A Show of Hands Read online

  “We’re still talkin’ about this girl?”

  Crisp nodded. “Yes, Matty.”

  Matty nodded. “And you don’t think she was murdered by the Calderwood boy?”

  Crisp shrugged. “I don’t see how.”

  “You think it was somebody else?”

  He shrugged again.

  “Now you think that somebody is leadin’ you along by the nose?”

  Crisp nodded.

  “And you think he knows what you’re goin’ to do even before you do?”

  Crisp nodded.

  “Well,” said Matty—it was her philosophical “well”—“he must be some clever.”

  The McKenniston estate consisted of the main house, a guest house, and a barn. It crested a swell of earth that, to the north, rolled across grassy fields and disappeared into the forest and on the south tumbled abruptly down crags and crevices past the boathouse to the unsettled sea. Casual turn-of-the-century elegance had given way to the casual neglect of the mid-1900s. The tennis courts were overgrown, their fence posts leaning toward the ground like a gaggle of old men looking for pennies in the tall grass. The novelty of the swimming pool had worn off a quarter century ago, so the elements had recommissioned it as a receptacle for their refuse.

  The houses themselves were in good repair and had recently been painted red with white trim. They had always been painted red with white trim. The shingles of the barn, which was knotted among a stand of ancient evergreens, had been weathered a deep gray-brown and were rotting at a leisurely pace. The rust red trim was peeling in places, missing entirely in others. The structure seemed to have grown where it stood.

  Contrapuntal to the quiet nostalgia of the scene as Crisp entered was a distant mechanical thumping punctuated by the sound of a tortured feline. His stomach churned with a horror that was not mollified by his feeling of impotency. How could he, an old man on a bicycle, with imperfect hearing, locate the source of the sound and extricate the animal from the machinery before it was torn limb from limb?

  His search led him to the cliff overlooking the Thorofare. The wind was blowing briskly, and the sea crashed on the rocks below. He strained to separate the plaintive wail from nature’s cacophony. It emanated from the boathouse. How long could the hapless creature endure such obvious extremes of pain? More to the point, thought Crisp as he hastened down the ramp, what sight would he soon have to add to the waxworks of horrors that constituted his memory?

  Once at the bottom of the ramp, he bounded across the deck, threw open the door, and stood akimbo in the doorway, transfixed by a blast of rock-and-roll music from the oil-soaked abyss.

  His pulse seemed to be keeping time against his eardrums with fists of thunder. He could feel the veins in his neck marking the downbeat. He was too old and White to know anything about backbeat. “Hello?” he said into the darkness.

  There was no response. None was expected. He knew that his voice couldn’t be heard over the noise. As he stepped in out of the sunlight, objects in the room oozed into view. The offensive noise was coming from a large portable radio that hung by its strap from a crossbeam of a boat cradle. Squinting, he could make out the extension cord, which he followed to a bare outlet in the plank wall. The umbilical cord that sustained the “cat” in unspeakable misery, doubtless against its will. He pulled the plug.

  Peace.

  The patient had died but was happier for it.

  It was not an unbroken peace, however.

  “Hey!” said someone under the cradle.

  Crisp watched carefully as, bit by bit and hind end foremost, a body emerged from below the boat, to the accompaniment of a commentary calling into question the parentage of whoever had conducted the mercy killing on the radio. Crisp still held the plug in his hand.

  When fully birthed by the inky blackness, there stood before Crisp—rather below Crisp in the well of the boat slip—a youth of about seventeen summers with the physique of a poorly fed scarecrow and a mane of dirty hair that seemed to weigh his head to one side, leaving only one eye operable. This eye he trained on Crisp and the plug. “Huh?” he said.

  “You must be Marky Williams,” said Crisp, draping the electrical cord over a nearby beam a safe distance from the outlet.

  “Yup,” said Marky Williams. It occurred to him that this could be one of the doddering old friends or relations of the people who signed his paycheck, so he reined his indignation. “Need somethin’?”

  “Well,” Crisp said slowly. What, now that the cat had been saved? “I was wondering if you had a key to the barn.”

  The boy jerked his head to one side; the hair flew temporarily out of his eyes and fell promptly back into place. “Nope,” he said.

  “Oh . . . well, do you know where I . . . is there someone . . . perhaps Mostly has one?”

  “He ain’t here.”

  “I see. Well . . . and there’s no one else with a key?”

  “Nope,” said the monosyllabic youth. “Nobody’s got one.”

  “Oh.”

  “It ain’t locked.”

  “Oh?” said Crisp, who, in the space of forty-seven seconds had become a devout adherent to the concept of a generation gap. “Well, then . . . that’s good.”

  “It ain’t even got a lock, as far’s I know,” said the boy, the words flowing forth in a comparative torrent. “Even if it did, you could still get in fifty different ways.”

  “I see,” said Crisp. “Well, I’ll just go . . . and . . .” He expected the boy to ask him who he was, what he was up to, and why he wanted to get into the barn. The inquisition was not forthcoming. The boy just nodded.

  “Would you mind pluggin’ that back in?” he said. “I go crazy if it’s too quiet.”

  Cringing inwardly, Crisp stuck the plug in the outlet. The silence, sung to by the rhythm of waves and lilt of seagulls, was swept away by a bulldozer of noise. The boy smiled and crawled back under the boat. Crisp left the building, shut the door as tightly as possible, and made all the haste his legs would allow to separate himself from the scene.

  Marky Williams had exaggerated when he said there were fifty ways into the barn, but there might as well have been. Time had burgled the huge cast-iron hinges on the barn doors, lowering the left door two to three inches into the soil, where it had taken up permanent residence. The right-hand door was held closed by a two-by-four, one end of which was wedged under a wooden bracket that seemed to have been made for the purpose, the other stepped deep in the ground. It took a good deal of effort to remove it. This done, the huge door sprang open about six inches, then stopped abruptly.

  Crisp, who had leaped out of harm’s way, tugged the door open a little more and stuck his head inside.

  The air was thick with pleasant smells. Hay. Kerosene. Paint. Ancient, dry wood. Hemp. Sawdust and sea salt. The wind, having nowhere in particular to go, sneaked in at odd angles through broken windowpanes and numerous cracks and crevices in the walls and tossed the smells together in an aromatic salad. Bird droppings and feathers covered every surface, silent memorials to the generations of sparrows and pigeons that had made their home in the rafters.

  The roof had held up well. It was dry inside the barn.

  Crisp took inventory as he made his way gingerly over and around the decaying remains of an old ice sled, a weather-beaten dory, and a ’28 Ford roadster. Two wooden canoes with wickerwork seats were tucked among the rafters overhead, together with fishing poles, several sets of rawhide snowshoes and cross-country skis, and other items long enough and low enough to be suspended between the crossbeams. A workbench occupied the entire north wall and was littered with every imaginable implement conceived for the purpose of putting together or tearing apart. Hundreds of capless jars held thousands of rusting screws, nails, washers, bolts, cotter pins, and the congealed remains of various pungent fluids, some of which had fused with the paintbrushes, stirrers, and rags that had been placed in them and forgotten.

  The two-horse stall at the opposite end of the stru
cture had become a catchall for everything that couldn’t find a proper home among the chaos. A row of decrepit windows over the workbench barred entrance to all but the weakest wash of sunlight, giving the scene a Wyethian aura, that of a world frozen in time and forever beyond waking.

  A three-quarter wall of vertical pine boards ran the length of the building immediately to Crisp’s right. Its surface, too, was crowded with the relics of a hundred years. License plates and calendars. Double-ended saws. Ropes, chains, and wires. Cracked mirrors and empty window frames. Door frames. Bedsprings. Air pumps. Inner tubes. Wheelless bicycles and broken toys. All the things someone meant to fix one day and never got around to.

  The wall was punctuated by three doors ten to fifteen feet apart, and Crisp was determined to examine each room in sequence.

  The first had once been home to the groom or stable boy. An iron spring-frame cot lay against the right-hand wall, covered with equine flotsam. A plain wooden washstand, wearing its nonmatching chipped porcelain bowl and pitcher at a jaunty angle, stood on tiptoe trying to peek out the window. A small rectangle of carpet was the room’s only concession to comfort. Otherwise, austerity, if not monasticism, seemed to be the decorator’s motive genii.

  The world had been a different place when the dust in this room was last disturbed. It felt like a museum display, the only difference being there was no velvet rope to keep the present at bay.

  Crisp closed the door on his way out. Whatever ghosts resided there were not his to trouble.

  Access to the second room was barred by the Ford roadster. Crisp climbed in the driver’s side, slid across the crushed velvet seat, rolled down the passenger window, and examined the door to the room. Ancient movie posters and risqué picture postcards from France were thumbtacked to it in profusion. Wedging his head and shoulder between the car and the door, he was able to extend himself enough to reach the thumb latch. It clicked easily up and down, but the door didn’t open. He removed a shoelace and, tying the latch open, lay back across the seat with his feet sticking out the window. He placed them against the door and pushed until it squeaked open enough to offer a provocative glimpse into the room.

  A glimpse was sufficient to suggest that ingress had been impeded by design, and that he had doubtless not been the first to gain entry via the roadster. This was the boys’ secret room. The clubhouse. The haunted mansion. The vestibule of ill repute. The smoking room. The hiding place. Their own Barbary Coast with all its delicious promise of iniquity.

  Crisp poked his head through the door as far as possible. It was dark. Such places always are. Over the years the sun had managed to poke a few holes through the tattered green shade that covered the window, but there was not enough light to see what all the whispering was about, only enough to suggest shapes in the darkness and the sins of the past. Cigarette butts and cigar ends, their stale perfume long since absorbed by scolding breezes, rested on can lids and mason jars.

  The walls hosted a varied exhibit of pornography through the ages. The subject of even the most recent of them was a grandmother by this time. Crisp didn’t need to investigate this room any further. Its secrets were those that boyhood, in all its splendid perfidy and inconsistency, held in common. He had been a boy once, and, like many men, had spent most of his life fleeing the memories of its clinging pleasures.

  He closed the door, rolled up the car window, slid across the seat, got out, closed the door—locking it first—and brushed off his hands.

  The third and last door stood wide open. Directly opposite it was an oversized outside door, opening onto the pool patio. Here the debris was less antiquated, indicating recent use. There was the customary abundance of unrelated junk, but garden tools and custodial implements formed the bulk of the inventory, which included a well-used golf cart. The doors of a crude wooden wall cabinet stood open, revealing work gloves, boxes of Miracle-Gro, and an assortment of mosquito repellents and insecticides. Below this, behind a stack of screens and old storm windows, was an old steamer trunk, covered with autographs and pasted with playbills, train ticket stubs, and theater tickets.

  Crisp’s heart raced as he noiselessly set aside the screens and windows. It wouldn’t do to attract attention. Not now. It wouldn’t do to have the juvenile junk music aficionado training his cyclopean eye on what was about to happen. And wherever Mostly was, Crisp hoped profoundly that he would stay there.

  The trunk was locked. The only thing in the building that had been. Perhaps the only thing on the estate, or the peninsula, maybe the whole island. It was a good sign.

  His fingers had a memory of their own. In twenty seconds he’d popped the lock. Without a sound. Without a sign. The lid issued a long rasp of relief as he raised it. The contents matched his suspicions so perfectly that he could almost have described them blindfolded.

  It was Trudy Rutherford’s theatrical kit, full of things that had been new when he was young. A large tortoise-shell hand mirror, lying face up atop a heap of feminine props, reflected Crisp’s keen eyes. There were numerous shoes and stockings, and here and there, floating free or half wrapped in tissue paper, were an assortment of wigs, pads, and similar devices that actresses use to supplement deficiency or minimize abundance. In the middle, like a crown on a velvet cushion, was a shoebox-sized wooden case. It was covered with gaudy silk brocade and rested among folds of costuming. He lifted the lid. A small battalion of glass makeup jars stood at attention, awaiting inspection.

  Pay dirt.

  The lid came off the first jar easily. Too easily. Its contents were cracked and dry, a miniature desert the color of mustard gone bad. The second was the same. The third yielded, but not without stern resistance. Its contents were supple. Almost fluid. Still usable.

  In all, there were eleven jars. Three had been left partially open and were useless. The rest were sealed tight and had been for a long time. Crisp put the three jars in his pocket, returned the rest to the case, and closed the trunk.

  “P’fessor!” The voice was unmistakably Mostly’s. “I thought somebody was in here when I seen that door open. Watcha up to?”

  Under most circumstances Mostly’s presence would not elicit stark terror. This was not one of them. Beads of sweat had formed on Crisp’s brow in an instant. The veins pulsed visibly on his wrists, and his heart was attempting to flee the scene via his mouth.

  “I . . . I . . .”

  The village of Eze sits atop a barren hill in southern France, near the Italian border. In recent times it has become an artists’ colony, a tourist trap. In the days immediately after World War II, however, nearly deserted and rat infested, it formed the backdrop for darker deeds. Stephen Caton had been stabbed in the back one night while attempting to retrieve a roll of microfilm from the baptismal in an abandoned church that squatted on the hilltop.

  Crisp had found Caton there, still warm. Blood hadn’t had time to congeal around the blade of the curved dagger that stuck in his back. His eyes, staring orbs of horror, bulged toward the crucifix-shaped vacancy on the blackened wall at the back of the chancel as if glimpsing hell and begging forgiveness. Crisp couldn’t help but wonder if he’d received it. The body had to be moved so he could see if the microfilm was still in the small cleft above the baptismal spigot.

  It was there—in the dead of night, with a Luger in one hand, Caton’s body in his arms, and knowing that the murderer wasn’t far away, possibly in one of the shadows cast by holy ruins—that Crisp had last sweat. It was the last time he’d been caught.

  Perhaps he’d lost his touch. At any rate, Mostly wouldn’t pay the price that was paid that night. Another waxwork.

  “You startled me,” he confessed.

  Mostly, his thumbs hooked around the halters of his overalls, arched an eyebrow and nodded knowingly. “You been gettin’ into things, ain’t you?”

  Although it had been a long time since Crisp last sweat, it had been even longer since he blushed. He did so now. “Well . . . I spoke to the young man in the boathouse. He said
the barn was open, and . . .”

  Mostly smiled. “I don’t care,” he said. “Look around all you want. You can take half this stuff home with you, as far as I’m concerned. Then take a match to the rest. Junk, most of it.” Crisp brushed off his hands. “Find what you was lookin’ for?”

  “Half,” Crisp replied. He finished stacking the screens in front of the steamer trunk.

  “Mrs. McKenniston’s theater stuff?”

  Crisp nodded.

  “You found the key, then.” Crisp hadn’t used a key. His face showed it. Mostly bent over and rattled the ornate little key that hung on a hook on the side of the trunk. “Easier that way,” he said with a larger smile than usual. “Somethin’ to do with Mandy?”

  Crisp continued nodding.

  Mostly resumed nodding and fell silent for a moment. They both looked distractedly around the ghosts of McKenniston’s past. Each object was haunted by its own aura, the memory of the sights and sounds that had accompanied its days of usefulness.

  “You seen her up there, didn’t you?” Mostly said finally. He rarely said anything of consequence. Like the majority of natives, he would keep his thoughts to himself and take them to his grave. His communication with the world would thus be amiable but superfluous. These words had not come easily.

  “Who?”

  “Mandy.”

  “Where?” said Crisp. Once again his heart was straining in anticipation.

  “You know,” said Mostly. “Up to the cemetery.”

  Crisp grasped Mostly by the arm. “You saw her there?”

  “You did, too,” said Mostly. He writhed slightly, but Crisp didn’t relax his grip. He seemed unaware how hard he was squeezing. “I remember the look on your face.”

  Crisp’s head was swimming. He knew that the thin mental membrane separating fact from fantasy in his own mind had atrophied almost to nonexistence, but could his dreams even spill into the reality of those around him?

  Mostly’s stoicism was no proof against the hungry, desperate eyes that beseeched him for answers.