Ghost Story

'I'd like to walk. I get there too early otherwise.'

'Okay, scout.'

Five minutes later, books under his arm, Peter left the house; his viscera still retained the imprint of the fear he had felt when he thought his father would ask about Saturday night-that was an episode he planned to put out of his mind as completely as possible-but the fear was only a trembling area surrounded by a sea of relief. His father was far more concerned about being closer to him than about whatever he got up to with Jim Hardie: Saturday night would slip backward into time and become as remote as the Dedham girls.

He rounded the corner. His father's tact lay between him and whatever mysterious thing had happened out there two nights ago. In some way, his father was a protection against it; the terrible things would not happen; he was protected even by his immaturity. If he did not do anything bad, the terrors wouldn't get him.

By the time he reached the top of the square, the fear had almost entirely vanished. His normal route to school would have taken him past the hotel, but he did not want to take the slightest chance of seeing that woman again, and he turned off into Wheat Row. The cool air clipped against his face; sparrows thronged and cheeped across the snowy square, moving in quick zigs and zags. A long black Buick passed him, and he looked in the windows to see the two older lawyers, his father's friends, in the car's front seat. They both looked gray and tired. He waved, and Ricky Hawthorne lifted a hand in a returned greeting.

He was nearly at the bottom of Wheat Row and walking past the parked Buick when a commotion in the square took his attention. A muscular man in sunglasses, a stranger, wandered over the snow. He wore a pea jacket and a knit watch cap, but Peter saw from the white skin around his ears that his head was shaven. The stranger was clapping his hands together, making the sparrows scatter like spray from a shotgun: he looked irrational as a beast. Nobody else, neither the businessmen going up the pretty eighteenth-century steps of Wheat Row nor the secretaries following in short coats and long legs, saw him. The man clapped his hands again, and Peter realized that the man was looking directly at him. He was grinning like a hungry leopard. He started to lope toward Peter: Peter, frozen, sensed that the man was moving more rapidly than his steps could explain. He turned to run and saw, seated on one of the tilting tombstones before St. Michael's, a little boy with ragged hair and a slack grinning face. The boy, less fierce, was of the same substance as the man. He too was staring at Peter, who remembered what Jim Hardie had seen at the abandoned station. The stupid face twisted into a giggle. Peter nearly dropped his books, ran, kept running without looking back.

Our Miss Dedham Will Now Say a Few

Words

5

The three men sat in the corridor on the third floor of University Hospital, Binghamton. None of them liked being there: Hardesty because he suspected he looked like a fool in the larger city, where no one immediately knew of his authority, and suspected also that he was on a useless mission; Ned Rowles because he disliked being away from The Urbanite's offices at most times of the day, and especially disliked leaving layout entirely to the staff; and Don Wanderley because he had been out of the East too long to drive instinctively well on icy roads. Yet he thought that seeing the old woman whose sister had died so bizarrely might help the Chowder Society.

The suggestion had been Ricky Hawthorne's. 'I haven't seen her in an age, and I understand she had a stroke some time back, but we might learn something from her. If you're willing to make the journey on a day like this.' It was a day when noon was as dark as evening; storms hung over the town, waiting to happen.

'You think there might be some connection between her sister's death and your own problem?'

'There might be,' Ricky admitted. 'I don't really think so, of course, but it wouldn't do to overlook even these peripheral things. Trust me that there is some relevance, anyhow. We'll have it all out later. Now that you're here, we shouldn't keep you in the dark about anything. Sears might not agree with me, but Lewis probably would.' Then Ricky had added wryly, 'Besides, it might do you good to get out of Milburn, however briefly.'

And that had been true at first. Binghamton, four or five times the size of Milburn, even on a dark, lowering day was another, brighter world: full of traffic, new buildings, young people, the sound of urban life, it was of its decade; it pushed little Milburn back into some novelettish period of Gothic romance. The larger city had made him recognize how enclosed Milburn was, how much an appropriate field for speculation like the Chowder Society's-it was the aspect of the town which had initially reminded him of Dr. Rabbitfoot. It seemed he had become accustomed to this. In Binghamton there was no drone of the macabre, no lurking abnormality to be sniffed out in stories over whiskey and in nightmares by old men.

But on the third floor of the hospital, Milburn held sway. Milburn was in Walt Hardesty's suspicion and nervousness, his rude 'What the hell are you doing here? You're from town. I've seen you around-I saw you in Humphrey's.' Milburn was even in Ned Rowles's lank hair and rumpled suit: at home, Rowles looked conventional and even well dressed; outside, he looked almost rubelike. You noticed that his jacket was too short, his trousers webbed with wrinkles. And Rowles's manner, in Milburn low-key and friendly, here seemed tinged with shyness.

'Just struck me as funny, old Rea going so soon after that Freddy Robinson being found dead. He was out at their place, you know, not more than a week before Rea died.'

'How did she die?' Don asked. 'And when can we see her sister? Aren't there evening visiting hours?'

'Waiting for a doctor to come out,' Rowles said. 'As to how she died, I decided not to put that in the paper. You don't need sensationalism to sell papers. But I thought anyone might have heard, around town.'

'I've been working most of the time,' Don said.

'Ah, a new book. Splendid.'

'Is that what this guy is?' Hardesty asked. 'That's just what we need, a writer. Sweet jumping Jesus. Great I'm gonna be talking to a witness in front of the fearless editor and some writer. And this old dame, how the hell is she going to know who I am, anyhow? How is she gonna know I'm sheriff?'

That's what is worrying him, Don thought: he looks like Wyatt Earp because he's so insecure that he wants everybody to know that he wears a badge and carries a gun.

Some of this must have shown on his face, because Hardesty became more aggressive. 'Okay, let's have your story. Who sent you here? Why are you in town?'

'He's Edward Wanderley's nephew,' Rowles said in a tired voice. 'He's doing some work for Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne.'

'Jesus, those two,' Hardesty moaned. 'Did they ask you to come here to see the old lady?'

'Mr. Hawthorne did,' Don answered.

'Well I suppose I ought to fall down and pretend I'm a red carpet.' Hardesty lit a cigarette, ignoring the no smoking sign at the end of the corridor. 'Those two old birds have something up their sleeves. Up their sleeves. Hah! That's rich.'

Rowles looked away, obviously embarrassed; Don glanced at him for an explanation.

'Go on, tell him, Fearless. He asked you how she died.'

'It's not very appetizing.' Rowles, wincing, caught Don's eye.

'He's a big boy. He's built like a running back, ain't he?'

That was another thing about the sheriff: he would always be measuring the size of another man against his own.

'Go on. It's not a goddamned state secret.'

'Well.' Rowles leaned wearily back against the wall. 'She bled to death. Her arms were severed.'

'My God,' Don said, sickened and sorry that he had come. 'Who would…'

'You got me, you know?' Hardesty said. 'Maybe your rich friends could give us a hint. But tell me this- who would go around doing operations on livestock, like happened out at Miss Dedham's? And before that, at Norbert Clyde's. And before that, at Elmer Scales's?'

'You think there's one explanation for all of that?' This was, he assumed, what his uncle's friends had asked him to discover.

A nurse went by and scowled at Hardesty, who was shamed into stamping out his cigarette.