Crying Child (27 page)

I told her.

She didn’t say anything. I assumed her lack of response indicated a perfectly natural skepticism, and I said wearily,

“You must think I’m as crazy as my sister. I’m beginning to wonder myself…. Maybe I imagined this last thing. I’m in such a state I don’t really know what I’m seeing.”

Her expression wasn’t skeptical or hostile. It was abstracted, as if she were thinking about something else.

“I talked to Ran,” she said.

“What about?”

“About your research investigations, what else? I think you’ve all been most ingenious.”

“And naïve?”

“Not at all. In any case, you’ve got a pretty little family mystery on your hands. I’m particularly intrigued by the semi-anonymous grave.”

“There’s more,” I said, and told her what Jed and I had ferreted out that afternoon. If she wasn’t genuinely interested she was a good actress.

“It really is curious,” she said. “Of course you realize that these things may have a perfectly in
nocent explanation? And that they may not be connected with your ghostly phenomena?”

“I do know that. That’s our problem, that we can’t get any definite facts.”

She turned away, reaching for a cigarette. It seemed to me that she was smoking too much, but that was none of my business.

“There is one source of information you don’t seem to have considered,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“The newspapers, of course. You aren’t delving into ancient Babylonian history; there must have been a local paper in 1846.”

“Of course!” I exclaimed. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of that. I’ll bet they have copies at the local library. We can check tomorrow.”

“It’s a pity you can’t check tonight.”

“Why?”

She looked away.

“Now it’s your turn to be skeptical,” she said. “Maybe the atmosphere is affecting me…. But I have a feeling that time is running out, and that the sooner you can arrive at some conclusion, the better.”

“Why, Anne—”

“Don’t be alarmed,” she said quickly. “I’m not saying that because of any specific change I’ve observed in Mary’s condition. All the same…
This will be my last evening here; I called my secretary today and I find that I must be in Boston by tomorrow afternoon. Through fog and hail and dark of night, you know. At least I can be a good watchdog while the rest of you pursue your investigations. I can’t seem to help in any other way.”

I felt as if I ought to protest that last sentence, if only out of politeness; but she didn’t sound bitter, only obscurely amused. And before I could think of anything to say, Ran and Mary came in.

Dinner was surprisingly pleasant. I say surprisingly because underneath the laughter and the casual talk I was very much concerned with Anne’s remarks. She had said she wasn’t worried about a worsening of Mary’s condition, but I couldn’t accept that statement at face value. If she didn’t expect a crisis, why was she so concerned about the passage of time? I too had that sense of time running out, of the necessity for quick action. I knew the feeling was illogical. I had no reason to think that matters were any worse; if anything, Mary looked better that evening, bright-eyed and responsive and happy….

That in itself should have warned me. There had been other times when she seemed better; they had been followed by some of our most disastrous nights. I didn’t think of that at the time, however. The other problem that preoccupied me was how
I was going to get out of the house after dinner. I had had time for a quick private exchange with Ran; Anne’s suggestion about the newspapers had impressed him as much as it had me, and he was sure he could get the key of the library from the local woman who was in charge of it. He had to go into the village after dinner to pick up Will, so that would give him an excuse to leave the house. But I was determined to go with him and I didn’t see how I was going to manage it.

It was easy. So easy that it should have made my suspicions flare up like a torch.

We had finished dessert and were having coffee at the table. Casually Ran glanced at his watch and then pushed his chair back.

“I’d better be leaving. Want to come along for the ride, Jo?”

“Well…” I glanced at Mary.

“Go ahead. The boat will probably be late, in this foul weather. You can both sit in the bar at the Inn and drink till it arrives. Then I’ll know Ran isn’t being seduced by any of the local sirens.”

“If you’re sure—”

“Of course I’m sure. I’m sorry things are so dull here, Jo; it isn’t much fun for you sitting in the house all the time. Isn’t there a movie in town, Ran? Why don’t you treat your poor bored guest to a nice X film?”

“We can see what’s on,” Ran said. “I imag
ine Will will want to get home, but—well, don’t worry if we don’t come right back.”

“No,” Mary said. “I won’t worry.”

As we drove off down the road, I felt a qualm which had nothing to do with my concern about Mary. The fog was worse, or else it seemed thicker at night; I couldn’t see anything. Ran didn’t seem to be worried; he was whistling under his breath. After a while I relaxed too. I hadn’t realized until we left it how tense the atmosphere in that house had become. A nice ordinary fog was a pleasure by contrast.

On the way to town we hashed over our deductions. I told Ran about my experience with the portrait, and my latest discoveries.

“It seems to me we have two major questions,” he said thoughtfully. “First, who is the child, the boy named Kevin? Second—”

“What do you mean, who is he? We don’t even know he exists. If the boy who wrote his name in that book is—”

“Oh, hell, Jo, let’s not be so dogmatic. I know we don’t have concrete evidence for a lot of these points, but let’s face it, we probably never will. I’ve reached the point where I’ll accept a good strong presumption instead of proof. We have a name in a book and the picture of a fair-haired child and a child’s voice that cries—and the name Mary has given to the voice. I’m going to assume
that they all fit the same individual, and that his name was—is—Kevin. So we come back to the question—who was he? He wasn’t one of Hezekiah’s children and yet he seems to belong to Hezekiah’s time. He is connected with the woman, not only because of the miniatures, but because of the concurrence of the weeping and the apparition of the woman in black. So let’s do the same thing for Miss Smith that we did for Kevin; let’s assume that all these identities are one and the same. The woman in the black cloak is Miss Smith, who is also the woman in the portrait.

“And that brings us to question number two. Who was Miss Smith, besides the governess? The miniature is not the portrait of a governess, it’s the portrait of a woman who has the wealth and social position to commission such a work—or who is under the protection of a man who has those attributes. It is in that capacity that she is associated with the child. And yet Miss Smith is undoubtedly a member of Hezekiah’s household staff. I ask again: What was she besides the governess?”

“All right, I know what you’re thinking. The twin miniatures certainly suggest mother and child. If Miss Smith was the mother, who was the father? Kevin is a common Fraser family name—”

“And Hezekiah was a well-known lecher. Let me tell you a little thing, my innocent sister-in-
law; if I had a girl like the one in that picture hanging around the house all day, I know what I’d be strongly tempted to do. From what we’ve heard, Hezekiah lacked my scruples.”

“Hmmph,” I said, impressed by his reasoning if not by his point of view. “Yes, but Ran—no wife, particularly a stiff-necked Bostonian like Mrs. Hezekiah, would keep her husband’s mistress and their illegitimate child in her own house. The boy was there, in that tower room, if we can trust the evidence; and Miss Smith was certainly in the house up till the year Hezekiah died.”

“You underestimate the old boy, and the spirit of the times. Those were the good old days, when women knew their place.”

We were on the outskirts of town now and I began to see lighted windows and an occasional electric sign through the mist. It made the fog seem less thick; but when Ran stopped the car and opened the door I heard a sound that is one of the most melancholy sounds in the world—the low, mournful wail of a foghorn, out at sea.

“Where are we?” I asked, looking out the wet-streaked window. The street was a quiet residential street; a single streetlight tried valiantly to shine through the fog.

“I’m going to see if I can get the key to the library. You won’t be afraid in the car alone, will you? This is the most law-abiding town I’ve ever
been in, and if you come into the house it’ll take time to make introductions and all that sort of thing. The ferry is due in five minutes.”

“I’d rather wait here,” I said, and watched him disappear along the sidewalk. It was like a disappearance, his tall body seemed to melt into the fog.

The time seemed longer than it was. As I sat in the misty darkness I could hear the foghorn still, even though doors and windows were closed. I began to feel like a character in one of those gloomy O’Neill plays; I remember one in which the foghorn hoots, with monotonous misery, through the entire second act. It’s an extremely effective theatrical device for creating a mood of utter depression.

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, though, before Ran came back, and I knew from his jaunty walk that he had succeeded. He put the car into gear and we started off. I wasn’t really expecting to see Will that night, I couldn’t imagine that anybody would be crazy enough to take a boat out in that fog. The ferry was not only functioning, it was early. When we reached the end of the main street where the dock began, we saw the boat’s lights shining through the mist. Will was already waiting.

He blinked as the headlights struck him. The glare of the light robbed his face of identity, but
it showed his general state of dishevelment quite clearly—his unkempt hair and the awkward way the old raincoat hung off his shoulders. He looked worse than I had ever seen him look; and I was so glad to see him I almost got out of the car and rushed to meet him. The sensation wasn’t new. I had felt it coming on for a long time, but there didn’t seem to be much point in encouraging it; between sexy Sue and brilliant Anne, my prospects didn’t look too good.

Will got into the back seat of the car; and I thought, See? He doesn’t even want to sit next to me.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

Ran started to talk, but I interrupted.

“The boy—your patient. How is he?”

“He’ll be all right.” Will chuckled; it was a funny chuckle, exasperated and yet triumphant. “Damn that woman, she was right. It wasn’t a virus—it was appendicitis. We just got him there in time. The first time in ten years she’s been right, and I don’t imagine she’ll ever let me hear the end of it.”

“You must be exhausted,” I said.

Will gave me a funny look.

“I’m a little tired,” he said cautiously. “What’s been going on this afternoon?”

“We’ve found out quite a bit,” Ran said. “How about a drink and a steak at the Inn while we fill you in? If you can hold up for an hour or so, there’s
something I want to do here in town before I drive you home. Of course if you’re really too tired—”

“Hell, no,” Will said indignantly. “But I won’t turn down that steak.”

He was definitely cool to me for the next five minutes; I was being punished for daring to intimate that four or five hours of work and worry could tire him. But he ate with the gusto, if not the table manners, of Henry VIII tearing into a haunch of beef.

Ran talked the whole time. When Will finally slowed down enough to comment, he remarked,

“Seems to me you do better when I’m not around…. Jo, if I hadn’t seen the lady in black myself, I’d begin to wonder about you. How come you’re getting all the attention from the ghosts?”

“That’s what Jed wondered. I don’t like any of the possible answers. As for Hezekiah’s portrait—”

“Yeah,” Will said. “What about Hezekiah? I had him pegged as a villain, but it’s beginning to look as if he might have been the victim.”

“Will, I’m not sure,” I said. “That business with the picture…It’s a classic type of hallucination, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Will said.

“So maybe that’s what it was. You know,” I said, struck by the idea, “I wonder if that’s why psychic phenomena are discredited. People see
one genuine manifestation and it shakes them up so much they start imagining others. Naturally the false manifestations are easy to disprove, so the whole subject gets a bad name.”

Will grinned.

“The SPR would love your descriptions. I commend your honesty, Jo, but this time I’ll be the attorney for the defense. Your impression was not that you were being threatened; it was rather a feeling of warning, right? But that doesn’t fit your conscious predispositions about Hezekiah. You thought of him as a villain too. If you had imagined that incident, you’d have seen him baring his teeth and reaching out to grab you.”