Tightrope Walker (18 page)

The possibilities were fragile but my hopes were rising; I had convinced myself now that Hannah had hidden the sequel in the box room. It might no longer be there but I knew with absolute certainty that I couldn’t leave for Trafton in the morning without looking for it. Even the remotest possibility of finding an unpublished Gruble manuscript—the missing sequel to
The Maze in the Heart of the Castle
—left me shaken. If it was there—poor Joe, I thought, to miss such a triumph!

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly four o’clock and I’d promised Joe that I’d leave early tomorrow. I didn’t think I’d be able to find Bob Tuttle in his real estate office at this hour and, even if I did, I wondered how I could possibly explain my interest in taking apart the box room. I sat down on the bed and thought about this problem, and of course there was only one solution, which I accepted very calmly.

I drove first to a hardware store and purchased what I needed, and then I headed for Carleton, conscientiously remaining inside the speed limit to please Joe. I passed Simon Pritchett’s General Store, veered right at the intersection on to Tuttle Road, and turned into the driveway of Hannah’s house. I drove the car across the grass and around to the rear, out of sight, and cut the engine. Climbing out, I grasped the flashlight and the tool kit I’d bought, and prepared to burgle Hannah’s house.

Morally I felt relatively sanguine about committing this illegal act, for the crusading spirit was high in me and I thought that if pressed hard I could always buy
the house, although all I wanted from it was a manuscript. But I soon discovered certain practical drawbacks to the tidy professional job I’d planned. For one thing the wind was rising in that insistent and menacing way that suggests a brewing thunderstorm, and the back door, which I’d considered removing by unscrewing its hinges, was over-sized and built for the ages. Expediency won: after studying the situation I simply broke one of the small panes of glass in the door and reached inside to unbolt the lock. I told myself that, if I recovered a sequel to Hannah’s book, Bob Tuttle might forgive my larceny but just in case he didn’t see things my way I would place ten dollars in an envelope and mail it to him in the morning.

Once inside the house the cold hit me like a fist, a flat damp cold that had been building for eight months and needed more than a few warm days to dispel. I was surprised at the difference that companions had made on my earlier visit. For instance, as I left the kitchen and passed the door to the cellar, I could feel prickles run up and down my spine as if four murderers walked behind me, and at any moment I might hear Hannah’s scream. The house was not at all quiet, either; every board that I put a foot on sent out a small groan of protest in the cold, and the wind outside wrapped itself around the exterior and made whispery moaning sounds. I hurried up the staircase to the second floor and here I found it so dark that I had to turn on my flashlight: I didn’t like this, either. Only one thought kept me going: Hannah’s manuscript
In the Land of the Golden Warriors
, and what Joe would say if I found it after all these years. It would certainly be a smashing denouement to our trip north. I could picture his explosion—“Amelia, you
promised
!”—and then his quick, marvelous smile, a hug, a kiss and about three minutes of intense questioning during which I would be given
a few hints as to how wonderful I was, how intelligent, and how clever.

I opened the door to the attic and propped it wide with a brick in spite of its having neither lock nor key. I walked up the several steps to the box room, which Bob Tuttle had left unlocked, and opened the door and walked in, closing it behind me to shut out the darkness and the sounds of wind.

Hannah
, I said silently,
I’ve come back.

It was dim and silent in here; I switched on my flashlight and placed it on the bureau, and then with the screwdriver I’d brought I began to remove the rear panel of the bureau. This didn’t take long because the back had been made of cheap wood that began to splinter before I’d removed two of its screws. I felt a little foolish when it was done: the bureau was quite simply a bureau, and empty at that.

Carrying the flashlight with me I went down on my hands and knees and started examining the wide oak floor boards, but I succeeded only in adding a decade of dust to my skirt and hands. The floor had been well made and I couldn’t even find a squeaky board or a telltale scratch. With a sigh I gave up on the floor as a repository and turned my attention to the bed. I pulled aside the flannel cover to the mattress and ran my hands over its break-neck lines: there were holes, bulges, and a complete redistribution of whatever cheap mattresses are stuffed with: an atrocious thing to lie on. My hands explored every deviation; I turned the mattress over and began again.

Suddenly as I probed a particularly devilish hole in the mattress my fingers encountered resistance down near the foot; there was a difference in texture here, too, from the wads of compacted stuffing I’d groped through. I thought,
It has to be, it has to be, dear God please let it be
.… My suspense was so unbearable that
I gave up my polite tuggings and feverishly ripped the surface of the mattress into shreds.

And there it was:
perhaps two hundred sheets of white paper tightly rolled up and bound by string. I tore off the string, unrolled the pages and saw neatly typed on the first sheet:
In the Land of the Golden Warriors
, by H. M. Gruble.

I had found Hannah’s sequel. I was actually holding it in my hands.

I sank down on the remains of the mattress and ran the flashlight over the first few pages. Colin’s name occupied almost every paragraph, which delighted me, because Hannah
could
have jumped ahead in time to Colin’s children, or chosen another character from the first book, like the prince of Galt, or Serena, but my beloved Colin was here, and apparently only two years older. I couldn’t wait to read it. I began eagerly, “One morning in the country of Galt, when the grass was silver with dew and the primroses scarlet in the meadows, a messenger on horseback rode up to Colin’s door with a message from the prince. Colin was.…”

At that moment I heard the lock on the door to the box room snap with a strange ping! sound, and as I looked up in astonishment a floor board creaked on the landing and I heard the very definite sound of the outer door to the attic closing.

Someone was in the house with me.

I had been in a different world, totally immersed in Hannah’s book, and it took a moment to apply intelligence to this improbable discovery. My mind, for instance, absolutely rejected it and yet I noticed that my hands were trembling. My mind told me it was inconceivable that I was not alone; I had entered an empty house, no one had known I was coming here, no one knew that I
was
here, and therefore I was alone. I
had
to be alone.

My senses knew better: my heart was racing and thudding, my hands shaking and I was slowly breaking out into a cold sweat. I laid aside Hannah’s manuscript, tiptoed to the door and gently tugged at the knob. It resisted and I pulled harder—very hard—and now there was no doubt about it, I was locked inside. I put my head against the door and listened. I had the distinct feeling that someone was there, and I wondered if he or she were listening on the other side of the door. A faint sound reached my ears that I couldn’t quite identify, a crackling noise, as if someone was crumpling up very stiff paper, and then I heard a floor board creak some distance away, as of someone leaving. My mind told me that I should call out, scream, shout, there had to have been a mistake, possibly a caretaker or the real estate agent checking the house, but my senses told me to be quiet and think, because I was in grave danger.

I am not proud of the several minutes that followed: I must have given a great deal of nourishment to Amman Singh’s demons who feed on violence because my thoughts were dark and grim. I paced, wept, and apologized profusely to Joe, who must have guessed I might do something irrational like this. It did not escape me that my mother had died in an attic and now, irony of ironies, I was to die in an attic, too, and in exactly the room where Hannah.…

But Hannah hadn’t died here, I remembered. Nor had she, I realized, suddenly galvanized by the thought, possessed a tool kit for breaking and entering.

This punctured my spasm of self-pity. My hysteria subsided and I crept to the door and listened again to find out whether anyone was waiting around to learn what I’d do. This time there was only silence and I set to work at once. Pulling the bureau over to the door I climbed on top of it, carrying screwdriver and hammer,
and looked over the possibilities. I found the top hinge of the door and applied my screwdriver to its screws but they’d been painted over so many times that the tool found no leverage. I gave this up and inserted the blade of the screwdriver into the dry wood under the hinge, hammered away at the handle until it prised up one corner of the hinge, and at last saw the hinge pull loose from the wall.

As the door shuddered from the loss of the one hinge I smelled smoke for the first time.

“Smoke!” I cried furiously, and felt my hands begin to shake again.

It was, of course, a very shrewd maneuver to set Hannah’s house on fire; there had always been the possibility that the real estate agent would find me before I died of thirst. Obviously I had only an ordinary criminal mind, given to common things like burglary; I lacked the cunning of a killer, and whoever had locked me into the box room wanted me dead. This in itself was a shock.

The smoke, I saw, was seeping lazily in under the door now. I realized that this was the sound I’d heard earlier, not paper but the kindling of a fire somewhere outside, and now the smoke had found me. A very thorough killer, I thought, enraged by his ruthlessness. It seemed a miracle to me now that I’d only broken a glass to get into the house; if he’d known about the tool kit he would never have gone off and left me.

I tore off the scarf around my throat, tied it over my nose and mouth and went to work with a fury on the remaining hinge. When I freed it, the door sagged open, and then nearly fell on top of me as it tore away the lock as well. The landing was thick with smoke. Choking and gagging I grabbed Hannah’s manuscript and my purse, found the attic door, and pushed it open. Here I nearly fell over the large pile of flaming rags
on the threshold. Nothing beyond it appeared to be burning, but the stench of gasoline and smoke set me coughing wildly again. I made one flying leap through the fire and raced for the stairs.

I had taken only two steps down when I heard the crackling noises below, and saw an astonishing brilliance illuminating the walls of the living room. I turned back and raced through the second-story hall until I found a bedroom overlooking the sunporch. I wrenched open a window, unhooked the screen, climbed over the sill, and jumped down to the roof. Here I paused for a better grip on manuscript and purse before I crept to the farthest corner of the roof and jumped again, landing in a bush on the ground and rolling over once. I picked myself up and ran around the corner of the house to my car.

The van was gone.

I stood staring blankly at the space where I had parked the van with its ignition locked. Here was still another shock to my already dazed mind: my van had completely disappeared.

A small explosion inside of the house—no more than a muffled
blop
reminded me that at any minute the house could blow up; I ducked and ran for cover.

From a copse of trees I looked back: the house still stood, inviolate, its exterior untouched, but from where I’d paused I could see the intense brightness of flames raging behind the windows. When I saw a tongue of flame curl out of one window and lick the clapboards I turned and ran. I had reached the intersection when I heard the scream of the town’s fire alarm.

The thunderstorm struck before I had walked a mile, and I had five more miles to go. It didn’t occur to me to ask for help or call a taxi; I was officially dead and I knew I had to stay that way. Whoever had tried to kill me had carried away with him the assumption that
my charred body wouldn’t be found until the firemen sifted the ashes but I thought that he couldn’t possibly have followed me to Hannah’s house without a car. He would have taken my van to confuse both firemen and police but eventually he would have to come back to retrieve his car from whatever hiding place he’d found, and I didn’t intend him to see me, still alive, limping along the highway. I walked at the very edge of the road, and ducked behind a tree whenever I heard a car approaching.

I had been drenched a few seconds after the rain began, but this proved a minor irritant; worse, I had twisted my ankle when I jumped from the porch roof and now it began to throb painfully. I nursed it as well as I could, but most of all I nursed my anger. I had very nearly been dead and I still couldn’t adjust to the fact. I mean, how many people get locked into an empty house which is then set on fire? To be the object of so much hostility is difficult for one person to assimilate.

It took me almost two hours to limp to the motel and it was nearly dark when I reached it. My van was parked precisely in front of unit 18. Not in front of 16 or 20, or even the motel office, but squarely in front of number 18.

I had planned a hot bath; I had planned a dinner—after all, we’d eaten nothing but stale peanut butter crackers since breakfast—but finding the van at the motel, in exactly the right place, pushed me beyond reason. I unlocked the back of the van, made certain no one was hiding inside, climbed into the front seat, started the engine, and drove away. I had no idea where I was going; I only knew I was getting away from the Golden Kingfisher Motel, and from Anglesworth, as quickly as possible. I was leaving behind my suitcase with half of my clothes in it, my toothbrush, and an unpaid bill; I was dripping wet, shivering from cold
and terror, and my ankle throbbing, but at least I was still alive.

I stopped at a gas station five miles out of Anglesworth and while the tank was filled I noted the few cars that passed. Nobody seemed interested in either the van or me. In the back of the van I found a sweater and my blue jeans; I went into the ladies’ room, took off my dripping corduroy suit, rubbed myself dry, and changed into clean clothes. I bought a cup of coffee from the vending machine in the gas station and climbed back into the van. By the time I’d driven fifteen more miles I felt a little safer but utterly wrung out. I stopped at a motel called the Bide-a-Wee that had a restaurant attached to it, and ordered a large dinner which I proceeded to eat because I knew I must. After that I rented a room in the motel, paid in advance, and fell into an exhausted sleep as soon as I dropped across the bed.