The Manitou Read online

  I lifted the card that covered my question card, and under there was Death. Perhaps I’d made a mistake. All the same, I was pretty sure I’d laid the Magician down first. I took up all the cards again, and placed the Magician firmly down there on the table, and covered it over with the two of wands, and went on putting down cards until I came to the last one.

  There was nothing on it at all. It was blank.

  I didn’t believe in all this fortune-telling stuff, but I definitely got the feeling that someone out there was telling me loudly and firmly to mind my own business.

  I looked at my watch. It was midnight. A good time for ghosts and spirits and a good time to be getting to bed. Tomorrow, I was definitely going to take a look at what Karen Tandy had scribbled down in her envelope.

  Chapter Two

  Into the Dark

  The next morning, Saturday, an orange sun showed up at around half-past ten and the snowy streets started to turn into heaps of brown slush. It was still freezing cold, and my Cougar stalled twice on the way to the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital. Passers-by went splashing along the filthy sidewalks in coats and mufflers, faceless black figures out of a winter’s dream.

  I parked right outside the hospital and went into the reception hall. It was warm and ritzy in there, with thick carpets and potted palms, and the murmur of conversation. It seemed more like a holiday resort than a home for the sick. I was greeted at the counter by a smart young lady with a white starched uniform and white starched teeth.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, I believe you can. There was supposed to be an envelope left here for me this morning. My name’s Erskine, Harry Erskine.”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  She sorted through a pile of letters and postcards, and eventually came back with a small white envelope.

  “The Incredible Erskine?” she read, with one eyebrow lifted.

  I coughed in embarrassment. “Just a nickname. You know how it is.”

  “Do you have some identification, sir?”

  I shuffled through my pockets. My driver’s license was at home, and so were my credit cards. Eventually I came across one of my calling cards, and showed it to her. Written across it was: “The Incredible Erskine. Fortunes told, forecasts interpreted, dreams delved.”

  “I guess you must be him all right,” she smiled, and handed over the letter.

  I waited until I reached my flat before I examined the envelope. I laid it on the table and inspected it closely. Just the sort of handwriting you would expect from a cultivated girl like Karen Tandy—firm, sweeping and bold. I particularly liked the way she’d written Incredible. I found a pair of nail scissors in the table drawer and cut along the top of the envelope. Inside were three or four sheets of lined paper, that looked as though they’d been torn from a secretary’s notepad. There was a short letter with them, in Karen Tandy’s script:

  “Dear Mr. Erskine,

  I had the dream again last night, much more vivid than before. I have tried to remember every detail, and two things were very striking. The coastline had a particular shape which I have sketched down here. I have also sketched the sailing ship, and as much of its flag as I can remember.

  The feeling of fear was also very much stronger, and the sense of needing to escape was extremely powerful.

  As soon as I have recovered from the operation, I will call you to see what you think.

  Your friend, Karen Tandy.”

  >I opened up the scraps of note paper and peered at them closely. The improvised map of the coastline was distinctly unhelpful. It was little more than a squiggly line that could have been anywhere in the world. But the drawing of the ship was more interesting. It was quite detailed, and the flag was good, too. There were bound to be books on sailing ships in the library and books of flags, as well, so there was a chance that I could discover which ship this actually was.

  If it was a real ship at all, and wasn’t just a figment of Karen Tandy’s tumor-ridden imagination.

  I sat there for quite a while, pondering over the strange case of “my friend, Karen Tandy.” I was eager to go and check on the ship, but it was nearly half-past eleven, and Mrs. Herz was due—another dear old lady with more money than sense. Mrs. Herz’s special interest was in knowing whether she was going to have any trouble with her hundreds of relations, all of whom were mentioned in her will. After every session with me, she went to her lawyer and altered everyone’s legacy. Her lawyer made so much money out of these codicils and amendments that last Christmas he had sent me a crate of Black Label Johnnie Walker. After all, he and I were in much the same kind of business.

  At eleven-thirty sharp there was a ring at the door. I hung up my jacket in the closet, took down my long green robe, stuck my hat on top of my head, and prepared to receive Mrs. Herz in my usual mystical manner.

  “Come in, Mrs. Herz. It’s a fine morning for everything occult.”

  Mrs. Herz must have been all of seventy-five. She was pallid and wrinkled with hands like chicken’s claws, and spectacles that magnified her eyes like oysters swimming in goldfish bowls. She came trembling in on her stick, smelling of mothballs and lavender, and she sat herself down in my armchair with a frail, reedy sigh.

  “How are you, Mrs. Herz?” I asked her cheerily, rubbing my hands. “How are the dreams?”

  She said nothing at all, so I simply shrugged and went to collect the Tarot cards together. As I shuffled them, I tried to find the blank card that I had turned up last night, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of it. I could have been mistaken of course, or overtired, but I wasn’t entirely convinced of that. In spite of my job, I’m not given to mystical experiences. I laid the cards out on the table, and invited Mrs. Herz to think of a question she would like to ask them.

  “It’s a long time since we checked up on your nephew Stanley,” I reminded her. “How about a peek at the comings and goings of that little household? Or how about your stepsister Agnes?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t even look at me. She seemed to be staring over into a corner of the room, lost in a dream of her own.

  “Mrs. Herz?” I said, standing up. “Mrs. Herz, I’ve laid the cards out for you.”

  I went over and bent down to look in her face. She seemed all right. She was breathing, at least. The last thing I wanted was an old lady giving up the ghost when I was in the middle of telling her fortune. The publicity would be ruinous. Or then again, maybe it wouldn’t.

  I took her old, reptilian hands in mine and said gently: “Mrs. Herz? Are you feeling all right? Can I get you a glass of brandy?”

  Her eyes floated eerily around in her Coke-bottle glasses. She seemed to be looking in my direction, but at the same time she didn’t focus on me at all. It was almost as though she were looking through me, or behind me. I couldn’t help turning around to see if there was somebody else in the room.

  “Mrs. Herz,” I said again. “Do you want one of your pills, Mrs. Herz? Can you hear me, Mrs. Herz?”

  A thin, sibilant whisper dribbled out from between her withered lips. I had the feeling she was trying to say something, but I couldn’t work it out at all. The oil lamp started flickering and guttering, and it was hard to make out whether the moving shadows across her face were strange expressions or not.

  “Booooo...” she said faintly.

  “Mrs. Herz,” I snapped. “If this is some kind of game, you’d better stop. You’ve got me worried here. Mrs. Herz, if you don’t get yourself together at once I’m going to call an ambulance. Do you understand me, Mrs. Herz?”

  “Boooo...” she whispered again. Her hands started shaking, and her large emerald ring vibrated against the arm of the chair. Her eyes were rolling around, and her jaw seemed to be stuck wide open. I could see her pale slimy tongue, and her $4,000 bridgework.

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s it. I’m calling an ambulance, Mrs. Herz. Look, here I am going to the telephone. I’m dialing the number, Mrs. Herz. It’s ringing.”

>   Suddenly the old lady stood up. She grabbed for her stick, missed it, and it clattered on to the floor. She stood swaying and shuffling on the carpet, as though she were dancing in time to some song that I couldn’t hear. The operator said: "Yes, can I help you?" but I put the phone down and went across to my hopping, waltzing old client.

  I tried to put my arm around her, but she flapped me away with one of her scaly paws. She jogged and danced, muttering and mumbling all the time, and I just didn’t know what the hell to do with her. She must be having some kind of fit, but I’d never seen a fit where the sufferer does a one-woman conga round the floor.

  “Booo...” she whispered again.

  I danced around her, trying to keep up with her scuffly little waltz. “What do you mean, ‘boo’?” I asked her. “Mrs. Herz, will you please sit down and relax, and tell me what the hell’s going on?”

  As abruptly as she had started to dance, she stopped. The energy seemed to fall out of her like an elevator sinking to floor-level, foyer and street. She reached out for something to support her, and I had to grab her arm to stop her from pitching over. I gently laid her stiff old body back into the armchair, and knelt down beside her.

  “Mrs. Herz, I don’t like to bully my clients, but I do think you ought to have some medical attention. Now, don’t you agree that would be sensible?”

  She stared at me blindly, and her mouth stretched open again. I admit I had to look away. The outsides of old ladies are okay, but I’m really not too keen on their insides.

  “Boot,” she whispered. “Boot.”

  “Boot?” I asked her. “What the hell have boots got to do with anything?”

  “Boot,” she quavered, much more shrilly now. “Boot! BOOOTTTT!!”

  “My God,” I said. “Mrs. Herz, just you calm down and I’ll fetch an ambulance straight away. Now, don’t move, Mrs. Herz, it’s perfectly all right. You’re going to be fine, just fine.”

  I got up and went over to the telephone and dialed the emergency service. Mrs. Herz was shaking and trembling and rabbiting on about “boot, boot” and they seemed to take half an hour to answer.

  "Can I help you?" said the operator, at last.

  “You certainly can. Look, I need an ambulance straight away. I have an old lady here who’s having some kind of a fit. She’s as rich as they come, so tell the ambulance crew they don’t have to make any detours through the Bronx before they get here. Please hurry. I think she’s going to die or something.”

  I gave my address and telephone number, and then turned back to Mrs. Herz. She seemed to have stopped twitching for the moment, and she was sitting there quiet and strange as though she were thinking.

  “Mrs. Herz...” I said.

  She turned toward me. Her face was old and fixed and rigid. Her watery eyes stared right into mine.

  “De boot, mijnheer,” she said gruffly. “De boot.”

  “Mrs. Herz, look, please, you don’t have to worry. The ambulance is on its way. Just sit there and keep calm.”

  Mrs. Herz gripped the arm of the chair and got to her feet. She had trouble standing straight, as though she were walking on ice. But then she pulled herself erect, and stood there with her arms hanging down by her side, taller and firmer than I’d ever seen her stand before.

  “Mrs. Herz, I think you’d better...”

  But she ignored me, and started to glide across the carpet. I’d never seen anybody walk that way before. Her feet seemed to skate silently over the floor as if she wasn’t really touching it at all. She slid quietly over to the door, and opened it.

  “It really would be better if you waited,” I said lamely. To tell you the truth, I was getting the creeps with all this, and I didn’t know what to say to her at all. She didn’t seem to hear me, or if she did, she wasn’t taking any notice.

  “De boot,” she said again, in a harsh voice. And then she glided out of the door and into the corridor.

  Of course, I went after her. But what I saw next was so sudden and weird that I almost wished I hadn’t. One second she was just outside the door, and I was reaching out my hand to take her arm, and then she was sliding away down the long bright corridor, as quickly as if she was running. But she wasn’t running at all. She was rushing away from me without even moving her legs.

  “Mrs. Herz!” I called, but my voice went strangled and strange. I felt a huge dark surge of fright inside me, like seeing a white face at the window in the middle of the night.

  She turned, once, at the end of the corridor. She was standing at the head of the stairs. She seemed to be trying to beckon, or lift her arm—more as if she were fighting something off than trying to call me to help her. Then she disappeared down the stairs, and I heard her stiff old body falling and bumping from step to step.

  I pelted down to the end of the corridor. Doors were opening all the way along, and anxious and curious faces were peering out.

  I looked down the stairs. Mrs. Herz was lying there, all twisted up, with her legs at peculiar angles. I rushed down and knelt beside her and felt her stick-like wrist. Nothing, no pulse at all. I lifted her head, and a long slide of glutinous blood came pouring out of her mouth.

  “Is she okay?” said one of my neighbors, from the top of the stairs. “What happened?”

  “She fell,” I told him. “She’s seventy-five. She’s not too good on her feet. I think she’s dead. I called an ambulance already.”

  “Oh, God,” said a woman. “I can’t stand anything dead.”

  I stood up, tearing my long green gown. I just couldn’t believe any of this, and I felt as if I’d wake up in a moment, and it would still be early morning, and I’d be lying in bed in my turquoise silk pajamas. I looked down at Mrs. Herz, wrinkled and old and extinct, like a pale balloon that’s leaked itself to death, and the sick started rising in my throat.

  Lieutenant Marino of the Homicide Squad was most understanding. It turned out that Mrs. Herz had left me something in her will, but it wasn’t enough for me to have pushed her down the stairs.

  The detective sat upright in my armchair, in his stiff black raincoat, with his black brush-cut hair sticking up at all angles, trying to read from a grubby scrap of paper.

  “It says here that you’re entitled to a pair of Victorian vases,” he sniffed. “We’re having someone check on the value right now, but you don’t look the kind of guy who’d knock an old lady off for a vase.”

  I shrugged. “Old ladies like her are my bread and butter. You don’t go pushing your bread and butter down the stairs.”

  Lieutenant Marino looked up. He had a wide, squashed face, like an opera singer who’s fallen on hard times. He scratched his spiky hair thoughtfully and cast his eyes around the room.

  “Some kind of fortune-teller, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right. Tarot cards, tea leaves, that kind of stuff. Most of my clients are elderly ladies like Mrs. Herz.”

  He bit his lip and nodded. “Sure. You say she was acting unwell the whole time she was here?”

  “Yes, I mean I thought there was something wrong from the moment she came in. She’s pretty old and infirm, but she usually manages to chat for a while, and tell me how she’s getting on. But this time she came in and sat down and never said a word.”

  Lieutenant Marino stared at his piece of paper. “Did you get around to telling her fortune? What I mean is, was there any reason she might have killed herself? Any bad news in the tea leaves?”

  “Not a chance. I didn’t even lay the cards out. She just came in and sat down and started rambling on about boots.”

  “Boots? What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. She kept on saying ‘boot, boot.’ Don’t ask me.”

  “Boot?” frowned Lieutenant Marino. “What kind of way did she say it? Did it sound like a name? Did it sound like she was trying to tell you about a guy named Boot?”

  I thought hard, tugging my nose. “I don’t think so. I mean, it didn’t sound like a name. But she seemed very worried ab
out it.”

  Lieutenant Marino looked interested. “Worried? How do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say, really. She came in, sat down, and started all this ‘boot’ stuff, and then she went out of the door and ran off up the corridor. I tried to stop her, but she was much too quick for me. She waved her arms around a bit, and then fell straight down the stairs.”

  The detective made a couple of notes. Then he said: "Ran?"

  I spread my arms open. “Don’t ask me how, because I don’t understand it myself. But she ran up the corridor like a girl of fifteen.”

  Lieutenant Marino frowned. “Mr. Erskine, the dead woman was seventy-five years old. She walked with a stick. And you’re trying to tell me she ran up the corridor? Ran?"

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Come on, now, Mr. Erskine—don’t you think you’re letting your imagination run a little wild? I don’t believe you killed her, but I certainly don’t believe she ran.”

  I looked down at the floor. I remembered the way that Mrs. Herz had skated out of the room, and the way that she’d dwindled away down the corridor as though she were running on rails.

  “Well, to be truthful, she didn’t exactly run," I told him.

  “So what did she do?” asked Lieutenant Marino patiently. “Walked, maybe? Shuffled?”

  “No, she didn’t walk, and she didn’t shuffle. She slid."

  Lieutenant Marino was just about to make a note of that, but his pen stopped an eighth of an inch from his paper. He grunted, grinned, and then tucked the paper away in his coat. He stood up, and came over to me with an indulgent smile on his face.

  “Listen, Mr. Erskine, it’s always a shock when somebody dies. It tends to play tricks on your mind. You should know that, you’re in the business. Maybe you just thought you saw something a different way from the way it actually happened.”

  “Yes.” I said dumbly. “It could be.”

  He laid a pudgy hand on my shoulder, and gave me a friendly squeeze.

  “There’s going to be a post mortem examination to establish the cause of death, but I doubt if it will go any further than that. I might have to send someone round again to ask you one or two more questions, but otherwise you’re in the clear. I’d ask you not to leave the city for a day or two, but you mustn’t think you’re under arrest, or anything like that.”