The Night of the Moonbow (46 page)

“He’s dead,” he said.

The prosecutor snorted and raised a scornful voice so all could hear. “Do you hear, men? He lies even to this court.”

Leo lifted his own voice to be heard over the other’s. “He is dead. He’s talking about my stepfather.”

“Listen, all of you,” came the bear’s voice, projecting so the sound carried among the trees. “He’s not dead, this father. His name is Rudy Matuchek, and he has drawn the sentence of twenty years imprisonment.”

At this news the band of watchers put their heads together and again jabbered among themselves.

Once more the judge raised a hand for silence and addressed the prosecutor.

“We are interested in your words. For what crime is this man in prison?”

“For the crime of murder!”

Murder! The word swept through the ranks. “It is a fact,” the prosecutor continued. “Here is the proof, in my hand.” Again he waved the documents. “Now ask me, for whose murder?”

“Yes, whose?” they demanded in unison, jostling one another in their eagerness to see and hear. Again the “judge” was forced to call for order.

“For the murder of his wife!” came the reply. “And his wife’s boyfriend.” Another eruption greeted this sensational revelation. The bear eagerly pressed his point. “Hear me, men. It’s all here in the file, every word.” He held up the folder.

The alligator had a further word to add. “His mother was a slut. She was having an affair with this other guy—” He would have gone on, but was silenced by the bear, who with obvious relish provided the details.

“The father was a butcher and he took his butcher knife and stabbed them both to death. He was convicted and sent to prison. That’s why the prisoner was sent to the orphanage. And before that he was in the nuthouse - the loony bin. It’s all here, anyone can read it!” He brandished the papers over his head while the commotion grew louder. Leo strained harder to free himself, his eyes wildly staring at his accuser, who just shook his head at him. “You see how it is - you think you can go around telling these lies—” “They’re not lies!” Leo shouted defiantly. “They’re not!”

“Are they the truth, then?”

“Not exactly, but—”

“Well, there you are! You’re a liar; and furthermore . . . ” the bear went on, ignoring Leo’s denial and taking up a position close to the fox. “Furthermore ... I stand here before this tribunal to accuse the prisoner of being responsible for the death of Tiger Abernathy.” He raised his voice so it echoed off the cellar walls. “Like father, like son!”

Angry mutters ran about the circle. Leo stared at the bear-head. “That’s not true!”

“Silence!” the judge roared. “On what do you base this accusation?” he asked the prosecutor.

“It’s simple. The prisoner is a collector of spiders. One of these spiders was poisonous and it bit the deceased and gave him blood poisoning. If it weren’t for that, Tiger wouldn’t have died.”

Leo again protested. “The spider wasn’t poisonous and everybody knows it! Ten spiders like that one could have bit someone and they’d never have died. The bite became infected because—”

“Silence in the court! The prisoner has not been given leave to speak. Mr Prosecutor, you may continue.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” returned the prosecutor, bowing. He came closer to Leo. “So, prisoner, you will call others liar, will you? When it is you yourself who is the liar!”

“Everything I’ve said is true.”

“I don’t think so. In fact” - turning to the courtroom again - “I think we have already proved beyond doubt that if there is any lying being done here, the prisoner is the one doing it. And his hands are stained with the blood of Tiger Abernathy, who except for him would be standing here at this very moment.”

“He wouldn't! He’d never be here! Let me go!” Again Leo strained against his bonds. This was more than a game, this was diabolical. He thought of Stanley Wagner. “You have no right!”

“Shut up!”

“Silence him.”

“Give him a poke to shut his mouth.”

“Silence! Silence, I said!” shouted the judge. “Enough of this. If there are any more outbursts I’ll order the prisoner gagged. We won’t waste any more time. We’ll have the verdict. And the sentence—!”

“ ’Ray! ’Ray!” the boys shouted. “Time for sentencing.” “Jury! What is your verdict?” came the call. As one they spat the word out in his face.

Guilty.

Guilty!

GUILTY!

The cellar rang with shouts and cries, while Leo stared in disbelief and mounting alarm. No use for him to struggle more. But the end - where was that? And when it came, what would it be?

The fox again stepped forward and raised his arms for silence. In the sudden hush he spoke to the prisoner: “You have been found guilty of the worst kind of crime

- the crime of breaking faith. Everybody knows it was your spider that killed Tiger. It won’t do you any good to go on lying about it. A liar is what you are and you will be punished accordingly.”

He paused, turning to speak sotto voce with the bear and several others who crowded around him to hear what he had to say. Leo watched, hating them all. The fox turned back, cleared his throat. “The penalty you will pay for your lies and treachery is as follows - watch - watch, all, see what has been arranged for the guilty.”

Leo watches. The fox reaches up and pulls a cord. Bright lights flash on as the curtain of blankets is pulled back, revealing a makeshift stage upon which a tableau is being enacted, a grisly tableau whose essence swiftly communicates itself to Leo. He shouts out in horror. He would look away, but cannot. There, in full view, stands the menacing figure of Rudy, the butcher of Saggetts Notch, in his shirtsleeves and his bloodied apron, his straw hat perched on his head, his drooping mustache, his ever-present cigar, and, clutched in one upraised hand, his butcher knife, its blade besmirched. His other hand is closed around the throat of Emily, her breast covered with blood. She is dead; he has killed her!

“Mother!”

The anguished cry echoes in the room. In terror and surprise, Leo springs forward, free at last of his bonds, his fingers scrabbling at his hip. As his body knocks heavily against the exposed flank of the murderer, his fingers close around his own knife, freeing it from its sheath. Its steel blade flashes in the light.

“No - stop!” comes a cry from among the crowd -a futile cry, for Leo’s avenging knife thrusts home. As the blade strikes there is an explosive sound of shocked surprise from Rudy, who gasps, groans, crumples, then falls backward. Frantic hands snatch at Leo, yanking him away from the stage. He stares dazedly at the gory sight of the murdered Emily, who in some unaccountable yet miraculous transformation has been restored to life, her blood-spattered features now changing into those of Gus Klaus, a look of bug-eyed horror on his face as he peers down at the lifeless body of Reece Hartsig, who lies bleeding on the floor, an expression of surprise frozen forever in his eyes, Tiger Abernathy’s parting gift to Wacko Wackeem buried to the hilt under his ribs.

EPILOGUE

Neither lofty nor inspiring, Mount Zion was never what you could call a real mountain, merely one of a range of low hills, the site chosen by Knute and Dagmar Kronborg as their home in America. On a bright, sunny morning toward the middle of November 1938, a thin plume of smoke curled from the hen’s-egg chimney, and high atop the observation tower the Stars and Stripes marked a brisk wind from the east. With the coming of autumn, even the sky had changed: no longer the soft, limpid cerulean blue of summer, it was a harder, more enameled blue, the blue of a Delft plate, and host to wavering wedges of geese flying south from Canada. There was a good nip in the air, too; all through the valley the leaves had turned, and in the farmers’ fields the pumpkins ripened their way toward Thanksgiving pies. Except for a black-winged hawk knifing earthward, the valley seemed to drowse in a sort of fairy-tale slumber.

On the topmost gallery off the music room, Augie Moss was leaning over the parapet, spilling to the wind the contents of two ashtrays. Through the open doors behind him came the sound of music, a lively glissando of notes that lay melodiously on the ear. Augie slid a look up to the cruising hawk, then stepped back into the music room, where Leo Joaquim stood behind the Pleyel piano, some sheets of music open on the rack (Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto).

Augie watched from under knitted brows. The boy had changed some. He looked older, not as thin and gangly -Augie’s cooking had helped to accomplish that - and with an indefinable something more grown-up in the line of the jaw that rested on the curve of the violin.

Returning the ashtrays to their decreed places - the jade one on the big table, the crystal beside the piano keyboard

- Augie slippered his way from the room, while Leo continued his practice undisturbed. If he paused for longer than the time it took to run to the bathroom, he would hear from “upstairs” the signal for him to resume pronto or catch it. At the Castle one had certain obligations: in the matter of musical practice, diligence was called for; Dagmar was no easy taskmaster.

As he bowed away, Leo’s eye traveled to the framed photograph on the piano, a pair of suntanned campers clad in khaki shorts, grinning into Dagmar’s box Brownie, two summer pals, arms across each other’s shoulders, two friends now parted - one dead, one alive. One buried under the earth, the other here, playing Mendelssohn; Felix Mendelssohn for Tiger Abernathy.

Victim of whimsical impulse, Leo broke off his concerto and switched to another, possibly more popular but far less classic, rendition. He tossed it off with polish and verve, even for so humble a ditty, and before long he heard Augie’s sandpapery voice singing the words as he came back along the passageway:

I push the first valve down.

The music goes down and around,

Whoa-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho,

And it comes up here.

In he came with his turkey duster, lightly feathering his way around the room, “rearranging the dust,” as Dagmar called it. When he reached the piano he clapped a hand to Leo’s shoulder and they sang the next verse together.

I push the middle valve down.

The music goes down around below, below,

Dee-dle-dee ho-ho-ho,

Listen to the ja-azz come out.

They had swung into the last verse when a clarion voice rang out from overhead.

“No one had better push that other valve down or there’ll be hash for dinner. August, more coffee! Leo, more Mendelssohn!”

Augie slipped Leo a conspiratorial wink, then trucked his way across the tiles to disappear around the corner while the boy had recourse once more to his music. Not long after, the old man again passed the doorway as he carried her morning coffee tray to Dagmar. He found her at the desk in her bedroom, writing letters.

“Was it you who encouraged him to play that dreadful stuff?” she asked, adding sugar lumps to the cup (she liked her coffee black but sweet).

“No, ma’am,” Augie replied in his soft, dusty voice. “That was his own inspiration. Ask me, I think it’s hot.” “Hot!” Dagmar was indignant. “The notes of that composition are as nails on a blackboard,” she declared. “And the words are pure jabberwocky.”

Augie chuckled, then picked up the objectionable refrain as he left the room, “Oh you push the third valve down ...”

Hiding her mirth behind the rim of her cup, Dagmar looked over the front page, which detailed how Nazi thugs all over Germany had gone on a rampage, smashing their way into the shops and homes of Jews, setting fire to synagogues, brutalizing the Jewish population. Dagmar shook her head at the thought of such violence and wondered where it all would lead. She thought of Fritz, who had learned his family’s fate at last. Trying to escape Austria, they had been betrayed, and had disappeared behind the walls of a concentration camp called Mauthausen.

When she had glanced through the rest of the newspaper she returned to her letter. Her lines were addressed to Elsie Meekum at Pitt Institute, whom Dagmar had promised to keep apprised of Leo’s progress. In the weeks since the coroner’s inquest in Putnam, when she and Elsie had frequently found themselves together, they had struck up a correspondence, having discovered that they shared an interest not only in Leo Joaquim but in other matters as well, including mulberry ware and the paintings of Renoir, and it had been between the two women, widow and spinster, that the plot had been hatched to bring an end to Leo’s stay at the orphanage. Now Dagmar enjoyed receiving Elsie’s correspondence from Pitt, and responded with news concerning their “protege,” which was how Leo had come to be regarded.

Looking back to that July day when the boy had first come to the Castle, it hardly seemed possible that so much had happened in so short a space of time: so much bad -and how much good?

There had been a great hubbub during the weeks following the tragedy. The town of Putnam, the Windham County seat, had filled up with reporters who had been drawn to the scene of the tragedy like flies to rotting fruit, and who, despite the best efforts of all concerned, from Dr Dunbar of the Joshua Society to Dagmar Kronborg, would not be denied. Even the services for the slain young man had provided grist for their mill: It had been held under the sponsorship of the German-American Bund, whose rank and file had appeared in numbers, many wearing swastika armbands in token of respect to their “fallen comrade” -Rolfe’s doing, of course. During the last rites the mother of the deceased became hysterical and had to be forcibly restrained, and one persevering photographer managed to get a dramatic shot of Joy being helped into a waiting car.

None of this had Leo Joaquim witnessed, for within hours of his arrest he had been returned to the same hospital where he had been a patient as a child. In a state of shock, he lacked all comprehension of what had taken place at the old Steelyard place, or the fact that he had been the instrument of someone’s death. At the hospital he was once more placed in the care of Dr Epstein, and there, while he waited for the inquest to begin, the same Miss Holmes sat again in the corner of his old room (or one exactly like it), smiling and nodding.