by Peter Straub
“Is Sarah Spence here yet?”
The man closed his eyes and opened them again. The movement was too calculated to be a blink. “Miss Spence is upstairs with her parents, sir. The Spences will be dining with a large party at the Redwing table this evening.”
“I’ll just go up,” Tom said, and moved toward the low, gleaming first step of the staircase.
He came up on a wooden floor that extended fifty or sixty feet toward an open deck with three round white tables beneath green-and-white-striped sun umbrellas. Inside the dining room ten larger tables, one per lodge, stood on the gleaming floor. Three of these had been set with white tablecloths, candles, wineglasses, and flowers. A small bandshell and stage with a baby grand piano jutted out from the far left wall of the dining room. Neil Langenheim, seated opposite his wife at the only occupied table, looked up and waggled his glass at Tom. Tom smiled back.
Sarah’s eyes flashed at him from the middle of a crowd of older people in sports clothes at the long bar on the right side of the room. She met him halfway between the stairs and the bar. “Why are you wearing that tie? Oh, never mind, I’m just glad you’re here. Come and meet everybody.”
She took him to the bar and introduced him to Ralph and Katinka Redwing. The head of the Redwing family smiled at Tom, showing the gap between his front teeth, and gave him a grinding, painful handshake. His small black eyes looked too lively for his pale, lacquered face. His wife, far more tanned and half a foot taller than he, flicked nearly colorless eyes at Tom. Her long blond hair had been frozen into place. “So you’re Gloria’s son,” she said.
“Glen Upshaw’s grandson,” said her husband. “Your first time up here, isn’t it? You’ll love it. It’s a great place. Sometimes I think about retiring here, just being alone with these wonderful woods, all that hunting and fishing. Peace and quiet. You’ll love it.”
Tom thanked him for letting him come up in the plane.
“Glad to do anything I can for old Glen—one of the old island characters, you know. Solid man, solid man. You like the plane? They treat you all right?”
“I never had an experience like that before,” Tom said.
Mrs. Spence edged up beside Ralph Redwing. She had changed out of the miniskirt, and wore a knee-length belted pink dress cut low in front. She looked like a big candy cane. “I think I’d rather be on your plane than Frank Sinatra’s, really I would.”
Redwing put a white, hairy arm around her waist. “There’s no telling what Frank would do, if you showed up on his jet in that dress. Hah! Isn’t that right!” He kept his arm around Mrs. Spence’s waist another couple of beats, and his wife tilted a glass filled with transparent liquid and ice into her mouth.
“Have a good first day?” asked Mr. Spence. “Have any fun?”
“I didn’t do much,” Tom said. “I went to the village and met Chet Hamilton.”
Redwing’s face stopped moving, and his wife stepped back to the bar.
“Tom had a little excitement,” Sarah said. “He thinks somebody pushed him off the sidewalk into the traffic. A car went right over him.”
The lively black eyes had turned depthless. “Should have happened to Chet Hamilton. We don’t talk about the Hamiltons, around here.” He forced a smile. “We leave them alone, and they leave us alone. Word to the wise.”
“What happened? What was that?” This came from a man on the outside of the Redwing group, who had been talking with two other people while glancing occasionally at Tom and had overheard Sarah’s remark. He was about Redwing’s age, and had crisp dark hair and a lightly suntanned, handsome face. In a striped shirt, with the arms of a blue cotton sweater loosely tied around his neck, he looked like every actor who had ever starred in a romantic comedy with Doris Day agreeably mixed together. “Somebody pushed you off the sidewalk into traffic? Were you injured at all?”
“Not really,” Tom said.
Sarah said, “Tom, this is Roddy Deepdale. And Buzz.”
A blond man in his mid-thirties with a blue scarf around his neck had moved up beside Roddy Deepdale to look at Tom with the same mixture of concern and fascination as the older man. He, too, was remarkably handsome. His bright yellow cotton sweater had been tied about his waist. Both men seemed more alarmed by what had happened to Tom than anyone in the Redwing party.
“Well, what happened, exactly?” Roddy said, and sipped a drink while Tom told the story. An old woman with a chinless, toadlike face peered at him between the broad, well-set-up figures of the two men. Except for Sarah, the others had turned back to the bar.
“My God, you could have been killed,” Roddy Deepdale said. “You nearly were!”
Buzz asked if he had seen who pushed him.
“Well, that’s just it. There were so many people on the sidewalk that it must have been an accident.”
“Did you go to the police?”
“I didn’t really have anything to tell them.”
“You were probably right. Last summer, a week or two before we got here, someone broke every window in our lodge. Stole half of our things, even a double portrait by Don Bachardy which is sorely missed, let me tell you, but the physical damage was almost as bad. The squirrels got in, and a lot of birds, and the police couldn’t do a thing.”
“Everybody felt so bad about it, Roddy,” Sarah said.
“Some people did,” said Buzz.
“I did,” interjected the old woman, who thrust her arm between Roddy and Buzz and laughed at the awkwardness of her position. Roddy and Buzz moved aside to admit her, and Roddy placed his hand on her hunched shoulder. “I felt terrible about it, I promise! And I’m distressed about what happened to you, Tom Pasmore, and I congratulate you on your survival!” Tom had taken her hand, which was surprisingly solid and long—longer than his own—in his. The impression of her ugliness had entirely disappeared. She had sagging dewlaps and prominent teeth and no chin, but now Tom saw the intelligence in her eyes, the soft wave of her white hair, and the calm width of her forehead. “I’m Kate Redwing,” she said. “You’ve never heard of me, but I knew your mother when she was just a little girl.”
“I was hoping I’d meet you,” Tom said, “and now that I have, I’m delighted.”
“And I’m delighted to meet you. Sit next to me at dinner, and we’ll have a good long talk.”
“Sarah said to give you this.” Roddy Deepdale passed Tom a tall flute glass filled with a bubbling liquid tinged a pale pink. “I assume it’s a reward for having survived your experience.”
“If Sarah Spence is looking after you, you’re going to be looked after very well,” said Kate Redwing. “Do you suppose someone could look after me? I’ve had only one martini, and it was a very small one, and since my grand-nephew is still primping …”
Buzz smiled and went up to the empty half of the bar.
“You said a double portrait was stolen from your lodge. A double portrait of whom?”
“Of Buzz and me,” Roddy Deepdale said. “It’s still a terrible loss. I hated telling Don about it, but he was very civilized. He said that it would probably turn up one day, and he sent us a little drawing to compensate. Christopher said something very wicked and funny, but I’d better not repeat it.”
Sarah, surrounded by her parents and Ralph and Katinka Redwing at the bar, winked at Tom and raised her glass.
“That Spence girl is really something, isn’t she?” said Kate Redwing. “I’m not sure she’s properly appreciated in these parts.” She clinked her glass against his and gave him a sparkling, conspiratorial look over its brim as she drank.
A stir of movement took place at the bar, and Kate Redwing said, “The heir apparent.”
Katinka Redwing swept toward the top of the stairs as Buddy came up beside the young man with oily hair. A tall, lanky young person with limp blond hair and a large nose trailed up behind them. Buddy wore a baggy polo shirt and large Bermuda shorts and boat shoes without socks; Kip Carson wore floppy jeans, sandals, and a cheesecloth Indian shirt. Bu
ddy looked glazed and red, as if he had just come out of an oven.
“I think we could go to our table now, Marcello,” said his mother.
“Who’s the toad in the necktie?” Buddy asked. Baked eyes in the baked-apple face glared at Tom. “One of Roddy’s playmates?”
The party at the bar broke up. Katinka Redwing bent whispering toward her son as they followed Marcello toward a long table near the terrace. Roddy and Buzz carried their drinks toward a table for two behind the Langenheims. The senior Spences attached themselves to either side of Ralph Redwing, and Sarah rolled her eyes and fell in with Tom and Kate.
“Buddy enjoys being bad,” the old woman said quietly as they followed the procession to the table. “But I must say, I’ve always rather liked toads myself. Useful little things. I’ve even sort of grown to resemble one, though a nice one, I trust. Do you suppose Buddy might have meant … no, I don’t suppose he did.” She grinned wickedly, but it might have been at the game of musical chairs going on at the head of the table. Mrs. Spence wished to sit between Ralph and Buddy Redwing, and Buddy wanted to sit beside Kip Carson; Katinka Redwing was determined to sit at the side of her husband and to banish Kip Carson to the table’s other end. Mr. Spence and Mrs. Redwing urged Sarah into the chair opposite Buddy. Ralph Redwing took the chair at the head of the table. Everybody else sat down more or less where they wanted to. Tom sat opposite Kip and between Sarah and Kate Redwing, who was opposite Mr. Spence.
Marcello distributed handwritten menus the size of theater placards, and Kip passed two or three small objects to Buddy, and Buddy inserted them into his mouth. Both the host, and then Kip Carson, declared their willingness to live year-round in Eagle Lake. Mrs. Spence could be observed to grasp Ralph Redwing’s knee, and Sarah slid her leg next to Tom’s. Katinka Redwing stared into some private arctic space and alluded to the anticipation on Mill Walk of “Ralph’s book.” Buddy told a dirty joke, largely to Sarah, and an incomprehensible one about an elephant and a homosexual to the room at large. Everybody—everybody except Kip Carson, who ate nothing but drank six large glasses of water—ate hugely, drank hugely, and most talked without stopping or listening. Tom noticed that Sarah had been wrong about Buddy Redwing and Kate had been right: Buddy enjoyed being bad, he was acting up, but part of his awfulness was that he had no real talent for that kind of badness. He was too ordinary for it. In ten years, he would be talking with romantic nostalgia about how wild he used to be; in twenty, he would be an overweight tycoon who cheated at golf and thought that he had a divine right to steal whatever he could get his hands on.
“I’m glad you didn’t take off your tie,” Kate Redwing said to him.
“My mother told me to wear this tie,” said Tom, smiling.
“She would have been thinking of the old Eagle Lake, when things were much more formal. She probably still has memories of eating at the club with her father. I can remember seeing her here, the summer I was engaged. How is she now?”
Tom hesitated for a moment, then said, “She could be better.”
“Is your father a very sensitive man?”
Tom found himself unable to answer that question, and she patted his hand to tell him that she understood his silence. “Never mind. I’m sure that you make up for a lot. She must be very proud of you.”
“I hope she can be,” Tom said.
“I used to worry about your mother. She was a dear little thing, but absolutely forlorn. So very pretty, but so unhappy. This is none of my business, of course.”
Up at the other end of the table, Ralph Redwing was explaining that he saw Eagle Lake as a world apart from his family’s businesses, and that was why he had turned down many opportunities to invest in the area. He would not sully the place with money—he was content with their lake, their friends, their little piece of the woods.
“In spite of what we could do with this area,” he said. This was a speech that required an audience, and all faces were turned to him, even those of Buddy and Kip. “We could turn this whole part of Wisconsin right around—we could wake it up—we could start putting money into people’s pockets …”
“I daresay,” Kate whispered to Tom.
“… and there’s another factor, which is the attitude of some of the locals. Some of these people resented anything new—anything successful. They made life pretty tough on us for a couple of years. We got back in a couple of ways, but it meant that we don’t try to help them any, you can believe that.”
“How did you try to get back?” Tom asked innocently.
“Yes, since you mention it,” said Kate. “I’ve always wanted to know how to get back at someone.”
“Remember, we’re talking about a different time now,” Redwing said. “We made our own perfect place up here, that we and our people enjoy, and they can beg us for help and advice, but we don’t put a penny into the town of Eagle Lake. You see these fine young men who work here at the club? These are the finest waiters in the world, and my father hired their fathers from the best restaurants in Chicago in the twenties, they live right here in damn fine rooms they deserve, and they’re loyal people.”
A respectful silence followed all of this. Mrs. Spence said that she admired his … well, she admired everything, but something in particular, but she just couldn’t find the word, but they all knew what she meant. Mrs. Redwing said she was sure they did, dear, and everybody went back to the same sort of conversations they had been having earlier.
“Do you come here a lot?” Tom asked Kate Redwing.
She grinned. “I’m just a peripheral Redwing from Atlanta, and I don’t get up here more than once every two or three years. When my husband was alive, we used to come every summer. We had our own lodge in the compound, but when Jonathan died, they started putting me in a room in the main house.”
“I want to talk to you about your first summer here,” Tom said. “About my mother and my grandfather, and, if you don’t mind, what happened to Jeanine Thielman.”
“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “You are a remarkable fellow.” She turned to give him a long look full of intelligence and good humor. “Yes, you are. Do you happen to know a gentleman from your island named”—here she lowered her voice—“von Heilitz?”
Tom nodded.
“Well, he was remarkable too.” She continued to look at him. “I think it would be better to have this conversation elsewhere—certainly not in the compound.” She sipped at what was left of her watery martini. “I often drop in to see Roddy and Buzz for tea around four in the afternoon. Why don’t you stop in there tomorrow?”
The meal ended a short time later. Ralph Redwing waved away Tom’s thanks. Buddy waddled around the table toward Sarah, who whispered “Ten minutes” to Tom, and pushed herself away from the table. Tom said good-bye to Kate Redwing, who gave him a pert nod, to the Spences, who seemed not to hear him, and to Mrs. Redwing, who showed all her teeth and said, “Why, you’re welcome!”
Sarah did not appear after ten minutes, nor after twenty. Tom read a page of Agatha Christie, then reread it when he realized that he had understood each individual word, but none of them in sequence. Noises on the porch made him jump up to open the door, but no one was there. The lodge made noises by itself. He looked down the long curved avenue of trees, lighted by his porch light and the Spences’.
After ten more minutes, he wandered out on the dock. Far down to his left, distinct areas of yellow light from the club lay on the black water like paint. The Spences’ dock stood illuminated like a stage set. Moonlight silvered the tops of the trees surrounding the invisible lodges across the lake and laid a broad white path on the water. On the north end of the lake a bird called Chk?, and from past Roddy Deepdale’s lodge a second bird answered it: Chk! Chk!
Male voices floated to him, and lights went on in the Deepdale lodge: another dock jumped into visibility. Tom walked back to the deck, found the switches for the outside lights, and turned them off. Light from Glendenning Upshaw’s study fell out on the deck an
d the few camp chairs and a rough wooden table threw out long, decisive shadows. Now the dock was only a blur of darkness against the paler darkness of the lake. He sat down in one of the camp chairs and wondered how he would be able to stand the evenings at the club.
He went inside, sat down at the desk, opened the phone book and found the number for the Spence lodge.
Mrs. Spence said that Sarah had not come back from the club yet; and wasn’t she going out to the White Bear with Buddy?
“I thought she changed her plans,” Tom said.
“Oh, no, Sarah always goes out in the evening with Buddy. They have so much to talk about.” She would tell Sarah he called. Her voice was blandly insincere.
Tom wrote I’m on the deck—come around the side on a sheet of his grandfather’s paper, and folded it between the screen and the front door. Then he walked back around the side of the lodge and went up the steps to the deck. He turned on one of the lights and sat down to read Agatha Christie while he waited for Sarah.
Moths fluttered around the angled spotlights. The moon coasted through the sky. The light in Barbara Deane’s bedroom switched off, and another degree of softness and wholeness appeared in the darkness beyond the circle of light on the deck. Hercule Poirot strolled onstage and began exercising his little grey cells. Tom sighed—he missed Lamont von Heilitz. On the other hand, maybe Monsieur Poirot would appear to explain what really had happened here at Eagle Lake forty years ago.
Tom wondered why the Shadow had not told him that Anton Goetz was an accountant for Mill Walk Construction; and how an accountant had been able to build the enormous house on The Sevens in the early twenties; and who had shot at Lamont von Heilitz; and why Anton Goetz had taken his meals home from the club, just at the time he should have tried most to act normal.
These were exactly the sort of questions to which Hercule Poirot and every other detective like him always had the answer. They were abstraction-machines, and you never had any idea at all of what it felt like to be like them, but by the last chapter they could certainly tell you who had left the footprint beneath the Colonel’s window, and who had found the pistol on the bloody pillow and tossed it into the gorse bush. They were walking crossword puzzles, but at least they could do that.