Ghost Story (20 page)

Not yet,
his mind said.

He pulled up beside the house on Montgomery Street and got out of the car. The wind pulled the blazer away from his body, yanked at his necktie: he realized that like Ned Rowles he was coatless. Lewis looked despairingly at the unlighted windows, and thought that at least Milly Sheehan would be in. He trotted up the path and pushed the bell. Far away and dim, it rang. Immediately below it was the office bell for John's patients, and he pushed that one too and heard an impatient clamor go off just on the other side of the door. Lewis, standing as if naked in the cold, began to shake.

Cold water lay on his face. At first he thought it was snow, then realized that he was crying again.

Lewis pounded on the door futilely, turned away, the tears like ice on his face, and looked across the street and saw Eva Galli's old house.

His breath froze. He almost thought he saw her again, the enchantress of their youth, moving across a downstairs window.

For a moment everything had the hard clarity of the morning and his stomach froze too, and then the door opened and he saw that the figure coming out was a man. Lewis wiped his brow with his hands. The man obviously wanted to speak with him. As he approached, Lewis recognized him as Freddy Robinson, the insurance salesman. He too was a regular at Humphrey's Place.

"Lewis?" he called. "Lewis Benedikt? Hey, good to see you, man!"

Lewis began to feel as he had in the bar—he wanted to get away. "Yes, it's me," he said.

"Gee, what a pity about old Dr. Jaffrey, hey? I heard about it this afternoon. He was a real buddy of yours, wasn't he?" Robinson was by now close enough to shake hands, and Lewis was unable to avoid grasping the salesman's cold fingers. "Hell of a note, hey? Goddamned tragedy, I call it. Boy." He was shaking his head sagely. "I'll tell you something. Old Dr. Jaffrey pretty much kept to himself, but I loved that old guy. Honest. When he invited me over to that party he had for the actress, you could have knocked me down with a feather. And man, what a party! Really, I had the time of my life. Great party." He must have seen Lewis stiffen, for he added, "Until the end, of course."

Lewis was looking at the ground, not bothering to reply to these horrible remarks, and Freddy Robinson rushed into the silence to add, "Hey, you look kind of crapped out. You don't want to stand here in the cold. Why don't you come over to my place, have a good stiff drink? I'd like to hear about your experiences, chew the fat a little bit, check out your insurance situation, just for the record—there's nobody at home here anyhow—" Like Jim Hardie, he grabbed Lewis's arm, and Lewis, harassed and miserable as he was, sensed desperation and hunger in the man. If Robinson could have handcuffed Lewis and dragged him across the street, he would have. Lewis knew that Robinson, for whatever private reasons, would fasten on him like a barnacle if he allowed him to.

"I'm afraid I can't," he said, more polite than if he had not felt the enormity of Robinson's need. "I have to see some people."

"You mean Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne, I guess," Robinson said, defeated already. He released Lewis's arm. "Gosh, what you guys do is so great, I mean I really admire you, with that club you have and everything."

"Christ, don't admire
us,"
Lewis said, already moving toward his car. "Someone's picking us off like flies."

It was uttered almost casually, a merely dismissive remark, and within five minutes Lewis had forgotten he'd said it.

"Oh, so you've heard," Ricky said when he opened the door. "I'm glad you came." His nose was red, with crying Lewis thought, and then saw that he had a bad cold.

"Yes, I saw Hardesty and Ned Rowles and they told me. How did you hear?"

"Hardesty called us at the office." The two men entered the living room, and Lewis saw Sears James, seated in an easy chair, scowl when the sheriff was named.

Stella came in from the dining room, gasped, and ran across the room to embrace him. "I'm so sorry, Lewis," she said. "It's such a damn shame."

"It's impossible," said Lewis.

"That may be so, but it certainly was John who was taken to the county morgue this noon," Sears said in a thick voice. "Who's to say what is impossible? We've all been under a strain. I may go off the bridge tomorrow." Stella gave Lewis an extra squeeze and went to sit beside Ricky on the Hawthorne's couch. The Italian coffee table in front of them looked the size of an ice rink.

"You need coffee," Stella said, scrutinizing Lewis more carefully, and got up again to go into the kitchen.

"You'd think it impossible," Sears went on, unruffled by the interruption, "that three adult men like ourselves would have to huddle together for warmth, but here we are."

Stella returned with coffee for all of them, and the desultory conversation ceased for a moment.

"We tried to reach you," Ricky said.

"I was out for a drive."

"It was John who wanted us to write to young Wanderley," Ricky said after a moment.

"Write to whom?" Stella asked, not understanding. Sears and Ricky explained. "Well, that's the craziest thing I ever heard," she finally said. "It's just like the three of you, to get all worked up and then ask someone else to solve your problems. I wouldn't have expected it from John."

"He's supposed to be an expert, Stella," Sears said in exasperation. "As far as I'm concerned, John's suicide proves that we need him more than ever."

"Well, when's he coming?"

"Don't know," Sears admitted. He looked rumpled, a fat old turkey at the end of winter.

"If you ask me, what you ought to do is stop those Chowder Society meetings," Stella told him. "They're destructive. Ricky woke up screaming this morning— all three of you look like you've seen ghosts."

Sears remained cool. "Two of us saw John's body. That should be reason enough for looking a little out of sorts."

"How did—" Lewis began, and then stopped.
How did he look?
was a singularly stupid question.

"How did what?" demanded Sears.

"How did you happen to hire Eva Galli's niece as a secretary?"

"She asked for a job," Sears said. "We had some extra work."

"Eva Galli?" asked Stella. "Wasn't she that rich woman who came here, oh, a long time ago? I didn't know her very well; she was much older than I. Wasn't she going to marry someone? Then she just upped and left town."

"She was going to marry Stringer Dedham," Sears said impatiently.

"Oh yes, Stringer Dedham," Stella remembered. "My goodness, he was a handsome man. There was that awful accident—something at a farm."

"He lost both arms in. a threshing machine," Ricky said.

"Ugh. What a conversation. This must be like one of your meetings."

All three men had been thinking the same thing.

"Who told you about Miss Mostyn?" asked Sears. "Mrs. Quast must gossip overtime."

"No, I met her. She was at Humphrey's Place with Jim Hardie. She introduced herself to me."

The feeble conversation died again.

Sears asked Stella if there was any brandy in the house, and Stella said she'd get some for everybody and disappeared again into the kitchen.

Sears yanked savagely at his jacket, trying to make himself comfortable in the leather and metal chair. "You took John home last night Did he seem unusual in any way?"

Lewis shook his head. "We didn't talk much. He said your story was good."

"He didn't say any more than that?"

"He said he was cold."

"Humph."

Stella returned with a bottle of Remy Martin and three glasses on a tray. "You should see yourselves. You look like three owls."

They did not so much as nod.

"Gentlemen, I'll leave you with the brandy. I'm sure you have things you want to talk about." Stella looked them over, autocratic and benign as a primary teacher, and then moved quickly out of the room without saying good-bye. Her disapproval stayed with them.

"She's upset," Ricky said apologetically. "Well, we all are. But Stella's more affected by this than she wants to show." As if to make amends for his wife, Ricky leaned forward over the glass icerink table and poured a generous amount of cognac into each glass. "I need this too. Lewis, I just don't understand what would make him do it. Why would John Jaffrey want to kill himself?"

"I don't know why," said Lewis, taking one of the glasses. "Maybe I'm glad I don't."

"Talk sense for a change," Sears growled. "We're men, Lewis, not animals. We're not supposed to stay cowering in the darkness." He too accepted a glass and sipped. "As a species, we hunger for knowledge. For enlightenment." His pale eyes angrily fixed on Lewis. "Or perhaps I misunderstood you, and you did not actually intend to defend ignorance."

"Overkill, Sears," Ricky said.

"Less jargon, Ricky," Sears retorted. " 'Overkill,' indeed. That might impress Elmer Scales and his sheep, but it does not impress me."

There was something about sheep—but Lewis had forgotten it. He said, "I don't mean to defend ignorance, Sears. I just meant that—hell, I don't know anymore. I guess I meant that it might be too much to take." What he did not articulate but was half aware of was the notion that he feared to peer too closely into the last moments of any suicide's life, be it friend or wife.

"Yes,"
breathed Ricky.

"Twaddle," said Sears. "I'd be relieved to learn that John was merely despairing. It's the other explanations that frighten me."

Lewis said, "I have the feeling that I'm sort of missing something," and proved to Ricky for the thousandth time that he was not the dullard of Sears's imagination.

"Last night," Ricky said, holding his glass with both hands and smiling fatalistically, "after the other three of us had gone, Sears saw Fenny Bate on his staircase."

"Christ."

"That's enough," Sears warned. "Ricky, I forbid you to go into this. What our friend means, Lewis, is that I thought I saw him. I was badly frightened. It was an hallucination—a ha'nt, as they used to say in these parts."

"Now you're arguing both ways," Ricky pointed out. "For my part, I'd be happy to think you're right. I don't want to see young Wanderley here. I think we might all be sorry, just about the time it's too late."

"You misread me. I want him to come and say: give it up. My Uncle Edward died of smoking and excitement, John Jaffrey was unstable. That's the reason I agreed to John's suggestion. I say, let him come, and the sooner the better."

Lewis said, "If you feel that, I agree with you."

"Is that fair to John?" Ricky asked.

"John's past being fair to," Sears said. He finished the cognac in his glass and leaned forward to pour more from the bottle.

Sudden footsteps on the stairs made all three swivel their heads toward the entrance from the hall.

Turned that way in his chair, Lewis could see Ricky's front window, and he noticed with surprise that it had begun to snow again. Hundreds of big flakes hammered the black window.

Milly Sheehan came in, her hair all flattened on one side and all frowsy on the other. She was sausaged into one of Stella's old dressing gowns. "I heard that, Sears James," she said in a voice like the wail of an ambulance. "You'll bully John even when he's dead."

"Milly, I meant no disrespect," Sears said. "Shouldn't you—"

"No.
You won't get rid of me now. I won't give you coffee now and bow and scrape. I have something to say to you. John didn't commit suicide. Lewis Benedikt, you listen too. He didn't. He wouldn't have. John was murdered."

"Milly," Ricky began.

"Do you think I'm deaf? Do you think I don't know what's going on? John was killed, and do you know who killed him? Well, I do." Footsteps, this time Stella's, came hurrying down the stairs. "I know who killed him. It was you. You—you Chowder Society. You killed him with your terrible stories. You made him sick—you and your Fenny Bates!" Her face twisted; Stella rushed in too late to stop Milly's final words. "They ought to call you the Murder Society! They ought to call you Murder Incorporated!"

The new girl, Anna, had been wonderful: she'd helped deal with Sears's rage, cushioning Mrs. Quast from the worst effects of it, she'd been as marvelous with Milly Sheehan as Stella had, and she'd transformed the office. She had forced Ricky to realize that Hawthorne, James had plenty of work if Hawthorne and James wanted to do it. Even during the terrible period of arranging John's funeral, even on the day he took a suit from John's closet and bought a coffin, he and Sears found themselves responding to more letters and answering more phone calls than they had for weeks. They had been drifting toward retirement, sending clients elsewhere as if automatically, and Anna Mostyn seemed to have brought them back to life. She had mentioned her aunt only once, and in the most harmless way: she had asked them what she was like. Sears had come close to blushing and muttered, "Almost as pretty as you, but not as fierce." And she had been staunchly on Sears's side in the matter of the autopsy. Even coroners make mistakes, she had pointed out with placid, undeniable common sense.

Ricky was not so sure; he was not even sure it mattered. John had functioned perfectly well as a doctor; his own body had weakened but he had remained competent at curing other bodies. Surely a "massive, habitual, etc." drug habit would account for the physical decline John had exhibited. A daily insulin injection would have got John used to needles. He found that if John Jaffrey had been an addict, it did not much affect what he thought of him.

And this: it made his suicide explicable. No empty-eyed barefooted Fenny Bate, no Murder Incorporated, no mere stories had killed him—the drug had eaten into his brain as it had eaten into his body. Or he could not take it anymore, the "shame" of addiction. Or something.

Sometimes it was convincing.

In the meantime his nose ran and his chest tickled. He wanted to sit down; he wanted to be warm. Milly Sheehan was gripping Stella as if the two of them were battered by a hurricane, now and then using one hand to pluck another tissue from the box, wipe her eyes, and drop the tissue on the ground.

Ricky took a damp tissue from his own coat pocket, discreetly wiped his nose, and returned it to his pocket.

All of them heard the car coming up the hill to the cemetery.