Dreamthorp

by Williamson, Chet

  Laura's eyes grew large. "God, that's . . . awful. How did t happen?"

  "A heavy wooden lid—blanket bin—fell on her." The feeling shot through Tom that he should not lie to this woman, that she would find out the truth sooner or later. "That's the official story, anyway," he added. "The truth is that she was murdered."

  "Murdered . . ." It was a whisper that Tom barely heard.

  "I found her," he said. "There was no other way it could have happened."

  "Do they . . . know who?" She looked scared, Tom bought, and rightfully so. He was scared too.

  "No. The state police just got here."

  Laura nodded. "Well . . . let me know if you hear anything else."

  "I will. But I'm sure there'll be a lot on the news tonight about it. In the meantime, keep your doors locked, huh?"

  She nodded grimly. "You know it. Bye."

  Laura locked her doors as soon as she got into her house, and closed and locked her windows as well, turning on both the upstairs and downstairs air conditioners. She watched the local six o'clock news, but they didn't add much to what Tom Brewer had told her. "Suspicions of foul play" were as much as the police would admit, but there had been two reports of prowlers in Dreamthorp in the past two weeks, and residents were urged to be on their guard and report anything suspicious to the Chalmers police.

  After her Lean Cuisine dinner, Laura worked on a project until nine, then took a bath and climbed into bed, where she read a Wodehouse paperback, hoping that the absurd and hilarious plot intricacies would get her mind off what had happened only two cottages away.

  It did not work. The calamities accumulating upon the shoulders of Bingo Little and Bertie Wooster drifted from Laura's thoughts, and the volume drifted shut. There were more important plots to be untangled. She kept imagining different scenarios leading up to Mrs. Sipling's death, and in every one the face of the killer was Gilbert Rodman's, even though she knew he was dead, she knew he could not possibly have had anything to do with it, she knew that if, by some miracle he had not died and had come after her and found out where she lived, that he would not have vented his fury on dull, sweet, ancient Martha Sipling.

  No, if Gilbert Rodman, whoever he was, had come for her, he would have been standing behind the door when she walked into her house. He would not have given the grace of a warning by killing a neighbor first.

  She put her book on the bedside table and looked at her clock radio. It was only a little after ten, but she thought that if she could sleep she would at least stop thinking about what happened, both today and nine months ago. But when she flicked off the light, she kept seeing Gilbert Rodman's face etched on the inside of her closed eyelids. Her efforts to replace the image finally brought her to thoughts of Tom Brewer.

  She had been attracted to him. He was not handsome, but there was a friendly, comfortable ruggedness to his features. She remembered the day she had bumped into him in the lake, and found pleasure in the thought of his grinning face, his wide shoulders, downy with fine, curly hair, dark except for a sporadic touch of gray to hint at his age. Even as he had told her about today's violent death, he had seemed calm, in control. She envied him that.

  And as the full and cheerful lineaments of his face replaced the tense and strained ones of Gilbert Rodman, she slowly drifted into sleep, realizing, just for a second before unconsciousness claimed her, how much Tom Brewer reminded her of her father.

  Wherever death looks, there is silence and trembling. But although on every man he will one day or another look, he is coy of revealing himself till the appointed time. He makes his approaches like an Indian warrior, under covers and ambushes.

  —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

  "It is quite a scarce piece," Amelia Peters said from behind her cluttered desk. "It's Delaware in origin, I'm sure of it, the tribe that used to be called the Lenape. Carvings like this aren't too scarce in themselves, but I've only ever seen one other in quartz, and that was back when I was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, oh, more years ago than I care to think about."

  She chuckled and began to make herself a cigarette with a Laredo machine. Sam Hershey leaned across the desk and picked up the figure with a new respect. Esther sat next to him, looking amused and feeling extremely jealous. "Is it valuable?" Sam asked Amelia Peters.

  The curator pushed the trigger of the machine, muttered "Damn," and withdrew something that could charitably be described as a filter cigarette, which she placed in her mouth and ignited before answering. "Oh yes, to a certain extent." She spoke slowly and distinctly but with a guttural growl, and Esther suspected that the woman had once suffered a stroke. "The museum would be willing to buy it for its Pennsylvania Indian collection, if you want to sell it."

  Esther groaned inside. So she did want to buy it after all.

  Sam would be insufferable for weeks after this, and the more money it brought, the more insufferable he would be. He would tell everyone at their metal detectors' club how he had found something that the William Penn Museum in Harrisburg, mind you, had been willing to pay good money for to put in their collection! And what had Esther found lately? Oh, just some coins . . .

  "Well, yes," Sam was mumbling. "I suppose we'd be willing to part with it, you know, depending on the price."

  "Of course." Miss Peters sucked in with such force that good half-inch of her cigarette turned to ash in an instant. "We wouldn't be able to give you much, but your name would be on the tag as the finder."

  "My name?"

  Esther winced as Sam's eyes brightened. A tag. A tag in the William Penn Museum. Sam wasn't just thinking money now, he was thinking immortality. "How much," Esther said, "are we talking about?"

  "Oh," the curator said, "maybe seventy-five dollars." Sam's eyes lost their sparkle. "Is that all?"

  Miss Peters shrugged. "It's a question of demand, Mr. Hershey. There really aren't many private collectors of this sort of thing, and they build their collections mostly by trading items. Now, I'm authorized to go to a hundred, but that's the limit."

  "You're authorized," Esther said, smelling the possibility of a more generous bureaucracy. "Does that mean there's a committee or something that could approve more?"

  "They could," said Amelia Peters, "if I recommended it, but I would not. In fact, a hundred is pretty high, come to think of it."

  "Well," Sam said quickly, "a hundred would be all right with us."

  "Fine," said Miss Peters. She began rummaging around her desk top, sliding aside stacks of papers, science fiction paperbacks, and poetry journals. "I know I have some purchase orders here somewhere . . ."

  She found them, filled one out, and asked Sam to sign in the proper place.

  "You should receive payment within thirty days. If you don't, don't be alarmed. Sometimes it takes longer. Now . . ." She sat back in her chair and took another drag on her cigarette that burned it down to the filter. "You say you found this new Dreamthorp. Where exactly?"

  Sam licked his lips. "Why, uh . . . why do you want to know?"

  "Well, it's probably a burial site," Miss Peters replied. "A valid archaeological site. And as such it should be registered and protected."

  "You mean," said Esther, "that you . . . museum people will go in there then?"

  "Of course. Our people will do a dig there. You see, this carving is a burial carving—supposed to keep the dead lying still. Now that area around Dreamthorp, quite frankly, is not known to be a site of any Lenape burials, so if we do find one—that is, if this artifact hasn't been taken from someplace else and dropped or buried where you found it, which is absurdly unlikely—then we have an interesting archaeological discovery here."

  "Well, uh . . ." Sam cleared his throat. "Is there any reason that, since Esther and I found it, that we couldn't dig it up ourselves?"

  "Yes, there is, Mr. Hershey, a very good reason. You're not trained archaeologists. You'd be likely to do far more harm to the site than any good you could do."

  "Oh, but we're very
careful, Miss Peters," Sam said, "People give us permission to hunt where they don't give other people because we're so good about the condition we leave the place in."

  "There's more to sound archaeological practice than replacing divots, Mr. Hershey. This place must be recorded and protected."

  "But then we can't dig there anymore," Esther said.

  "That's correct." Miss Peters shuffled through the contents of her desk top until she found her cigarette machine, and slipped a paper tube over the end.

  "But that's because it would be protected, right?" asked Esther, who was beginning to smile.

  "Yes," said Miss Peters, loading the tobacco.

  "But," Esther went on, "if you don't know where it is, then it can't be registered. And if we don't tell you, then you can go jump."

  Amelia Peters pushed the trigger, ripping the paper tube open and scattering tobacco shreds like brown snow. "Blast," she whispered, then looked up at Esther. "Not telling us would be a very irresponsible thing to do, Mrs. Hershey."

  "Esther . . ." Sam cautioned.

  "Is there a law against it? Withholding evidence or something?" Esther said, her smile sharpening into a grin.

  "Of course not," Miss Peters said. "This isn't a police state, we can't force you to tell us—"

  "That's fine then," Esther said, standing up.

  "But I would think that as good citizens, you would feel obligated to," Miss Peters added.

  "Well, maybe we'll think about it," Esther said. "Come m, Sam."

  Sam stood up and looked from one woman to the other in confusion. "I, uh . . . thank you for, uh . . . buying that thing. Urn, you'll still put my name on the tag?"

  Miss Peters nodded sullenly.

  "Oh, great. Well . . . we'll see you." And Sam followed us wife out the office door and down the hall, leaving behind a frowning Amelia Peters.

  "Of all the gall," mumbled Esther as they walked past the yellow cinder block walls toward the elevator. "Thinks just like that we'll tell her where that place is, well, she's got mother thing coming, I'll tell you that . . ."

  "Esther, maybe we should've . . ."

  "Oh, don't be silly. Do you know how many Indian burial sites there are around here? Dozens and dozens of them. That stuff she was giving us about this one being so much more important was a lot of hooey, if you ask me. She just wants to lock it up for the museum." She punched the elevator button and turned to confront her husband. "Well, why should they get all the glory when we're the ones who found it? And we can dig just as careful as they can. I mean, if we can sift dirt so that we don't put an extra scratch in a coin, we sure as heck can avoid breaking some beads or jars or bones or whatever else might be down there. Don't you think?"

  The elevator doors slid open and they got on. "I guess so," Sam said. "To tell the truth, I'd really be disappointed if we couldn't dig there again. And that's right—we are the ones who found it."

  "Sure. And it's public land too. I think. I mean, we probably pay taxes for its upkeep."

  "Look," Sam said. "Let's dig, and if we find anything that we think we can't handle—like walls or buildings or something—then we'll call Miss Peters and tell her about it."

  "All right, fine. But I don't think we'd find any buildings."

  The elevator stopped. They got out, turned right, and walked past the gift shop and through the outside doors. "Look," Sam said. "Is that Charlie Lewis?"

  It was. He was walking away from the monolithic archives building with a brown folder tucked under his arm, and waved when he saw them. "Got some information about that thing you found," he said when he was near enough to be heard over the Wednesday afternoon Harrisburg traffic. "Its provenance, so to speak. And I won't even charge you for the many hours of research spent. Next time I lose a gold bar in my backyard, however, I expect you to find it for me gratis."

  Sam chuckled. "It's a deal. But you're a little late."

  "Late?"

  "A curator just bought it for the museum," Esther explained.

  "Really?" Charlie sighed. "Well, they've gotten themselves quite a little treasure then. I hope they paid you well."

  "A hundred dollars," Sam said.

  Charlie nodded noncommittally. "I suppose there's not a huge market for that type of thing. Did they tell you what it was?"

  "A burial statue," said Esther.

  "Mmm. There's a little more to it than that. It's a totem that's supposed to be buried on top of a grave. To keep the evil spirit within."

  "Evil spirit?" Sam asked.

  "So the good books said. The thing was meant to be placed over the graves of enemies or murderers, someone that the Indians might not want to come back and annoy them."

  "Miss Peters didn't mention that," Sam said.

  "Undoubtedly thought the arcane knowledge would be wasted on laymen such as yourselves. I wouldn't take it as a personal affront." Charlie sighed. "So my research is for naught. Oh well, it's always a joy to spend a humid summer afternoon in an air-conditioned library. We old folks have to keep ourselves amused some way, don't we?"

  "Speak for yourself, Charlie," Esther said, chuckling.

  Then her face grew serious as she thought of something else. "Say, did they find out anything about that killing over at Dreamthorp?"

  Charlie's expression of dry humor, turned to sobriety. It was a subtle but unmistakable distinction. "No. Nothing yet. They seem to be certain that it was murder now. But they've got no motive and no suspects, apparently."

  "Boy, there's been a lot of bad things happening over there the past few weeks," Sam observed, shaking his head in sympathy. "I heard about that fella falling down his stairs last week, too."

  "We've had more than our share." Then Charlie's face brightened again. "Maybe you two are responsible."

  "What?" Sam said.

  "By releasing that evil spirit, of course. Shame on you."

  "Oh, Charlie," said Esther Hershey, with a trace of discomfort in her laugh. "That's really nothing to kid about."

  "If you can't kid about Indian bogeymen, what can you kid about?" Charlie asked.

  "I mean . . . the deaths."

  "'Thus in the spring we jeer at Death, though he/Will see our children perish, and will bring/Asunder all that cling while love may be.'" Charlie quoted.

  "What?" asked Sam.

  "Just James Branch Cabell's way of saying eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If we laugh at death, he won't scare us so much, even though he's bound to have the last laugh."

  In their car on the way home, the Hersheys argued over who this Jim Cabell was, remarked several times how strange Charlie Lewis was, but nice, and decided that they would return to the logging site the next weekend.

  Summer has adorned my village as gaily, and taken as much pleasure in the task, as the people of old, when Elizabeth was queen, took in the adornment of the Maypole against a summer festival.

  —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

  That weekend also saw the premiere of Arms and the Man at the Dreamthorp Playhouse, now relocated in the Hall of Culture. The hall was built in 1903, and was still the same sickly yellow that it had first been painted. Coat after coat had gone on over the decades until some residents joked that the building's walls were twice their original thickness.

  Over the years the Hall of Culture had played host to thousands of lectures, hundreds of magic lantern travelogues, uncounted chamber music concerts, and a multitude of play readings. But Arms and the Man was the first full-scale production ever to grace its Spartan interior, by necessity rather than design. It was not really made for theatrics. A raised platform twenty feet wide functioned as a stage, and there were no provisions for hanging curtains. The lighting instruments were placed on poles a third of the way back, and the audience had to walk around them when they came in and out of the makeshift theatre.

  Another problem that created a logistical nightmare for the producers of the summer season was that the Hall of Culture seated only half the number of paying customers t
hat the playhouse had. As proved to be fortunate, the season had not sold out, so advance sales were suspended and the number of performances increased by three a week. The playhouse would still lose money, but hoped to break even once the insurance payments were sorted out.

  Still, for all its problems, the Hall of Culture was cozy and comfortable, and its intimacy highlighted the sense of community that was such a large part of life in Dreamthorp. This Saturday night, the twenty-seventh of June, the tragedy of two weeks before was, if not forgotten, at least temporarily misplaced, to be thought of again only alone, perhaps in the dark, just before sleep came.

  But now, among the excited murmurs of the audience that crowded the Hall of Culture, the show was the thing on everyone's mind, the show and the new director from New York City, who had directed on Broadway, mind you, and the cast, of course, some of whom had been on television shows both here and in England.

  The hubbub continued as Tom Brewer made his way down the narrow aisle and circumnavigated the stage-left light post. He arrived at his seat in the second row of folding chairs just as the lights blinked on and off to indicate that the show would begin—in another five minutes, if past Dreamthorp Playhouse history was any harbinger of the present.

  Tom looked at the empty chair next to him. It was to have been Karen's. He had bought a pair of season tickets, just as he had done for the past seven years, ever since the playhouse had upgraded from local performers to professionals. This was the first year that Susan would not be sitting next to him, but he had thought Karen would. He had asked Ed and Frances if either of them wanted to go with him, but they had declined. Frances found Saturday night sitcoms more to her liking than "that Shaw. I went to one of his plays once, and it was like sitting at a three hour sermon. My Fair Lady was the only thing he ever wrote that I liked."

  The first act went remarkably well, Tom thought, under the circumstances. The primary difficulty was with exits and entrances. Since there were no wings, the actors had to exit behind five-foot-wide curtains on either side of the stage and stay there until their next entrance. Tom found it impossible not to wonder what the poor things were doing back there, especially when there were several at a time. He thought they had to be standing at attention, exhaling as much as possible in order to all fit. And he could not imagine how anyone made a costume change. It would be, he felt, impossible without rustling the curtains. The show must go on, he thought with grim humor. Come death, come destruction, the show must go on.