Not Quite Dead (22 page)

The distance to the Shelton estate was farther than I remembered. By the time we trotted onto the property, between the eerily rustling rows of chestnut trees and past the cemetery, my inner thighs were aflame with saddle welts, which would make my trousers a torture and leave me waddling like a sailor for days.

By the time I stood stiffly onto the mounting block by the front stoop, the elderly Negro coachman had already materialized to take the reins, while Elmira Royster stood behind the screen door, holding the visiting card I had hastily sent ahead the day before.

Shifting from foot to foot in order to restore feeling and movement to my legs, I noted her dress, which was the same as at our previous meeting, or one just like it. Already I could smell violet.

“Dr. Chivahs. I am evah so surprised.”

“Forgive me, ma’am, for arriving without due notice. I left Baltimore in some haste.”

“You look peaked, suh, you appear right consumptive. I declare, when is the last time you have eaten?”

“Eating is out of the question. On this occasion it is I who am in terrible distress.”

“Then you are most welcome to come in, suh. Will you take another glass of whiskey on this occasion?”

“I certainly shall.”

I followed her down the hall—mesmerized by the swing of her body beneath her dress—and into the drawing room, while wondering why the devil I had come, what did I expect? After the constable’s visit I had acted with the instinct of a trapped animal and fled—but by what logic did I expect Elmira Royster to be of assistance to me, a woman who seemed seldom in her right mind herself?

Or did I seize on this new emergency as an opportunity to act upon my aching desire for her, an ever-present pressure like a fist beneath the sternum, pressing on the
Rectis Abdominus
so that the taking of food became an absurdity?

In my wretched state, one thing remained self-evident:
Somehow Eddie Poe must be stopped
. The sentence roared in the mind, and to this end Elmira Royster was my only lead, being in written contact with the scoundrel.

The drawing room was furnished—or unfurnished—as it had been when last I was here. Elmira Royster sat at the tea table, crossed her legs beneath her dress, and gestured that I was to be seated as well.

“My sakes but the house is chilly for this time of year, is it not?”

“Yes, ma’am, and almost vacant. When I was last here, I confess that I wondered where you really live.”

“I declare, that is a question I sometimes ask myself. Where do I live? Where do you live, Dr. Chivahs?”

“In my mind for the most part,” I replied, surprised to hear myself say it. “Certainly not in Washington College Hospital, I hope.”

“If one lives in one’s mind, perhaps life is all a dream,” she said, and her eyes shifted as though something were written on the center of my forehead.

Of course as a scientist I detested empty mystification and all that promoted it, if only because it reminded me of Eddie Poe and his fetish of death and dreams and grotesques.

“I do not agree that life is a dream,” I said, raising my voice. “In fact, I
know
that it is not. A war teaches you that, if nothing else. An amputation is not a dream, ma’am, I assure you, and my patients would all agree with me.”

Elmira Royster did not seem discomfited in the least. Yet my
outburst must have had some effect, for when she spoke she seemed almost reasonable. “After Mr. Shelton passed away, I began to simplify things. I sold the property except for the house itself, and freed the slaves who wished to go. When the remaining staff leave or die, I shall sell the house too.”

“An admirable plan, ma’am, and I applaud your treatment of slaves. It is more than Jefferson ever did.”

“I believe I once said that a wife is a sort of slave. It gives us something in common.”

“Many have noted a similarity.”

“It goes away when the spouse is departed.”

“Indeed. With nobody to give the orders, there is no one to obey.”

“Not so, suh. We take orders from a higher power, through Christ our Lord.”

“Believe me, ma’am, I would not dream of contradicting you.”

“Sarcasm ill becomes you, Dr. Chivahs.”

“I was not being sarcastic in the least.”

We sat in silence while the elderly and all-observing butler placed two glasses on the tea table between us: three fingers of whiskey for me, and a glass of what appeared to be lemonade, but which could have contained anything.

“I will be in earshot, Miz Shelton,” murmured the butler, with a significant glance in my direction.

Despite the fact that every word we uttered would be overheard by the staff, I decided to speak plainly. “Ma’am, I am here because I am utterly smitten by you, and because I am in desperate trouble. I don’t know which comes first.”

“That rightly makes two problems,” she replied. “Which do you
think
comes first?”

“The Philadelphia police have requested that Eddie be dug up— and you know as well as I that it is not Eddie in that grave.”

She frowned slightly.
“Dug up?
My soul, why would anyone do such a thing?”

“There is a public outcry in Philadelphia. It seems that Eddie staged spurious hauntings in a spirit of revenge.”

“He haunted Mr. Griswold?” Her eyes glinted with interest. “After that obituary I am not surprised.”

“The name of the writer was, I believe, a Mr. Ludwig.”

“Yet it was Mr. Griswold, suh. It was a most vile eulogy. Eddie was livid.”

“Do you mean that Griswold wrote under a pseudonym”

“Of course. They all dice each other up under pseudonyms. Eddie was fond of the practice himself. I called it a form of cowardice, but he differed.
Truth must always wear a mask
, was his opinion.”

“You have put your finger on the problem, ma’am. Having left his mortal body, at least as far as the public is concerned, at present Eddie is nothing
but
a mask. He can destroy anyone he likes, being forever anonymous.”

“But surely, suh, to do so he would need an associate—someone with an interest in supporting him, and in covering his tracks. Someone in the publishing business, perhaps.”

“That was nicely put, ma’am. I expect that might well be the case.”

“Thank you, suh.” Elmira Royster appeared amused, which I found infuriating. “Eddie once remarked that he would like to become a ghost, stalking the halls and frightening folks out of their skin.”

“Then you knew that he was planning this insanity?”

She shrugged, as though it were a trivial matter. “He mentioned it in one or another of his letters. I neither approved nor disapproved.”

“You are in touch with him, then?”

“Of course. Eddie and I are, after all, engaged.”

“Pardon me, ma’am, but I swear that he is the most selfish beast I have ever encountered. I have risked everything for him, and he is cutting shines again!”

Once again my mouth had surprised my mind with its unintended frankness.

“I don’t rightly know what you mean by
cutting shines,”
she said.

“Eddie does awful things just to see what will happen. He always did. Now that he is ‘dead’ he is free to act upon his morbid fantasies, and take responsibility for none of it, and with no critics to complain. We—you and I—have become his creative materials. He is experimenting with our lives—-just to see what will happen! Oh, it is monstrous! …”

I do not remember what happened after that.

* * *

I
AWOKE TO
the fragrance of violet and a woman’s mouth against my forehead. I did not move. When I finally opened my eyes, Elmira Royster was kneeling close to me, in her plain cotton dress, with no sign of a corset beneath.

“I was testing you for fever, suh,” she explained. “You are abnormally warm.”

“Test me again. One can never be too sure.”

She put her hand on my chest and her lips on my forehead. “You are still very warm,” she said, and straightened up again.

“I am afraid I must have fallen into a delirium. It happens occasionally. A war injury. Nothing very serious. Please excuse my behavior, whatever happened.”

“For a man in a delirium, you were remarkably polite. You were able to climb stairs without assistance. You were raving about experiments, and about something called flying artillery, and about butchery—but it all made perfect sense to me.”

“Ah yes, I remember saying that,” I said, which was an utter lie. “It is a feeling I experienced in the war, of being an experiment in some monstrous laboratory. Run by some godlike creature, nothing friendly, driven by morbid curiosity, like a boy dissecting a frog.”

“I declare, that is a strange notion of the Savior.”

“I don’t know that I mentioned Him.”

“You described the Son of God, dissecting a frog. God, manifest not in the flesh but in the laboratory.”

I decided to change the subject. It would not be the first time I had observed religion to turn an intelligent individual into some kind of imbecile.

“I wish they wouldn’t use the word
flesh”
I said. “It makes me think of raw meat.”

“Dr. Chivahs, I do fear that you are becoming delirious again.”

Indeed, I did feel the need to close my eyes for a moment, and by the time I opened them again an uncertain amount of time had passed. I was alone in a room which appeared to be a library—and on the second floor, to judge by the trees outside. I was lying on a velvet couch. The floor was bare, with no carpet; in fact, other than a fireplace, a desk, and a chair, the room stood entirely empty of furniture. Only
a wall, containing bookcases, interspersed by open windows, which emitted much air but little light.

Having little to look at, I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, there she was.

“It is late in the day,” I said. “You must shut the windows at once, for reasons of health.”

“I disagree, suh. It is a curious assumption, that the harmful vapors are
outside
the house.”

“I am a doctor, ma’am, and it is my professional judgment. Should you choose to ignore it, I hold you responsible for what happens as a result.”

The omniscient butler, of whom I had by now formed a thorough dislike, entered with a tray. “The brandy, Miz Shelton, ma’am,” he murmured in a tone of resentful resignation, primarily directed at me.

“Thank you, Mr. Washington,” she said, as though she were speaking to a business colleague. “Kindly set it on the bedside table, if you please.”

With a not quite undetectable sigh, Mr. Washington poured three fingers of brandy into a plain glass tumbler and put it before me. “Your health, sah,” he murmured, nodded to Elmira Royster, and was gone.

“I was a Son of Temperance before Eddie arrived,” I said. “You will probably think ill of me, for transgressing my oath.”

“‘Sufficient unto the day are the sins thereof,’“ she replied, and in my imagination we kissed.

She sat on the couch beside me, which made a tight fit, so that I could feel the warmth of her body.

“Forgive me, Elmira, but…”

“Dr. Chivahs, my name is Mrs. Shelton.”

“If you insist, ma’am.”

“You were meaning to ask a question, suh. What is it?”

“What is your understanding—no, what I mean to say is, what are the
terms
of your engagement to Eddie Poe?”

“I don’t rightly know what you are suggesting, but there are no plans for a marriage, as I have said before. We wished to stop the rumors. People can remain engaged for decades, and nobody says a word.”

“Then I am to understand that there is no … no passion between you?

“Kindly watch your language, suh. But yes, that is why I am engaged to Eddie. I could never be engaged to you. I would find it evah so stressful.”

Infuriating as usual, yet the warmth of her hip against my side encouraged me to continue the conversation.

When I describe my feelings for Elmira Royster, please understand that the word is not
love
. To say that I liked Elmira would be stretching it. To say that I needed her in order to remain alive, would be more to the point.

“I am trying to imagine you as a freethinker,” she said. “A free-thinking doctor! How do you know where to cut?” And for the first time I saw her laugh out loud.

I myself did not laugh. At her mention of my profession, the entire catastrophe of my present situation struck me in the stomach with terrible vigor.

“Miz Royster—”

“I am Mrs. Shelton.”

“Mrs. Shelton, I beg your pardon but let me restate the facts of the case. They want to dig Eddie up. There has been a sensational murder in Philadelphia, and Eddie is a suspect, or rather, his ghost, at least for the present. The upshot of it is, if they dig him up I shall be utterly ruined—and, incidentally, Eddie will be suspected of murder. If you care anything for your fiancé—and I would rather you did not—you must help me to reach him.”

She hesitated, which I took as a hopeful sign, though it tormented me beyond endurance that his welfare was uppermost in her mind.

“Eddie is in Philadelphia,” she said. “He has found work there under a pseudonym. I have his address.”

“That would be most helpful. Thank you.”

She stood, crossed to the writing table, took pen and ink—and stopped. “No. I do not think so.”

“You do not think what, ma’am?”

“I do not think I shall give it to you, suh.”

“Why not in heaven’s name?”

“Because I must protect Eddie. From you.”

Damnation
.

“Why on earth would you say such a thing?”

“I declare that any man with your wayward sentiments is not to be trusted alone with my fiancé.”

“Ma’am, I am a doctor. I do not take lives, I save them.” Hearing myself say this, I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

“I will assist you on one condition, suh,” she said. “I shall go to Philadelphia with you.”

“Surely that is out of the question, ma’am. How could such an arrangement be possible?”

“We will travel as man and wife. As Mr. and Mrs. Henri Le Rennet. And that is my last word on the subject.”