by Peter Straub
“Oh, Sears,” he said on the steps of their building. His partner was just pushing himself out of the Lincoln. “Good morning. It’s at your house tonight, isn’t it?”
“Ricky,” said Sears, “at this hour of the morning it is positively forbidden to chirp.”
Sears lumbered forward, and Ricky followed him through the door leaving Milburn behind.
Frederick Hawthorne
1
Of all the rooms in which they habitually met, this was Ricky’s favorite—the library in Sears James’s house, with its worn leather chairs, tall indistinct glass-fronted bookcases, drinks on the little round tables, prints on the walls, the muted old Shiraz carpet beneath their feet and the rich memory of old cigars in the atmosphere. Having never committed himself to marriage, Sears James had never had to compromise his luxurious ideas of comfort. After so many years of meeting together, the other men were by now unconscious of the automatic pleasure and relaxation and envy they experienced in Sears’s library, just as they were nearly unconscious of the equally automatic discomfort they felt in John Jaffrey’s house, where the housekeeper, Milly Sheehan, forever bustled in, rearranging things. But they felt it: each of them, Ricky Hawthorne perhaps more so than the others, had wished to possess such a place for himself. But Sears had always had more money than the others, just as his father had had more money than theirs. It went back that way for five generations, until you reached the country grocer who had cold-bloodedly put together a fortune and turned the James family into gentry: by the time of Sears’s grandfather, the women were thin, palpitating, decorative and useless, the men hunted and went to Harvard and they all went to Saratoga Springs in the summers. Sears’s father had been a professor of ancient languages at Harvard, where he kept a third family house; Sears himself had become a lawyer because as a young man he had thought it immoral for a man not to have a profession. His year or so of schoolmastering had shown him that it could not be teaching. Of the rest, the cousins and brothers, most had succumbed to good living, hunting accidents, cirrhosis or breakdowns; but Sears, Ricky’s old friend, had bluffed his way through until, if he was not the handsomest old man in Milburn—that was surely Lewis Benedikt—he was the most distinguished. But for the beard, he was his father’s double, tall and bald and massive, with a round subtle face above his vested suits. His blue eyes were still very young.
Ricky supposed that he had to envy that too, the magisterial appearance. He himself had never been particularly prepossessing. He was too small and too trim for that. Only his mustache had improved with age, growing somehow more luxuriant as it turned gray. When he had developed little jowls, they had not made him more impressive: they had only made him look clever. He did not think that he was particularly clever. If he had been, he might have avoided a business arrangement in which he was unofficially to become a sort of permanent junior partner. But it had been his father, Harold Hawthorne, who had taken Sears into the firm. All those years ago, he had been pleased—even excited—that he would be joined by his old friend. Now, settled into an undeniably comfortable armchair, he supposed that he was still pleased; the years had married them as securely as he was married to Stella, and the business marriage had been far more peaceful than the domestic, even if clients in the same room with both partners invariably looked at Sears and not himself when they spoke. That was an arrangement which Stella would never have tolerated. (Not that anyone in his right mind, all through the years of their marriage, would have looked at Ricky when he could have looked at Stella.)
Yes, he admitted to himself for the thousandth time, he did like it here. It went against his principles and his politics and probably the puritanism of his long-vanished religion too, but Sears’s library—Sears’s whole splendid house—was a place where a man felt at ease. Stella had no compunctions about demonstrating that it was also the sort of place where a woman too could feel at ease. She didn’t mind now and then treating Sears’s house as though it were her own. Thankfully, Sears tolerated it. It had been Stella, on one of those occasions (twelve years ago, coming into the library as if she led a platoon of architects), who had given them their name. “Well, there they are, by God,” she had said, “The Chowder Society. Are you going to keep my husband away from me all night, Sears? Or aren’t you boys through telling your lies yet?” Still, he supposed it was Stella’s perpetual energy and constant needling which had kept him from succumbing to age as old John Jaffrey had. For their friend Jaffrey was “old” despite his being six months younger than Hawthorne himself and a year younger than Sears, and in fact only five years older than Lewis, their youngest member.
Lewis Benedikt, the one who was supposed to have killed his wife, was seated directly across from Ricky, an image of expansive good health. As time rolled through them all, subtracting things, it seemed only to add to Lewis. It hadn’t been true when he was younger, but these days he bore a definite resemblance to Cary Grant. His chin would not sag, his hair would not fall. He had become almost absurdly handsome. This evening, Lewis’s big placid humorous features wore—like all their faces—an expression of expectancy. It was generally true that the best stories were told here, in Sears’s house.
“Who’s on the griddle tonight?” asked Lewis. But it was only courtesy. They all knew. The group called the Chowder Society had only a few rules: they wore evening clothes (because thirty years ago, Sears had rather liked the idea), they never drank too much (and now they were too old for that anyhow), they never asked if any of the stories were true (since even the outright whoppers were in some sense true), and though the stories went around the group in rotation, they never pressured anyone who had temporarily dried up.
Hawthorne was about to confess when John Jaffrey interrupted. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, and then responded to the others’ inquisitive glances, “no, I know it’s not me, and a good thing too. But I was just thinking that in two weeks it will be a year to the day since Edward died. He’d be here tonight if I hadn’t insisted on that damned party.”
“Please, John,” said Ricky. He didn’t like to look directly at Jaffrey’s face when it showed his emotions so clearly. His skin looked like you could push a pencil straight through it and draw no blood. “All of us know that you were not to blame yourself.”
“But it happened in my house,” insisted Jaffrey.
“Calm down, doc,” Lewis said. “You’re not doing yourself any good.”
“I’ll decide that.”
“Then you’re not doing the rest of us any good,” Lewis said with the same bland good humor. “We all remember the date. How could we forget?”
“Then what are you doing about it? Do you think you’re acting as though it never happened—as though it was normal? Just some old poop kicking the bucket? Because if so, let me inform you that you’re not.”
He had shocked them into silence; even Ricky could think of nothing to say. Jaffrey’s face was gray. “No,” he said. “You’re damned well not. You all know what’s been happening to us. We sit around here and talk like a bunch of ghouls. Milly can hardly stand having us in my house anymore. We weren’t always like this—we used to talk about all sorts of things. We used to have fun—there used to be fun. Now there isn’t. We’re all scared. But I don’t know if some of you are admitting it. Well, it’s been a year, and I don’t mind saying that I am.”
“I’m not so sure I’m scared,” said Lewis. He took a sip of his whiskey and smiled at Jaffrey.
“You’re not so sure you’re not, either,” snapped the doctor.
Sears James coughed into his fist, and everybody immediately looked at him. My God, thought Ricky: he can do that whenever he wants, just effortlessly capture our attention. I wonder why he ever thought he couldn’t be a good teacher. And I wonder why I ever thought I could hold my own with him. “John,” Sears said gently, “we’re all familiar with the facts. All of you were kind enough to go through the cold to come here tonight, an
d none of us are young men anymore. Let’s continue.”
“But Edward didn’t die at your house. And that Moore woman, that so-called actress, didn’t—”
“Enough of that,” Sears commanded.
“Well, I suppose you remember how we got on this kick,” said Jaffrey.
Sears nodded, and so did Ricky Hawthorne. It had been at the first meeting after Edward Wanderley’s odd death. The remaining four had been hesitant—they could not have been more conscious of Edward’s absence had an empty chair been placed among them. Their conversation had stuttered and stalled through half a dozen false beginnings. All of them, Ricky had seen, were wondering if they could bear to continue to meet. Ricky knew that none of them could bear not to. And then he had had his inspiration: he had turned to John Jaffrey and said, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
Dr. Jaffrey had surprised him by going pink; and then had set the tone of all their subsequent meetings by saying, “I won’t tell you that, but I’ll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me—the most dreadful thing . . .” and following it by telling what was in effect a ghost story. It was riveting, surprising, frightening . . . it took their minds off Edward. They had gone on like that ever since.
“Do you really think it’s just coincidence?” asked Jaffrey.
“Don’t follow,” Sears grumped.
“You’re dissembling, and it’s beneath you. I mean that we started on this tack, me first, after Edward . . .” His voice trailed off, and Ricky knew that he was caught between died and was killed.
“Went west,” he put in, hoping for lightness of touch. Jaffrey’s stony lizardlike eye, darting at him, told him he’d failed. Ricky leaned back in the opulent chair, hoping to vanish into the luxurious background and be no more conspicuous than a water stain on one of Sears’s old maps.
“Where did you get that from?” Sears asked, and Ricky remembered. It was what his father had used to say when a client died. “Old Toby Pfaff went west last night . . . Mrs. Wintergreen went west this morning. There’ll be the devil to pay in probate court.” He shook his head. “Yes, that’s right,” Sears said. “But I don’t know . . .”
“Exactly,” said Jaffrey. “I think something pretty damn funny is going on.”
“What do you advise? I take it that you’re not just talking for the sake of interrupting the proceedings.”
Ricky smiled over the tops of his joined fingers to show that he took no offense.
“Well, I do have a suggestion.” He was doing his best, Ricky saw, to handle Sears carefully. “I think we should invite Edward’s nephew to come here.”
“And what would be the point of that?”
“Isn’t he by way of being an expert in . . . in this sort of thing?”
“What is ‘this sort of thing’ ?”
Pushed, Jaffrey did not back down. “Maybe just what’s mysterious. I think he could—well, I think he could help us.” Sears was looking impatient, but the doctor did not let him interrupt. “I think we need help. Or am I the only man here who has trouble getting a decent night’s sleep? Am I the only one who has nightmares every night?” He scanned them all with his sunken face. “Ricky? You’re an honest man.”
“You’re not the only one, John,” Ricky said.
“No, I suppose not,” said Sears, and Ricky looked at him in surprise. Sears had never indicated before that he too might have awful nights—certainly it never showed on that big smooth reflective face. “You have his book in mind, I imagine.”
“Well, yes, of course. He must have done research—he must have had some experience.”
“I thought his experience was of mental instability.”
“Like us,” Jaffrey said bravely. “Edward must have had some reason for willing his nephew his house. I think it was that he wanted Donald to come here, if anything should happen to him. I think he knew that something would happen. And I’ll tell you what else I think. I think we ought to tell him about Eva Galli.”
“Tell him an inconclusive story fifty years old? Ridiculous.”
“The reason it’s not ridiculous is that it is inconclusive,” the doctor said.
Ricky saw that Lewis was as surprised, even shaken, as he that Jaffrey had brought up the story of Eva Galli. That episode lay, as Sears had said, fifty years in their past; none of them had mentioned it since.
“Do you think you know what happened to her?” the doctor challenged.
“Hey, come on,” Lewis put in. “Do we really need that? What the hell is the point?”
“The point is trying to find out what really happened to Edward. I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear.”
Sears nodded, and Ricky thought he could detect in his longtime partner’s face a sign of—what? Relief? Of course he would not admit to it; but that it could be seen at all was a revelation to Ricky. “I’m in a little doubt about the reasoning,” Sears said, “but if it would make you happy I suppose we could write to Edward’s nephew. We have his address in our files, don’t we, Ricky?” Hawthorne nodded. “But to be democratic, I’d like to put it to a vote first. Shall we just verbally agree or disagree and vote like that? What do you say?” He sipped from his glass and looked them over. They all agreed. “We’ll start with you, John.”
“Of course I say yes. Send for him.”
“Lewis?”
Lewis shrugged. “I don’t care one way or the other. Send for him if you want.”
“That’s a yes?”
“Okay, it’s a yes. But I say don’t drag up the Eva Galli business.”
“Ricky?”
Ricky looked at his partner and saw that Sears knew how he was going to vote. “No. Definitely no. I think it’s a mistake.”
“You’d rather have us go on as we have been going on for a year?”
“Change is always change for the worse.”
Sears was amused. “Spoken like a true lawyer, though I think the sentiment ill becomes a former member of YPSL. But I say yes, and that makes it three to one. It’s carried. We’ll write to him. Since mine was the deciding vote, I’ll handle it.”
“I’ve just thought of something,” Ricky said. “It’s been a year now. Suppose he wants to sell the house? It’s been sitting empty since Edward died.”
“Faw. You’re inventing problems. We’ll get him here faster if he wants to sell.”
“How can you be sure things won’t get worse? Can you be sure?” Sitting as he had at least once a month for more than twenty years in a coveted chair in the best room he knew, Ricky fervently wished that nothing would change—that they would be allowed to continue, and that they would simply tease out their anxieties in bad dreams and stories. Looking at them all in the lowered light as a cold wind battered the trees outside Sears’s windows, he wished for nothing more than that: to continue. They were his friends, he was in a way as married to them as a moment ago he had considered he was to Sears, and he gradually became aware that he feared for them. They seemed so terribly vulnerable, sitting there and regarding him quizzically, as if each of the others imagined that nothing could be worse than a few bad dreams and a bi-weekly spook story. They believed in the efficacy of knowledge. But he saw a plane of darkness, cast by a lampshade, cross John Jaffrey’s forehead and thought: John is dying already. There is a kind of knowledge they have never confronted, despite the stories they tell; and when that thought came into his well-groomed little head, it was as though whatever was implied in the knowledge he meant was out there somewhere, out in the first signs of winter, out there and gaining on them.
Sears said, “We’ve decided, Ricky. It’s for the best. We can’t just stew in our own juices. Now.” He looked around the circle they made, metaphorically rubbing his hands, and said, “Now that’s settled, who, as Lewis put it, is on the griddle tonight?”
Within Ricky Hawthorne the past suddenly shifted and deli
vered a moment so fresh and complete that he knew he had his story, although he’d had nothing planned and had thought he would have to pass; but eighteen hours from the year 1945 shone clearly in his mind, and he said, “Well, I guess it’s me.”
2
After the other two had left, Ricky stayed behind, telling them that he was in no hurry to get out into that cold. Lewis had said, “It’ll put blood in your cheeks, Ricky,” but Dr. Jaffrey had merely nodded—it really was unseasonably cold for October, cold enough for snow. Sitting alone in the library while Sears went off to freshen up their drinks, Ricky could hear the ignition of Lewis’s car grinding away in the street. Lewis had a Morgan which he’d imported from England five years before, and it was the only sports car Ricky had really liked the looks of. But the canvas top wouldn’t be much protection on a night like this; and Lewis seemed to be having a lot of trouble getting the car to start. There. He’d nearly got it. In these New York winters, you really needed something bigger than Lewis’s little Morgan. Poor John would be frozen by the time Lewis got him home to Milly Sheehan and the big house on Montgomery Street, around the corner and seven blocks up. Milly’d be sitting in the semi-dark of the doctor’s waiting rooms, keeping herself awake so that she could jump up as soon as she heard his key in the door, help him off with his coat and pour a little hot chocolate into him. As Ricky sat listening, the Morgan’s engine coughed into life—he heard them drive away and pictured Lewis clapping a hat on his head, grinning at John and saying, “Didn’t I tell you this little beauty would perform?” After he’d dropped John off, he’d leave town altogether, zipping along Route 17 until he was out in the woods, and go back to the place he’d bought when he had returned. Whatever else Lewis had done in Spain, he had earned a lot of money.