The Pariah Read online

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Two thousand seven hundred. I might go down to two-five.’

  The husband stared down at the bottle in his hand speechlessly. Eventually he said,

  ‘Two thousand seven hundred dollars for a model boat in a bottle? I could build it myself for a buck-and-a-half.’

  ‘Then you should,’ I advised him. There’s quite a market for ships-in-bottles. Even new ones.’

  ‘Jesus,’ the husband said, putting down the bottle as if it were the Holy Grail, and already starting his retreat from the shop. He kept on looking around, so that he wouldn’t completely lose face, and I knew that he would ask the price of just one more item before he went, and say ‘I’ll think it over, and call back later,’ before disappearing forever.

  ‘How much for that hook thing?’ he said, right on cue.

  'That grappling-hook? That came from one of John Paul Jones’ vessels. Eight hundred and fifty. A bargain, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the husband. ‘Let me think about it. Maybe we’ll call by after lunch.’

  'Thank you,’ I said, and watched them leave.

  They had only just gone, however, when Walter Bedford came into the shop, wearing a broad smile and a black London Fog raincoat that was a size too large for him.

  ‘John, I just had to call by. I had a call from the district attorney this morning. They’ve decided to be reasonable, under the circumstances, and drop the homicide charges. Insufficient evidence. They’ve told the newspapers that they’re looking for a maniac of considerable strength, just to make it look kosher; but the main thing is that you’re free. Right in the clear.’

  ‘No money passed hands, I hope,’ I said, a little sarcastically.

  Walter Bedford was in too good a mood to take offence, and clapped me on the back.

  The truth is, John, the modus operandi was giving the chief of police something of a headache. He had the coroner’s report late last night, and the coroner said that the only way in which Mrs Edgar Simons could possibly have been impaled on that chandelier chain was for the chain to have been forced through her body before the chandelier was fixed to the ceiling, and then for the whole caboodle, chandelier and body and all, to be hoisted up, wired, screwed in, and left to dangle. Now - even given that the murderer had a block-and-tackle to lift the chandelier and the body, it would have taken him at least an hour-and-a-half to complete the job, not to mention the time it would have taken to remove the hoisting equipment, of which there was no trace in the house. An hour-and-a-half places you well away from the Simons house, according to Mr Mark-ham and Mr Reed, and so your alibi is absolutely solid. Case dismissed.’

  ‘Well ,’ I said, ‘thank you very much. You’d better send me a bill.’

  ‘Oh, no, no bill. Not for you. Not when you’ve managed to bring back Jane.’

  ‘Walter, I really don’t think - ‘

  Mr Bedford gripped my upper arm, and looked me steadily in the eye. He smelled of Jacomo aftershave, $135 a bottle. ‘John,’ he said, in his best courtroom voice, ‘I know how you feel about this. It’s scary, and it’s also deeply moving. I can understand, too, that you may want to keep these visitations to yourself, particularly after the way in which Constance and I have blamed you so much for what happened. But both of us understand now that it couldn’t have been your fault. If it had have been, Jane wouldn’t have wanted to come back to you, and comfort you from the spirit world. Constance, I can tell you, is deeply, deeply, apologetic for the way she’s felt about you. She’s filled with remorse. And she begs you, John, even though she’s not a begging woman - she begs you to let her see her only daughter again, even for the briefest moment. I guess I do, too. You don’t know what this means to us, John. We lost everything we ever had when we lost Jane. Just to be able to talk to her again, just to see that she’s happy in the world to come. Just once, John. That’s all I’m asking.’

  I lowered my eyes. ‘Walter,’ I said, huskily, ‘I can appreciate your eagerness to see Jane again. But I have to warn you that she isn’t exactly the Jane you knew. Nor the Jane I knew, either. She’s - well, she’s very different. For Christ’s sake, Walter, she’s a ghost.’

  Walter stiffened his lower lip, and gave a little shake of his head. ‘Don’t use that word “ghost”, John. I like “visitation” so much better.’

  ‘We’re arguing about what to call her? Walter, she’s a ghost; a phantom; a restless spirit.’

  ‘I know that, John. I’m not trying to hide myself away from the truth. But the point is - do you think she’s happy! Do you think she likes it, where she is?’

  ‘Walter, I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘But is she happy? That’s all we want to ask her. And Constance wants to ask if she’s managed to locate Philip. You know, Jane’s young brother, who died when he was five.’

  I simply couldn’t answer that question. I tiredly rubbed the back of my neck and tried to think what I could possibly say to put Walter Bedford off. Something that wouldn’t antagonize him again, and lose me my most munificent benefactor; not that ‘munificent’ was quite the word that anybody would use in connection with Walter Bedford.

  ‘Prudently generous’ was probably more accurate.

  ‘I don’t really think, Walter, that any of us are going to be able to determine whether she’s happy or not. I have to tell you that she appeared again last night, and, well - ‘

  ‘You’ve seen her again? You’ve actually seen her again?’

  ‘Walter, please. She appeared last night, in my room. The whole experience was very upsetting. She spoke my name a few times, and then - well, she asked me to make love to her.’

  Walter frowned, and stood suddenly rigid. ‘John,’ he said, ‘my daughter is dead.’

  ‘I know that, Walter, God preserve me.’

  ‘Well , you didn’t actually - ‘

  ‘Didn’t actually what, Walter? Didn’t actually fuck my dead wife? What are you trying to say, that I’m a necrophiliac? There was no corpse there, Walter, only a face, and a feeling, and a voice. It was like freezing electricity, that’s all.’

  Walter Bedford appeared to be shaken. He walked across the shop and stood with his back to me for a while. Then he picked up a brass telescope, and began opening it and closing it, opening and closing it, in nervous distress.

  ‘I think, John, that we will be able to discover whether she’s happy or not. We are her parents, after all. We’ve known her all her life. So it’s possible that some of the little nuances of expression that you may have missed, not knowing her so well; some of the little give-away words that you may not have recognized … it’s possible that these may mean something to us that wasn’t immediately apparent to you.’

  ‘Walter, God damn it,’ I said, ‘we’re not dealing with a cozy transparent version of Jane here. This isn’t a warm and friendly ghost that you can have conversations with. This is a chilly, hostile, frightening manifestation with eyes that look like death itself and hair that crackles like fifty thousand volts. Do you really want to face up to that? Do you really want Constance to face up to it?’

  Walter Bedford closed up the telescope and put it back on the table. When he looked at me, his eyes were very sorrowful, and he was near to tears.

  ‘John,’ he said, ‘I’m prepared for the very worst. I know it won’t be easy. But it can’t be as bad as that day when they called us up and told us that Jane had been killed. That day was the blackest of all.’

  ‘I can’t put you off?’ I said, quietly.

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll have to come anyway, invited or uninvited.’

  I bit my lip. ‘All right then. Come tomorrow night, if you want to. I’m not staying at Quaker Lane Cottage tonight, I can’t face it. But please do me one favour.’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Warn Constance, over and over, that what she may see may be horrifying, and cold, and even malevolent. Don’t let her come to Quaker Lane Cottage thinking that she’s going t
o be meeting the Jane she knew.’

  ‘She is her mother, you know, John. The visitation may behave differently when her mother’s there.’

  ‘Well ,’ I said, not wanting to prolong the argument any further, ‘I guess that’s possible.’

  Walter Bedford held out his hand, and I didn’t have any option but to shake it. He gripped my elbow at the same time, and said, ‘Thank you, John. You don’t know what this means to us, you really don’t.’

  ‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night. Make it late, will you? Eleven o’clock, something like that. And please, don’t forget to warn Constance.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll warn her,’ said Mr Bedford, and left the shop like a man who’s just learned that he’s come into money.

  FOURTEEN

  I kept the shop open until four o’clock in the afternoon, and considering it was early March, and the weather had been so poor, I was visited by quite a reasonable number of buying customers. I managed to sell a huge and hideous ship’s telegraph to a gay couple from Darien, Connecticut, who excitedly took it away in the back of their shiny blue Oldsmobile wagon; and a serious silver-haired man spent nearly an hour going through my engravings and unerringly selecting the best.

  After I had locked up the shop, I went over to the Crumblin’ Cookie (God forgive me) for a cup of black coffee and a doughnut. I liked the girls behind the counter there; one of them, Laura, had been a friend of Jane’s, and she knew just how to talk about Jane without upsetting me.

  ‘Good day’s business?’ she asked me, handing over my coffee.

  ‘Not bad. At least I managed to unload that ship’s telegraph that Jane always used to hate so much.’

  ‘Oh, that thing you bought up at Rockport, when you went out buying on your own?’

  That’s the one.’

  ‘Well ,’ said Laura, ‘you’d better make sure your taste in acquisitions improves, or she’ll come back and haunt you.’

  I gave an awkward grimace. Laura looked at me, her head tilted to one side, and said,

  ‘Not funny? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to - ‘

  ‘It’s all right,’ I told her. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘Really, I’m sorry,’ Laura insisted.

  ‘Forget it,’ I told her. ‘I’m just having one of my moods.’

  I finished my coffee, left Laura a dollar tip, and walked across Granitehead Square into the chilly afternoon. I felt like getting into my car and driving all night, as far away from Massachusetts as possible west, back to St Louis, or even further. In spite of the constant wind, in spite of the ocean, I felt that Salem and Granitehead were small and dark and constricting and old. A great suffocating weight of history pressed on me here, layer upon layer of ancient buildings, long-dead people, mysterious events. Layer upon layer of prejudice and argument and pain.

  I drove south-west as far as Lafayette Street, and then crossed into Salem, passing the Star of the Sea cemetery. It was unusually sunny; and sharp reflections of light glanced off windows and car windshields and yachts. A distant airplane glittered in the sky like a needle as it circled in to Beverly Airport, five miles away.

  On the car radio, WESX was playing Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away. I drove as far as Charter Street, opposite police headquarters, and then made a right to Liberty Street, where I parked. Then I crossed the road to the Peabody Museum, on East India Square.

  Salem had been revitalized in the same way as Granitehead, and East India Square, newly created, was a clean, brick-paved enclave, with a fountain in the centre in the shape of a Japanese gate. Running west from, East India Square was a long mall of ‘shoppes’, jewelry stores, menswear boutiques, tasteful bric-a-brac emporia. In contrast, the original 1824 building in which the Peabody Museum had been started, East India Marine Hall, overlooked the square like an elderly relative who had been freshly scrubbed and clean-collared to attend a grandchild’s wedding-party.

  I found Edward Wardwell in the Maritime History department, sitting in the full-size cabin of the 1816 yacht Cleopatra’s Barge, reading a sub-aqua manual. I knocked on the woodwork, and said, ‘Anybody home?’

  ‘Oh, John,’ said Edward. He put down his book. ‘I was just thinking about you.

  Refreshing my mind on diving for absolute beginners. It looks like the weather’s going to hold for tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Not if the storm-god answers my prayers it isn’t.’

  ‘You don’t have anything to be afraid of,’ said Edward. ‘In fact, when you’re diving, it’s very important not to be afraid, or at least to try to control your fear. I mean, we all get afraid. We get afraid of not being able to breathe properly; we get afraid of dark water; we get afraid of being tangled up in weed. Some divers even develop a phobia about surfacing. But if you’re reasonably relaxed, there isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t have the time of your life.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, unconvinced.

  ‘You don’t have to worry,’ Edward reassured me, taking off his spectacles, and blinking at me. ‘I’ll be right beside you the whole time.’

  ‘What time do you finish here?’ I asked him. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘We close at five, but then I’ll have about twenty minutes’ clearing-up to do.’

  I looked around. Already the light was fading through the museum’s arched windows.

  Another night was approaching; another time when the dead of Granitehead might appear to their long-lost loved ones; and another time when Jane might appear to me. I was going to stay in Salem tonight, at the Hawthorne Inn, but I wasn’t at all sure that Jane’s visitations were restricted to Quaker Lane Cottage.

  ‘Come and have a drink at the Tavern on the Green,’ I suggested. ‘I’m going there now.

  Why don’t I see you there about six?’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Edward. ‘Go down to Street Mall and introduce yourself to Gilly McCormick. She’s going to be keeping log for us tomorrow, so you might as well get to know her now. She runs a fashion shop called Linen & Lace, about the sixth shop down, in the arcade. I’ll meet you there when I’ve finished up here.’

  I left the Peabody and walked across East India Square to the Mall. It was growing colder now, as well as darker, and I rubbed my hands briskly together to keep myself warm. A small party of tourists wandered past, and one woman said loudly, in a twanging Texas accent, ‘Isn’t it marvellous’? You can just feel that 18th-century atmosphere.’

  Linen & Lace was a small, elegant, expensive little shop selling high-collared Princess-Diana style dresses with bows and ruffles and muttonchop sleeves. An extremely svelte black girl directed me to the back of the shop with a long blood-red fingernail; and there I found Gilly McCormick, tying up a gift parcel for a tired-looking Boston matron in a moulting mink.

  Gilly was tall, with curly brunette hair, and a striking high-cheek-boned face. She wore one of her own linen blouses, with a ruffled lace bodice, but it did nothing to conceal the fullness of her breasts, or the slimness of her waist. She wore a charcoal-gray calf-length skirt, and fashionably small black boots. Pixie boots, Jane always used to call them.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said, when the Boston matron had flustered out of the shop.

  I held out my hand. ‘I’m John Trenton. Edward Ward-well told me to come down and make myself known to you. Apparently we’re diving together tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, well, hi,’ she smiled. She had eyes the colour of glace chestnuts, and a little dimple on her right cheek. I decided that if this was going to be the quality of the company I was going to be keeping when I went diving, then I might very well become something of a sub-aqua enthusiast.

  ‘Edward told me you bought that watercolour of the D.D. the other day,’ said Gilly. ‘He totally forgot about the auction, you know; he was here, helping me put up one of my displays. He was so mad when he came back here and told me you’d bought it. “That damn stuffy guy!” he was shouting. “I offered him $300 and all he
did was tell me I could borrow it.” ‘

  ‘Edward’s very involved with this theory about the David Dark, isn’t he?’ I said.

  ‘You’re allowed to say “obsessed” if you want to,’ smiled Gilly. ‘Edward won’t mind. He admits he’s obsessed, but that’s only because he really believes he’s right.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think I agree with him; although I’m not too sure about all these apparitions in Granitehead. I’ve never actually met anyone who’s ever seen one. I mean, it could be a kind of mass hysteria, couldn’t it, like the witch-trials were?’

  I looked at her carefully. ‘You know about me, and the homicide charge they made against me?’ I asked her.

  Gilly blushed a little, and nodded. ‘Yes, I read about that in the Evening News.’

  ‘Well , whatever it says in the Evening News, let me tell you one certain fact, apart from the one certain fact that it wasn’t me who murdered that woman. The fact is that one of those apparitions was there that night. I saw it with my own eyes; and it’s my belief that it killed her.’

  Gilly stared at me for a very long time, obviously trying to decide whether I was a freak or a fruitcake. She probably wasn’t aware of it, but her body language clearly gave her trepidation away: she crossed her arms across her breasts.

  ‘Right,’ I said, without smiling. ‘Now you think I’m a maniac. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she stammered, ‘I mean, that’s quite all right. I mean, I don’t think you’re a maniac at all. I just think that - ‘

  She hesitated, and then she said, ‘Well , I just think that ghosts are kind of hard to believe.’

  ‘I know that. I didn’t believe in them either, until I saw one.’

  ‘You really saw a ghost?’

  I nodded. ‘I really genuinely saw a ghost. It was Mr Edgar Simons, the dead woman’s late husband. He was like - I don’t know, electricity. A man made out of high-voltage electricity. It’s hard to describe.’