had smacked a hand over his mouth. He looked embarrassed again.
Definitely an oddball, I thought. Musket Creek seemed to be full of them, all right. But Penrose, at least, had my sympathy; the strain of coping with physical deformities like his was enough to throw anybody a little out of whack.
“That was a dreadful pun,” he said. “Gary can’t help it if he’s retarded; I don’t know what makes me so cruel sometimes. I apologize. No one should make fun of others, should they.” It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t wait for a response. He went on, “What else did the boy tell you? Did he say anything about the Northern Development Corporation?”
Kerry simulated a blank look that would have got her thrown out of any acting school in the country. But again, Penrose didn’t notice; he still wasn’t looking at her, except for brief sidelong eye-flicks whenever she spoke. “No,” she said, “he didn’t. Is that something we should know about?”
“Yes. Oh yes. If they have their way you won’t want to move here.” He paused. “But I’m forgetting my manners. I haven’t many visitors, you see. Would you like to come in?”
Kerry said, “Yes, thanks. That would be nice.”
So Penrose stepped aside and we went in. The interior of the cabin-just one big room-was furnished sparsely with mismatched secondhand items and strewn with books. Against the back wall was a long table with a typewriter, a bunch of papers, and an unlit candle on it. The candle caught and held my attention. It was fat, it was stuck inside a wooden bowl, and it was purple-the same color purple as the one I’d found at the burned-out ghosts.
I went over to the table for a closer look. When Kerry finished declining Penrose’s offer of a cup of coffee I said to him, “That’s a nice candle you’ve got there.”
“Candle?” he said blankly.
“I wouldn’t mind having one like it.” I gave Kerry a pointed look. “We collect candles, don’t we, dear.”
“Yes, that’s right. We do.”
“Did you get it locally?” I asked Penrose.
“From a widow lady who lives here, yes.”
“May I ask her name?”
“Ella Bloom. She makes them; it’s her hobby.”
“Just purple ones? Or other colors too?”
“Just purple. Her favorite color.”
“Does she sell them to anyone besides you?”
“Oh, I didn’t buy it from her. She gave it to me. She doesn’t make them to sell.”
“Does she give them away to everyone around here?”
“Yes. Everyone. Maybe she’ll give one to you, if you ask her. Her house is right near the mercantile.”
So much for the purple-candle angle.
I steered Penrose back to the topic of Northern Development, and this time he managed to stay on it without getting sidetracked. He launched into a two-minute diatribe against the developers and what he called “the warped values of modern society.” He didn’t seem quite as militant as Robideaux and Mrs. Bloom, but then he didn’t know I was a detective.
I said, “Isn’t there anything that can be done to stop them, Mr. Penrose?”
“Well, we’ve hired attorneys, you know, and they’ve filed suit to block the sale of the land. There’s nothing else to be done until the suit comes to trial.”
“Have you tried appealing to the Northern people? To get them to modify their plans?”
“Oh yes. They won’t listen to us. Awful people. The head of the company was an insensitive swine.”
“Was?”
“He died a few days ago,” Penrose said, with a hint of relish in his voice. “A tragic accident.”
“What sort of accident?”
“He went to blazes.” Penrose did his barking sea-lion number again. This time he didn’t look quite so embarrassed when the noise stopped. “One shouldn’t speak lightly of the dead, should one,” he said.
“You mean he died in a fire?”
“Yes. In Redding.”
“That’s a coincidence,” I said.
“Coincidence?”
“You had a fire here recently. We noticed the burned-out buildings on the way through.”
“Oh, that. It was only four of the ghosts.”
“Another accident?”
He didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, “I told the others they should have let the fire spread, let it purge the other ghosts as well, but they wouldn’t listen. A pity.”
Kerry said, “You wanted all the buildings to burn up?”
“All the ghosts, yes.”
“But why?”
“They’re long dead; cremation is fitting and overdue,” he said. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
I said, “Shouldn’t the buildings be preserved for historical reasons? After all, this was once a Gold Rush camp-”
“Definitely not. The past is dead; requiescat in pace. Resurrection breeds tourists.” He smiled, rubbed his bulbous nose, and repeated the phrase as if he liked the sound of it: “Resurrection breeds tourists.”
“Does everybody in Musket Creek feel the same way?”
“Oh, yes. Leave us alone, they say. Let us live and let us die, all in good time.”
“So that’s why nobody here ever tried to restore any of the buildings,” Kerry said.
“Just so,” Penrose agreed. “Natural history is relevant; the history of man is often irrelevant. You see?”
I asked, “How do you suppose the fire got started? The one here, I mean.”
“Does it matter, Mr. Wade?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Curiosity kills cats and lays ghosts,” he said, and cut loose with his laugh again. Listening to it, and to his slightly whacky comments, was making me a little uncomfortable. I get just as nervous around unarmed oddballs as I do around those with weapons.
“Is it possible somebody set the fire deliberately?” I asked him. “Somebody who feels as you do about cremating the ghosts?”
It was the wrong thing to say. Penrose’s mean little eyes narrowed, and when he spoke again his voice had lost its friendliness. “I think you’d better leave now. I have work to do.”
Kerry said, “Couldn’t we talk a while longer, Mr. Penrose? I really would like to know more about-”
“No,” he said. “No. Come back and visit me again if you decide to move here. But I don’t think you should; it’s probably too late. Good-bye.”
There was nothing for us to do but leave. We went out onto the platform deck, and Kerry thanked him for talking to us, and he said gruffly, “Not at all,” and banged the door shut behind us.
On the way down the stairs she said, “Why do you always have to be so damned blunt?”
“He was getting on my nerves.”
“We could have found out more if you’d been a little more tactful.”
“We? ‘Bill and Kerry Wade, from San Francisco.’ Christ!”
“It got him to talk to us, didn’t it?”
“All right, so it got him to talk to us.”
“Which is more than you accomplished with your direct approach to Mrs. Bloom,” she said. “You probably blurted out that you’re a detective to Gary Coleclaw and that artist, Robideaux, too. No wonder they wouldn’t tell you anything.”
“Listen, don’t tell me how to do my job.”
“I’m not. I’m only suggesting-”
“Don’t suggest. I didn’t bring you along to do any suggesting.”
“No, I know why you brought me along. Women are only good for one thing, right?”
“Oh for God’s sake, I didn’t mean-”
