Requiem for Ashes Read online

  "And the students," added Lane, lest mention of that contingent be scratched from the credits.

  "You'll need something to put them in. Let's ring for the nurse," said Miss Moodie, so doing.

  "How're you feeling, old man?" Lane shook Albert's hand.

  "This is Inspector . . . " Albert stuttered.

  "I'll be back some other time, Professor," said the Naples. "Thanks for the breakfast." He picked up his overcoat and, with an odd tap on the side of his nose with his forefinger, departed.

  "And up the chimney he rose," chuckled Miss Moodie. "What was all that about? Ah! Nurse. Some water please, for these flowers. And a vase, or a bedpan, or what-have-you."

  "Was he here about? Tewksbury?" said Lane who had taken the inspector's seat. "What happened last night?"

  "You've heard?"

  "Heavens, yes," chimed Miss Moodie on the hour. "It's everywhere. Old Tewksbury escaping, can you imagine!? What a lot of excitement we've have in our little . . . my, my, yes."

  "Where will he go?" Lane wondered.

  "He has no family."

  "His father," Albert corrected. "In Vermont."

  "Oh, my, yes. That's right. He was at the trial. You remember Walter, the poor old fellow who sat in the . . . Yes. That's right. Very sad."

  "I doubt he'd go there. Besides, they've got police all over the place. Roadblocks, too, I should imagine."

  "You should see!" said Miss Moodie, tasting just a morsel of scrambled egg and toast. "They're everywhere. Like a police drama on the telly. Nurse, these eggs are cold. Where did she go?"

  Albert looked at Jeremy Ash with thanks in his eyes, but cartoons were on, and real life got no notice. He looked at his plate. It was almost empty, but he was still hungry.

  "How's the old head?" Lane said.

  "Better," said Albert.

  "Everyone's asking after you," Miss Moodie continued. She spoke much more succinctly with her mouth full than Jeremy had. The benefit of practice. "This is really terrible. Hospital food." She cocked her eyebrow in judgment of the universal malady. "But you're back to your old self, and that's what matters.

  “Of course . . . it leaves certain questions begging . . . "

  "Before Gertie wears herself out beating around the bush, Professor, what happened to you? That's what everyone wants to know."

  Albert told them. Even cartoons paled momentarily by comparison.

  "Gracious me!" puffed Miss Moodie. "Who's ever heard of such a thing!"

  "Any idea who it was?"

  Albert shook his head.

  "This is positively thrilling! I mean, it’s terrible, of course, but . . . " said Miss Moodie. "We thought it was just an accident."

  "You're sure you didn't see anything?" said Lane. "I mean, there's nothing at all you remember that might give a clue as to who it was?"

  Albert thought carefully. He remembered the figure running down the hall, the black cape flowing behind it. That was all.

  "That's all," said Albert. "Maybe I've forgotten something."

  He looked from one to the other of his visitors. Miss Moodie was consuming the last of the toast. "Can't let this go to waste," she said. But Lane seemed suspended in midair. "I don't usually remember things." Lane dropped gently to the ground.

  Miss Moodie coughed. "Toast is dry as the Serengeti," she said. "Glad I et before I came." She dusted the crumbs of Albert's breakfast off her hands. "I suppose you've heard about Strickland?"

  Albert remembered Professor Strickland and wondered why he wasn't connected with the Law School. "What?"

  "He's been named to head Ancient History."

  "Just temporary," said Lane.

  "Means he'll be taking over the digs in Crete, though, once spring rolls around."

  Albert was struck by something quite apart from the conversation. "You live alone, don't you?" He was looking at Lane. "You're left-handed, and you cook with gas."

  The sudden turn down a narrow side street nearly threw Lane off the turnip truck.

  "What? Gas?"

  "Gas."

  Lane looked at Miss Moodie who was busy helping the nurse arrange the flowers in a vase to the accompaniment of a lecture on crisp toast and hot eggs. "As a matter of fact, yes, I do cook with gas."

  A thrill of revelation rattled through Albert. "And you live alone?"

  "Yes, but," Lane was suddenly uncomfortable under Albert's unabashed gaze. "What, Albert? You're looking at me like I forgot to put my pants on."

  "There's no light on your right side when you shave," said Albert aloud to himself. What could that mean? He related the observation to his own experience. "Your bathroom light isn't working. There's a window on your left."

  Lane shifted on the bed. "Do you hear this, Gertie? I think the concussion's made the Professor a mind-reader."

  "What?" said Gertie as the nurse departed, freshly weighted with orders for the cook. "Who?"

  "The Professor," said Lane. "He's a psychic."

  "How do you mean?" said Gertie, bending close to Albert and studying him over her glasses as if he'd just come down with spots. "He looks all right to me."

  "A psychic," Lane repeated. "How did you do that?"

  "Do what?" said Miss Moodie.

  Albert's excitement doubled. "Was I right?"

  "Right as rain, except about the window," said Lane. "There are lights on either side of my bathroom mirror. The right one blew out a few days ago. Haven’t had the chance to put a new one in. How did you do it?"

  "What did he do? What's all this about plumbing?" said Miss Moodie, a little offended that the conversation should have gotten so far without her.

  Albert had withdrawn to a separate level of consciousness, one where pleasant thoughts resided, if the smile on his face was any indication.

  "Remarkable," said Professor Lane. "I think we'd better let him get some rest. He's tired."

  "Well, I shouldn't wonder, what with . . . " Lane guided Gertie from the room by her elbow. "But he'll have to water the flowers regularly."

  "The nurse will take care of them," said Lane, who had been discomfited by Albert's scrutiny. "Let him rest."

  After they left the room, the sounds of the cartoons subsided. "Professor?" said Jeremy Ash. He'd pulled himself to a sitting position. "Professor?"

  Albert regarded his roommate distantly.

  "Professor?"

  Albert focused. "Yes?"

  "How did you do that?"

  "What?"

  "I was listening. What you said to that man about gas and the bathroom and living alone. How did you do that?"

  "I'm not sure," Albert said. "He was rubbing his hands together, and I noticed he had a lot of hair on the fingers of his right hand, here," he added, pointing to the first joint of his finger. "White hairs. But there was hardly any on the left hand, and what there was burnt, just like mine when I put the tea kettle on and turn on the gas. Poof! It stinks."

  "And since it was on his left hand."

  "He must be left-handed."

  "Unless he put the pot on with his left hand, because he was right-handed . . . and used his right hand to turn on the gas."

  "I hadn't thought of that," said Albert, who hadn't. "But I was right."

  "What about the bathroom light?"

  Albert stroked his growth of whiskers. "Something I read somewhere. Dr. Lane is a very well-dressed man; clothes are important to him. But there were places he missed shaving . . . only on the right side of his neck. So he must have had good light on the left, and bad light on the right."

  "Makes sense."

  "And he must live alone. He had no wedding ring. Besides, his wife would have told him to shave again." Miss Bjork came suddenly to mind. "Miss Bjork would have told him."

  What, Albert wondered, would the burns on his face and hands have told the very observant Detective Naples?

  Chapter Eight

  It was late afternoon when the doctor came in. Jeremy Ash was trying to explainI Love Lucy to Albert.

 
"Well, everything seems all right here. Everything under control, young man? Let's have a look, shall we?"

  The color drained from Jeremy's cheeks. Even Albert noticed. His face became set and determined. The doctor unfolded the curtain between them. A moment later Albert realized that not all the moaning he'd heard had come from the TV. Sympathetic tears welling in his eyes, he took off his glasses and stared at the wall.

  The doctor squeezed himself around the screen when the examination concluded. "We'll let young Mr. Ash get himself together. How's the head?" Without waiting for an answer, he began unwinding Albert's turban.

  Albert was not encouraged by the rows of rust-red stains surrounded by pale-green haloes that marked the trailing cloth. Dr. Williams pressed for a nurse. "Beautiful job of stitching, that," he said. "I got the design from a sewing book." Albert didn't laugh. "That was a joke."

  Albert thought the doctor's manner was forced and unnatural. He had something on his mind.

  The nurse came in with new bandages. By the time Dr. Williams had finished applying them, Albert had discovered that he was right-handed, smoked a pipe, drank beer, had been married a long time, and had a son who lived at 25 Highland Avenue in Terre Haute, Indiana. Furthermore he was farsighted and regarded with affection by the hospital staff. All this information had been acquired without a word of reference to any of it. It was amazing how much could be learned if one just looked.

  Righthandedness was easy to figure out. The smell of smoke on his breath combined with the lack of nicotine on his fingers made him a smoker from a distance - a pipe. His wedding ring was deeply embedded in the supple flesh of his finger. It had been there a long time.

  The doctor's physique suggested a penchant for beer, an impression greatly reinforced by the glow on his cheeks and nose. It had a Pavlovian effect on Albert's salivary glands.

  As for the son, each time the doctor leaned forward his coat bulged aside revealing a letter in his shirt pocket, from "Dr. John Williams, Jr." Finally, the pen with which he scribbled his notes on Albert's chart was gold and inscribed "to D.J.W., with love, from the staff of St. Mary's."

  Albert decided to take a bold step. "I'm sorry your son's not going to be a doctor."

  Dr. Williams started as if he'd been slapped in the face.

  He rolled back in his chair with the loose ends of Albert's bandage in his hand, like someone about to start a lawnmower.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Your son, in Indiana," said Albert. "He's decided not to be a doctor, hasn't he?"

  Williams's hand went quickly to the letter pocket. "You know my son?"

  “No.” Albert was ashamed. In playing his game he'd struck something deeply personal, and painful. "I'm sorry," he said, lowering his eyes. "I saw the envelope . . . the letter. It must be your son, 'Dr. Williams, Jr.'. But the 'Dr.' was crossed out in pen."

  For a moment Williams seemed unsure how to respond. The gaze he settled on Albert mixed confusion and wonder. It was a lesson Albert was never to forget.

  Williams let go of the loose end of Albert's bandage, so it hung from his head like the shroud on Marley's ghost. He took the letter from his pocket and turned it over in his hands. "Well, you deduced a hell of a lot," he said. "And you're right. He's dropped out of med school. I'd given him this stationery as a gift a year or so ago. Counting my chickens, I suppose. He never was too keen on the idea. My wife and I . . . well, I thought seeing 'Dr. Williams' in print like that might, you know, inspire him . . . but it didn't."

  The doctor raised his watery eyes to Albert's. "You deduced a hell of a lot," he said again. He put the letter back in his pocket and resumed his work in silence. "I'll drop in tomorrow, Professor," he said as he left the room.

  Albert called after him. "Doctor!"

  "Yes?"

  "When can I go home?"

  "Well, you could go now, if you wanted. I mean, we can't keep you here, you know. But I wouldn't advise it. Not for another two or three days. I want to keep any eye on that."

  "Could I go home, then come back? I need to take care of some things mail. Messages." Albert didn’t remember the last time he’d had mail, or a message. Huffy handled all that.

  "Do you feel up to it?"

  "Yes.”

  The doctor deliberated. "I don't imagine you'll do yourself much harm. You'll have to sign yourself out, you know. You're not under our care while you're gone."

  "Where?"

  "At registration downstairs. Just home and back, mind."

  Albert nodded. "Home and back."

  "Good."

  Once more the doctor turned to go. Once more Albert stopped him. "Dr. Williams I'm sorry . . . I'd like to . . . I mean I didn’t mean to . . . I'm sorry."

  Williams looked at him for a moment in silence, nodded with a half-smile and disappeared down the hall on soft-soled shoes.

  On his way out of the hospital Albert passed Tewksbury's room. The yellow police ribbon was stretched in front of the door, but the police were gone. Tewksbury was gone.

  It felt strange to be outside. The sun was out, but the air – instigated to indiscriminate acts of aggression by the winter wind – was bitingly cold. It felt good. Albert pulled his turbaned head a little further into the upturned collar of his coat and struck off through the shadowless waste of midday.

  First he went to the school to get some money but the person who usually had his envelope full of change wasn't there. They sent him to the bank where he had direct deposit. He'd never been to the bank before. He'd never had to. His rent was automatically deducted and someone else got all his bills. Huffy, he suspected. Maybe an accountant at the school. Someone.

  The bank reminded him of the Law School; a row of women stood behind a counter and thick windows of bullet- proof glass. There were no lines, but Albert still had to wait until one of the women finished telling the other women a story about somebody named Claudette.

  "I'd like some money, please," said Albert. He never forgot to say please.

  "I can't hear you," said the woman behind the glass. Albert could hear her perfectly.

  He bent down and repeated his request through the narrow gap between the window and the counter.

  The woman tapped a slotted metal disk in the middle of the window. "Up here," she said without further explanation. Albert pressed the disk firmly and waited for the money.

  "No . . . talk here. What do you want?" She'd heard what he wanted when he spoke under the glass, but that wasn't the right place.

  Albert pressed his lips to the disk and reiterated his request for the third time. He wondered how anyone ever managed to rob a bank.

  The tellers seemed a happy crowd, all smiling very actively at one another. And at Albert.

  "Account number?" said the woman.

  "I don't have it with me."

  "You don't remember it?"

  Albert couldn't tell if this was a question or an accusation; in either case it was preposterous.

  "Of course not."

  "Checking or passbook?"

  Honesty was the best policy. "I don't know," Albert said into the disk. It was cold on his lips.

  The teller had descended to the bottom of her very short rope.

  "What is your name, sir?"

  Finally, a sensible question! He told her and she entered it into the computer.

  "Here it is." Suddenly her demeanor changed. "Goodness! When was the last time you made a withdrawal?"

  "A what?" said Albert, afraid he'd done something wrong. "I didn't do it." He probably did.

  "You've got a substantial balance in your savings account!"

  "I didn't know that," said Albert. "I just need some groceries."

  Usually he just charged groceries to the school, but they'd be suspicious if he charged all he'd need for both him and Tewksbury. "How much are groceries?"

  The woman looked at the other women who had gathered around the computer screen to admire Albert's assets. "Well, I spend a hundred and twenty-five a week and I've go
t three kids."

  Tewksbury would equal three kids. "I'll take that," said Albert.

  "A hundred and twenty-five."

  "I'll need to see your driver's license."

  "I don't drive."

  "You don't drive?"

  "Ask for his Social Security number," said one of the other ladies. Albert heard her perfectly, too.

  "Does it have it in there?" asked Albert, pointing at the computer.

  "Yes, it does," said the teller.

  "Then that's it," said Albert. The Age of Reason hadn't passed.

  The teller went into a little glass room and said something to her supervisor, who replaced her minion at the window. "May we help you?" said the lady with an arch of the eyebrow.

  Even Albert's patience had a limit. "I've said all that to the other lady. I have money here, don't I?"

  "If you're who you say you are, yes," said the woman. "But you must appreciate that we can't just give you the money because you say you're you."

  Whoshould he say he was? Albert was just going under for the third time when he heard someone call his name.

  "I didn't recognize you for a moment, Professor," said the dark-eyed man. The voice was familiar. Professor Strickland. "You look like an Arab in that headgear."

  In response to Albert's bemused stare he said, "I don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm Michael Strickland, from Archaeology." Recognition wasn't immediately forthcoming in Albert's expression. "Ancient History? Tewksbury's colleague." The light was slowly coming on in Albert's reddened eyes. "I'm a great fan of yours."

  People often said that to Albert. Complete strangers would stop him on the street and ask for his autograph. He knew it had something to do with music, the records he'd made. One of music's unpleasant side effects. "Thank you," he said, etching his name on a deposit slip at the teller window and handing it to Strickland whose turn it was to be bemused. He looked at the paper and tucked it in his pocket.

  "Thank you, Professor," he said. He extended his hand. Albert had an idea. He took Strickland's hand and pulled him to the teller window.