Spirit Page 11

  The bottom drawer, however, was locked. He tugged it and rattled it without success, then he looked around for a key. One of the mysteries about Dick Bracewaite’s death (apart from the mystery of his frostbite) was the whereabouts of his clothes and personal belongings, like his keys and his wallet. He had been found buck-naked without any discarded underwear around him, no wristwatch, nothing. That could have meant that Doctor Ferris’ abduction theory was right, and that Dick Bracewaite had been taken over to New Milford or somewhere else where they had access to a freezer. He could have been stripped, frozen, and then driven back here and dumped on his kitchen floor. Good theory, except that the chronology was all wrong. Too many people had seen Dick Bracewaite too close to the time that Lizzie Buchanan had found him.

  Other theory: somehow they had managed to freeze him here in the rectory, and then taken his clothes away with them. Only trouble with that theory: no discernible motive and no known means of carrying it out.

  Sheriff Grierson searched all around the study for the key to the desk. In the end he took out his clasp knife, listened for a moment to make sure that May the housekeeper couldn’t hear him, then slid the blade into the desk, just above the drawer. He wasn’t a lockpicking expert, but what he lacked in expertise he made up for in sheer strength. He pried the lock away from the front of the drawer, and with one sharp satisfying crack it was open. Inside he found a document-case, made of black calfskin, with a brass-plated clasp. This, too, was locked, but it only needed one twist from the knife to break it.

  Sheriff Grierson stood up and emptied the contents across the desk. He spread them around, and said. ‘Holy God almighty.’

  He hardly ever swore, and up until now he had never blasphemed. But he had never seen anything like this before-nothing that shocked him so much nor fascinated him so much and at the same time made his stomach churn in disgust.

  The document-case had been crammed with scores of black-and-white photographs and pencil drawings. There were a few scenes of rural Connecticut, and a drawing of the church of Christ the King in the centre of New Milford, but the rest of them depicted naked or semi-naked children, mostly girls but some pretty-looking boys, too. The photographs were pale and pearly-grey, like children seen through a fog, beautifully but indecently posed. The drawings were mostly in ochre-coloured pastels or very soft pencil, and executed with a lewd and meticulous attention to detail.

  The children had half-closed dreamy eyes, and seductive smiles, as if they were enjoying what Dick Bracewaite was doing to them. What was most shocking of all, though, was that Sheriff Grierson recognized at least five of them: Janie McReady, Jimmy Phillips, Sue-Ann Messenger, Polly Womack and Laura Buchanan.

  He stared at the pictures for a very long time. His disgust and shock finally subsided, to be replaced by a terrible and suffocating anger – anger that Dick Bracewaite could have used these children to satisfy his own revolting lust – anger that he himself hadn’t found out about it, and stopped it, and protected the community that he was pledged to protect.

  He sniffed, and took a deep, steadying breath. Then he shuffled the pictures straight, and slid them back into the document-case. Evidence, exhibit one. But Sheriff Grierson almost felt like letting the perpetrator go free. Whoever had killed Dick Bracewaite, and however they had managed to kill him, they had been doing the community of Sherman a considerable favour.

  May appeared in the study doorway and stared. ‘Wally?’ she said. ‘You want a lemonade? You look like you’re sick.’

  Sheriff Grierson ignored the comment and said, ‘Tell me, May, what was the Reverend Bracewaite like with children?’

  ‘Children? Why, he adored children. Do you know what he used to say to me? “A man has no need of angels, when he has children”.’

  Sheriff Grierson tucked the document-case under his arm. ‘He don’t have neither now, children nor angels.’

  May looked perplexed, but Grierson laid a hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. ‘There aint no angels where the Reverend Bracewaite’s going.’

  Seven

  Aunt Beverley arrived on Saturday morning, in a fine summer rain that turned the driveway into molten gold. She had been driven up from New York by a big-nosed man in a startling brown check suit and yellow spats. She said his name was Moe and he was something to do with wartime baseball. He perpetually shifted an unlit cheroot from one side of his mouth to the other, and when he did speak he was mostly unintelligible. Aunt Beverley said he had money to burn.

  The atmosphere in the house was tense and strange. In some ways, it was worse than it had been when Peggy had died. Ever since Sheriff Grierson had come around on Tuesday evening to talk to father, and then to Laura and Elizabeth, they had been scarcely able to speak to each other, any of them, because of the absolute awfulness of what had happened.

  How could you go on chatting normally about horses or lunch or meeting your friends in Endicott’s when all you could think of was your own sister or your own daughter, without any clothes on, being touched and photographed and even doing that with the Reverend Bracewaite?

  Father had a haunted pinched-up look on his face. He had been forced to postpone his trip to New York, and had paced around his desk all day, waiting for the phone to ring with news of grandfather. He had talked to Laura for a long, long time with the door closed, over an hour, and when Laura came out of the study her eyes were scarlet-rimmed and swimming with tears. Upstairs, in her bedroom, she said that father hadn’t been cross with her, but he had been deeply hurt that she hadn’t felt able to tell him what Dick Bracewaite had been doing to her. Why hadn’t she trusted him? How had he failed her? Why in God’s name had somebody else managed to kill Dick Bracewaite before father himself had been given the chance to have his revenge?

  Father had made them both solemnly promise not to mention a word to mommy. Mommy was improving every day: they didn’t want her to go off the rails again, not now.

  Elizabeth had stood pale-faced at the end of the bed and watched Laura sniffing and talking and twiddling with the fringes of her bedspread.

  After a while, she said, ‘You’re not sorry, are you?’

  Laura had frowned at her sharply. ‘What are you talking about? Why should I be sorry?’

  ‘But you’re not sorry that it happened. You liked it.’

  ‘Don’t be so horrible,’ Laura had retorted. She had lifted her bedspread and hidden her face in it. For a while she had tried to make a noise that sounded like sobbing; but after a while she had lowered the bedspread a little so that only one blue eye was visible, and the corner of a smile.

  ‘You liked it,’ Elizabeth breathed, in complete horror. ‘You actually, actually liked it!’

  But now Aunt Beverley was here to take Laura away for a while. Away from scandal, away from small-town disapproval, and most of all away from men. Seamus opened the front door for her, and took her umbrella, and Aunt Beverley came striding into the hallway, pulling off her beige summer gloves like long strings of raw pastry, and swivelling her large head imperiously from side to side. She was dressed in a beige jacket, a spotted beige blouse, and a beige hat that looked like a tureen-lid.

  Elizabeth hadn’t seen her since Peggy’s funeral, and she thought that she looked even more waxy and made-up and older than ever, although her hair had turned to a vivid ginger.

  Seamus dutifully shook out her wet umbrella over her feet.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ she declared.

  ‘Cuffs and coats,’ he replied, with a smile.

  Moe brushed rain off his sleeves. ‘This is alpaca, it shrinks.’

  ‘Isn’t that the loudest suit you ever saw?’ Aunt Beverley remarked, stepping across the hallway and taking out her cigarette-case. ‘That suit’s so loud it keeps people awake at night.’

  ‘How are you doing, Beverley?’ their father asked her, holding out his hand.

  ‘Better than you , I imagine,’ Beverley replied.

  ‘Are you staying for lunch? Mrs Patrick’s manag
ed to find us a couple of Cornish rock hens.’

  ‘Well, that’s sweet of you, but we’ll probably stop off at Danbury, on the way back. Moe has to get to his game.’

  Moe said, ‘You know something, the Giants are playing the Phillies today, and they’re both so bad, I don’t think either team can win.’

  ‘The Phutile Phillies,’ said Laura.

  Moe looked down at her, his cheroot travelling swiftly from one side of his mouth to the other. His eyes bulged in appreciation. ‘Here’s a girl who knows her stuff,’ he declared. ‘The Phutile Phillies, that’s right. They brought in that lardbutt Jimmie Foxx out of retirement and what did they get? Sixteen flops on the trot.’

  Father laid his hand on Laura’s shoulder. ‘Sweetheart . . . are you all packed now? Aunt Beverley wants to get you back to New York.’

  ‘I think I have time for a drink,’ said Aunt Beverley. ‘Where’s your lovely wife today? Isn’t she joining us? I thought she was making progress.’

  ‘Margaret’s been resting,’ father told her. ‘She has been making progress, for sure. But it hasn’t been easy. That’s why I don’t want her to know about any of this. I’ve said that Laura’s been offered the chance of a screen audition, that’s all, just a small part. And of course she’s thrilled about that.’

  Moe lit Aunt Beverley’s cigarette and almost lit his own cheroot, but then appeared to think better of it.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Aunt Beverley, ‘there may be a chance of a real screen test. Robert Lowenstein is making a picture about the Home Front. What’s it called, Moe?’

  ‘I Piped My Eye In My Old Apple Pie, how should I know?’

  ‘That’s nearly it. The Apple Pie Patrol. It’s a picture about wives and sweethearts doing their bit. And they’re looking for pretty little blonde girls like you, Laura.’

  Father looked even more pinched than ever. ‘Beverley . . . you know why you’re looking after Laura, don’t you? I want her away from all that. I want her to have quiet and normality and strictly-supervised bedtimes.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Moe nodded, with exaggerated enthusiasm. ‘That’s exactly what I could do with. Especially the strictly-supervised bedtimes.’

  He waggled his eyebrows at Aunt Beverley like Groucho Marx, and Aunt Beverley said, ‘Shut up, Moe, for God’s sake.’

  They went through to the drawing-room. Moe circled around and around as he walked, admiring the antique fireplace and the tall colonial-glazed windows that gave out onto the gardens. Aunt Beverley sat down in the largest, most dominant chair and asked for a whiskey. Moe said he had an ulcer, and he was driving, so gin would do. Straight up, no ice, no olive. Father allowed Elizabeth to have a small glass of cherry brandy. There were hickory-smoke peanuts on the table and Moe started to scoop them up as if he hadn’t eaten in three days.

  Laura sat well away from the grown-ups, on the faded brocade window seat. Behind her the sunlight sparkled on the raindrops, and her golden curls shone, and she looked like an angel of flawless innocence. That, of course, was why the late Dick Bracewaite had found her so alluring.

  Elizabeth tried to join the grown-up conversation; but there didn’t seem to be very much more that she could say. She sensed, too, that her father needed to talk to Aunt Beverley alone.

  ‘Why don’t you go find your mommy, you two?’ her father asked them. ‘See if she needs any help.’

  They went upstairs. Oddly, however, mommy wasn’t in her bedroom. Her bed was still unmade, as if she had only recently got up, and her dressing-table was still scattered with combs and lipsticks and an open powder compact. The powder puff had dropped onto the carpet and she hadn’t bothered to pick it up. Even odder, though, she had left a cigarette burning in the ashtray.

  ‘Maybe she had to rush to the bathroom,’ Laura suggested.

  But just as they were turning to investigate, Elizabeth glimpsed something down on the front lawn, something white that bobbed quickly out of sight. She ran to the window; and she was just in time to see her mother hurrying across the driveway, wearing her long white nightgown and carrying her white umbrella. ‘It’s mommy!’ Laura exclaimed. ‘And she isn’t even dressed!’

  The two girls pelted downstairs and into the living-room. They caught father and Aunt Beverley with their heads close together, earnestly talking, while Moe was pacing around the billiard-room next door, chalking a cue. ‘Daddy! Mommy’s run out of the house in her nightgown!’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said their father. He took off his glasses and came hurrying after them. Seamus had been coming into the living-room with a tray of iced tea, and he almost dropped it. ‘Where’s the friend?’ he asked, in panic. Moe, perplexed, said, ‘What?’

  They ran outside. The rain was soft and fine. The sun was so bright that at first they couldn’t make out where their mommy had gone. But then Elizabeth saw a flicker of shadow on the corner of Oak Street, and she screamed. ‘Look! There she is!’ and they all set off in pursuit.

  Elizabeth hastily smeared the rain out of her eyes with the back of her hand, and prayed that they would find mommy first, and that this latest escapade wouldn’t be noticed. She already had enough patronizing gibes to put up with, and she always heard the whispers, although she pretended that she didn’t: ‘You see her? Her mom’s a certified loony.’

  However, they didn’t even have to run as far as Oak Street. On the right-hand side, just before the intersection, the ground dropped away. There was a creek here, no more than a muddy trickle in winter and dried-out in summer. It was here amongst the scrub and thistles that Margaret Buchanan was standing, her upside-down umbrella on the ground beside her, her hair hanging in rat’s-tails, her wet nightgown clinging to her ribcage and her bony thighs. On her face was an expression of such desolation and anguish that Elizabeth had to look away.

  Father slid down the path to reach her, and put his arm around her.

  ‘Come on sweetheart, let’s get you home. What on earth made you come running out here?’

  Mommy twisted his sleeve, and stared at him as if he were the one who was mentally unbalanced. ‘I saw her. It was just like Lizzie said. I saw her with my own eyes.’

  ‘Come on sweetheart. You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘Don’t you say “come on” to me. I saw her with my own eyes. She must be here, not too far away, if Lizzie saw her and I saw her, too. And it was her, no question about it.’

  ‘Who was it?’ asked father.

  ‘You don’t know? It was Peggy, my little Clothes-Peg! Peggy’s back!’

  Father looked at her, his face fractured with sadness, and said nothing; but mommy wrenched herself around and pointed along the creek and screamed at him, ‘She’s here! I saw her! Why can’t you believe me? You should be happy that she’s back!’

  Elizabeth, shivering, peered through the glittering rain. For a split second she thought she glimpsed a blurred white figure, running behind the rainbows, but it could have been nothing more than a flash of refracted light, or something she wanted to see, rather than something that really was. She looked at her mommy’s face, however, and she could tell that her mommy had really seen the same little girl all dressed in white. She could tell it for sure. Her mommy was staring at her, quite steadily, quite calmly, and there was nothing in her face that beseeched her to believe that she wasn’t insane, because she didn’t have to prove her sanity to anybody.

  Elizabeth reached out and took hold of her mommy’s hand. She was very cold.

  ‘Come on, mommy,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s go home.’

  They all climbed back up the slope to the sidewalk. The rain began to ease off, almost as if somebody was slowly closing off their lawn-sprinkler. They walked back with squelching shoes along a street that was already beginning to steam.

  ‘Your hat’s gone strange,’ Laura said to Aunt Beverley.

  ‘Is that all?’ Aunt Beverley retorted, fiercely.

  As they walked back along the street, Elizabeth noticed that some of the bushes were spark
ling. At first she thought it was only caused by raindrops, but when she brushed one of them with her hand, she realized that they were sparkling with ice. She looked down at her fingers, and she could see the crystals melting on her fingertips, like snowflakes. She brushed another bush, and then another, and she was showered with tiny particles of ice. They glittered on her sleeve, and blew through the summer sunshine like chaff.

  Ice, in June, it’s magic.

  Her mommy looked at her, and Elizabeth touched one of the bushes and whispered, ‘Ice, mommy. It’s ice.’

  Her mommy gave her a tired, affectionate smile. Elizabeth was sure that she understood what it meant. She took hold of her mommy’s hand, and the two of them walked back to the house with a shared secret and a shared feeling that the world was made of more than rain and sunshine: it was made of mirrors, too.

  She hugged Laura goodbye. Aunt Beverley was already waiting in the car, and Moe kept checking his wristwatch and looking fretful.

  ‘I’ll write you every day,’ Elizabeth promised. ‘I won’t mind at all if you don’t write back every day, but do send me some picture postcards.’

  Laura nodded. She was crying so much that she couldn’t speak. At last their father laid his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Come along, sweetheart. Time to go.’ He was going too, so that he could visit granpa in New York.

  But as Laura climbed into the car, Elizabeth called out, ‘Wait! Please! I won’t be a second!’ She ran back into the house and up the stairs. She hurried along the landing to her bedroom, snatched what she wanted from her pillow, and ran helter-skelter back downstairs again.

  Laura was sitting in the back of the car, her face pale and her eyes pink. Elizabeth said, ‘Here . . . he always wanted to go to Hollywood. You can take him.’

  She passed Mr Bunzum through the window. Laura took him and hugged him close.

  ‘You will look after him?’ asked Elizabeth.