Pressure Drop

by Peter Abrahams

  High tide—splash, low tide—smash.

  Matthias looked up. Hew’s balustrade loomed directly above, thirty or forty feet overhead. From where he stood, Matthias could just make out the neck of an overturned bottle extending over the top like a toy cannon.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Brock.

  Moxie said nothing. He wore only a threadbare Speedo; perhaps that explained the goose bumps on his skin and the ashy tint around his eyes and mouth.

  “What time is it?” Matthias asked.

  Brock checked his Rolex. “Eight-fifteen,” he said.

  Matthias had probably left Hew’s less than three hours ago. “Who found him?” he asked.

  Brock turned to Moxie. Moxie said: “Boys on the beach.”

  “What boys?”

  “Fishing boys,” said Moxie. “Down to Blufftown.”

  “Which boys?”

  Moxie gazed over Matthias’s shoulder. “Craig be one. And the short boy with that bad foot.”

  “Larry?”

  Moxie nodded. “Larry, he be the one that tell me.”

  “When?”

  “Morning time.”

  “An hour ago?”

  “Yeah. An hour.”

  Matthias looked up again: at the cliff, the balustrade, the bottle, the buzzard in its holding pattern. “And he was just like this?”

  “Like this,” Moxie said. “But the tide be out then.”

  Now it was rising. Waves foamed up the coral beach and slipped back down, not far from Hew’s outstretched hand. Matthias knelt and patted Hew’s pockets. They were empty.

  “What’s that for?” Brock asked.

  Matthias wasn’t sure. “Anyone seen Nottage?” he said.

  “Nottage?”

  “He was on the Bluff last night.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Maybe he saw something. Or heard something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Falling.”

  “Nottage?” said Brock. “He’s bloody pickled twenty-four hours a day.”

  A ball of nausea quickly coalesced in Matthias’s stomach and almost came up.

  “What’s wrong?” Brock asked.

  “What’s wrong?” Matthias, still kneeling, gently raised Hew’s head and revealed the crushed side. The eye on the crushed side was open; the other closed. “That’s what’s wrong.”

  No one blanched. No one turned away. Moxie came from a world where curable birth defects like club feet went uncured; Brock had seen a diving partner taken by a great white off the Queensland coast; Matthias had encountered men with caved-in heads before, starting with a few of Cesarito’s compadres on the Isle of Pines. The ball of nausea in his stomach dissipated. “We’d better call Conchtown,” he said. “For Constable Welles.”

  “Why?” Brock asked.

  “To examine the body.”

  “Welles?” Brock said. “He can’t even write his name.” Matthias glanced at Moxie. His eyes had gone blank. “Isn’t it obvious what happened?” Brock asked.

  They all looked up. “I guess so,” Matthias said.

  “He was a funny old ponce,” Brock said, “but he was as big a lush as Nottage. He didn’t have to get by with aftershave, that’s all.”

  Matthias stood up. “I’ll call Welles anyway. You stay here, Brock. And Moxie, see if you can find Nottage.”

  Moxie went off down the beach. Brock said: “What am I supposed to do here?”

  “Keep the crabs off him.” They watched the crabs, no longer scuttling: they had advanced a foot or two and waited in pools in the rock, claws folded neatly before them; each pair of wide-apart eyes formed the short base of an isosceles triangle with Hew’s body at the apex.

  “Better hurry,” Brock said. The tips of the first waves lapped at Hew’s bloodless fingers.

  Matthias returned to the office. He called the one-room police station in Conchtown and counted thirty rings before hanging up. When he tried again he couldn’t get a dial tone. Walking out, he saw that he had left red footprints on the office floor. He slid on a worn pair of boat shoes and went up the path to Hew’s house.

  Inside, everything looked the way it had a few hours before: the mildewing antiques, the shelves of paperbacks, the stacks of Punch, the Gauguin, all in their places. Matthias moved to the terrace. The tray of Ritz crackers still sat on the table between the chaise longues, but now a cockroach had joined the ants inside. One empty snifter stood beside the tray. The other, which he had not been able to see from below, was on the balustrade, not far from the overturned bottle. The second glass was one-third full. Matthias picked it up and sniffed. He smelled the smell of 1909 Armagnac. It had lost its magic.

  Matthias glanced over the wall. Brock stood gazing out to sea, arms folded on his chest, Hew’s body at his feet. The sea half-covered the graceful outstretched arm and was beginning to foam in the long white hair. In ten more minutes it would lift Hew off the rocks and carry him away. “You might as well bring him up here,” Matthias called down.

  Brock lifted Hew on his shoulders in one easy motion and brought him up to the terrace. He started to lower him on one of the chaises, but Matthias said: “Just lay him on the floor.”

  “On the floor?” Brock said. Matthias didn’t reply. Brock laid Hew down on the white marble. A strand of seaweed had caught in his hair, curled like a limp garland.

  Matthias sat on the balustrade, his back to the sea. Brock sat nearby, on the other side of the snifter and the overturned bottle. “How much did he have last night?” Brock asked.

  “Enough.”

  “Then you left and he had some more.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Maybe he sat up here.”

  “Maybe.”

  “To watch the sun come up, say. With his feet on the other side.”

  They swung around to look east. Brock’s arm barely brushed the overturned bottle, but it was enough to start it rolling. He snatched at it, missed; the bottle rolled off the edge and pinwheeled down, landing with a little splash in the waves that now covered the spot where Hew had lain. A red crab shot out of the water and sidestepped quickly out of sight.

  “Shit,” Brock said. “That was evidence.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was suicide.”

  “Why would Hew commit suicide?” Matthias asked.

  Brock shrugged. Overhead the buzzard had been joined by another, slightly smaller and blacker. They flew in tandem, banking into the stiff wind, beating their heavy wings, then banking again and gliding swiftly on the breeze, round and round.

  “Ever been in the blue hole, Brock?”

  “What blue hole?”

  “Our blue hole.”

  “The sink hole by the shuffleboard?”

  “Yeah.”

  Brock shook his head. “Can’t really call that a blue hole, can you? It’s not even blue.”

  “All the inland ones are that way.”

  “You dove it?”

  “Years ago.”

  “Yeah? I’ve never seen the point.” He glanced at Matthias. “What’s down there?”

  “Nothing.”

  They fell silent. Small, quick brown flies appeared and descended on Hew. Then came slow fat black ones. They found his nostrils right away, then his lips, then his open eye. “Maybe we should cover him up,” Brock said. But then they saw Constable Welles making his way steadily up the path. News could still travel on Andros without electronic aid.

  Constable Welles climbed the steps to the terrace. He paused at the top and took a deep breath. Constable Welles was a tall old man with tightly curled white hair, a long bony face and a big frame that suggested he had once been very strong. He wore his summer uniform all year long: black shorts with red stripes down the sides, black knee socks, black shoes cracked but highly polished, white shirt with red trim. He nodded to Matthias and Brock, then gazed down at the body. “That be Sir Hew?” he said. C
onstable Welles had a bass voice, not frayed and rumbling, like Nottage’s, but smooth and musical, like Paul Robeson’s. His knees cracked as he knelt to examine the body. The quick brown flies darted away; the fat black ones took to the air with more reluctance.

  Matthias told him how Hew had been found and why they had moved him, about the night before and the overturned bottle. The constable acknowledged this explanation with a deep sound from his chest, longer than a grunt, shorter than a hum: it resisted interpretation. Then he picked the seaweed out of Hew’s hair and rose. The flies descended.

  The constable bent over the snifter and smelled its contents. “Anyone be touching this?”

  “I did,” Matthias said. “But that’s where it was.”

  Constable Welles made his deep sound again. He gazed down where the Armagnac bottle had fallen. It had drifted away, or filled with water and sunk out of sight. The constable pulled a clean white handkerchief from the pocket of his shorts and carefully wrapped the snifter in it, spilling nothing.

  “Do you want the bottle too?” Brock asked.

  “It be gone,” Constable Welles said.

  “We could look for it,” Matthias told him.

  The constable shook his head. “Too late, mahn.” He stood before Brock and Matthias, but looked between them rather than at either one. “Sir Hew has no kin,” he said.

  Was it a question? Matthias said: “I’m not sure.”

  “No kin,” Constable Welles repeated, like a mournful theme sounded on the lowest string of the bass violin. He stared down at the seaweed in his hand. Time passed. The flies buzzed; waves began slapping the base of the cliff; a third buzzard rose out of the pine trees and went into an orbit of its own, not as high as the other two. Brock yawned.

  At last Constable Welles looked up. “I don’ like to dirty the name of a dead man,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Matthias asked.

  “If a man take his own life.”

  “Is there evidence of that?”

  Constable Welles was watching the cockroach in the Ritz crackers. “That wall be plenty wide,” he said quietly. Then there was a silence until Reverend Christie came on the terrace with a few men from Blufftown.

  Reverend Christie was a fat man with a clerical collar, a stained white suit and a heavy gold watch which he consulted frequently. He gazed down on the body. “Poor sinner,” he said. “What happened to him?”

  “Death by accident,” replied Constable Welles without hesitation. “Give him a Christian burial.”

  “May he rest in peace,” said Reverend Christie. The men from Blufftown gazed at the objects in the constable’s hands: seaweed and a crystal glass wrapped in a white handkerchief.

  “No kin,” said Constable Welles.

  Reverend Christie frowned. “No kin anywhere?”

  “No kin.”

  “Then, my good friend,” said the reverend, “who shall pay for the Christian burial?”

  Not I, said the pig. “I’m sure his estate will cover it,” Matthias said. “In the meantime, I’ll pay whatever’s necessary.”

  “God bless you,” said Reverend Christie.

  The men from Blufftown carried Hew away. Reverend Christie poked his head through the open sliding glass door, glanced quickly into the house and followed. Constable Welles walked to the balustrade, poured the contents of the snifter into the sea and set the glass down where he had found it. Then he left, taking only the seaweed.

  “What was that all about?” Brock asked.

  “He liked him,” Matthias said.

  “Yeah?”

  Half an hour later, Matthias was in his office, on the phone to a man named Willoughby at the trust department of Hew’s branch of Barclay’s Bank in the City of London.

  “What did he die of?” asked Willoughby.

  “A fall.”

  “I see. He lived a long time, considering.” There was a silence. “Well then, Mr. Matthias, thanks so much for getting in touch.”

  “Will someone be coming over to handle his estate?”

  “His estate?” said Willoughby.

  “Yes. I don’t know if he has a lawyer, or whether he left a will.”

  “May I ask what your relationship was to Sir Hew?”

  “We were neighbors.”

  “Ah. Did you know him well?”

  “I wouldn’t say well.”

  “Not well,” said Willoughby. “Then perhaps it will surprise you to learn that there is no estate.”

  “Hew told me he received monthly income payments from you.”

  “Not income, Mr. Matthias. He’d been encroaching on principal for the last decade. Encroaching heavily. The balance in his account is presently … two-hundred-forty-seven pounds, thirty-six pence.”

  “That’s all he had left?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “There’s still the house to be sold.”

  “I don’t think we need hurry about that,” said Willoughby.

  “Why not? There are bound to be some expenses now. The burial, for one.”

  “I gather you haven’t been apprised of all the facts, Mr. Matthias. Sir Hew hasn’t owned the house for a number of years now.”

  “Who owns the house?”

  “We do. The bank, that is. Sir Hew mortgaged it heavily at one time. He proved unable to maintain the payments. We were forced to foreclose. Naturally we continued to allow him residency, at a very reasonable rent.”

  “Which you skimmed off the top of the trust account.”

  “I don’t quite follow you.”

  “Never mind,” Matthias said. The image of Hew subsisting on ant-infested crackers made him angry. “Do you own the contents of the house too?”

  “Not me personally, of course. The bank. All contents and furnishings.”

  “Including the Gauguin? It must be worth hundreds of thousands all by itself.”

  Willoughby laughed, a laugh quickly masked by genteel coughing. “The Gauguin. Did Sir Hew never tell you the story of the Gauguin?”

  “What story?”

  “I’m taken aback. I would have thought he’d have dined out on it for years.”

  “What story?”

  “Simply put, the Gauguin is a fake. Sir Hew must have known it all along—he bought it in Paris sometime in the twenties at a rather low price, too low, I’m afraid, for a Gauguin, even then. But it was thoroughly inauthenticated, if you’ll pardon the coinage, in the appraisal conducted before he entered into the initial mortgage. He was quite a character, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “What was going to happen when he couldn’t pay the rent?”

  “Fortunately we’ll never have to face that decision.”

  “But it’s in your interest to maximize your return.”

  “Without doubt. I’m glad you understand, and I’m sure Sir Hew would have as well. He was quite realistic, beneath his rather colorful … patina. I met him several times in the late fifties. A most amusing fellow. Thank you so much for your call. We’ll be in touch with the local authority.”

  “What do you want done with the Armagnac?”

  “The Armagnac, Mr. Matthias?”

  “Do you want me to send it to you personally, or to the bank impersonally?”

  “Armagnac? I’m afraid I don’t follow quite.”

  “Goodbye, Willoughby.”

  Matthias hung up. He went outside. Brock was passing by, a tank on each shoulder.

  “Something wrong, Matt?”

  “He killed himself.”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “Just take my word for it.”

  Matthias returned to Hew’s house. Piaf, the drinking, the scrapbooks, two-hundred-forty-seven pounds, thirty-six pence: it added up to suicide; and put a different slant on Hew’s last words. “I’ll miss your company.”

  Matthias stood before the painting with the Gauguin signature. “Gauguin,” it said, “1897.” It looked like a good painting to him, but he knew nothing about art. He was s
till gazing at it when he remembered the scrapbooks. Hew had promised to search for all his old scrapbooks. He walked out on the terrace to get the scrapbook Hew had shown him hours before, with the Nijinsky picture, and all the young men, and Dr. Hiram Standish at the University of Heidelberg. It had been on the table, beside the tray of Ritz crackers. The tray was still there, empty now, and so was the flashlight and Matthias’s glass. But the scrapbook was gone.

  Matthias searched the entire house. He found drawers full of old love letters, a collection of erotica from the twenties that seemed refined compared with what was available in any American city, and a copy of Mr. Norris Changes Trains with the inscription, “To Hew, who remembered the wine, gratefully, Christopher,” but he didn’t find the scrapbook, or any other scrapbooks.

  Hew had three old suitcases. Matthias put the “Gauguin” in one, for reasons he couldn’t explain. The other two he filled with all the bottles of Armagnac that were left because he didn’t want Mr. Willoughby to get his hands on them and he didn’t think Hew would have wanted that either.

  24

  Now he was sick.

  It was Fritz’s fault.

  Fritz had let him get cold. He had caught a chill. It made him want to cough, but he couldn’t cough. He felt his chest filling with liquid. It was, he thought, like drowning. That struck him as appropriate, somehow, but he couldn’t think why. His memory was very bad.

  The medical man appeared. “Hi, I’m Dr. Robert. Remember me?”

  Certainly, doctor. I even remember when you said I might not remember. You were right.

  Dr. Robert stuck a breathing tube in his nose and hooked him to a respirator. He became a component, one third of a device—IV, respirator, him—designed for a purpose he couldn’t figure out. He left out the catheter, which for some reason bothered him most of all.

  “This is merely temporary,” said Dr. Robert, leaving. “Not to worry.”

  But temporary went on and on. Happy no longer saw the outside. He lost touch with the tingling electromagnetic force and the smell of the living planet. The IV forced nourishment into him, the respirator air. His body accepted them. He watched the white ceiling and the brown spider and longed for painkillers, even though he wasn’t in pain. He had caught a chill. Now he was in the white room all the time. But he couldn’t blame Fritz. Fritz had always been nice to him and now he was a simple old man. He had always been a simple old man.