Doyle After Death (23 page)

I did, putting the lanterns down and traipsing through the low undergrowth, past several of the oversized bonsai—­and saw the wiry remains in the deep shadow under the silvery green foliage of another of those trees. Looked like a hawthorn tree to me.

We ducked our heads under the tree's branches. The shrubs and grasses had been trampled down under the tree—­maybe by a struggle. The wiry black remains lay on its back, soul spark flickering within the cage of its outline. The shape had its arms outthrust, fingers clawed, as if frozen in the act of trying to push someone away. It was definitely the remains of a man—­I was relieved it wasn't Touie Doyle. These remains belonged to a big man, with a round head, and when I looked closely at the face, though it was indistinct, I suspected I knew who it was.

Doyle was circling the tree, just outside the circle of its branches, looking at the ground. “Ah,” Doyle said. “His clothing.”

He reached down, retrieving something that had been tossed into the grass to one side. He held the discarded overalls up for me to see. “Higgs's overalls. I wonder how the murderer gets them to shed their clothes. It may well be that he renders them unconscious and undresses them. Then they wake when he's performing the last part of the operation . . .”

“Higgs,” I said, looking at the overalls.

“Undoubtedly. You'd best release what's left of him.”

“Higgs,” I said, picking up the remains. “I thought you were the bad guy here. But you weren't.”

The spark seemed to flicker frantically about, as if it understood me. Was it angry? Or just eager to be on its way?

“My apologies, Higgs,” I said. “Here you go.”

I lifted the lightweight frame of Higgs's wiry remains up, and bent its back over my right knee, opening up the rib cage.

The spark wriggled eagerly out through the widened gap, and out, then flew about for a few instants, flashing around us once, twice, circling the twisted bole of the tree . . . then it was off toward the west. It flew swerving to the right and left, but generally going . . . toward the mansion.

“Oh no,” I said. “You don't think Higgs is going to look for Merchant?”

“Yes,” Doyle sighed. “In a blind, forgetter's sort of way—­yes. Stupid of Higgs. But he was so obsessed with Garrett Merchant. The soul spark will hazily remember its association with Merchant, and, probably, wait around what's left of the mansion for him.”

“I doubt Merchant comes back there.”

“And Higgs will be a ghost on the old Merchant property, for a time. Perhaps a century or two . . .” He put his bag down, took the remains in his hands, carried them out from under the tree, turning them to catch the light. The sunlight glinted on traces of the “snail's track” material.

“Yes. Just the same.”

He brought it back to the tree and laid it down. “So much for Roscoe Higgs. He ran afoul of Charles Long.”

I looked at Doyle. “So . . . process of elimination? It's Long we're looking for?”

“I think it is. His association with the mansion, but . . . more than that . . .”

We walked back to the trail. I picked up the lanterns, and we started out, Doyle picking up the thread of his explanation as we picked up the trail. “ . . . I was about to get up a party to take Charles Long into custody for questioning, when Touie turned up missing. Perhaps he knew I was going to come for him. It may be that's why he took her. He might have
felt
my researching him. That's something that happens here—­read in the Journals about someone, and they can feel it. I was reading about him that night, after the psychic storm . . .”

“Charles Long!” The guy who'd formulated the mansion for Garrett Merchant. “You find something about him in the books we looked at during the storm?”

“I did. New ­people just arrived in Garden Rest usually get an entry in the books. Sometimes it's difficult to find the entry—­hence my use of the psychic charge from the storm. The books were still charged when I looked up Long. Information about a man or woman's Earthly life will arise in the book, if one writes about their appearance in the afterworld. One writes one's observations of the new arrival, the account they give of themselves . . . and the Journal seems to look them up in the Before. It offers more . . . it fills in their life and, most important, their
life pattern
. . .”

“You mean—­the book
writes itself?”

“Not . . . entirely. It's rather more of an ‘automatic writing' process. The spirit of Garden Rest's Journal is a collaborator, a co-­author—­and that author always knows more about the new arrival in the Before than we mortals do. But it does not know everything—­or more likely it chooses not to disclose everything. It seems to respect a soul's innermost secrets. But if one concentrates, sometimes a page opens, a disclosure that wasn't there before . . .”

“So it's like linking to hypertext.”

“Now you are speaking Greek to me, Fogg. However, if you were speaking Greek, I would understand you: I took the Greek prize in school. What is hypertext?”

“I don't think it matters much here. So you were looking up Charles Long?”

“Not at first! I was looking for information on the vagabond, ‘Ron', whose remains were found on the strand—­just below Gretchen's Overlook, as it happened. The Journal told me that ‘Ron' exhibited a habit of homelessness, of mistrust of being indoors. Perhaps agoraphobia, delusional thinking. The Journal indicated years of lonely wandering madness in the Before. His delusions were removed when he was aftered, but his fears came with him, and he was reluctant to leave the shore—­which made him a handy victim for someone needing to harvest his essences.”

“I don't like the sound of that ‘harvesting essence' thing.”

“Why, what do you suppose happened to Morgan Harris? His essences were harvested. And the same happened to Roscoe Higgs.”

He paused, his expression darkening. I knew he was thinking about what might happen to Touie.

After a few moments of traipsing on the pathway, he went on, “But who was the harvester? Who is the murderer? Then I came across the entry on Charles Long. There was nothing especially ominous in his behavior, when ­people encountered him here—­he represented himself as a professional man, with certain interests, and he was. The Journals confirmed that he had been an investor in buildings, back in the Before. Quite extensively. He had a degree in architecture but it seemed to be
acquisition
that drove him. He would buy the property, design the architecture himself, and find investors to build it. He would take a delight in seeing it built, and he would take money from it and immediately start another project.”

“You mean—­a real-­estate developer?”

“I suppose that's the modern American term.”

“A specialist in creating sprawl.”

“He went bust overextending himself on small shopping areas and building—­I did not quite absorb the term used.”

“Malls? Or—­mini-­malls?”

“Yes, I believe that was it. The journal revealed something about Long that he did not reveal to us: I take it that in the year 2008 there was an economic depression of some sort.”

“Yeah. A pretty steep recession.”

“Charles Long lost every penny in that downturn. He decided to use other ­people's money for his obsessions. He couldn't find legitimate investors so he tried to recoup with a pyramid scheme—­sheer fraud really—­and was arrested. He made bail but did not appear before the court . . .”

“He jumped bail?”

“Yes. Charles Long fled to Mexico—­and fell into building with substandard materials in Mexico City. There he ran afoul of a cartel trying to launder its money—­and was killed. Rather horribly. And there was something else—­symbols appeared in the book, superimposed over him. Occult symbols. He seems to have dabbled in ritual magic. Which is significant, you see. I take it there was a fascination with it, in the 1960s . . .”

“Lot of Bettie's friends were into it. I never knew anyone who tried it who wasn't broke. It never worked.”

“Not in the Before. Magical ritual doesn't work there, on Earth—­or scarcely. All sense of what ­people call ‘magic' is a really just a vague intuitive knowledge of the afterlands—­or is a communication with it, like
apportment
, and ectoplasmic manifestations at a séance. In the afterworld, what ­people think of as ‘magic' can become realer. Here, nature responds to mind as the magician wished it to in the Before. But one must die, first . . . to live in the land of true magic.”

“So Long got the usual books on magic rituals, and got into all that. The magic words and the pentagrams. I never could stand that stuff. Anything else?”

“That's all the information the books would provide on him, except that some former spouse apparently committed suicide.”

“While he was alive?”

“So I inferred. But, you see, there was a pattern in his life—­and it seems to be working itself out in the afterworld. That's what we look for here, to solve a mystery: the patterns that ­people followed compulsively in life . . . and which they may pursue blindly in the afterworld, until it shows them their mistake. Garrett Merchant's mansion seemed the work of someone compulsive. Long blamed its random growth on Merchant. He set it up so that Merchant drove it to lunatic extremes, from that bath. But I suspect the compulsion was Long's. In order to act on it, Long needs more than the energy the sun will provide him alone; he needs more than his own ectoplasmic essences to expend on his constant desire for expansion, for dominance of the land.”

“Ectoplasm? When you're formulating a house, you and the major—­you need ectoplasm?”

“It is one of the ingredients. We combine it with the energy of the sun and the fundament of the soil beneath us. But the ectoplasm is stored inside us. We have only so much between us to spare . . . Of course, the afterbody makes more, later, but it takes time and it's only so much . . .”

“So Long needed a lot more of it to satisfy his compulsion?”

“Yes. And there's more to that—­to his state of mind, than we know . . .”

“You're saying Charles Long is our murderer? Seems like a good fit. 'Specially when you put it together with the connection to the mansion—­and the fact that Long is the only one missing from there . . .”

“Do you recall the notebook we found? Morgan Harris's?”

“Sure. You didn't mention it again. I thought you hadn't found anything else on it.”

“Something that took me a while to connect with Long. A single red thread. A very distinctive shade of scarlet. Do you remember?”

“Yeah. The dry-­goods place. He bought . . . scarlet thread.”

“Yes. I was looking the notebook over, just before I realized that Touie wasn't there. I found the thread—­I'd missed it before—­then I realized she was missing. After that, it took me some time to have the clarity of thought to make the connection.”

“But why Morgan Harris, particularly? Why'd Long pick him? Just at random?”

“I suspect not quite at random, Fogg—­in a way, Morgan Harris picked himself to be a victim without meaning to. You recall the scuffle marks by the path—­as if two men had been pushing at one another?”

“Yes.”

“Then farther along, there was Harris's botanical notes. Suppose that Morgan Harris was coming out of the swamp where he'd been doing his botanical research. Harris then saw a curious thing—­Charles Long dragging a wounded animal along through the marsh. Long was taking it to a spot where it could catch enough sunlight, yet be screened from the village. As Harris watched, Long performed his deformulation on the poor creature. It was a terrible thing to see . . . and Long did not want anyone to see it. Perhaps it does not break our laws to deformulate an animal—­perhaps. But Long had other plans, too. He didn't want anyone to trace a line from this act, to those later acts. And then Long saw Morgan Harris! Long realized that Harris had seen it all! He confronted Harris—­and Harris tried to push past. There was an impasse for a few moments. In the process a red thread from Long's costume found its way into Harris's pocket and onto his notebook. And Morgan Harris ran, the notebook falling from his coat after a few steps. Long pursued Harris. And somewhere, near the village, he caught him. He rendered Harris semiconscious—­I suspect by the same occult means he used on Touie. Then he carried him around the village, and up into the hills. It must have been a difficult task, but as you must have noticed, we do not become winded here. It's no great thing to carry a two-­hundred-­pound weight in the afterworld.” He paused, as if trying to visualize the scene. “It was dark by the time he carried Harris up to where he could get the last rays of light—­and where he could use the full energies of the atmosphere. Gretchen's Overlook. When he was almost done deformulating Harris on the overlook, Long was interrupted.”

“Fiona told Diogenes she'd seen something going on, up on the Overlook. The old guy must have hurried up there, and Long realized he was coming.”

“Yes. And long was afraid of Diogenes. He couldn't deal with
him.
And he didn't wish to be seen disposing of the remains. So Long simply ran, before Diogenes arrived. Diogenes did not see him. While somewhat prescient and wise, Diogenes is not all-­knowing.”

The sun lit the tops of the small trees, turning green to blue-­white, as if imparting the stuff of souls to the leaves; the boulders cast shadows and seemed to hum inside themselves as the declining light soaked into them. I thought at times that the boulders seemed carved, almost like weather-­worn stone heads from colossal ancient statues. But when I was sure I made the faces out, a moment later they melted away as our passage made the light shift.