Requiem for Ashes

by David Crossman

  "All for this." Tewksbury rattled the photograph in his hands.

  Albert got out and stepped in a puddle halfway up to his ankles. He lit a cigarette and leaned on the open door. The sky was low and starless, the night close and still. Raindrops gathered at the ends of budding branches like laughing children and jumped to the rivulets below. Otherwise it was perfectly quiet.

  "What do we do now?" Tewksbury said finally.

  "We should tell Inspector Naples."

  "Tell him what? What proof is there? He's already got Daphne Knowlton; signed, sealed, and delivered. The only way he could associate Strickland with Glenly's murder is if she's willing to talk and that seems unlikely, given all she's done for Strickland this far. That kind of woman expresses her love through martyrdom. The more worthless the object of their affection, the greater the sacrifice; the greater the love. At least, that’s how the love-benighted idiot would view it."

  "What about the tire tracks? The glass? G to D."

  Tewksbury tossed the photograph on the dashboard and, wearily, rubbed his face with both hands. "That's not evidence, Albert. Those tire tracks are long gone by now. There's only your word they were there in the first place. Nobody else saw them."

  "The police did."

  "Well, that may be. But they didn't notice that G to D business. Apparently they weren't impressed enough to take pictures. Anyway there's no murder weapon. Strickland doesn't even own a .410." He peeked out from between his fingers. "Sorry, Albert. Convincing me— and I'm not saying you have, not a hundred percent—and convincing a court of law . . . are two different things."

  Courts of law were strange things, able to find Tewksbury guilty when he wasn't, probably equally unable to find Strickland guilty when he was. Somebody should do something about that.

  "What about the stone in the safety-posit box? What about that picture?"

  "He'll have the devil to pay for that, all right. His career is over. At this school, at least. Thank God he didn’t have tenure. But . . . that doesn't make him guilty of murder, not by a long chalk."

  "But, he'd have to say why he held on to it; why he waited."

  "He could say he intended to sell it, he was just waiting to find the right buyer . . . the right price. Wouldn't do his reputation any good, perhaps, but it'd be preferable to a murder charge.'' He breathed the familiar note of irony. "What can we do beyond that?" he asked rhetorically. "If your suspicions are true, then we're up against someone who seems to have planned for every contingency."

  Albert was exhausted. He couldn't think anymore. Finally, he understood everything, but could prove nothing. He shut the door, waded ashore, and went inside. When he looked out the window, the car was gone. He went to bed.

  Miss Bjork was in his dream. She had been flying in and out of the windows of his mother's house in Maine, laughing, teasing the curtains and the treetops with her toes. She settled in the garden and began weeding tires and beer bottles from among the rows of heads that grew from the ground. Some heads he knew, some he didn't. But they were all very happy, singing a beautiful chorale, very baroque and flowery. Appropriate for a garden.

  A phone rang in the house, but no one would answer it. Miss Bjork didn't seem to hear it. When Albert tried to move he discovered he was planted up to his waist in the garden. Besides, he had to direct the singers.

  The phone kept ringing, working its way into Albert's subconscious and laying waste the dream. He groped from the abyss of sleep with Minoan stones hanging from his eyelids and tied around his feet. He said "Hello" twice before he found the phone. He knew he was still half asleep. Maybe he was only dreaming he hadn’t found the phone yet.

  "Hello?"

  "Albert! Did I wake you up?" Albert had the phone upside down. He turned it over a few times. "Hello?"

  "It's Tewksbury," said Tewksbury. "You'll never guess who just left."

  Albert didn't doubt it. "Tewksbury?"

  "Strickland!"

  "Tewksbury?" Albert turned the phone over again.

  "Did you hear what I said? Albert? Strickland was just here."

  "Strickland?"

  "He just left."

  "Dr. Strickland?" said Albert. He found his glasses and put them on, but it didn't help; he still couldn't open his eyes. His fingers found a cigarette and matches. He lit it. "At your house?"

  "He just left."

  Something about the thought of Strickland visiting Tewksbury had a resuscitating effect on Albert. "What was he doing there?"

  "Seems Miss Glenly told him about our visit."

  Albert wedged his right eye open with his fingers. There was a small fire in the vicinity of his mouth, he'd lit the filter. He dropped the cigarette into a cup where it hissed and died and sent a stinking soul up to scratch at the doors of heaven. He lit another.

  "He just laughed it off."

  "He admitted he smuggled the . . . disc?"

  "What else could he do? I had the picture, I have you as a witness . . . Catherine Glenly, too, if it comes to that."

  "What did he say? Why didn't he tell you about it?"

  "He was going to, at first, so he says. Then he decided there wasn't any rush. He'd bring it home, decipher it . . . there was a chance what it said is more important than what it is."

  "So, he brought it back . . . like I said?"

  "Just like you said. Put it in the safe-deposit box . . . out of sight. Took pictures of it so he could translate at leisure. If it presented some startling revelation, he could advance it as a theory . . . smuggle the disc back among the finds at some future date; mislabel one of the equipment boxes and suggest it had been misplaced, arrange for somebody else to find it. Somebody like me. Affirmation of his theory would overshadow the discovery itself.

  "Of course, it was all the remotest speculation on his part, and very risky, as far as his career is concerned. But a risk he was willing to take apparently."

  "Did he figure out what it says?"

  "That's the amazing thing! It seems to shed some pretty shattering light on the history of Crete after all."

  Albert waited.

  "First you need a little background, or you won't appreciate what's happened. No one had much luck deciphering the Phaistos disc . . . for years. I mean, the usual crackpot attempts, 'predatory birds flying over the threshing floor' type of things. Generally about as far from the mark as you could get. Why would anyone go to all that trouble to write about birds flying over a frigging threshing floor, predatory or otherwise? Then someone discovered that certain of the symbols stand for constellations. Well, that's all it took. All of a sudden the disc is a calendar, a celestial calculator, a pocket-sized Stonehenge.

  "Well, I haven't had time to verify it yet, of course, but if Strickland's translation is accurate . . . and whether or not he's a weasel . . . he's a decent scholar, everything changes; it's none of the above."

  "Then what is it?"

  "A history."

  "Oh," said Albert, easily concealing his enthusiasm.

  "Apparently Crete's earliest god-kings were thought to be descended from the stars, so they were named after constellations. The disc is their hereditary history, a validation of their presumptive royalty.

  "And that's just the beginning. According to Strickland, the disc seems to suggest that the island's founding race was from Sumer."

  "Sumer?"

  "Refugees from the Chaldean invasion of the Sumerian Peninsula." Tewksbury was breathless. "Just think of it, Albert!"

  Albert didn't want to think of it. "What about Miss Bjork . . . and Glenly?"

  "What? Oh, well . . . I think that's where your theory falls apart. I mean, Strickland was right up front about his little sleight-of-hand. Right off the bat. 'So, you caught me red-handed, old man,' he said. 'Can't blame a fellow for wanted to get ahead. I saw a chance and took it.' I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it. Then he explained what I told you . . . said he was blinded by his own ambition and all that. He said he was willing to take the consequen
ces, hoped there were no hard feelings. Mind you, sounds as if he's got his defense all thought out; insanity by reason of greed, or ambition. Who knows? Granted, he's beneath contempt. But I must say, I can understand why he did it." Tewksbury sniffed. "Something stinks. Must be the soup I spilled down around the gas ring on the stove. Thought I got it all up. Phew! Where was I?"

  "Greed."

  "Oh. Right. Anyway . . . nothing in his plans seemed to call for anybody's dying. Glenly was killed by the Knowlton girl, just like she confessed. Bjork was shot by a hunter . . . accidentally."

  "What about the glass?"

  "Oh, man! Don't start that business again! It was just coincidence! Who knows how many cars there are going around with some kind of . . . blemish or imperfection? Might be a company that makes them that way, for all we know. Coincidence, Albert. That's all. Just like everything else. Coincidence; and not very convincing ones at that, when you think about it. And like I said, Strickland doesn't own a .410.

  "Don't get me wrong. You were on the money about the disc . . . the safe-deposit box, the manifest, and for that I'll hug you, and kiss you, and call you George. But the rest . . . just coincidence. Tragic, but . . . " He sniffed again. "I swear the smell is getting worse, hold on a second."

  He put the phone down and Albert heard him banging around in the background. What if he was wrong? Tewksbury was right, there was still no evidence of the kind that would impress Inspector Naples. Only the tire tread, which was gone, and Albert's suspicions which were . . . just a piano player's suspicions. What did he know, anyway? Until a few weeks ago his idea of Chinese food was rice.

  Come to think of it, who was he, anyway? He'd been everywhere, and seen nothing. Lived half a lifetime and never been alive. He knew nothing. Experienced nothing. Was . . . nothing. Pretty soon life would be over and he would die. The death of no one. A little B-flat burp in the firmament.

  Of course, Miss Bjork had said there was something after life. She probably knew. She had read Tolstoy and had a Bible. She'd been somebody.

  The sound of Tewksbury picking up the phone salvaged Albert from the compost of himself. "Some of it must have got down around the pilot light."

  "What?"

  "Some of the soup must have dripped down by the pilot light . . . it'll burn off, I guess. Stinks, though," Tewksbury explained. "Anyway, I've kept you up long enough. I'm exhausted myself. It just hit me. I've been going on adrenaline since Strickland was here. Pretty heady stuff, you know? You go on back to bed, Albert. Put all this behind you. It's a matter for administration now. Nothing more you can do. Time to get on with life, you know?"

  "Get on with life," Albert whispered into the void that stretched into eternity. He was afraid to let go of the precious pain he'd wrapped himself around. There was nothing out there but miles and miles of open ocean. Without the pain there was nothing to cling to; and once he let go, it would be gone forever. He'd be alone.

  "I'll talk to you tomorrow," said Tewksbury. "Good night, Albert." He hung up.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was late afternoon when he awoke with a groggy headache that told him he'd slept too long. A lot of half-thoughts bubbled to the surface from his subconscious where they'd plagued him all night. It took a while to distill the facts. It took a while to remember that Tewksbury didn't think Strickland had killed Miss Bjork; or Glenly. All he did was steal a rock and take pictures of it.

  There was a knock at the door. Albert draped the sheet around his shoulders and dragged it across the room. He had his clothes on, but somehow felt naked.

  "Who is it?" said Albert as he opened the door and saw who it was. "Inspector."

  Naples wore a half-turban of the type Albert had reintroduced to fashion. His right eye was black and seemed open even when it was shut. Otherwise he looked all right. Not that this was a comfort to Albert, who was more inclined to close the door than open it.

  "Mind if I come in, Professor?"

  Albert let him in anyway, stumbled back to the bed and sat down. Naples pulled up a chair opposite him and straddled it backward. Albert sketched him in a glance. His face was the same. His clothes were the same. But he wasn't the same. He didn't smile his thin, knowing smile. His eyes weren't crowded with skepticism.

  "I'm afraid I've got some bad news, Professor," Naples said. His voice was quiet. Unthreatening.

  "Bad news?"

  Naples nodded and looked down at his hands. "There was a fire last night . . . at Tewksbury's place."

  Albert looked at the inspector. "Fire?"

  "Bad one."

  Albert didn't want to ask what he was going to ask. But there was nothing else he could do. "Is he all right?"

  The inspector shook his head. Albert knew he would.

  "It started in the middle of the night. Everyone in the building was in bed . . . there are four apartments, including Tewksbury's." He sighed and scratched between the turban and his forehead with his thumb. "Most made it out, once the alarm was sounded, some aren't out of the woods, yet. But Tewksbury . . . the fumes got him."

  This is where the sobs were supposed to come, weren't they? Albert wondered why he didn't feel anything. Anything at all. He doubted if he'd feel a knife in his back. He shut off his face and hung it out to stare at Naples.

  "They say it was an electrical fire . . . in Tewksbury's apartment," said the inspector. "Seems he had one of those little heaters, you know the portable things? . . . left it too close to some drapes and . . . " He threw up his hands, "Whoosh!"

  "Whoosh," Albert whispered.

  Naples shifted in his seat as the news settled around the room. "Sorry to have to be the one to tell you, Professor." He patted Albert on a knee. "I've got to go. I just thought you'd want to know." He got up and walked to the door. "I wanted you to hear it in person."

  Albert followed with his eyes. "He smelled something burning."

  The doorknob froze in Naples's hand. "Did you say something?"

  "He said he smelled something burning."

  "When did he say that?"

  "Last night," said Albert. "He called."

  "What time?"

  "I don't know. I was asleep."

  "And he said he smelled something burning?"

  "Soup."

  "Soup?"

  "He spilled soup on his stove. He thought that's what he smelled burning."

  "It was the drapes," said Naples. "He should've known better than to keep the heater so close to them." He opened the door, stepped onto the landing and hesitated. His hand went to his head. He turned and stared at Albert. "I was wrong about you, Professor."

  "I know," said Albert.

  Naples nodded. "l've got to give you credit. You did a good job, finding Glenly's murderer."

  Albert stared at his television; that's what it was there for.

  "If you ever decide to give up the music game . . . " After a moment Naples turned and stepped onto the landing where he stood staring at the floor. The door swung shut by itself. A few seconds later Albert heard his footsteps on the stairs. Tewksbury was dead.

  Death was getting crowded.

  The darkening room echoed the inspector's words. Albert listened to them as they bounced off the walls in no particular order. Eventually one sentence assembled itself and tapped at his forehead, persistent as a poor relative. "He should've known better."

  "He should have known better," he said aloud. Leaving an electric heater by the drapes is the kind of thing Albert would do. But Tewksbury? "Dangerous contraptions" he'd called them.

  Tewksburydid know better. Suddenly another thought stumbled blindly into his brain: Strickland was probably the last one to see him alive. Strickland, whose leitmotif surfaced time and again throughout the score of the whole tragedy. Strickland, who already admitted to Tewksbury . . . that he was willing to lie, cheat, and steal. Strickland, who stood to lose everything when Tewksbury reported him to the school.

  "Strickland started the fire," said Albert.

  A wet, heavy
sleet, driven by a sharp-toothed wind, had begun to splatter against the window, thousands of tiny, frozen sacrifices appeasing the goddess of encroaching spring. With a sharp breath Albert suddenly stood up and began pacing frantically back and forth. He shook his head and slapped his cheeks. His brain was trying to give birth to a thought he didn't want. He piled heaps of mental refuse on it, but it kept bobbing to the surface.

  He undressed and jumped in the shower, but it was too late.

  At approximately ten after six the idea was delivered. Since nothing could be proved against Strickland, Albert had to confront him . . . face to face.

  It was an absurd notion. He'd never confronted anyone about anything. How was it done? With what would he confront him? What would come of it? His heart grabbed his ribs and shook them until he could scarcely catch his breath. Some unfamiliar, determined part of his brain had taken over his body and was propelling him to do that which he never would have considered on his own.

  He couldn't find a towel so he dried himself as much as possible on the plastic shower curtain. It was only wet on one side. Then he took some clean clothes from under his mattress where he'd been pressing them, dressed, threw on his overcoat, his socks, and his slippers, in that order, and was out in the night before the saner members of his brain could master the reactionaries.

  It was a long way to Strickland's, though. He took some comfort in the knowledge that he couldn't go through with it. There was plenty of time to back out. That he should find himself on Strickland's street without the inevitable having come to pass was alarming, but not yet panic-inducing.

  His hair had frozen in a solid, omni-directional mass.

  When - shivering, blue, and swollen to twice his customary size with goosebumps - he arrived at the head of Strickland's driveway, panic set in with a vengeance. Suddenly his excuse mechanism sputtered to life: He had no evidence. What if Strickland wasn't home? What if he called the police? But it was too late, he'd already rung the doorbell and his slippers had apparently frozen to the porch. Of course he could leave them there and run home barefoot, but Strickland would probably have them traced. Naples would return them in person, and begin asking questions.