Superstition (37 page)

“Anyway,” she said, “the coincidence of our both being in that tiny churchyard at the same time and looking for the same grave was so extraordinary…” She made a gesture that implied she need elaborate no further. “It just seemed sort of inevitable.”

“And so you wrote your book,” Sam prompted her.

“I wrote my book with the subject's great-great-several-more-greats-grandson correcting my spelling and making sure I was no more horrible about his family than I had to be.” She gave Ralph's hand a squeeze.

“Had you published anything before?” Sam asked her.

“Heavens, no. I'd been working in a brokerage firm—incredibly dull, just a job. I'd always dreamed of becoming a writer, but never had the confidence to start. Now I'm hoping I can make a career of it. I've got a few more ideas for biographies, then maybe a novel.”

“Now come on, Dr. Towne,” Ralph said, “you must tell us something about what's behind all this. Are you working on something about Adam yourself? Or has he come up in one of your psychic investigations? It wouldn't surprise me, he was a pretty dark character—used to dabble in black magic by all accounts.”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact he has come up in connection with my work—in a way.”

“How exciting! Do tell all,” Joanna said, like a little girl eager to hear the latest gossip from a friend.

Sam hedged delicately. “I'm afraid it's difficult to go into detail right now. But I'll be glad to tell you whatever I can as soon as I'm able.”

Joanna looked faintly disappointed at his evasiveness, but said nothing.

“Do you think I might borrow a copy of this book?” Sam asked tentatively. “I'd be happy to buy one, but if it isn't published yet…”

“Take that one as a gift,” she said at once, and gestured toward the shelf behind her. “As you can see, I've got plenty.”

“That's very kind of you, thank you.” Sam got to his feet.

“Now I really mustn't trouble you any longer.”

“Just one thing,” Ralph Cazaubon said, frowning like someone tripping over an awkward detail that he'd briefly forgotten, “when you got here, you said something about two men dying. What exactly was all that about?”

The question took Sam by surprise. He too had pushed the matter from his mind.

“I'm sorry,” he said, as reassuringly as he could, “that was misleading of me. As your wife is plainly not the Joanna Cross I thought she was, none of that applies any longer. I know that sounds obscure, but I can't tell you more for the moment. I don't really
know
any more.”

“Well, this is all very mysterious,” Ralph said, though he didn't seem especially perturbed, “but I can see we'll have to take your word that you'll explain everything when you can. You don't have a card by any chance, do you? Somewhere we can get in touch with you if we need to?”

“Yes, I should have one somewhere…” Sam fished out his wallet and found one of the cards Peggy had gotten printed for him a couple of years ago and that he rarely found use for. He wrote his home number on the back. Ralph took it with thanks and placed it on the mantel.

“You must be sure to let me know what you think of my book, Dr. Towne,” Joanna said. “I'd love to have an academic opinion.”

“I promise I'll call you.”

“And let me know if there's anything you can think of about Adam that I've left out. It's not too late to add a few footnotes.”

“Yes, of course,” Sam mumbled. Then he looked at them, first one, then the other, and said, “I assume you're not superstitious, either of you.”

“Superstitious? How do you mean?” she asked.

“Oh, you know, history repeating itself. I mean, Adam being your husband's ancestor…”

“Oh…” She laughed as though he'd made a joke, and reached out to ruffle Ralph's hair playfully. “No, I'm not superstitious in that way. Neither of us is.”

They saw Sam to the door and watched as he walked off into the night.

“Strange man,” Ralph said when they were back inside.

“I thought he was kind of nice.”

“All right—nice
and
strange. But I hope we find out what that was all about someday.”

“Maybe Adam's started haunting somebody—clanking around in chains and uttering low moans. I wouldn't put it past him—he's done just about everything else.”

The phone rang. Ralph went back to the room where they'd been sitting to answer it.

“Hello? Oh, Bob…” He gestured to Joanna that it was her father. “How are you? You want Joanna, she's right here…?”

He broke off, his face clouding. Joanna, realizing something was wrong, came quickly to his side.

“What is it?”

He gestured her to be patient while he listened.

“You're kidding. When was this?”

He listened some more, then he said, “That's the weirdest thing. We just had someone here looking for her. It must be the same woman.”

Joanna's patience, never remarkable, was reaching its limit. She was holding out her hand for the phone, expecting him to pass it over any moment, but instead Ralph said, “No, sure, I understand. I'll tell her. Okay, bye, Bob.”

He hung up and turned to her. “That is quite extraordinary.”

“What? What?”

“Your parents have had some strange woman at the house banging on their door and claiming to be you. It must be the same woman Sam Towne was looking for.”

“Is she there now?”

“No, she got away. Apparently your mother was alone and freaked out and called the police. Who can blame her? Your father got back in time to see the woman, but then she gave them the slip.”

“What was she like? What did he say?”

“Not much—only that she was about your age, dark hair. He said Elizabeth's still pretty shaken, but she'll call you tomorrow. He just wanted to warn us in case the woman shows up here. She must be some kind of weirdo—a stalker or something.”

“Jeez!” Joanna gave an involuntary shudder. “That's a little creepy.”

Ralph reached out to brush back the hair where it fell across her forehead. “Don't worry, the cops seemed to think she was harmless. They said there was a name for it, some kind of syndrome—people who develop an obsession about being someone else. Maybe it'll turn out to be somebody you went to school with, or college. I've heard of that kind of thing happening.”

“All the same, I don't like it.”

He took her in his arms and held her face against his. “Don't worry, nothing's going to happen to you. I'll make sure of that.”

54

S
he took the subway from Grand Central and emerged on Sixty-eighth Street. Minutes later she was on the street that she had walked along the day before with Sam. The house they had seen then had been neglected, closed up and uninhabited. Tonight its windows blazed with light, and its door, painted in a green so dark that it was almost black, bore the number 139 in plain brass characters.

Filled though she was with an apprehension bordering on terror, she stepped up and rang the bell. She heard a lock turn, and the door opened. There was no recognition in Ralph Cazaubon's face when he saw her.

“Ralph?” She spoke his name uncertainly, her voice caught somewhere in her throat.

A look came into his eyes. Not recognition, but understanding of some kind.

“Do you know me?” he asked her.

“Yes. Don't you know me?”

He shook his head slightly, then checked himself. “Yes, I think I know who you are.”

There must have been some change in her face, some expression of relief or gratitude for the tiny crumb of comfort he had offered her, because she saw it reflected in his. There was a sympathy in the way he looked at her, a kindness that had become in so short a span of time quite alien to her.

“Do you? Do you really know me?”

There was a pleading in her eyes and voice that touched him. He could not believe that this poor disturbed creature meant ill toward anyone.

“I think you'd better come in,” he said.

As she stepped into the light, he saw that her hair was dank and tangled from the rain that had been falling earlier. There was a red mark on her cheek where she'd been scratched by something. Her clothes were creased and dirty, and her shoes caked with mud that had splashed up her legs.

She looked around, then turned to fix her gaze on him as he closed the door behind her. The words began to tumble out of her.

“Nobody knows who I am anymore. Only you. And this morning I was so afraid of you I ran away. I went to my parents’ house and they locked me out, they didn't know me…and then I heard someone say their daughter's name was Cazaubon, Joanna Cazaubon…”

“Come through, in here…”

He took her arm and steered her gently through into the drawing room where he had sat with Sam two hours earlier.

“Sit down. Don't be afraid, don't worry about anything. I'll do all I can to help you.”

“But do you know what's happening? Do you understand?”

“I think I do.”

She became agitated suddenly. “I have to talk to somebody. His name's Sam Towne. I must find Sam, we must call him…”

“Sam Towne was here earlier.”

She seemed both surprised and reassured to hear this.

“He was here…?”

“Two hours ago. He was looking for you.”

“We must call him now.…Please, I must see him…Sam will know what to do…we must get him here…”

“Yes, of course, I'll call him.”

Just then, distantly, he heard his wife call “Ralph…?” She was coming down the stairs.

The woman with him reacted instantly. “Who's that…?” she asked abruptly, as though the voice she had heard belonged to someone with no right to be there, an intruder whose presence was both an affront and a threat to her.

He didn't answer her question. All he said was, “Wait here a moment, please.”

“But I have to see her…”

“You will. But just sit down a moment, please.”

She sat obediently on the edge of the sofa that Sam had occupied earlier. Ralph started out of the room. At the door he glanced over his shoulder; she was still there, tense and ready to get up and follow him if he gave the word.

“One second,” he said. “I'll be right back.”

He slipped out and closed the door behind him, then ran up the stairs to intercept Joanna. They almost collided at the first landing.

“I heard the bell,” she said. “Who was it?”

“It's her,” he said in a whisper, “the woman who was at your parents’ earlier.”

“Where is she—?”

“The sitting room.”

She made a move to pass him, but he blocked her.

“No—I think it's better you don't.”

“But I have to see her. I want to find out who she is.”

“Darling, let me handle it—please.”

“Maybe I know her. Like you said, it could be somebody I went to school with…”

“She's obviously disturbed, I don't think we should risk provoking some kind of crisis.”

“There's already a crisis if she's going around pretending to be me. I want to see her.”

He didn't argue further, just let her pass and followed her down the remaining stairs and into the hall. He made sure he was right behind her as she pushed open the door into the drawing room.

They both stopped and looked around. The room was empty.

She turned to him. “She doesn't seem to be here now.”

He looked around again, bewildered. “She was right there, on the sofa.”

“Well, she must have left.”

Ralph quickly checked the room. There was no hiding place.

“She can't have left,” he said. “We'd have heard the door.”

“Maybe not if she didn't want us to.”

“For God's sake,” he said, “this is ridiculous. Who
is
she?”

55

I
t was almost three in the morning when Sam finally closed Joanna's book and set it down on the table by his chair. For a while he didn't move. Then he ran his hands over his face and through his hair, and got up to pour himself a large whiskey.

As she had told him, it was an extraordinary story—the more so for being familiar in all but a handful of its details. It was everything that the group had invented about Adam, but set out now as historical fact and authenticated by a comprehensive index of sources. Even the various pictures of Adam, attributed though they were to portraitists and sketch artists of the period, were unmistakably of the man drawn by Drew Hearst way back at the start of the experiment.

But this version of Adam had become a very different person from the one they had intended to create. This was a man who had betrayed the trust first of his patron, Lafayette, then of his wife, and subsequently almost everyone with whom he had come into contact. In Paris, during the period leading up to revolution, he had consorted with thieves and whores and scoundrels of all kinds. When asked once by the generous though despairing Lafayette why he behaved so badly, he answered insolently, “Joie de vivre!” It was the only explanation he ever gave for any of his actions.

The magician Cagliostro became his ally, and together they conspired to defraud the gullible Cardinal Rohan of a fortune in the Diamond Necklace Affair. When Cagliostro was thrown in jail for his part in the plot, he kept quiet about Adam's involvement because Adam, who still had connections at court through his unfortunate and much abused wife, represented his only chance of getting out.

Cagliostro's silence was rewarded when Adam did in fact secure his release, but in return Adam demanded the magic talisman which had thus far in his life protected Cagliostro against all enemies. It would do so, Adam said, one last time, when he handed it over in return for his freedom and his life and went into exile outside France.

The talisman was shown in one of the book's illustrations. Sam was familiar with the design it bore. It was the design he had first seen indistinctly in the wax impression left on the floor that terrifying night in Adam's room at the lab, then later and more clearly in the book given to Joanna by Barry Hearst.

According to legend, Adam had kept the talisman with him all his life, even having it buried with him in his tomb. Something else he had never abandoned was his strange love of the French term “joie de vivre,” for which no equivalent existed in English, and which he not only had engraved upon his tomb but also had already incorporated into the Wyatt coat of arms—a vanity he had acquired in England, along with a second wealthy and aristocratic wife.