. They were just … letters. Maybe a little bit explicit. Whatever. Within the context of our relationship, it seemed entirely appropriate. It’s just …’ She rolled her glass between her palms. ‘My husband’s a decent man.’

  Phrases were coming back to me from the bundle of letters I had found in the drawer, in particular something rather outlandish Patrick’s correspondent had suggested doing with a colander.

  ‘Mrs Delamitri, you’re welcome to have them back. I don’t want your letters. I can’t say I know where they’ll be, but I’ll be happy to return them.’ I had that drunkard’s expansive confidence that everyone’s problems are soluble.

  ‘Actually, that’s not the problem I have. I already got them back. I … panicked slightly. I mean, I had no idea who was going to come and live at the house. I hope you understand. I truly felt I had no alternative.’

  I couldn’t tell if she was sweating slightly, or if her make-up was melting in the sunshine.

  ‘Alternative to what?’

  She rummaged in her handbag. I had the feeling that she was going to pull out a gun and shoot me. Instead, she produced her handkerchief, which she pressed against her temple. It smelled faintly of cologne. ‘The sun’s awfully strong.’ She took another sip of wine and her rings clinked against the glass. I had the cruel thought that, however young she managed to keep her face, the backs of her hands still looked like the skin on a roast chicken.

  ‘I had someone break into the house and take them,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not mad at me.’

  ‘Mad at you?’ The truth was I didn’t know what I felt about it. ‘Why? If you’d asked, I would have given you your letters.’

  ‘I know you would’ve. Now that I’ve met you, I’m just so sorry about everything. But you must see that not everybody is as nice as you are. I had a lot to lose.’

  ‘So Mr Delamitri has no idea about you and my uncle?’

  ‘Mr O’Brien,’ she said. ‘Delamitri is my maiden name. And no, he doesn’t.’

  I said nothing. I was befuddled.

  ‘I came to apologise,’ said Mrs Delamitri. ‘These things can be very upsetting. Believe me, I know. The last thing in the world I wanted was for you to feel unsafe in your home. I hope this will put your mind at rest.’

  ‘So what did you do? You just looked under “Burglar” in the Yellow Pages and someone broke down my door?’

  ‘It’s not quite that simple, but if you have money, most things can be arranged.’

  ‘What if I’d interrupted these guys?’

  ‘These men are professionals, Damien. They wouldn’t have harmed you in any way.’

  ‘Well, while they were getting your letters, they also took the opportunity to steal my money, and passports, and my air ticket out of here.’ I was counting out my losses loudly on my fingers and she tried to silence me with a discreet Shush. ‘Did you pay them to do that or was it freelance work?’

  ‘That was unavoidable. Tug – one of the …’

  ‘Thieves?’ I suggested.

  ‘He said we had to make it look like a random break-in. It took them almost an hour to find anything a random burglar would be interested in.’

  ‘Well, I’m relieved he’s happy.’

  She took my hand. ‘Please don’t be angry with me.’

  I wanted to tell her that her simpering little-girl routine might have worked on Patrick, but she was old enou
gh to be my mother. I sulked for a while, enjoying the view and going over the sequence of events in my brain. Mrs Delamitri fiddled with her handbag. ‘Here,’ she said. When I looked over at her, there was a cheque for five thousand dollars folded in half by my wineglass.

  ‘I can’t accept that,’ I told her.

  ‘Damien, don’t be proud. I want to make amends. You have every right to be angry with me. I don’t want anyone else to be the victim of my selfishness.’

  As the afternoon had gone on, I noticed Mrs Delamitri’s accent meandering between Boston’s North End and somewhere in the Cotswolds. The idea that Mr O’Brien and I were victims of her selfishness seemed part of the same aspirational self-deception: that she was the star-crossed lover of a famous writer.

  ‘Believe me,’ she added tartly, ‘I spent quite a bit more than that having your house broken into.’

  ‘You know what’s strange, though,’ I said. ‘I could have sworn those files were on Patrick’s desk when I went to the house after the funeral.’

  She looked very sneaky for a moment. ‘How many times in your life have you done something really foolish, Damien?’

  ‘Probably not as often as I ought to,’ I said.

  ‘You have to put yourself in my position. I was distraught. I was in a hurting place.’

  ‘You were composed enough to organise a fairly efficient burglary.’

  ‘Not the first time.’

  ‘The first time?’

  ‘Janine and I came with a ladder. It was her idea. I’m – I’m not blaming her. I’m just saying I’m not proud of what I’ve done.’

  ‘You burgled the house twice?’

  ‘I had no idea where the letters were. We took the boxes because they were the first thing we could find. Then Janine decided she wanted the skull.’

  ‘She just took a shine to it?’

  ‘I told her to leave it behind. It was Patrick’s. All I wanted was what belonged to me. But Janine’s like that. She’s creative.’ Mrs Delamitri made it sound like a medical condition – like diabetes. ‘Once she gets an idea in her head, she just runs with it. Well, we argued about it. I told her it would be terrible feng shui – I mean, it’s basically the head of a dead person. Can you imagine? Then I was sure I heard someone coming. We rushed out. Janine took the skull and sprained her ankle on the way down. I had to carry her to the car. I warned her about the skull’