Pascal shivered and tried not to think of Mr. Gere and what Mr. Gere had wanted him to do.
There was a thump and clatter out in the main kitchen and Pascal sprang from the bed and ran to the door. “Rick?”
An icy draft of air met him at the kitchenette and he glanced across the dim stretches of the main kitchen to the passageway that wound out to his spiderweb door.
A forty-watt security light burned over the stairs off to his left and something dark lay crumpled at the bottom. Half whimpering with terror, Pascal edged closer. “Rick?”
A moment later, with the bat clutched in his hand, Rick emerged from the dark hallway into the main kitchen and found Pascal shivering over a twisted bundle at the foot of the stairs.
“Dr. Shambley,” Pascal whispered.
Rick drew near. The ugly little man lay face up on the tiles, his eyes stared unblinkingly at the light, his lips were drawn back almost in a snarl.
“Is he dead?” asked Pascal.
It reminded Rick of finding a dead snake in the road. Neither wanted to touch him. Rick nudged Shambley’s head with the bat. It flopped to one side and they saw that his shaggy brown hair was matted with blood. Rick knelt down then. There was no pulse in the man’s lifeless wrist.
“Did you hit him?” asked Pascal. “I heard the bat.”
“No,” Rick said sharply. “Someone else was here, too-in the hallway. I ran after them but the bat banged into the wall and I dropped it. Whoever it was must have pushed him down the stairs and then run away.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Rick said grimly, “but we can’t leave him here.”
“Why, Rick?”
“Because they might think
“But we’ll just tell them we didn’t. I’ll call Mrs. Beardsley. Or Dr. Peake. They’ll know what to do.”
“No!” Rick looked at Pascal’s beautiful innocent face despairingly. “Look, if you call them, you’ll have to tell them I was spending the night with you and they wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re my friend.”
“I know, but most people would think that was wrong.”
“Wrong to have a friend?”
“Wrong to let him sleep over with you. They’d make something dirty out of it. They think everything is sex.”
“Oh,” said Pascal. He caught his lower lip between his teeth and nodded.
“We’ll take him up to the third floor and leave him at the bottom of the attic stairs. Those steps are steeper. They’ll think he tripped and fell up there.”
Still shivering, Pascal reluctantly agreed to Rick’s plan. Even though Shambley’s body was small, neither youth was strong enough to carry him very far. Instead, they rolled him onto one of the blue rag scatter rugs, loaded him inside the dumbwaiter, and hoisted him aloft.
Up on the third floor, they carried him across the wide hall to the foot of the uncarpeted steps and Rick tried to arrange those limbs into a natural-looking sprawl.
When they were finished, they lowered the dumbwaiter and, as a precaution, Rick stopped it at the butler’s pantry beside the dining room.
Back in the basement, they were left with a patch of sticky blood on the tiles where Shambley’s head had lain. They swabbed up the worst with the blue rag rug since it already had blood smears on it. While Pascal got a mop and scrubbed away the rest of the blood, Rick bundled up the rug, stashed it in one of the storage rooms, then returned to Pascal’s room to finish dressing.
“Aren’t you going to stay?” asked Pascal. His large blue eyes were frightened.
“Listen, Pasc,” Rick said seriously. “If you want to let’s stay friends, you have to do exactly what I tell you, okay?”
“Okay.”
It took almost a half-hour before Rick was certain the janitor had their story straight: they had gone to a movie, come back and listened to jazz for a while, then Rick had gone home at nine and Pascal had fallen asleep without remembering to set the burglar alarm.
“I could set it now,” Pascal said.
“Better not,” Rick said. “Otherwise they’ll ask you if you checked to make sure Dr. Shambley was gone.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“You didn’t see Dr. Shambley.”
“I didn’t,” Pascal agreed. “Not till-”
“Not at all,” Rick reminded him. “You didn’t see him since before the party, okay?”
“Okay. ” Pascal looked up at his friend trustingly. “I wish you could sleep over, Rick.”
“Another time,” he said and clasped Pascal’s shoulder as he stood. “I promise.”
At the spiderweb door beneath the main stoop, he drew on his gloves, pulled his collar snugly around his neck, and stepped out into the freezing night as Pascal locked the door behind him.
Shortly after eleven, Rick let himself into the apartment on the upper West Side. His grandfather usually went to bed early, but he was a light sleeper. Tonight, a muffled snore was all Rick heard as he crept past Jacob Munson’s closed door and gained the sanctuary of his own room. He expected to lie awake reliving the horror of the evening; yet no sooner did his head touch the pillow than he was instantly and deeply asleep.
Mrs. Beardsley awoke near midnight with a painful leg cramp. Groaning, she pushed aside the covers and made herself stand up and walk around the room until the spasms passed. Her bedroom faced Sussex Square and, though she told herself it was childish, she lingered at the window to watch the tall spruce tree turn off its lights. The automatic timer was set for midnight, and there was something magical about catching the precise moment.
There! The trees blaze of colored lights vanished, leaving only the old-fashioned gaslights to illumine the square. Pleased, she started to turn from the window when a movement diagonally across the park caught her eye. Someone was coming down the front steps of the Breul House. She strained to see.
Dr. Shambley?
No, Dr. Shambley was shorter than she and this man-if it were a man-was taller.
The figure came down the steps, head hunched into the turned-up collar of the topcoat, and hurried along the brick walk. At the corner, the figure became recognizable as he passed beneath the electric streetlight there, turned west at the corner, and disappeared from her view.
Now why, wondered Mrs. Beardsley, had Mr. Thorvaldsen come back to the Breul House so late at night?
Sigrid turned in the night and found her bed empty. “Nauman?”
The room was quite dark but there was a movement by the door. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“What time is it?”
“Not quite five. Go back to sleep,” he whispered.
She raised herself on one elbow and looked at the luminous clock dial in disbelief. “Five! Why are you up so early?”
“I couldn’t sleep and there’re things I need to do.”
He came and sat on the edge of the bed and gathered her into his arms. She smoothed back his hair and felt the rough stubble along his chin line. “Come back to bed.”
He kissed her then, a yearning, tender kiss that transcended carnal desire, and tucked the blanket around her body. “I’ll call you tonight.”
Too sleepy to argue, she snuggled deeper into the covers.
Zurich
My dearest husband,
Mama’s health is so much improved this week that I begin to think I may soon be released from sickroom duty and may truly begin to plan our return. You will be surprised at how our son has grown since you last saw him in April. He all but tops my shoulder now.
