Crying Child (28 page)

Ran was beginning to fidget.

“I don’t want to rush you, Will, but if we’re going to spend any time in the library…”

I used to think of libraries as friendly, cozy places. But they can be eerie on a foggy night, when there are only three people in all the empty spaces. The fog seeped in through closed windows; long pale streaks of it drifted down the shadowy aisles of the stacks. Footsteps echoed in those tunnellike areas. The musty, dusty smell of books, which is usually one of my favorite smells, took on a different significance in the gloom and seeping fog.

In the 1840s, the island had not boasted its own newspaper, but Richmond, the nearest mainland
town, put out a weekly. Ran explained that it was our best bet. The Portland newspaper might have carried Hezekiah’s obituary, since he was a fairly prominent citizen, but it was unlikely that they would print less important island news—certainly not the news of the death of a servant.

It was Miss Smith’s obituary we were looking for. Ran had already seen the notice of Hezekiah’s death; the clipping was among the family papers in the museum.

“I should have thought of a newspaper then,” he admitted in disgust. “But the clipping was separate. Whoever cut it out didn’t even include the name of the paper.”

We were working with microfilm copies, not originals, but as soon as Ran saw the type and general setup of the pages, he was fairly sure that the notice of Hezekiah’s death had been cut from this paper. We had to go through all the 1846 issues to reach the month in which Miss Smith had passed away, so when Will, who was operating the viewer, found Hezekiah’s obituary, he stopped the machine, so that Ran could verify his assumption. Will and I hadn’t seen the clipping, so we hastily scanned this copy of the obituary. Will is a faster reader than I am; I was still plodding through the names of local dignitaries who had attended the funeral when I heard him burst out with a single expressive expletive. It brought
Ran back from his nervous pacing, and at the next moment my slower eyes found it too.

At the end of the column, the editor named the surviving relatives. There were a brother in Ohio and a sister in Rhode Island. The names of Hezekiah’s wife and children followed. And last on the list was the name that had caused Will’s outburst: “And his adopted son, Kevin.”

II

“I swear it wasn’t there,” Ran said in utter bewilderment. “The clipping I saw ended…yes, right there. Third line from the bottom.”

“Someone cut the last lines off,” I said. “But why? Adopted son…Good Lord, we never thought of that.”

“It makes sense,” Will said. The microfilm reader was still switched on; the yellow light, shining upward, cast the weirdest shadows across his face. “When did you say Miss Smith first makes her appearance—1840? Suppose she had just had the baby. Hezekiah adopts it and brings it home, from Boston or wherever; and with it he thoughtfully brings a nursemaid-governess.”

“Oh, I don’t believe it,” I said angrily. “Not even Hezekiah could do such a filthy thing. Why, it—it’s horrible. And there isn’t a scrap of proof.”

“Proof, hell. I’ve known of people being hanged on less convincing circumstantial evidence. Go ahead, Will. We still haven’t found Miss Smith.”

Will touched the switch and the pages began to glide past. The next item appeared only a few weeks later, but it wasn’t Miss Smith’s obituary. Will almost missed it. The headline didn’t include a name:

“Hope abandoned for missing heir.”

“Wait,” Ran said, and grabbed Will’s arm.

We read the story together, in fascinated silence.

Kevin Fraser, missing since Friday night, is now believed to have been swept to sea after falling from the cliff near the Fraser mansion. Young Fraser was last seen on Friday morning heading toward the cliff. A search party, led by Joshua Beale, found the only trace of the boy—his cap, caught on a shrub just below the edge of the cliff. Kevin was the adopted son of Captain Hezekiah Fraser, whose accidental death occurred less than a month ago. The captain’s will named the boy as one of his two principal heirs.

“Something a little pointed about that word ‘accidental,’ don’t you think?” Will suggested.

Ran was disturbed.

“My God, the poor little devil…How they
must have hated him. They even tried to wipe out the memory of him.”

“By ‘they,’ I gather you mean your ancestors,” I said. “Mercy and her son Jeremiah and all the rest. Ran, do you realize what you’re suggesting?”

“It fits,” Ran said. “It fits too damn well.” In the reflected light his face was ghastly. “He inherits a large chunk of the captain’s estate and a month later he disappears. Talk about motives for murder…”

“Not to mention motives for haunting,” I muttered. “Revenge? Oh, no, surely not—not a child…Justice, then? Is that what he wants? No wonder he cries…. How do you bring a murderer to justice when he’s been dead for almost a century—even if you could identify him?”

Will started the machine again.

“Aren’t you being a trifle melodramatic?” he said drily, without looking up. “If you are willing to admit a disembodied intelligence that survives physical death, you ought to concede the likelihood of a Justice which can cope much more effectively with sin than any human court.”

“And which is not deceived,” Ran said.

“All right.” I threw up my hands. “Maybe the child doesn’t want anything except peace. Don’t they say that violent death is a traumatic experience for the spirit? And time is meaningless in eternity. Maybe he’s still in a state of shock—lost.”

“That,” said Will, continuing to scan pages, “is why I part company with spiritualism. If their benevolent creator can let a victim suffer that kind of torment all those years…”

“You want logic,” I said angrily. “There isn’t any. None of this makes any sense. But there has to be some point….”

“Exactly. And so far we haven’t found it. We haven’t even found…Ah, yes. Here she is.”

“One week after the boy disappeared,” Ran said. “My God, it is like a curse. Isn’t there an old superstition about death coming in threes?”

“Now you’re being melodramatic,” I said. “It sounds silly, but to me this is almost reassuring. She must have been very close to the boy, whether she was his mother or not. And she must have felt guilt as well as grief. She was responsible for him; a baby like that, she should have watched him more closely.”

“What makes you think it was suicide?” Will asked.

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t buy three accidents within a month, all in the same house. What does the paper say? Ah—here you are. Empty glass and a bottle which had contained laudanum on the table beside her. The verdict…Hmmph. Accidental death?”

“Now wait a minute.” Will was several lines ahead of me. “They didn’t find a note, so they
charitably assumed an accident. She mightn’t have received Christian burial otherwise.”

“You call that beyond-the-pale grave Christian burial? Oh, all right. You’re arguing on my side.”

“I don’t know what I’m arguing for or against,” Will muttered, scowling at the page. “Those three deaths are too coincidental. They ought to be connected, somehow.”

“If it were a murder mystery, they would all be murders,” I said, with a lightness I assuredly did not feel. “You know, the thing the police call them.o. is the same in all three cases—making it look like an accident.”

Will gave me a warning jab in the ribs and I stopped talking; Ran’s grim face showed that he was taking all this seriously. I think the thing that bothered him most was the vindictiveness his family had displayed in wiping out all trace of the child. It had been deliberate; some record would surely have survived otherwise.

“Do you mind?” he said. “I can’t take any more tonight. And we’ve been gone long enough; I don’t like leaving Mary this late.”

Will switched off the machine.

“We’ve got all we’re going to find, unless we take a lot more time than we have at our disposal right now. Mary isn’t alone, surely?”

“Of course not, Anne is with her. But it isn’t fair
to expect her to cope with Mary if she gets one of her spells.”

“Funny thing,” Will said casually, as Ran turned out the lights and locked the door. “I ran into a guy today, at the hospital, who used to know Anne in med school. He asked me about her husband. I said so far as I knew she wasn’t married, and he seemed surprised. She was engaged when he knew her, to another student, and it was quite an affair.”

“She was married,” Ran said. We went down the steps and walked toward the car. “For less than a year. The guy who recommended her to me told me about it. Her husband was killed in Viet Nam—or was it Korea, back then? She was badly shaken up. Had a breakdown. It was that that made her decide to go into psychiatry.”

Right then I got the first faint prickle of alarm. I couldn’t understand why I felt uneasy, but my subconscious must have been working on it. I remembered that it had been Anne’s suggestion that had sent us to the library that evening. I remembered Mary’s acquiescence—eagerness, even. I remembered certain things that had been said—and the look on a woman’s face as she stared out a darkening window. And I knew, all at once, why Anne’s face had reminded me of something. The resemblance had not been one of physical features.
It had been an expression. The same expression, on Anne’s face, that I had seen one other night on my sister’s face as she stared out into the darkness where the crying child had its existence.

I caught at Ran’s arm as he stopped the car in front of the librarian’s house.

“Ran. Did Anne say anything more to you about holding a séance?”

“No…You mean lately? Not since that first time she mentioned it, and we all decided—”

“She’s mentioned it to me several times,” Will said. “Jo, what is it?”

“I’m overanxious. I must be. But tonight—she did seem glad to have us go, didn’t she? She said it was her last night. She said—oh, God, what was it she said? ‘I don’t dare believe it; you don’t know what it would mean to me—’ Will. You don’t think—”

“I think we’d better get back to the house as fast as we can. Never mind the key, Ran; let’s get moving.”

Ran drove that road like a madman, and I kept urging him to go faster. In the faint glow from the dashboard his face looked like a death mask, and he never spoke a word. I kept babbling. I couldn’t stand the silence.

“There’s another theory, one we never considered. Suppose she’s the murderess—Miss Smith? Hezekiah died in that room, falling down those
stairs. A man like that, who had walked his quarterdeck in gales and storms, tripping on a stair? Suppose she pushed him. Suppose she hit him, with a poker or something, and made it look as if he’d fallen. The child might know. She would have to dispose of it to keep it from talking. Remorse, suicide—or maybe one of the family found out the truth and took the law into his own hands, to avoid scandal. I can see Mercy doing it, she must have hated the woman anyhow. Ran, can’t you go any faster?”

We met only one car on the road. It let out a long startled bleat of its horn, which faded as we swept past. Then we were among trees, swinging up the private road. The trunks loomed up and vanished like colossal columns in a pagan temple. And then, after far too long a time, we were in front of the house. Ran drove straight across the lawn. He was out of the car before the engine died, and we were right behind him.

Jed met us in the hall. His somber face lit up at the sight of Ran.

“Glad you’re back,” he said, in what was clearly an understatement.

“Where are they?” Ran demanded. “Where’s Mary?”

“They went upstairs an hour ago,” Jed said. “I thought they went to bed. But Bertha went up a while back, just to check, and neither of them was in her room. I’m afraid—”

Ran made an inarticulate sound and started up the stairs. He, like the rest of us, had no doubt as to where to go.

The lights on the fourth-floor landing were on. That was the only sign that anyone had come this way. Everything was quiet; the tower door was closed. Then I heard a voice—it was Anne’s, I learned later. I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was calm and regular, with a cadence almost like that of poetry.

The feeling hit me then—the same icy chill I had felt before, and with it came the sick malaise that was a sickness of the soul rather than the body.

I forgot that the others hadn’t felt it, at least not so strongly. I saw Jed recoil, and saw the perspiration break out on Ran’s face. He grabbed at the doorknob. It turned, but the door didn’t open. They had barricaded it from within.

They heard us—or something heard us…. Anne’s voice rose, its tempo increasing; and from within the room there was a sickening grating groan and then a sob—a long, sobbing wail, the same sound we had heard before.