The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library

by Alice Kimberly

  Seymour was back to his old self, doing the job that made him the happiest. As it turned out, campus security didn’t hold him long. After the staties arrived, I showed Detective Marsh the evidence I’d found in Nelson Spinner’s office, and all charges against Seymour were dropped.

  Spinner was fished out of the Dumpster and put in traction, where, thanks to a combination of his own smugness and the pain-killing drugs, he’d confessed everything to Marsh. Of course, he claimed he’d never “meant” to kill Peter Chesley, said it had been “an unfortunate accident” during a struggle. As for Rene Montour’s death, that again, he claimed was “unintentional.”

  According to Spinner, Tyler Scott had flagged Montour down on the crest of Crowley Hill, pretending he’d just been in an accident and needed help. When Montour stepped out of his vehicle, Spinner emerged from behind a bush and struck him from behind with a flashlight. They put Montour back at the wheel of his car, took the Phelps volume, and sent the car down the hill and into a tree. Montour wasn’t supposed to die from the blow. Spinner claimed this was “simply an unfortunate result.”

  Tyler Scott was arrested after Spinner’s confession, and I understand both of their lawyers are working out a plea agreement with the authorities. Whatever the authorities agree to, however, I doubt Tyler will be seeing freedom anytime soon. And Spinner will have all the time to work out any code he can dream up—behind bars.

  “Next up, two butterscotch swirls.” Seymour gave me another cone. I handed the treats to two more friends of Spencer’s—Danny’s little sister, Maura, and a shy boy named Keith Parsons.

  “Thank you, Mrs. McClure!”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “The rocky road,” Seymour declared. I gave the cone to the next boy. “Here you go, Boyce. Enjoy.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. M,” Boyce Lyell said, running off to join Spencer’s invited group.

  “And, finally, the guest of honor, the old half-chocolate, half-vanilla, doubled-dipped in strawberry coating.” Seymour winked at Spencer. “That was always my favorite, too.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Tarnish,” Spencer said. He took a bite, then faced me. “I’m getting on line with my friends, okay, Mom?”

  “Save a place for me.”

  “Hey, Pen.” Seymour motioned me closer. “Isn’t that kid Boyce Lyell the snot you said was bullying Spencer?”

  “It is. But, as you can see, things worked out.”

  “I’m all ears.” Seymour leaned out the window of his truck, and I stepped closer.

  “Well,” I said, lowering my voice, “the day I went to see Principal Chesley, his face was bruised and swollen from a car accident. He wrecked his Toyota sedan while running errands at lunch—running them at very high speeds, it turns out. Anyway, I got confused when I saw him drive an SUV into the school parking lot. I thought he was lying to me about the wreck when I saw there were no dents on his vehicle. Turns out it wasn’t his vehicle. He’d borrowed the SUV from the garage that had towed his sedan away from the accident, which was also why he’d been so late for our meeting.”

  “Wait a second there. What the heck does the principal’s car wreck have to do with Spencer being bullied?”

  “Everything. One of the kids overheard me arguing with their principal in his office, and the next time they saw the man, his nose looked like a swollen sausage.” I shrugged. “It seems kids can jump to the wrong conclusion as easily as adults.”

  Seymour’s eyebrows arched in disbelief. “You mean?”

  “The rumor got spread that I smacked around the new principal. The way I heard it, that story scared Boyce Lyell so badly he was shaking in his sneakers. I mean, you’ve got to figure, if Spencer’s mom can beat up their new strapping jock of a principal, what would she do to the kid who bullied her baby boy?”

  Seymour laughed. “That’s hilarious, Pen. But it still doesn’t explain who invited the kid here.”

  “Spencer did.”

  “Spencer?”

  “Yeah. Like a little lawyer, he approached Boyce all by himself to work things out. Instead of twisting the knife and scaring the kid with his mom’s new rep, he invited Boyce to join us.”

  “That’s pretty evolved for a ten-year-old. Me? I would have tortured the snot.”

  “Yeah, I know. I can’t tell you how proud I am. You know what he told me? He said he’d seen an old Shield of Justice episode where Jack said, ‘In the P.I. game, it’s always better to make a friend than burn an enemy.’ How about that?”

  Seymour scratched his head. “You know, I love that show, and I swear I’ve seen every episode three times, but I don’t remember that quote.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Then where did he?…” I tapped my chin.

  “Kid probably just dreamed it up,” Seymour said with a shrug. “You watch enough of that stuff it gets in your blood.”

  I tried mentally asking Jack for an explanation, but all I could hear in my mind was a low, teasing chuckle.

  A new group of customers stepped up just then, ready to place orders for ice cream, so Seymour handed me my cone—vanilla dipped in chocolate and rolled in peanuts—and went back to work. I was about to join my son in line when someone called my name.

  “Pen! Great news!” Brainert cried, getting out of his car. “I’ve just returned from Providence.”

  “What’s the word?”

  After everything had been settled with Spinner, Brainert and I had driven back to Newport. In the light of day, (thanks to Brainert’s breathless persuasion) Raymond Chesley had agreed to allow Brainert to examine Poe’s oval portrait hanging in the mansion’s library. Just as both of us had suspected, there was something preserved inside that portrait—a literary treasure. A handwritten poem, one never before discovered, signed by Edgar Allan Poe.

  Brainert grinned as he walked up to me. “Three handwriting experts and two document analysts have concluded that that the poem we found inside the picture frame was, in fact, written by the hand of Poe.”

  “Did you ever doubt?” I asked between bites of melting ice cream.

  “Not after an examination of the paper and the ink showed them to be authentic. And of course no one doubts the authenticity of the Reynolds daguerreotype itself.”

  I noticed the gash under Brainert’s eye was almost healed. He’d turned out to be right about that, too. The scar did make him look more dangerous.

  “I still can’t believe you got Raymond Chesley to cooperate,” I said. “He was so nasty to me the night I met him.”

  “Never try to reason with a man after you’ve broken into his house, Pen.” Brainert shook his head. “In the light of day, one always sees the light.”

  If that were only true, I thought. It certainly wasn’t for Nelson Spinner. The truth might have set Seymour free, but it would put Nelson behind bars for a long, long time.

  That’s the thing about the PI game, baby. Digging for the truth can be a dirty business.

  So can eating ice cream, I thought, as I stepped over to Seymour’s truck to retrieve some paper napkins.

  “That’s another mystery solved,” Brainert crowed, following me over. “Who could have imagined that Eugene Phelps was the great-grandson of the daguerreotype maker who captured that image of Poe? Or that Poe would have paid for his daguerreotype by writing an original poem?”

  “Or that the man’s name was Jericho Reynolds,” I noted, wiping some sticky drippings off my hands.

  Reynolds, of course, was the name Poe had called in his dying hours. For over a century, many scholars had speculated about the man’s identity. Brainert was now preparing to write a bevy of academic papers on the subject, offering his theory on that mystery as well.

  “So what’s going to happen to the poem and the daguerreotype?” I asked.

  Brainert rubbed his chin. “The two sides of the family share Peter Chesley’s estate evenly and they don’t agree on much, but they did decide to place the daguerreotype in the St. Francis College
Library—”

  “I’m glad to hear it won’t stay private. Something like that should be available for study and appreciation.”

  “The Chesley family will continue to own the likeness, of course, and each time the image is reprinted, the family stands to gain. The same is true of the poem. I’ve dealt with both sides of the family—even that favorite principal of yours, Claymore Chesley—and they are close to resolving their differences.”

  “It seems Peter’s last wish is finally coming true.”

  “Yes. The feuding branches of his family are going to be reunited at last.”

  I gave Brainert a sad smile. “I’m just so sorry it took his death to accomplish it.”

  Why, baby? Jack piped up. You of all people ought to know. Dead guys can accomplish an awful lot.

  I DIDN’T HEAR from Jack again until hours later. I was tucked under the covers, reading the Penguin edition of Poe’s Selected Writings. When I finally shut off the light, I felt the room’s drop in temperature, the soft kiss of wind brushing my cheek, that frisson of electricity tickling my skin.

  You ready for that night on the town yet, baby?

  I smiled, settled into the pillows. “You’ll never give up, will you?”

  A guy can dream.

  “So, apparently, can a girl.”

  You did good. You should be proud.

  “I didn’t do it alone.”

  Yeah, that geek show you parade around with helped a little.

  “I meant you, Jack. Thanks.”

  Don’t thank me. Without the trouble you get into, I’d be bored out of my skull in this hick town.

  “Did you just give me another compliment? You’re spoiling me.”

  Yeah, well, don’t let it go to your head. You’ve still got a lot to learn. Back in my time, when your gumshoeing wasn’t hinky it was lousy.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  So what were you reading tonight, lamb chop?

  “Poe’s short story ‘The Oval Portrait.’ I’d never read it before, and I decided it was about time.”

  Give me the highlights.

  “It’s about an artist who’s so obsessed with his work, he neglects his young bride. So she agrees to sit meekly as his subject. The artist spends weeks painting her. He’s so enamored of the image on the canvas, he never notices how the cold, shadowy turret of his studio is withering the health of his bride. Day after day, she grows weaker and sicker. Finally, he finishes the oval portrait. Gazing on it, he cries out, ‘This is indeed Life itself!’ Then he turns to regard his wife: she’s dead.”

  Sounds like a happy-go-lucky yarn.

  “Well, Poe was a gothicist. He had reason to be, of course, since he’d lost a young wife whom he’d loved dearly. That’s where the story comes from—he drew imagery and emotion for his writing watching his bride suffer and die slowly from tuberculosis. Her death fueled his art. Morbid and sad, but true.”

  You know, that old Chesley geezer sounds like the painter in the story, holing up for years, obsessing over the cataloging of that moldy mausoleum.

  “Yeah, I’d hate to think of Aunt Sadie trapped in a place like that. I think, in the end, she did okay without him.”

  And you did okay, too, baby.

  “What do you mean me?”

  I been around guys like that rummy late husband of yours. Alkies, wife-beaters, it don’t matter. They’re all the same. They drain the life out of the ones who love them.

  I lay quietly, considering what Jack had said. He wasn’t wrong. I’d been obedient and meek in my marriage, just like the bride in “The Oval Portrait.” I wondered what would have happened if Calvin hadn’t bailed. Would I have wised up on my own? Or, little by little, over time, would he have crushed my spirit? Drained the life out of me?

  Not for nothing, sweetheart, but there are some questions you’ll never get answered.

  “Well, how about your life then? Now that it’s over, maybe you can give me a few…answers, I mean.”

  What do you want me to spill?

  “First of all: what ever happened in that Vincent Tattershawe case? You never showed me.”

  Not much to show. The address on the ticker tape wrapped around the key led to a bank. The key opened a safety deposit box. Inside was a pile of stock certificates for Ogden Heating and Cooling. Turns out it was a legit business. Some big conglomerate bought it, and the stock paid off ten to one. Dorothy Kerns was a multimillionaire before the year was out.

  “You mean Vincent Tattershawe was on the up-and-up all along?”

  Yeah, baby, Dorothy Kerns’s picture of Tattershawe turned out to be the one that rated after all. He left a short note in that bank box, told Dorothy it was better for her if they never saw each other again. Seems he’d been building a case against the firm. Was going to take it to the authorities. But his boss caught on, tried to have him clipped. Vincent escaped the lead poisoning and took a powder.

  Grabbing the photo off Mindy’s desk was a last-minute idea. He figured no one would suspect a photo having incriminating info. A straight letter could have been intercepted and he was pretty paranoid. Judging from what happened to Mindy, turned out he was right.

  “And what happened to Baxter Kerns and the corrupt investment company?”

  I dropped a dime on both of them, honey. Went to the feds with the address of the warehouse, info on the records room. Caught up with old Baxter nice and private like before the badges took him away.

  “What did you do?”

  Let’s just say I introduced him to a new gourmet dish: brass knuckles.

  “Is that what went wrong that you set right again?”

  Excuse me?

  “Last week, you said there was something that went wrong in your life that you wanted to see go right in someone else’s.”

  Dorothy Kerns and Vincent Tattershawe. That’s what went right. I helped Dorothy find him.

  “How?”

  Tattershawe didn’t leave any contact info, but I noodled out where he’d gone just the same—back to Cherbourg. That’s where I would have gone. After serving over there, he knew the old HQ like the back of his hand. So I took Dorothy to France, and we tracked him down. They got hitched over there and stayed. Started a family right away, too. Adopted two little orphan girls.

  “Jack, that’s amazing…but if that’s what went right, what was it that went wrong? For you, I mean?”

  It’s not a happy story, baby.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Back in the ’30s, before I did my bit for the war in Europe, I’d been seeing a woman—

  “Wait, did you actually say a woman? Not a dame? Not a broad?”

  Her name was Sally Archer. She was a nurse. She had a russet pageboy and a pert little nose. She was small and practical, full of sunbeams and fresh air but strong enough to kick a stevedore into holding the door for her.

  “Sounds like she was right up your dark alley. What happened to her?”

  Well, she wanted to get hitched, but I was a pretty angry, unhappy bird back then, and I was fairly sure I’d make any dame miserable, so I walked away. I joined the army, spent four years over there, you know, like the song…

  “And?”

  And…they say one bad night in a foxhole can change any man. I had hundreds of them. But by the time I got back stateside, Sally was married. A doctor she worked with had snatched her up, and she was living in the suburbs, had a kid already and another on the way.

  “Jack, that’s so sad…but couldn’t you find another woman to settle down with?”

  No, sweetheart. Went through plenty. But none were Sally. There’s only been one other woman who’s reminded me of her since…

  “Who was she?”

  I waited for an answer.

  “Jack?” I called. “Jack?”

  But all the ghost said was—

  I’ll see you in your dreams, baby.

  Then his whispering presence temporarily receded, back into the fieldstone walls that had become his tomb.


  REMEMBERED

  (FOR REYNOLDS)

  A moment gone, a moment captured

  In this countenance displayed—

  An image, bloodless, everlasting

  An instant Death cannot dissuade.

  Herein the goodly spirit,

  Herein the sorrows woe,

  Herein both truth and falsehood—

  What will this likeness sow?

  A thousand thoughts on paper

  Captured by this hand

  Inscribed for time eternal,

  An amaranthine land.

  Like stars hung in the Heavens,

  Like books shelved on a wall,

  Now you have made this monument

  Even Death cannot befall!

  ’Tis true the image cannot tell

  what secrets lie within—

  If the heart of one is troubled

  If the mind of one has sinned.

  But perhaps the greater purpose

  Of this new and valiant art

  Is to keep the memory sweet

  When another loses heart.

  For a man who’s well remembered

  In mind, in thought, in tale,

  For him, life is eternal

  And Death shall finally fail!

  Don’t Miss the Next

  Haunted Bookshop Mystery

  The Ghost and the Femme Fatale

  After nearly a decade, Cranberry Street’s old Movie Town Theater is finally restored to its former glory. The grand opening “Noir Week” is the biggest event Quindicott, Rhode Island, has seen in years. Dozens of old films are scheduled for screening, along with a roster of special guests and lectures.

  No sooner do the festivities begin, however, than special guests start dropping—from decidedly unnatural causes—and Penelope Thornton-McClure wants to know why “Noir Week” has taken a genuinely dark turn.

  Penelope sets her sleuthing sights on eighty-something Hedda Geist. The ghost of PI Jack Shepard well remembers the dame (albeit a much younger version of her) from her years burning up the silver screen as a sultry, seductive femme fatale in 1940s crime dramas. Jack also remembers that Hedda abruptly left Hollywood at the height of her career, for some mysterious reason, retreating from the public eye until now.