The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library

“Then you think this was an accident?”

The detective looked at me strangely. “What else?”

His tone didn’t imply that he was suddenly suspicious—more like I was paranoid to suggest anything else.

“Look, Mrs. McClure. It’s pretty clear what happened here. Mr. Chesty there—”

“Chesley,” I corrected. “His name was Peter Chesley.”

“The deceased lost his balance on the stairs.”

“But—”

“His cane was at the top of the stairs. You did say that was his cane, correct?”

I nodded. “But Peter told us he hadn’t gone up those stairs in a year. He said he was too weak to try.”

Kroll shrugged again. “Maybe he wasn’t telling you the truth.”

“He said he had his bedroom moved down to the first floor,” I told him. “Peter said that he was sleeping in a small room off the kitchen.”

Douglas Kroll turned his head. Officer Durst was standing nearby. “You hear that, son?” Kroll asked.

“I did, Detective. I found a bedroom, right next to the kitchen.”

“See!” I cried. “Why would a man as wealthy as Mr. Chesley sleep in a tiny room next to the kitchen if he could climb the stairs?”

“Why would a wealthy man live in a dump that’s falling apart?” Kroll asked, then glanced at his notes. “Anyway, your statement and your aunt’s match up.” He turned to Durst. “You can bring Ms. Thornton back in.”

“What about the 911 call?” I asked. “Officer Durst told me he was responding to a distress call. But I didn’t make it. Neither did my aunt.”

Detective Kroll nodded. “I already checked with dispatch. The call definitely came from this house. A male voice.”

My jaw dropped. “Then the killer was in this house. We might have nearly caught him in the act—”

Detective Kroll squinted. “Now why would you assume that? Look, ma’am,” Kroll continued in the most patronizing tone imaginable, “this same kind of thing happened last year to that fellow over at Bellecourt Castle. He was as old as this geezer—I mean, the unfortunate Mr. Chesley, here. The old fellow who owned Bellecourt, well he got away from his handlers and took a walk around the castle. He was suffering from Alzheimer’s, experienced a bout of mental confusion—”

This guy knows all about mental confusion, griped Jack.

“—And he tripped on the rocks and broke his neck.”

“But who called 911?”

“I’m going to get the transcript of the call, and maybe even a tape the first thing in the morning, but you know what I think?”

I frowned. “No. What?”

“I think the deceased made the call because he felt faint or dizzy,” Kroll said with a touch of smugness. “Or maybe he was even feeling the beginning stages of a stroke or heart attack. Then maybe he went upstairs for his pills, or maybe he just got confused. The stairs are wet, the geezer looks shaky to me. Down he came.”

Sounds reasonable on his end. But that doesn’t make it true.

I was about to argue some more with Kroll when the library door opened. Officer Durst led my aunt out. She hurried to my side.

“Here’s my card,” Detective Kroll said, thrusting it into my hand. “If you have any questions, give me a call. I have your address and your statements. You can both go home. My department will contact Mr. Chesley’s family and notify them of his passing…”

Neither of us spoke as we headed for our car. It took a few minutes for me to maneuver around all the emergency vehicles, but I managed. We were through the gate and a mile down the road before Aunt Sadie broke the silence.

“Do you think Peter’s fall was an accident?”

“No,” I said softly.

“What do you think happened?”

“I…I don’t know…the detective’s got a lot of reasonable answers for what happened to him, but I know that I heard someone upstairs. And I just can’t believe your friend climbed those stairs under his own power—or called 911 himself, for that matter, unless he was afraid of being attacked and called the police for help.”

The vote’s unanimous, Jack said. Gramps didn’t die by accident, he was shoved into his coffin.

“But, Pen, what can we do about it?” Sadie asked.

I squeezed the steering wheel, unhappy to face reality, but the Newport police were all over this case and, to me, Peter Chesley was a virtual stranger. In the end, I had a business to run and a little boy to raise.

“Nothing,” I finally told my aunt. “There’s nothing to be done.”

CHAPTER 5

The Dreamer

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

—Edgar Allan Poe, “A Dream Within a Dream,” 1827

LATER THAT NIGHT, buried under a pile of bedcovers, I tried not to lie awake, repenting my decision—and failed.

After Sadie and I had arrived home, I drove our part-time clerk Mina Griffith back to her dorm room at St. Francis College, paying her double-time for baby-sitting Spencer. Finally, well after midnight, I returned home and collapsed.

Now I lay on my mattress, eyes wide. Across the shadowy ceiling, the stripped-down limbs of our hundred- year-old oak became a bacchanal of dancing skeletons. Down the street, the long, tubular chimes, hanging from Mr. Koh’s grocery store awning became a melancholy specter, moaning on the storm’s dying wind.

Need a bedtime story, baby?

“Jack?”

Well, it ain’t Clark Gable.

I closed my eyes and sighed, happy to hear his voice. “Strange,” I whispered.

What?

“I never would have thought there’d be so many things in life more disturbing than talking to a dead man.”

Such as?

My eyes opened again. I turned onto my side, punched my pillows, then hugged one to me. “I can’t get the image out of my head.”

You mean, Peter Chesley’s broken old body, lying at the base of the staircase he couldn’t climb?

“Don’t, Jack.”

Don’t what?

“Don’t push me to pursue this.”

You’re the one who can’t sleep, sister.

“Yes.”

But it’s not just because of Old Man Chesley, is it?

“No.”

Reminds you of another body, doesn’t it?

“Yes.”