The Witching Hour (92 page)

“I saw it weakening. I saw it lose its solidity, indeed, its very animation. The face, so beautifully modeled and expressive of negative emotion, was slowly going blank.

“ ‘I’m not so easily dispatched, spirit,’ I said under my breath.
‘Now we have two accounts to settle, do we not! Petyr van Abel and Stuart Townsend, are we agreed on that much?’

“The illusion seemed powerless to answer me. And quite suddenly the entire mirror shivered, becoming merely a dark glass again as the door to the hallway was slammed shut.

“Footsteps sounded on the bare floor beyond the edge of the Chinese carpet. The mirror was definitely empty, reflecting no more than woodwork and books.

“I turned and saw a young woman advancing across the carpet, her eyes fixed on the mirror, her whole demeanor one of anger, confusion, distress. It was Stella. She stood before the mirror, with her back to me, gazing into it, and then turned round.

“ ‘Well, you can describe that to your friends in London, can’t you?’ she said. She seemed on the edge of hysteria. ‘You can tell them you saw that!’

“I realized she was shaking all over. The flimsy gold dress with its layers of fringe was shivering. And anxiously she clutched the monstrous emerald at her throat.

“I struggled to rise, but she told me to sit down, and immediately took a place on the couch to my left, her hand laid firmly on my knee. She leant over very close to me, so close that I could see the mascara on her long lashes, and the powder on her cheeks. She was like a great kewpie doll looking at me, a cinema goddess, naked in her gossamer silk.

“ ‘Listen, can you take me with you?’ she said. ‘Back to England, to these people, this Talamasca? Stuart said you could!’

“ ‘You tell me what happened to Stuart and I’ll take you anywhere you like.’

“ ‘I don’t know!’ she said, and at once her eyes watered. ‘Listen, I have to get out of here. I didn’t hurt him. I don’t do things like that to people. I never have! God, don’t you believe me? Can’t you tell that I’m speaking the truth?’

“ ‘All right. What do you want me to do?’

“ ‘Just help me! Take me with you, back to England. Look, I’ve got my passport, I’ve got plenty of money—’ At this point she broke off, and pulled open a drawer in the couchside table and took out of it a veritable sheaf of twenty-dollar bills. ‘Here, you can buy the tickets. I can meet you. Tonight.’

“Before I could answer, she looked up with a start. The door had opened, and in came the young boy with whom she’d been dancing earlier, quite flushed, and full of concern.

“ ‘Stella, I’ve been looking for you … ’

“ ‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m coming,’ she said, rising at once, and glancing at me meaningfully over her shoulder. ‘Now, go back
out and get me a drink, will you, sweetheart?’ She straightened his tie as she spoke to him, and then turned him around with quick little gestures and actually shoved him towards the door.

“He was highly suspicious, but very obviously well bred. He did as he was told. As soon as she had shut the door, she came back to me. She was flushed, and almost feverish, and absolutely convincing. In fact, my impression of her was that she was a somewhat innocent person, that she believed all the optimism and rebellion of the ‘jazz babies.’ She seemed authentic, if you know what I mean.

“ ‘Go to the station,’ she implored me. ‘Get the tickets. I’ll meet you at the train.’

“ ‘But which train, what time?’

“ ‘I don’t know what train!’ She wrung her hands. ‘I don’t know what time! I have to get out of here. Look, I’ll come with you.’

“ ‘That certainly seems to be a better plan. You could wait for me in the taxi while I get my things from the hotel.’

“ ‘Yes, that’s a fine idea!’ she whispered. And we’ll get out of here on any train that’s leaving, we can always change our destination further on.’

“ ‘And what about him?’

“ ‘Who! Him!’ she demanded crossly. ‘You mean Pierce? Pierce isn’t going to be any trouble! Pierce is a perfect darling. I can handle Pierce.’

“ ‘You know I don’t mean Pierce,’ I said. ‘I mean the man I saw a moment ago in that mirror, the man you forced to disappear.’

“She looked absolutely desperate. She was the cornered animal, but I don’t believe I was the one cornering her. I couldn’t figure it out.

“ ‘Look, I didn’t make him disappear,’ she said under her breath. ‘You did!’ She made a conscious effort to calm herself, her hand resting for a moment on her heaving breast. ‘He won’t stop us,’ she said. ‘Please trust me that he won’t.’

“At this moment, Pierce returned, pushing open the door once more and letting in the great cacophony from outside. She took the glass of champagne from him gratefully and drank down half of it.

“ ‘I’ll talk to you in a few minutes,’ she said to me with deliberate sweetness. ‘In just a few minutes. You’ll be right here, won’t you? No, as a matter of fact, why don’t you get some air? Go out on the front porch, ducky, and I’ll come talk to you there.’

“Pierce knew she was up to something. He looked from her
to me, but obviously he felt quite helpless. She took him by the arm and led him out with her ahead of me. I glanced down at the carpet. The twenty-dollar bills had fallen and were scattered everywhere. Hastily, I gathered them up, put them back into the drawer, and went into the hall.

“Just opposite the library door, I caught a glimpse of a portrait of Julien Mayfair, a very well-done canvas in heavy dark Rembrandt-style oils. I wished I had time to examine it.

“But I hurried around the back of the staircase and started pushing and shoving as gently as I could towards the front door.

“Three minutes must have passed, and I had made it only so far as the newel post, when I saw
him
again, or thought I did for one terrible instant—the brown-haired man I had seen in the mirror. This time he was gazing at me over someone’s shoulder, as he stood in the front corner of the hall.

“I tried to pick him out again. But I couldn’t. People crushed against me as if they were deliberately trying to block me, but of course they weren’t.

“Then I realized someone ahead of me was pointing to the stairs. I was now past it, and within only a few feet of the door. I turned round, and saw a child on the stairway, a very pretty little blond-haired girl. No doubt it was Antha, though she looked rather small for eight years. She was dressed in a flannel nightgown and barefoot, and she was crying, and looking over the railing into the doors of the front room.

“I too turned and looked into the front room, at which point someone gasped aloud, and the crowd parted, people falling to the left and the right of the door, in apparent fear. A red-haired man stood in the doorway, slightly to my left, facing into the room. And as I watched with sickening horror, he lifted a pistol with his right hand and fired it. The deafening report shook the house. Panic ensued. The air was filled with screams. Someone had fallen by the front door, and the others simply ran over the poor devil. People were struggling to escape back through the hall.

“I saw Stella lying on the floor in the middle of the front room. She was on her back, with her head turned to the side, staring towards the hall. I raced forward, but not in time to stop the red-haired man from standing over her and firing the pistol again. Her body convulsed as blood exploded from the side of her head.

“I grabbed for the bastard’s arm, and he fired again as my hand tightened on his wrist. But this bullet missed her and went through the floor. It seemed the screams were redoubled. Glass was breaking. Indeed, the windows were shattering. Someone
attempted to grab the man from behind, and I managed somehow to get the gun away from him, though I was accidentally stepping on Stella, indeed, tripping over her feet.

“I fell to my knees with the gun, and then pushed it quite deliberately away across the floor. The murderer was struggling vainly against a half-dozen men now. Glass from the windows blew inward all over us; I saw it rain down upon Stella. Blood was running down her neck, and over the Mayfair emerald which lay askew on her breast.

“Next thing I knew a monstrous clap of thunder obliterated the deafening screams and shrieks still coming from all quarters. And I felt the rain gusting in; then I heard it coming down on the porches all around, and then the lights went out.

“In repeated flashes of lightning I saw the men dragging the murderer from the room. A woman knelt at Stella’s side, and lifted her lifeless wrist, and then let out an agonizing scream.

“As for the child, she had come into the room, and stood barefoot staring at her mother. And then she too began to scream. Her voice rose high and piercing over the others. ‘Mama, Mama, Mama,’ as though with each new burst her realization of what had happened deepened helplessly.

“ ‘Someone take her out!’ I cried. And indeed, others had gathered around her, and were attempting to draw her away. I moved out of their path, only climbing to my feet when I reached the side porch window. In another crackle of white light, I saw someone pick up the gun. It was then handed to another person, and then to another, who held it as if it were alive. Fingerprints were no longer of consequence, if ever they were, and there had been countless witnesses. There was no reason for me not to get out while I could. And turning, I made my way out onto the side porch and into the downpour, as I stepped onto the lawn.

“Dozens of people were huddled there, the women crying, the men doing what they could to cover the women’s heads with their jackets, everyone soaked and shivering and quite at a loss. The lights flickered on for a second, but another violent slash of lightning signaled their final failure. When an upstairs window suddenly burst in a shower of glittering shards, panic broke out once more.

“I hurried towards the back of the property, thinking to leave unobserved through a back way. This meant a short rush along a flagstone path, a climb of two steps to the patio around the swimming pool, and then I spied the side alley to the gate.

“Even through the dense rain I could see that it was open, and see beyond it the wet gleaming cobblestones of the street. The thunder rolled over the rooftops, and the lightning laid bare
the whole garden hideously in an instant, with its balustrades and towering camellias, and beach towels draped over so many skeletal black iron chairs. Everything was helplessly thrashing in the wind.

“I heard sirens suddenly. And as I rushed towards the waiting sidewalk, I glimpsed a man standing motionless and stiff, as it were, in a great clump of banana trees to the right of the gate.

“As I drew closer, I glanced to the right, and into the man’s face. It was the spirit, visible to me once more, though for what reason under God I had no idea. My heart raced dangerously, and I felt a momentary dizziness and tightening in my temples as if the circulation of my blood were being choked off.

“He presented the same figure he had before; I saw the unmistakable glint of brown hair and brown eyes, and dim unremarkable clothing save for its primness and a certain vagueness about the whole. Yet the raindrops glistened as they struck his shoulders and his lapels. They glistened in his hair.

“But it was the face of the being which held me enthralled. It was monstrously transfigured by anguish, and his cheeks were wet with soundless crying as he looked into my eyes.

“ ‘God in heaven, speak if you can,’ I said, almost the same words I’d spoken to the poor desperate spirit of Stuart. And so crazed was I by all I had seen that I lunged at him, seeking to grab hold of him by the shoulders and make him answer if I could.

“He vanished. Only this time I felt him vanish. I felt the warmth and the sudden movement in the air. It was as if something had been sucked away, and the bananas swayed violently. But then the wind and the rain were knocking them about. And suddenly I did not know what I had seen, or what I had felt. My heart was skipping dangerously. I felt another wave of dizziness. Time to get out.

“I hurried up Chestnut Street past scores of wandering, weeping, dazed individuals and then down Jackson Avenue out of the wind and the rain, into a fairly clear and mild stretch where the traffic swept by without the slightest knowledge, apparently, of what had happened only blocks away. Within a matter of seconds, I caught a taxi for the hotel.

“As soon as I reached it, I gathered up my belongings, lugging them downstairs myself without the aid of a bellboy, and immediately checked out. I had the cab take me to the train station, where I caught the midnight train for New York, and I am in my sleeping car now.

“I shall post this as soon as I possibly can. And until such time, I shall carry the letter with me, on my person, hoping for
what it’s worth that if anything happens to me the letter will be found.

“But as I write this I do not think anything will happen to me! It is over, this chapter! It has come to a ghastly and bloody end. Stuart was part of it. And God only knows what role the spirit played in it. But I shall not tempt the demon further by turning back. Every impulse in my being tells me to get away from here. And if I forget this for a moment, I have the haunting memory of Stuart to guide me, Stuart gesturing to me from the top of the stairs to go away.

“If we never talk in London, please pay heed to the advice I give you now. Send no one else to this place. At least not now. Watch, wait, as is our motto. Consider the evidence. Try to draw some lesson from what has taken place. And above all, study the Mayfair record. Study it deeply and put its various materials in order.

“My belief, for what it is worth at such a moment, is that neither Lasher nor Stella had a hand in the death of Stuart. Yet his remains are under that roof.

“But the council may consider the evidence at its leisure. Send no one here again.

“We cannot hope for public justice with regard to Stuart. We cannot hope for legal resolutions. Even in the investigation that will inevitably follow tonight’s horrors, there will be no search of the Mayfair house and its grounds. And how could we ever demand such a step be taken?

“But Stuart will never be forgotten. And I am man enough, even in my twilight years, to believe that there must be a reckoning—both for Stuart, and for Petyr—though with whom or with what that reckoning will be I do not know.