Lizard World (37 page)

      
“Yes, Mr. Frobey is full of surprises,” said Annabel, opening the French door to the living room. “In fact, Mr. Frobey is one of our authors.”

      
“Wheel him in there, son,” said the Detective to Patrolman Guberman.

“Sir?”
said a voice, “we found this in a big box of old bras and panties, just where his chauffeur said it would be.”

      
And the next instant his own photo album was shoved in front of Smedlow’s face and a young cop wearing surgical gloves was flipping through it, showing him pictures of himself in his cradle, at camp, with his graduating class from dental school

      
“You wanna tell me,” said the Detective, his cigarette dangling from his mouth, “what you’re doin’ with this? If you confess right now, Pop, maybe they’ll put you some place nice. You won’t have all those . . . animals crawlin’ on your butt.”

      
Smedlow tried desperately to speak: “Uh . . . uh . . . uh . . . I.”

      
“Sure, have it your way, Pop.”

      
This scurvy constable doth use me most intolerably. Erelong I shall have him whipped.

      
“Hey, and look what we just found hid in his sock drawer,” said another cop hurrying toward them.

      
“What the hell!” said Patrolman Guberman, his face a convulsion of disgust.

      
Smedlow wanted more than anything not to see it, and yet he couldn’t look away: oh, oh my . . . all the meat was gone now and the bone was badly chewed, but he recognized his own leg easily enough.

      
“The cannibal, son,” explained the detective, remembering what he’d been taught back in his intro course on criminal pathology, “believes that he takes over his victim’s soul by eatin’ up his flesh. -- You wanna tell us, Pop, what you’re doin’ with this thing?”

      
“Uh . . . uh . . . I . . . I . . . aaa . . . mmm . . . Smmm . . . ed . . . low,” Smedlow managed to say.

      
“Yeah, right,” said the Detective.

      
And verily I am Smedlow, I am, I am, he told himself over and over again -- making hard shift not to look back at a periwigged lord staring down from a gold-framed portrait, doing his best endeavour not to believe that Smedlow was but some manner of displeasant dream from which he did, by little and little, ever more wakefully rouse himself.

      
“We found it! We found it!”

      
“Oh Jeez!” said Patrolman Guberman, covering his eyes while another one of the crime-scene guys came out holding something large as a bowling ball wrapped in bloodied newspapers.

      
“Now I bet you’d like us us believe,” said the Detective, himself putting on a glove and peeling back the papers, “that you just plain don’t know who the hell this is.”

      
For one split second of horror Smedlow couldn’t help looking at it, but then immediately closed his lids.

      
“Well, a young lady who worked as her editorial assistant,” continued the Detective, leafing through his notebook, “a young lady named . . . named . . . Magda Edna Kretch says she’ll testify that she saw Miss Blynn get into your limousine on the day she disappeared. That was the last time anyone saw Miss Blynn alive.”

      
“Oh man, they oughta fry you,” said Patrolman Guberman, shaking his head in disgust.

      
“Son,” said the Detective, “they’re gonna put his nuts through a meatgrinder. Oh, and by the way, Pop,” he said, now blowing out smoke in Smedlow’s face, “they just dug up another stiff in that landfill -- not far from where you buried your other victim. But this stiff . . . didn’t have a head.”

      
“You sick old bastard,” said Patrolman Guberman

      
“Rufus Wilmot Griswold,” said the Detective, “I’m arrresting you for the murder of Octavia Augusta Blynn.”

Chapter XXIII.

In which much is anticipated and much remembered.

Annabel grabbed
the milk carton from the refrigerator, tore it open, grabbed the saucepan from the cabinet, clanked it down on the stove and poured the milk. Damn! Damn it! She should have known that his lawyer -- that miserable little sneaky Fong -- would get in her way again. He was the one -- just when things were looking up -- who had whisked him away for the operation. And now he had managed to post bail.

      
So now the old man was back. Where the hell did that damn cook put the cocoa? So now the old snake was sleeping in her bed. And who, who would have guessed that just one week would have made such a difference? Yes, it wasn’t bad enough that he was out of jail. It wasn’t bad enough that he was now walking and jabbering and stuffing his face. Last night he had crawled all over her again -- made her do the Standing Heron and the Mounting Tiger and all those other detestable positions. And now he was on the phone in his smelly office, planning his acquittal.

      
Well, she’d come up with a little plan of her own. Yes, there wasn’t anything you couldn’t find on the internet. And she’d done every last thing the ad had said -- given the money to that bogus Tsunami fund, charged it to one of his company’s credit cards, and given a false name (the cleaning girl’s) to get the package from general delivery. The postmark had come from some rinky-dink town in India. The bottle had been shipped in a shoebox stuffed with crumpled newspapers from Calcutta. And it didn’t look like much -- just like a vial of nosedrops. But it was colorless, tasteless, odorless and its effect (which, the ad said, would fool any neurologist) was perfectly indistinguishable from the symptoms of a massive stroke.

      
Ah, there it is, she thought, at last seeing the brown box behind a can of stewed tomatoes -- and now pulling it out, prying off the lid and spooning in the cocoa. Yes, and why not bring him a few of these croissants and this jar of raspberry jam? And in another moment she was clicking her high heels down the hallway, trying not to spill the steaming chocolate and now, as her left hand balanced the silver tray and her right hand opened the door, trying to smile and ignore the sudden stink as she stepped into his office.

      
Well, there he was -- so wrinkled and old and hunched-over, more like a corpse, really, than a living man. But look at the way he moves now, slamming down the phone, grabbing his address book, flipping through its pages.

      
“I brought you your chocolate, darling,” she said and made herself walk closer, put the tray down on his desk, bring her lips up to his mouth -- and once more made herself endure the nausea of his smell, the horrors of his tongue.

      
But at last she managed to pull her face away, pry his fingers off her breasts, and head for the door. Slowly. Slowly. Don’t let him see how eager you are to get away.

      
She made herself wait at the door, look back and smile at him. Now he was rifling through the drawers of his desk, frantic as a cornered animal -- looking, looking, looking for something. Just as soon as he was in his coffin, she would redecorate -- tear down those depressing velvet curtains, auction off that dingy old map, throw out all those trunks of smelly old underwear, slash that big oil painting of that detestable, sneering young man. But for now she stood by the door smiling at her revolting husband, watching him pull aside that vile painting, open up his safe and probe it with his claw. Good God, now what was he doing? Oh, of course, looking for more phone numbers -- judges, senators, cronies -- people he could buy or blackmail, people he could count on to get him out of this. Well, the smell of the cocoa would get to him soon enough.

      
“I’ll be going now, darling,” she said, and no sooner did I see this most delicious creature shut to the door, than I did inhale the sweet excellency of this chocolate and then fall again to looking thro’ my strong box. And therein, indeed, was abundance of jewels and plate and valued papers, which I did presently rummage tho’, thinking to find a most important name-book which I’d mislaid. And thus it was, amongst these articles of worth, that I did chance upon the Spanish Friar’s book the which I had filch’d from my shitten cousin Fawncey on the morning of our duel. Indeed, I know not by what singular caprice I was now impelled to open it.

      
But there, pressed betwixt its pages, was the yellow primrose which my charmer had given me so exceeding long ago. Yet ’twas no longer fresh and lithe as when she did give it me, but sear-dryed and brittle quite. Nor could I now nose the least perfume therein.

      
Strange, then, the perturbation which did straightways come upon me. Indeed, I cannot but own that I did find myself, upon a sudden, fairly overflowing with remembrances. In more particular, I did sigh to think how far otherwise my life might have been, if my fancy had not ever been so inflamed by gallant smells.

      
I did remember me, firstly, of my cousin Belinda’s soapish smell and bethink me that if I had not liked so well of it, I would never have trucked with her in the barn -- nor would she have died of her lying-in. Nor would I have been fain to blind my cousin Fawncey or been packed off by my father to the colonies.

      
And being got thither, I would never have tarried so long amongst the salvages, had I not been ever more enticed by inflammatory delicacies of scent. Nor merely did I now bring to sad remembrance the poor Indian wench, Satchunk, who (tho’ she was but a numbskull’d brute and sullen serving-woman) did have a most robust and pleasing odour. But moreover than this I did reflect that I would never have journeyed so far to find out the white crokadell, had the Spanish Friar’s book not averrred that the Grand Elixir of the Philosophers was the rare musk from its cod. Nor would I have drunk this licquor off, if I had not been tempted by the most exceeding rapture of its smell.

      
And if I had not drunk thereof, never would I have suffered the sundry consummate afflictions of my immortal distemper -- the shedding of my teeth, the sloughing off of my skin, the pangs of beastly hunger -- nor been fain to take a bookseller’s ears and feed upon the scurvy lot of street-walkers and beggars. And thus did I now full plainly perceive that by slow degrees I’d been drawn on by soveraign smell until seeing my charmer asleep of an evening in her garden -- amongst the honey-suckle and the roses and the nectarous breath of hyacinths and jessamins -- I was quite over-mastered by perfume.

      
Wherefore I did now account myself for a fool and bring to mind how in drowzy streams I had seen the very rutting crokadells besotted by sweet smell. And yet, for all that, I could not chuse but remember me of the smell of her and the soft of her grey eyes when she did briefly smile upon me in the coach, of how long since the years had been, and lastly of the morning of the duel when I strided out upon the clover-grass to meet my cousin Fawncey -- when there was yet a mist upon the waking world, when I was yet young and the meadow yet replete with bygone fragrance.

Terry Richard Bazes i
s a graduate of Columbia College and has a Ph.D. in English Literature from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of
Goldsmith’s Return
, published by White Pine Press. His personal essays and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, including
The Washington Post Book World
,
Newsday, Columbia Magazine,
Travelers’ Tales: Spain
,
Lost Magazine
and the
Evergreen Review
.