Requiem for Ashes

by David Crossman

  "What's he saying?" Tewksbury whispered as his face joined Albert's in the sliver.

  "I can't hear."

  Tewksbury cast a wary eye up and down the street. He wouldn't have been surprised to see a torch-bearing horde of armed citizens descending upon them from all directions in righteous wrath. He was a little surprised they weren't. "Trouble in Paradise, you suppose?"

  "He's yelling at Miss Glenly?"

  "No doubt. Not unusual, from what I hear. They belong to the Virginia Woolf school of lovemaking."

  Strickland, still yelling, suddenly turned and stomped across the room to a desk which sat directly in front of the window. He threw together a stack of papers and stuffed them in his briefcase, which he then locked in a drawer. He dropped the key in his vest pocket.

  "Were those the papers?" Tewksbury whispered.

  "They must be."

  Strickland left Tewksbury's line of sight. "What's he doing? Can you see?"

  "He's putting his coat on."

  "He's coming out!" Tewksbury was half way across the street by the time Albert turned around.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Shh!" said Tewksbury. "He's coming!" He fell into something dry and leafy in the shadows on the other side of the street. Albert stood at the corner of the house and watched as Strickland stormed out, slamming the door behind him, got in his car, and drove noisily away. He returned to the window to see what Miss Glenly would do.

  After a minute or two, when she didn't appear, he went to the back of the house. The door, having so recently been slammed, was unlocked.

  Tewksbury had extricated himself from whatever he'd fallen into and was crabbing sideways up the driveway. Albert wondered if he thought it made him harder to see. Or maybe he figured if somebody saw him they'd say "Yes, Officer. And he walked like this . . . " effectively throwing suspicion elsewhere.

  Albert went in, leaving the doors open behind him. The kitchen light was off.

  "I'm not coming in," Tewksbury whispered sharply from the top step.

  Albert felt his way toward the hallway that led to the den. Tewksbury propped the door open and followed. "Is she still upstairs?" Tewksbury hissed from halfway across the kitchen.

  The lights were on in the den. A wide double door opened into the living room, where other lights were on, and Albert could see clearly to the top of the stairway. If anyone came, he'd see their shadow. He stepped carefully from the carpeted hallway to the large braided rug in the den.

  "I'm not coming in there," whispered Tewksbury from halfway down the hall.

  Albert tried the drawer. He was sure it was locked, but you never know.

  It was locked.

  He began rummaging through the cubbyholes and pencil holders. "What are you doing?" Tewksbury hissed from midway across the dining room. "That's not where he put it. It's in that big drawer on the bottom."

  There wasn't a bobby pin in sight. Albert was dismayed but undaunted. A paper clip would have to do. He bent it into a more convenient shape. "Watch the landing for shadows," he said, adopting Tewksbury’s conspiratorial whisper

  "Do what?"

  "Watch the landing," said Albert. "The top of the stairs. Tell me if you see any shadows, anyone coming." He slid the paper clip into the lock and gently turned it to feel the configuration of the mechanism. The L-shaped end of the clip dropped neatly in the slot behind the lift lever. Pull slightly. Turn a quarter to the left. Nothing. A half. Nothing. Three-quarters. Click. Full turn, down, pull back, double click. The drawer popped silently open.

  "Open sesame," said Tewksbury, not without a touch of awe. He'd have been only slightly more amazed if Albert had levitated before his eyes.

  "Watch the stairs," said Albert. He took the briefcase out, placed it on the table, and began going through the papers.

  "See it?" said Tewksbury.

  "Watch the stairs!"

  "I am. I am," said Tewksbury, who wasn't. "D'you see it?"

  Albert leafed through the stack of papers. It wasn't there. "It's not here."

  "What do you mean it's not there?"

  "It's not here."

  "Maybe you missed it."

  "Maybe."

  "Try again."

  "Okay," said Albert. He tried again. What if Strickland had already taken it out? What if he'd put it in his safety-posit box? Or burned it? What if he'd been mistaken? Wasn't he always? What if there never was a photograph after all? lt may have been a drawing; or a smudge of Ding-Dong filling on Albert's glasses.

  The third time through he found it. "Here it is!"

  "You found it?"

  "Here." He glanced at it as he passed it to Tewksbury. It was a picture of something round, clay or a stone, with a spiral pattern on it and odd little figures. Albert's heart fell. It wasn't gold or, jewels, or cigarettes or beer. Nothing valuable. Tewksbury didn't seem to realize this. As he stared at it, his eyes grew wider and wider and his hands began to shake.

  "Good Lord."

  "What?"

  "I don't believe this."

  "What?" said Albert. Even he was getting excited, or at least confused. When Tewksbury raised his eyes from the photo it seemed to Albert they had glazed over with a kind of euphoric madness. "What is it?"

  "It's a Rosetta stone." Albert wished it was something else.

  "Oh."

  "A Rosetta stone for the Phaistos Disc." Things were not getting clearer. "It's in Mycenean and Greek."

  It would be Greek, thought Albert. "Is it important?"

  Something suddenly dawned on Tewksbury. "That slimy little son-of-a . . . he found this in Crete last season!"

  "The stone?"

  "He smuggled it home!”

  “How?"

  Tewksbury had forgotten there was someone else in the room. "What? Oh. Oh . . . I don't know. There are ways. He could have . . . I don't know. There are ways. That's why he destroyed the original manifest."

  "That's what Jeremy Ash said."

  "Who is this person you keep referring to?"

  "He said that there was something on the original list . . . manifest . . . that wasn't on the new one."

  "Who is Jeremy Ash?"

  "Strickland smuggled this stone into the country in a box marked 'tools' or something. Then, when all the stuff was on campus, he snuck it out and took it to the bank."

  " . . . and put it in the safe-deposit box."

  “ . . . safety-posit box." Albert said at the same time. "Why?"

  "Nobody would ever find it. He took a picture of it, so he could decipher it at his leisure. It'd be the archaeological coup of the decade . . . the half-century."

  "Why?"

  "Prestige, Albert. The kind of notoriety that would come with this kind of discovery would mean . . . Troy. A Nobel Prize,"

  "Oh," said Albert. He couldn't understand awards, or why administration kept dressing him up and sending him out to receive them. He shuddered. "Troy." He fell silent. He hoped if he thought for a minute about what had been said, it would make sense.

  Tewksbury had returned to devouring the photograph with his eyes.

  The minute was up. "I don't understand."

  "What?" said Tewksbury, focusing his eyes on Albert across a span of a few thousand years. "Understand what?"

  "About Troy," said Albert. It had always been his custom to ignore things he didn't understand. He'd survived. But this time, he needed to know. "What's Troy got to do with it? Why didn't Strickland tell you about the stone last year, when he found it?"

  "Recognition, like I said. It's the dig director . . . that gets the recognition for whatever turns up during a dig. And the school, of course, as the sponsoring organization."

  "But if he found it . . . "

  "Oh, he'd get a mention. A footnote . . . like the French lieutenant who found the Rosetta Stone . . . what's-his-name? But I'd've gotten the lion's share of the credit . . . like Napoleon."

  Albert wondered if that was fair. Of course, nothing was. "You would?"

 
"That's the way it is," said Tewksbury. "The director organizes . . . orchestrates . . . that's it! Think of the director of an archaeological dig as the conductor of an orchestra. He puts the whole show together. Gets the job, auditions the musicians, decides what selections are to be played . . . and who gets the credit when the curtain comes down, or whatever it does. Not the musicians. Not the people who made the horns or the violins, or the tailor who made the tuxedos . . . it's the conductor. You see?

  “It's the same in archaeology. I'm the director of that project. The conductor. I’m the one who developed a hypothesis that might be archaeologically demonstrable, which got the funding, which got the school backing, whose imprimatur attracted volunteers, all of which validated the project in the eyes of the government officials - both here and abroad - whose cooperation I need. Then I hired the staff, made the arrangements. So, I get the credit."

  Albert tamped the papers together and slipped them back in the briefcase. "And that's important," he said, without adding the question mark he was thinking.

  "Men have killed for less."

  Albert glanced at the stairway. No shadows. "What are you going to do with the picture?"

  Tewksbury grasped the photograph by the edges with both hands. "Take it back to my place. Study it. That's the most important thing. Then, in a day or two, I'll confront that feculent little cephalopod."

  "But he'll see it's missing."

  "That's the beauty of it! What can he say? Thieves can't report it when things they've stolen are stolen."

  "Put that down!"

  Miss Glenly stood in the door of the hallway, staggering under the weight of the musket that she had pointed at them. Albert glanced reflexively at the top of the stairs. She wasn't where she was supposed to be.

  "Put it down now, Professor."

  She'd been crying.

  “But . . . “

  "Now!" she commanded, pulling back the hammer on the musket’s firing pan. "I know how to shoot this." She choked back some tears.

  Tewksbury placed the photograph gently on the edge of the table. "He stole it . . . Strickland. It belongs to the school."

  "Where did you get it?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Where was it, just now?" Her words wrapped themselves around sobs.

  "Well . . . in the desk, but . . . "

  "Whose desk?"

  "Whose? This desk, here. Strickland's," said Tewksbury nervously. "But . . . "

  "And you took it. That makesyou the thief. And you," she swung the gun barrel in Albert's direction. It passed him by a good six or seven inches before she could stop it. She didn't have her finger on the trigger. If there was a comfort in that, it was negligible. "Now, you leave, or I'll call the police."

  "Go ahead."

  "What?" said Miss Glenly.

  "What?" Albert said contrapuntally.

  "Call the police . . . if you want to see Strickland in jail." Miss Glenly was not in a mood to be confounded. Her face reddened, her eyes flashed a danger even Albert could read. She put her finger on the trigger. "If anyone's going to jail, it's you!" Albert wondered if it took longer to die when you were shot with an old bullet.

  Tewksbury picked up the photo. "Strickland's up to his eyes in trouble, Catherine. This proves it. He smuggled a rare artifact into the country; concealed it from me."

  The offenses chronicled by Tewksbury scarcely figured in Albert's suspicions of Strickland's crimes.

  "His entire career could be in jeopardy." He waved the photo in the air. "Go ahead," he challenged. "I'm sure the police would find this very interesting."

  "And there are worse things," Albert said softly. "The police will find out."

  The woman lowered the gun somewhat. She stared at Albert. Her eyes widened and brimmed with burning tears. Tewksbury took the opportunity to sneak the photo behind his back and tuck it into his overcoat pocket. "What things?"

  Albert was able to take his eyes off the musket for the first time. He looked steadily at her. "You know."

  What she found in the depths of his eyes as she searched them for answers unlocked her tears. As her resolve gave way, her knees buckled and, clinging to the ancient weapon like a shepherd's staff, she sank to the floor. "Get out of here," she said softly. "Go away. Leave me alone."

  Albert's heart was breaking. He knelt in front of her, and gently brushed the hair from her forehead. She flinched and shot him a glance filled with a confusing tangle of feelings he couldn't begin to unravel. He stood up abruptly and backed away.

  "Let's go!" said Tewksbury, tapping his pocket and pulling Albert by the coat sleeve. "I've got it."

  Albert shuffled slowly toward the door, unable to take his eyes off Miss Glenly. She looked like a wounded animal. The emptiness in the eyes with which she followed him to the door rattled him to the core. He wondered how many other people were out in the night, clinging to muskets and grocery bags with the end of the world in their eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “She won't call the police?"

  "I doubt it," said Tewksbury. He downshifted through the gears again. He was getting very attached to Miss Bjork's car. "She knows better than that."

  "Did you see her eyes?" Albert said. He hadn't blinked since they left Miss Glenly. He blinked. "I've never seen a look in somebody's eyes . . . like that."

  "I didn't notice," said Tewksbury. He shifted up through the gears on a straightaway. There was a primal gratification in the response of the engine, the stiffness of the steering wheel. He'd never have bought a car like this; he wasn't that kind of academic; but he'd always nursed the secret desire. He was that kind of academic. He downshifted as they rounded the curve. "She won't call the police."

  Albert's mind was busy trying to hear itself over the fevered whine of the engine. "Why did he wait?" he said at last.

  "Who?" said Tewksbury. "Strickland? You mean . . . why did he keep it to himself?"

  "Yes.”

  "Why not? All he had to do was hold on another few months. Remember he figured he'd be directing the dig this summer? He'd produce it then."

  "How did he know he'd be the director of the dig?"

  Tewksbury smiled his condescending smile. "'Cause like I said, with me in jail . . . "

  "But how did he know you were going to be in jail?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  Albert shepherded his words into a straight line. "Well, he had this . . . thing, this stone, last fall, right? When you came home from Crete?"

  "Right. So?"

  "I still don't see why he didn't tell you," Albert complained. "As far as he knew at the time, you were still going to be the director this year. And next year. And the year after that. He'd never get the credit."

  Tewksbury didn't say anything for a change. He stopped shifting.

  "So, why didn't he show it to you last year? Wouldn't it be better to get a little credit than none, if that's what he wanted? Why did he bring it back and try to figure it out?"

  "Decipher it," said Tewksbury from a distance.

  "Would that give him prestige, figuring out what it said?"

  "Anyone could figure out what it said," said Tewksbury, "if they had that disc."

  "Then I don't understand." They stopped in front of Albert's house. Albert stared at Tewksbury. Tewksbury stared straight ahead, as far into the night as the headlights would allow. The engine underscored the scene with rhythmic tension. "Strickland knew he was going to be director this year," Albert said.

  The river was beginning to flow at a perilous rate, and the bank where Tewksbury was standing was slippery, beginning to give way under foot. "But Daphne Knowlton killed Glenly . . . " he said. His words were barely audible.

  "She'd do anything for him. Lane said so. She stole the papers; she nearly killed me."

  "That was an accident."

  "Strickland made her kill Glenly."

  "Don't say that!" Tewksbury yelled suddenly. "No one would do such a thing?!"

  "You sa
id people have killed for less."

  "I wasn't . . . I was speaking figuratively. I didn't mean kill as in . . .kill. Strickland may be an ambitious, lying, conniving SOB . . . but he's a scholar." The words were weak as watercolor. "A colleague."

  Suddenly Albert understood. Everything. As he sorted it out in his mind, he watched the same realization overwhelm Tewksbury's objections. "He made Daphne Knowlton kill Glenly," he repeated flatly.

  " . . . to get me out of the way," Tewksbury whispered. He realized the notion had been in his subconscious for some time, but he'd battled it back as too ignominious to consider.

  "But you were found innocent."

  "Thanks to you and . . . " The final, chess piece fell squarely on Tewksbury's forehead, knocking the wind out of him. "Miss Bjork!"

  Albert lowered his eyes to the shadows at his feet. "She got in the way."

  Tewksbury's head wagged slightly from side to side while his eyes remained fixed on the dashboard. Finally he raised his stupefied, silly-putty face to Albert. "It was Strickland . . . shooting atme." He turned off the engine.

  "It was supposed to be a hunting accident," Albert summarized. "That's why he didn't shoot again. It wouldn't have looked like an accident."

  Tewksbury took the photograph from his pocket and held it in both hands, resting his arms on the steering wheel. "Glenly was killed . . . just to get me out of the way?"

  "If he'd killed you, then took your place as Director and discovered the stone . . . I don't know. Maybe he thought people would be suspicious."

  "Then he distanced himself from the crime . . . by convincing poor Daphne Knowlton . . . " His voice fell off in a whisper. Albert wondered if her name appeared that way on her birth certificate; ‘born this day, Poor Daphne Knowlton.’

  "If things fell apart . . . he knew he could get her to confess," said Albert. "Just like she did."

  "Which put him back at square one."

  Albert nodded. "That's when he tried to shoot you . . . in Maine."

  "And got Melissa Bjork instead. Two people who had nothing to do with anything, dead."

  Dead. Albert's lips formed the word, but nothing came out. Somehow it seemed there had been more than two deaths.