The Dark Stairs R/I (10 page)

“Your mother?”

“Yes, and the scream went on and on. I knew she was falling down the steps. I ran out and my mother was lying right there. She didn't move.”

“What did your father do?”

“Father pointed his finger at me and screamed, ‘You killed her. You killed your mother.'

“I was ten years old, but I was as big and strong as a man, and something snapped in me. I said, ‘I did not. I did not kill her.' And I started toward him. I was saying that I hated him and was going to kill him, and I would have. I would have picked him up and thrown him down the stairs, but the servants came out and overcame me.”

In the pause that followed, Herculeah heard her mother say quietly, “And your father?”

“Father was like a madman. He kept screaming, ‘He killed her. He killed her. He killed his mother. He tried to kill me.'”

There was another silence. Then the Moloch said in a voice so low Herculeah had to move forward to hear him.

“And that's how I came to spend my life in Bromwell Asylum for the Criminally Insane.”

Herculeah heard a shrill whistle from outside. She moved to the open window and glanced out.

Through the dead limbs of the oak tree, she could see Meat across the street. She leaned out and made a shooing motion to get him to go away.

He put one hand behind his ear as if to hear better. She waved him away again. She mouthed the words, “Go away!”

Meat pantomimed the fact that the Moloch was in the house.

Herculeah nodded.

Meat pantomimed the fact that her mother was in there too.

Herculeah would have nodded again, but she heard her mother's voice in the hall below say, “Let's go up there.”

“Up the stairs? No.”

“Why? If we are ever going to find your father's body, if you are ever going to put your mind at rest, we have to.”

“Maybe he's not dead. I heard somebody up there. Maybe I dreamed he was dead. If it's him, he'll say more bad things.”

“It's not him.”

“Maybe.”

“Come with me. I need your help.”

“No.”

“Your father is dead, isn't he?”

“He should be.”

“Then he can't hurt you anymore.”

Silence.

“The stairs bother you, don't they? Because of what happened to your mother. Are there other stairs in the house? A lot of these big old houses had stairs for the servants to use.”

“Back there.”

“Then let's go up that way. You need to face this with me.”

At that moment, Herculeah knew that even though the Moloch had not killed his mother, even though he had spent years in an asylum for something he had not done, ten years ago the Moloch had come back here, to this room where she was standing, and had killed his father.

Her eyes darted around the room, taking in the huge carved chest at the foot of the bed: that was big enough to hold a body. But the police had probably checked that. And the huge armoire: that could hold four or five bodies....

She needed to think. She reached into her pocket and took out her glasses. She fastened the slim gold hooks behind her ears. From the street below came another shrill whistle, but Herculeah did not turn around.

She was beginning to get a feeling about what had happened in this room. The Moloch had come to the house—this was his first escape from the asylum. It was probably night. He had gotten the key from over the basement door and unlocked the door to the side porch.

He had come into the darkened living room and into the hallway. He had avoided the marble stairs, even though marble stairs don't give you away by creaking. He had come up the back stairs, down the hall, into this room.

Had he spoken?

Herculeah thought he had, because he had been waiting for this moment for years, dreaming of it, hoping for it. “I tried to kill you once, and this time I am not going to fail.”

Then he had crossed the room. The old man would have come awake by then, perhaps fumbled for the light beside his bed. The Moloch had taken the old man out of the bed, carried him as easily as if he were a doll, and flung him down the stairs. Then he had gone down the back stairs, out of the house. Like a child, reversing his steps, he had put the key back in its hiding place. The next day he was back at the asylum.

But if it had happened that way, the body should have been found at the bottom of the stairs, and the body had never been found. Where was it?

Herculeah broke off her thoughts. She whipped off her glasses. Her mother's voice was in the upstairs hall now.

“That front room, where the door is open, that was your father's room?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Herculeah looked around frantically. The door to the dressing room was open. She moved quickly toward it. She slipped inside and flattened herself behind the door.

“You last saw your father here,” her mother asked, “in this room?” They were now at the door to the bedroom.

Herculeah felt air on her face. The dressing room window was broken, and dead leaves had blown in through the opening and lay on the tiled floor. The crow had probably gotten in that way.

“I last saw Father at the bottom of the stairs,” the Moloch said.

“The marble stairs?” her mother said.

“ No.”

“The back stairs?”

“No.”

Herculeah shoved herself further against the wall, and suddenly she felt herself falling backward. It was as if the wall had collapsed. She struggled to keep her balance.

“Down the dark stairs,” the Moloch said.

Herculeah caught herself, but she hung for a moment on the edge of darkness. It was like a bottomless, dark pit, and from this pit came a smell so terrible she felt she would faint.

She gripped the banister. She was at the head of some stairs—a small, private staircase probably used only by one man. She lowered herself to the steps. The door swung shut behind her.

Frozen with shock and growing horror, she could not move for a moment.

She choked. The smell caused tears to pour down her cheeks. Although it was too dark to see, she knew there was a body at the bottom of the stairs.

Then Herculeah did something she had never done before in her life. Herculeah screamed.

“I came as soon as I could,” Meat told everybody in the room. “I would have come sooner except Herculeah leaned out the window and told me not to—well, she didn't tell me, she shooed me like that.”

They were gathered in the bedroom of the Crewell house. Herculeah was sitting on the dusty bed. She had stopped screaming, but she held one hand over her nose as if to block out the smell. She was holding her mother's hand.

Her father, who was there in his official capacity, said to Meat, “Do you know anything about this, or are you just curious?”

“Both,” Meat answered truthfully.

“Sit down over there.”

Chico Jones pointed to a chair on one side of the fire-place. The Moloch was in the chair on the other side. His long arms dangled at his side. He was slumped forward. He still wore his hat, and it shielded his face.

“I'll stand,” Meat said. He moved to the opposite side of the room from the Moloch and stood against the wall.

“Now, what happened here?” Chico Jones asked.

“Are you asking me?” Herculeah's mother answered coolly.

“Yes, I am.”

“My client, Mr. William Crewell, and I came into the house in an attempt to ascertain what happened to his father.” Her mother was speaking with formality.

“You are William Crewell?”

“He is,” her mother answered for him.

“Continue.”

“We came up the steps, the back ones, crossed the hall, and we heard muffled screaming. Although I had never heard Herculeah scream before, I knew that's who it was.

“The screams seemed to be coming from the dressing room. I rushed in and checked but the room was empty.”

“I was behind the door,” Herculeah broke in shakily. “I fell through the wall into a secret stairway.”

“It wasn't a secret stairway, Herculeah; don't dramatize the incident,” her mother said. “It led down to Mr. Crewell's library. A lot of these old houses had multiple stairways. Making service areas—like stairways and closets—look like part of the wall was just a way of making them less noticeable.”

“Go on,” Chico Jones said.

“We got Herculeah out, and then we noticed that the body of Mr. Crewell, William's father, was lying at the foot of the stairs.”

“I could have fallen on him,” Herculeah said with a shudder. “That's why I screamed. You'd probably scream too, Dad, if you almost fell on a corpse.”

“I hope I never find out,” her father said.

The sergeant who was with him, jotting down notes on a clipboard, stifled a smile.

“Apparently,” Herculeah's mother continued, “Mr. Crewell fell down the stairs and died there. Whether it was a stroke or an injury or his heart gave out—”

“There could have been some sort of struggle,” the sergeant commented. “His cane was up here, and the window was broken as if he'd pulled back to strike someone.”

“I think it was a heart attack,” Herculeah said.

“We'll leave that to the coroner, shall we?” Chico Jones said.

Herculeah got up, and her mother said quickly, “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, but I've got to get off this bed.”

Her father looked at Herculeah. His stock-in-trade was never letting anyone know what he was thinking, and he was giving her that official look now.

“And what were you doing here?”

“Me? It's a long story.”

“We've got all evening.”

“Well, I came in and I didn't want to go upstairs, but I did.”

“That's the long story?”

“Yes.”

“You could be charged with trespassing, you know.”

“Dad, you know I didn't mean to trespass.”

“She doesn't need to be questioned anymore tonight,” her mother said firmly. “She needs to go home and take a shower and go to bed. You can come over tomorrow and get the details. The man's been dead for years. There's no rush.”

Herculeah said, “What I don't understand is why the police didn't find him.”

“I was here that day,” the sergeant said. He took out a stick of gum and folded it into his mouth. “We sure didn't know about that staircase. The note said the body was on the stairway, and we checked both of the ones we knew about.” He smiled. “I guess we needed Herculeah's help.”

The coroner arrived then, and two attendants came up the stairs with a stretcher.

“The body's in there,” Chico Jones told them, “at the bottom of the stairs. If you can find the entrance to the stairs in the library, it might make it easier.”

“We'll check it out,” the attendant said.

“There'll be an inquest,” Chico Jones told them, “after we get the results from the coroner. Mr. Crewell, you'll need to be there for that.”

The Moloch nodded his head.

“You too, Mim, Herculeah.”

Her mother said, “Of course.”

“I can be there too, Lieutenant Jones,” Meat said.

“That may not be necessary, Meat.”

“I want to know everything that happened.”

Herculeah didn't need the inquest or her glasses to know that. She could almost see it.

The Moloch had startled his father in the dressing room. The father had pulled the cane back to strike, breaking the window, but the Moloch had knocked the cane away, picked him up like a toy, and thrown him to his death.

But until the body was found, his father wasn't really dead. The Moloch couldn't rest. Finally, he'd written that childish note to the police, and come to stand in the crowd, hoping for the end.

“Come on,” Herculeah's father was saying.

“We can go?” Herculeah asked, not believing her good luck.

“Yes,” her father said, “I'll give you all a ride home.” And this time he looked at Herculeah as if she were his daughter, instead of an unfriendly witness.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said.

“So what do you think's going to happen to the Moloch?” Meat asked. Herculeah and Meat were talking on the phone. Herculeah's parents were in the kitchen, having beers and an argument.

“Probably nothing. I don't think they can prove he did it. But you know a funny thing? After you left, he talked to Mom about when he could go back to the asylum. He didn't want to be out in this world. He just wanted to make sure his father was dead. It's sad, really.”

“What did your parents say?”

“Nothing about the Moloch, plenty about me.”

She heard her father's voice in the kitchen saying, “You cannot let her get involved in your work!”

“I don't let her do anything. You know your daughter better than that!”

“I've got to go,” Herculeah said. “My parents are still arguing about me in the kitchen. I want to be in bed before they decide to come in here and argue with me.”

Herculeah hung up the phone. She picked up her eyeglasses from the desk. She looked at them for a moment before she hooked the thin metal loops around her ears. The phone rang.

“If that's for me, I'm not here,” her mother called.