probably kitchen and dining room — were lit by the orange, draft-shaken flames of candles or oil lamps.
Our Tonto-with-a-tail sprang to his feet and sprinted to the house. He went boldly up the steps and disappeared into the shadows of the back porch.
Maybe Mr. Mungojerrie, phenomenal feline, has a well-honed sense of civic responsibility. Maybe his moral compass is so exquisitely magnetized that he cannot turn away from those in need. I suspected, however, that his compelling motivation was the well-known curiosity of his species, which so frequently leads to their demise.
The four of us remained squatting in a semicircle for a moment, until Bobby said, “Am I wrong to think this sucks?”
An informal poll showed a hundred percent agreement with the it-sucks point of view.
Reluctantly, stealthily, we followed Mungojerrie onto the back porch, where he was scratching persistently at the door.
Through the four glass panes in the door, we had a clear view of a kitchen so Victorian in its detail and bric- a-brac that I would not have been surprised to see Charles Dickens, William Gladstone, and Jack the Ripper having tea. The room was lit by an oil lamp on the oval table, as though someone within were my brother in XP.
Sasha took the initiative and knocked.
No one answered.
Mungojerrie continued to scratch at the door.
“We get the point,” Bobby told him.
Sasha tried the knob, which turned.
Hoping to be thwarted by a dead bolt, we were dismayed to learn that the door was unlocked. It swung open a few inches.
Mungojerrie squeezed through the narrow gap and vanished inside before Sasha could have second thoughts.
“Death, much death,” Roosevelt murmured, evidently communicating with the mouser.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dr. Stanwyk had appeared at the door, dressed in a bio-secure suit like Hodgson, face seething with hideous parasites, a white-eyed crow perched on his shoulder. This man who had once seemed wise and kind — if eccentric — now loomed ominously in my imagination, like the uninvited party guest in Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.”
The Roger and Marie Stanwyk I had known for years were an odd but nonetheless happy and compatible couple in their early fifties. He sported muttonchops and a lush mustache, and was rarely seen in anything but a suit and tie; you sensed that he longed to wear wing collars and to carry a pocket watch on a fob, but felt these would be eccentricities in excess of those expected of a renowned scientist; nevertheless, he frequently allowed himself to wear quaint vests, and he spent an inordinate amount of time working at his Sherlock-ian pipe with tamp, pick, and spoon. Marie, a plump-cheeked matron with a rosy complexion, was a collector of antique ornamental tea caddies and nineteenth-century paintings of fairies; her wardrobe revealed a grudging acceptance of the twenty-first century, although regardless of what she wore, her longing for button-top shoes, bustles, and parasols was evident. Roger and Marie seemed unsuited to California, doubly unsuited to this century, yet they drove a red Jaguar, had been spotted attending excruciatingly stupid big-budget action movies, and functioned fairly well as citizens of the new millennium.
Sasha called to the Stanwyks through the open kitchen door.
Mungojerrie had crossed the kitchen without hesitation and had disappeared into deeper reaches of the house.
When Sasha got no answer to her third “Roger, Marie, hello,” she drew the.38 from her shoulder holster and stepped inside.
Bobby, Roosevelt, and I followed her. If Sasha had been wearing skirts, we might have happily hidden behind them, but we were more comfortable with the cover provided by the Smith & Wesson.
From the porch, the house had seemed silent, but as we crossed the kitchen, we heard voices coming from the front room. They were not directed at us.
We stopped and listened, not quite able to make out the words. Quickly, however, when music rose, it became apparent that we were hearing not live voices but those on television or radio.
Sasha’s entrance to the dining room was instructive and more than a little intriguing. Both hands on the gun. Arms out straight and locked. The weapon just below her line of sight. She cleared the doorway fast, slid to the left, her back against the wall. After she moved mostly out of view, I could still see just enough of her arms to know she swung the.38 left, then right, then left again, covering the room. Her performance was professional, instinctive, and no less smooth than her on-air voice.
Maybe she’s watched a lot of television cop dramas over the years. Yeah.
“Clear,” she whispered.
Tall, ornate hutches seemed to loom over us, as if tipping away from the walls, porcelain and silver treasures gleaming darkly behind leaded-glass doors with beveled panes. The crystal chandelier wasn’t lit, but reflections of nearby candle flames winked along its strings of beads and off the cut edges of its dangling pendants.
In the center of the dining-room table, surrounded by eight or ten candles, was a large punch bowl half full of what appeared to be fruit juice. A few clean drinking glasses stood to one side, and scattered across the table were several empty plastic pharmacy bottles of prescription medication.
The lighting wasn’t good enough to allow us to read the labels on the bottles, as they lay, and none of us wanted to touch anything.
I could have used my flashlight, but I might have drawn unwanted attention. Under the circumstances, any attention would be unwanted. Besides, the name of the medication wasn’t important.
Sasha led us into the large living room, where the illumination came from a television screen nested in an ornate French cabinet with japanned panels. Even in the poor light, I could see that the chamber was as crowded as an automobile salvage yard, not with junked cars but with Victorian excess: deeply carved and intricately painted neo-rococo furniture; richly patterned brocade upholstery; wallpaper with Gothic-style tracery; heavy velvet drapes with cascades of braided fringe, capped with solid pelmets cut in elaborate Gothic forms; an Egyptian settee with beaded-wood spindles and damask seat cushions; Moorish lamps featuring black cherubs in gilded turbans supporting beaded shades; bibelots densely arranged on every shelf and table.
Amidst the layers on layers of decor, the cadavers almost seemed like additional decorative items.
Even in the flickery light of the television, we could see a man stretched out on the Egyptian settee. He was dressed in dark slacks and a white shirt. Before lying down, he’d taken off his shoes and placed them on the floor with the laces neatly tucked in, as though concerned about soiling the upholstery on the seat cushions. Beside the shoes stood a drinking glass identical to those in the dining room — Waterford crystal, judging by appearance — in which remained an inch of fruit juice. His left arm trailed off the settee, the back of the hand against the Persian carpet, palm turned up. His other arm lay across his chest. His head was propped on two small brocade pillows, and his face was concealed beneath a square of black silk.
Sasha was covering the room behind us, less interested in the corpse than in guarding against a surprise assault.
The black veil over the face did not bellow or even flutter. The man under it was not breathing.
I knew that he was dead, knew what killed him — not a contagious disease, but a phenobarbital fizz or its lethal equivalent — yet I was reluctant to remove the silk mask for the same reason that any child, having pondered the possibility of a boogeyman, is hesitant to push back the sheets, rise up on his mattress, lean out, and peek under the bed.
Hesitantly, I pinched a corner of the silk square between thumb and forefinger, and pulled it off the man’s face.
He was alive. That was my first impression. His eyes were open, and I thought I saw life in them.
After a breathless moment, I realized that his stare was fixed. His eyes appeared to be moving only because reflections of images on the TV screen were twitching in them.
The light was just bright enough to allow me to identify the deceased. His name was Tom Sparkman. He
