The Heirloom Read online

  One of the nurses wrenched at my sleeve, and tried to twist me away from the bed. I shook her off, and she fell with a clatter against the metal trolley of swabs and oxygen equipment.

  ‘Tell me what you want!’ I screamed at Jonathan. ‘Tell – me – what – you – want!’

  ‘Can’t you guessssssssss?’

  The other nurse had managed to pull the door open now, and she beckoned silently but furiously to two passing orderlies. I was still screeching at Jonathan when they came into the room, two big men with muscles like lifeguards and sweatbands around their hair, and I only realised what was happening when they squashed my arms behind my back into a sinew-cracking full nelson. Then they forced me to teeter out of the room on tiptoe, and out into the corridor.

  ‘Okay, friend, what’s the big fuss?’ asked one of them, in that slow courteous way that people use when they’re quite confident that they can break both your legs without even breathing hard.

  David came up and said, ‘I say, is everything all right? Ricky, are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘He’s the father of that little boy in there,’ explained one of the nurses. ‘I guess he just got kind of upset.’

  ‘That your kid in there?’ the other orderly asked me. I nodded, dumbly.

  ‘Okay,’ said the orderly. ‘But keep it down, huh? These ladies ate trying to do the best they can. No point in giving them a hard time.’

  ‘I wasn’t—’ I began, but then I gave it up. Arguing with hospital orderlies, cops, airline stewards, and Disneyland staff always gets you wound up into a ball for no purpose. They’re trained to be calmly offensive to you, and to make you appear to everyone else around you like an apoplectic maniac.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I guess I was overwrought.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to have special permission from the doctor to come visit your son again,’ said one of the nurses, through her nose.

  ‘I said I’m sorry,’ I repeated, more doggedly.

  David and I walked the length of the corridor in silence until we reached the elevator.

  ‘Are you all right, old boy?’ David asked me. His voice was full of genuine concern.

  I leaned against the wall, and nodded. ‘I’m okay. I heard the voice of that man-serpent again, that’s all.’

  ‘I thought that was it. It was the way you were shouting, for no apparent reason. I thought you were trying to rouse Jonathan at first, until I realised what you were saying.’

  The elevator arrived, and the doors opened with a soft chime. We stepped inside, and it dropped down to the next floor, where three nurses and two interns crowded in. David and I shuffled to the rear of the elevator, and down it went again.

  We were passing the sixth floor when I happened to look at the polished stainless-steel doors in front of us. Everybody in the elevator was facing forward, and so their faces were all reflected in the smeary metal. There were two black girls, one quite pretty, and an intern with bushy hair and a bald patch.

  But as I looked at the next reflection in the line, I felt my skin creep with cold. The face that smiled at me out of the stainless-steel elevator door was that of the man-serpent on the Devil’s chair.

  6

  Alarmings

  We drove out to Escondido with the radio tuned to KOGO 6 Radio News. I just wanted to hear something normal, something real. I just wanted to know that thé world was still going on outside of my house at Rancho Santa Fe and the Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy.

  David said, ‘You’re sure you saw that face? You’re not letting your anxiety run riot?’

  I glanced across at him stonily.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I still believe we ought to challenge everything we see and experience. Otherwise our own minds are going to start working against us, too. One panic leads to another.’

  I flicked my eyes at the rear-view mirror, and depressed my lane-change signal to overtake a rattling bus crowded with Mexican roadworkers. The dark freeway rose ahead of us towards the cutting at Del Mar, and then dipped down again, an endless river of red lights.

  Back at the hospital, the elevator doors had rumbled open almost as soon as I saw the man-serpent’s face, and the nurses and interns had all pushed their way out into the lobby before I was able to make up my mind which of them had taken on the demon’s features. Even if I’d caught up with the right intern, and stopped him, I probably would have found that he was quite normal and ordinary and didn’t have the faintest idea what I was babbling about. I’d already allowed the chair to make a fool out of me in Jonathan’s room. I didn’t want to be banned from the hospital altogether.

  ‘I’m going to drive back to the house after we’ve seen Jessop,’ I said. ‘I want to see if the chair’s made its way there… or whether it’s decided to leave us alone for a while.’

  ‘It won’t leave you alone,’ said David. ‘Until you confront it, and deal with it according to the proper rituals, it won’t ever leave you alone.’

  ‘Now you’re beginning to sound like the chair yourself.’

  ‘Is that what it told you?’

  I nodded. ‘It won’t release Jonathan out of his coma, and it won’t allow me to get rid of it, not until I accept what it has to offer.’

  ‘And you still can’t work out what it is that it’s offering?’

  ‘I can’t even begin to guess. Mind you, I haven’t really been trying. That chair is so damned evil, I can’t think what it could possibly do for me that wouldn’t be illegal, or immoral, or downright homicidal.’

  David thought for a while. ‘You want to be rich, don’t you?’ he asked me.

  ‘I’d like to be slightly wealthier, but then who wouldn’t? I don’t actually have a burning desire to be a zillionaire.’

  ‘Is there any antique you’ve ever wanted to own? Some fabulous piece that you could never hope to lay your hands on?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve always wanted the “Diana and Minerva” commode in Harewood House in England. Do you know that Chippendale charged less than two hundred and ten dollars for it? But, you know, I can live without it.’

  ‘What about women? Is there a woman you covet?’

  ‘Yes. My wife. I’m in love with her, as corny as it may sound.’

  ‘Is there something you want for your son?’

  ‘Apart from his recovery, only health, and happiness. I don’t even want him to become a plastic surgeon.’

  David adjusted the wide white cuffs of his shirt. They were English-style, doubled-over, with mother-of-pearl cuff-links. He smelled slightly of tobacco, perspiration, and cologne.

  ‘Do you have any religious or spiritual desires?’ he wanted to know. ‘I knew one fellow at university who would have given his right arm to meet John the Baptist.’

  I took the sharply sloping ramp that led off the freeway on to the Escondido road. As I pulled up at the stop light at the bottom of the ramp, I said to David, ‘What’s with all these questions? I don’t want the chair, or anything to do with it, and that’s all there is to it. I don’t have any unfulfilled ambitions. I don’t have any outrageous desires. I’m happy. All I want is for that goddamned piece of black-hearted furniture to get out of my life.’

  ‘I’m trying to help,’ insisted David. ‘If you could think what it is that the chair is so eager to have you accept, then you might be halfway to getting rid of it.’

  The lights changed to green. ‘I’m damned if I know,’ I said, testily, as I shifted the Impala into Drive.

  It took us another thirty-five minutes to reach Escondido. The road is well-surfaced and wide, but it winds in leisurely loops through the hills and around the mountains, and we were stuck for ten minutes behind a dawdling Winnebago, and for another five minutes behind a milk truck.

  At last, on the outskirts of Escondido, we came to the narrow black-topped turning marked Jessop. The turning led nowhere else but up to the Jessop residence – a grandiose Gothic house whose dark spires we could already discern through the chok
eberries and manzanita.

  ‘I just hope he doesn’t kick us out on our ass,’ I remarked, as I steered the wagon up the driveway. A sign by the roadside warned ‘This Estate Patrolled by Dobermans’.

  We came at last to a high pair of wrought-iron gates, firmly locked against us. On the left-hand gatepost was a stainless-steel plate with an intercom button and a speaker. I put down my window and pressed the button twice. There was a warm evening smell in the air, dust and oranges and chaparral. David drummed his fingers nervously on the top of the dash.

  I was just about to press the button again when a croaky woman’s voice said, ‘Yes? Who is it?’

  It sounded like the same woman I had spoken to on Sunday – the woman who had denied that the Jessops had ever owned a carved mahogany chair. I turned to David, but he pointed to the intercom, and said, ‘Go ahead. Tell them the truth.’

  ‘Erm – it’s Mr Richard Delatolla here, ma’am – and Mr David Sears – we’re both antique dealers.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘Well, I regret not. But we have to see Mr Jessop as a matter of urgency. It’s a matter of life or death,’

  ‘Oh, is it?’ croaked the voice. ‘Well, I’m afraid that Mr Jessop is unwell. He can’t see anybody, no matter how urgent it is.’

  There was a burp and a click, and the intercom was obviously shut off. I pressed the button again, and then twice more.

  ‘What do you want?’ demanded the woman.

  ‘I have to see Mr Jessop,’ I repeated. ‘There’s a small boy lying critically ill in hospital, and only Mr Jessop can –’

  ‘Mr Jessop already pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity. He does not make personal donations.’

  ‘I’m not asking for money. I’ve come about the chair.’ There was a crackling pause. Then the woman said slowly, ‘The chair? Which chair?’

  ‘The chair I called about on Sunday. The chair which you told me you’d never owned. The chair with the man-serpent’s face on the top of it.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything about a chair.’

  ‘You can’t pretend any more, ma’am. I have absolute proof that the chair once belonged to Mr Sam Jessop, and that he sold it to a Mr Henry Grant.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the woman snapped. ‘There was never any documentation at all.’

  ‘I know there wasn’t,’ I replied. ‘But if Mr Jessop never owned the chair, how come you knew there wasn’t?’

  I distinctly heard the woman say ‘Damn’ to herself.

  ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘do we get in to see Mr Jessop, or don’t we?’

  ‘Certainly not. He’s sick. He’s not seeing anybody.’

  David leaned across the car in front of me, and said clearly, ‘I think it would be wise to let us in, Mrs Jessop. That is Mrs Jessop, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes it is, and what on earth makes you think that letting two perfect strangers into our house would be wise, especially after dark?’

  ‘It would be wise,’ said David, ‘because if you turn us away, we’ll make absolutely sure that you get your chair back again. No delivery charge, either.’

  I started to say something, but David put his finger to his lips and stopped me. We both waited, listening to the faint crackling of static from the intercom. Eventually, Mrs Jessop said, ‘Very well. But I will only let you in on one condition. That you don’t harass my husband, and that you leave when I require you to.’

  ‘That’s two conditions,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ she snapped back. ‘And I may very well think of more before you reach the house.’

  There was a metallic shuddering sound, and the wrought-iron gates gradually swung open. I started the wagon up again, and we drove through the dark trees towards the house, up a steep and curving gravel drive that eventually levelled off and widened into a parking area. There were two cars already parked beside the low brick wall that bordered the house – a black Fleetwood sedan and an old but highly-polished Chrysler Windsor.

  The house itself was extraordinary. I had only ever seen it from a distance, from a vantage point on the Ramona road. But close to, I realised for the first time how enormous it was, with sheer walls that rose sixty or seventy feet like red-brick cliffs. The windows were tall and arched, with leaded panes, and the gutterings and rooftops were decorated with gargoyles and pottery flowers and crests. There were balconies and spires and odd dormer windows everywhere, and from the highest roof a large cast-iron weather-vane flew like a medieval banner.

  ‘Castle Dracula,’ I remarked, as I climbed out of the wagon and slammed the door.

  ‘It’s an interesting place, isn’t it?’ said David. ‘It was originally built by Drummond Thody, who financed part of the Santa Fe Railroad. He was inspired by St Pancras Station in London, I believe.’

  We crunched across the gravel until we reached the steps that led up to the baronial front door. One of the doors was already open, and in the dim orange light from the hallway a Mexican manservant in a black tuxedo was waiting for us.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said, without any noticeable hint of welcome or respect. ‘Would you step this way, please?’

  He walked in front of us with the stiff-backed swagger of a man who had enjoyed his years of military service more than any other time in his whole life. ‘Fort Ord?’ I asked, to the back of his well-oiled head. He didn’t seem to think that was funny, because he didn’t reply, and when he showed us into the living-room, he stared at me as if he was considering me for knife-throwing practice.

  The hall had been echoing and huge, a parquet mausoleum; but the living-room was hung with rich plum-coloured velvet drapes, and decorated with fresh-cut orchids, and there was a glitter of silver and gilt and varnish about it which made it luxurious and comfortable. As David and I crossed the Ardebil carpet, which itself must have been worth nearly half a million dollars, I noticed in the corner a particularly fine inlaid Sheraton serpentine-fronted sideboard for which I would have given half the contents of my shop.

  There was a log fire burning in the massive stone fireplace, despite the warmth of the evening, and sitting beside it in a tall-backed leather armchair was Sam Jessop. Not the Sam Jessop I knew from magazine and newspaper pictures – the stern, ruddy-faced Californian with the pugnacious jawline and bristling eyebrows. This was a ghost of Sam Jessop, old and pale and sick, with all the appearance of a half-collapsed pig’s bladder. His liver-spotted hands hung on to the arms of his chair as if they were all that were preventing him from dwindling away to nothing on his seat-cushion. He wore a camel-coloured robe and brown velvet slippers with SJ embroidered on them.

  Beside Sam Jessop stood a tall and reedy old lady, in a purple dress and strings of pearls. She must have been eighty-five, but she had perfect facial bones, and half a century ago she was probably the most beautiful woman in Southern California.

  There was only one ornament in the whole room which gave any kind of clue how the Jessops had made their money. On the mantelpiece, gleaming in the firelight, was a chromium-plated model of a guided missile.

  I held my hand out. ‘Mrs Jessop,’ I said. ‘My name’s Ricky Delatolla. I’m very impressed with your house.’

  She ignored my hand, and indicated with a cursory nod of her head a small sofa on the other side of the fireplace. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ she asked. ‘You’ll have to speak rather loudly, I’m afraid. My husband doesn’t hear too well. And don’t tax him too much, will you? He has Bright’s disease.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Jessop,’ I said. ‘I have a son who’s lying in hospital right now, in a coma.’

  Jessop stared at me with eyes as impenetrable as pebbles. ‘Well,’ he said, in a thick voice, ‘the Grim Reaper gets us all, one time or another, sooner or later.’

  ‘Mr Jessop,’ I said, at the top of my voice, ‘I don’t like to bother you when you’re not feeling good, but I think you may be able to hel
p me save my son’s life.’

  ‘How can I do that, may I ask?’ enquired Mr Jessop. ‘I don’t even know your son.’

  ‘No, but you have some knowledge of what brought his coma on.’

  ‘I’m not a doctor, Mr Dela-whatever-your-name-is.’

  ‘Tolla. Delatolla. No – I know you’re not a doctor, sir. But you did used to own a chair… a dark mahogany chair… with carvings all over it and a kind of a face on the cresting-rail.’

  Sam Jessop’s expression remained confused and incomprehensible, like a crumpled handkerchief.

  ‘What of it?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, it may sound ridiculous, Mr Jessop, but I believe that chair has an aura about it that brought on my son’s coma.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Jessop.

  ‘You mean I’m right about the aura?’

  ‘No, you’re right about it sounding ridiculous.’

  ‘Mr Jessop –’

  The old man bent his head forward. ‘Mr Delatolla, I don’t know why you’re wasting your time. I used to own that chair, certainly. It’s a very special chair. But the particular properties with which it is imbued are not for the likes of you. What did you say you were? A salesman?’

  ‘I’m an antiques dealer.’

  ‘Well, even worse. What do antiques dealers know about furniture?’

  He gave three wheezy coughs, which I took to be an attempted laugh. I didn’t join in, and neither did David.

  David said, ‘My friend here is only interested in knowing how to get rid of the chair, Mr Jessop. He doesn’t want anything from it. He just wants it out of his life.’

  Jessop sucked at his gums. ‘Well…hat’s not at all easy. Giving up that chair is like giving up morphine. I had to take morphine once, you know, just after the First World War. I went through hell on earth trying to shake it. Hell on earth.’

  Mrs Jessop, who had remained standing by her husband’s side, now walked haughtily across to the other side of the room, and sat down on a spindly gilded chair. But the way she held her head up, like a watchful buzzard, showed that she still considered herself to be in control of the conversation.