The Bedlam Detective (25 page)

“Stepfather?”

“You’re looking for a man to blame for my situation.”

“Just trying to understand it better.”

The waitress brought coffee, and Evangeline waited until she’d gone before continuing. As she started to speak again, she undid the top button of her coat and unwound the scarf from around her neck, reaching up and over her head to do it.

“People misjudge Grace,” she said. “They always have.”

Evangeline told of how her mother had reason to disapprove of her daughter’s friendship with Grace Eccles. Grace’s father was a man of poor reputation, though Grace loved him as much as any daughter ever could. Grace’s mother had run off with another man. Her father had been a hard worker and a Saturday-night drinker before that, and became an all-week drinker thereafter. This didn’t sit well with Lydia Bancroft, who was a member of the Temperance League.

Evangeline said, “The story is that Grace’s father was making his way home from the Harbor Inn one night and swore he saw something cross his path in the moonlight. Big and black and it looked at him with yellow eyes. He said they shone out like lamps. You can imagine what everyone thought. But the more people ridiculed him, the more he insisted. Until the story found its way into the paper, and then he shut up. The reporter let him think they were going to take his side. But they only mocked him like everyone else.”

“I read the article.”

“Where?”

“In the post office book.”

“That would be the one. To this day, every visitor gets to read it. They destroyed him with that. But Grace never doubted him. Stood up for him at school. She fought with boys as equals and beat them, too. She was always determined to prove him right and clear his name.

“So the two of us hatched this plan. The idea came from Grace, but she needed me for the camera.”

The fine hairs rose on the back of Sebastian’s neck. “You had a camera?”

“The
Advertiser
made an offer to encourage visitors. One hundred pounds for a genuine picture of the Arnmouth beast. Grace didn’t care so much about the money. She just wanted to prove something for her father. It was my father’s Box Brownie. He’d bought it for Mother to make photographs of me, so she could send them to him as I grew. I don’t think she ever got to use it.”

Evangeline explained how she and Grace had each lied to their lone parent, each saying that she’d be spending the night at the other’s house.

“We had blankets and some food tied up in a tablecloth, and a little lantern with a candle in it. Grace knew where there was a dead lamb, up near some old mine workings, and we had some bread and cake to throw around as extra bait. For some reason we thought that might bring out the beast of the moor.

“We found a sheltered place to set up camp. It had been a building, but the roof had fallen into the cellar and there were only three walls standing. You could look up and where there should have been a ceiling, you could see the stars. I think I remember looking up and seeing something move across them. Something dark, like it was making them go out. Like a figure standing over the world. But I could be inventing that.”

Evangeline went quiet for a few moments, recalling the memory.

“And then?” Sebastian prompted.

“Then I was at home,” she said. “In my bed, in my bedroom, with the curtains closed even though it was daytime. And that felt all wrong. I could hear voices through the floor. When they came upstairs I pretended to be asleep. But I think my mother knew. She touched my shoulder and I pretended to wake up. It seems I’d been awake before, from the way they talked to me. But I don’t remember.”

“Were you in physical pain?”

“I prefer not to discuss that.”

“Forgive me. Was this when Sir Owain appeared at your house?”

“His was the voice that I woke up to hear. Is that why you’re pursuing him? I’ve read detective stories. Is he your suspect?”

“Do you find the idea completely beyond belief?”

“Before I went out to the Hall, I’d have said it was. Until then all my memories were of a man who acted like a father to the whole town. But now there’s that doctor of his … watching over him and guiding what he says. It’s like they’ve made a private world up there. Just the two of them. They’re on their guard when you enter it and they can’t wait for you to leave. And there’s something … I don’t know, there’s an atmosphere in that house. It made my flesh creep.”

She sat back in her chair and picked up her scarf. As she’d been speaking, she’d absently folded and refolded it into the neatest of squares. Now she shook it out again. “Will you tell me what you discover?”

“If there’s a way I can reach you.”

“I’ll reach
you
. Tell me where.”

Sebastian took out his pocket pad and scribbled a few lines on a blank page. Then he tore out the sheet and held it out to her.

“Here’s where I pick up my messages,” he said. She read it, and then looked at him.

“A pie stand?” she said.

“A man has to eat.”

“Not quite the Criterion Grill.”

“I’m not quite your Criterion type. Thank you.”

“For what?” Evangeline said, rising to her feet, and he quickly scraped back his chair to rise with her.

“Your patience and your openness,” he said. “I’d expected less. But I can see that you’re an unusual young woman.”

“I would like—someday—to be not so unusual. Outwardly I live a life of independence. Inwardly I live in fear. In my life there is no intimacy. I don’t know how I can even say this to a stranger.”

“With a stranger it’s often the way,” Sebastian said.

F
RANCES WAS STANDING BY THE WINDOW WHEN HE GOT HOME
. She had the lamps turned low and was looking out across the rooftops of the borough. She’d once told Sebastian that it eased her eyes to look at distant things, when too much concentration on close work had tired them.

She looked toward the door as he came into the room. For a moment, in this light, he was reminded of some familiar painting. But he couldn’t have said which one. Sebastian wasn’t a gallery man, and got most of his art from magazines.

She said, “Elisabeth’s reading. I’ve been trying to get Robert to his bed. He insisted on waiting for you.”

“You should have left him to it,” Sebastian said, hanging his overcoat on the stand. “He’s old enough, and capable.”

Frances gave a brief, tight smile.

“Tell that to Elisabeth,” she said, and moved to gather up her sewing.

As she was leaving the room, Sebastian’s son was trying to enter with an armload of books and documents. He was so eager that he forgot to be polite, and did not step back to let her through.

“Father,” he said, “I think I have earned my money.”

“That’s very good to hear, Robert,” Sebastian said. “Can we talk about it in the morning?”

“But I’ve been waiting for you. Didn’t Frances say?”

Sebastian began to frame a reply. But Robert was bursting with energy, and Sebastian had none with which to resist. So he said, “All right.”

Robert started to clear a space on the table for the papers he’d brought. Sebastian saw that they included Sir Owain’s book. It was bristling all around with slips of paper, like a hedgehog.

“The author’s observations of the seasons are very precise,” Robert said. “And I think the few actual dates he gives may be accurate. Unless he’s fabricated Christmas.”

“How is Christmas significant?”

“From one date I can work out another. He refers to five days on the river, two days in camp, a week spent wherever. With enough detail like that I can make out a rough chronology.”

“Can you indeed,” Sebastian said.

“I made you this to explain everything.”

In the cleared space, Robert unrolled a makeshift chart made from several sheets of paper gummed together. He placed a book on either end of it, to pin it down. The chart was somewhere between a vertical time line, and a family tree. Robert’s writing was minuscule and filled many boxes, between which he’d drawn connecting lines.

He said, “Over on the left-hand side are all the dated events that I can pin down exactly. On the right are those story events that clash with the calendar and can only be false. I’ve positioned all the other events somewhere in between them on a scale of credibility. Farthest to the left is your certain truth; over to the right is your certain fiction. Most things lie somewhere in between. It’s the closest you’ll ever get to a simple answer. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Sebastian’s head swam.

“This is … very well done, Robert.”

But Robert, who was odd but no fool, could see that his father hadn’t yet grasped the point.

“It’s not just an exercise, Father,” he said.

“Of course not.”

“It’s practical,” Robert persisted, “For example. Match your firm dates to shipping records and you can track down the crew of the rescue ship that took Sir Owain to safety.”

Suddenly, Sebastian understood.

It was brilliant. With patient analysis, Robert had deconstructed the author’s method and performed a fractional separation of fact and fiction, with a precise grading of all the shades in between. It was detailed and obsessive, and—professionally speaking—a significant piece of detective work.

“That’s very impressive, Robert,” was all he could say. “Thank you.”

“And I don’t want the money,” Robert said. “It’s my contribution. To help us get by.”

Happy now, Robert went back to his room.

Alone, Sebastian paced for a while. Then he added a piece of coal to the fire, which was beginning to die. He wasn’t ready for sleep yet, and with the fire gone the room would quickly lose its heat to the night. This was one of those occasions when he could be dazed by Robert’s flights of intellect.

He thought he might tell Elisabeth. But when he went to check, she’d turned out her light. He backed off quietly, not wanting to risk disturbing her.

Back in the sitting room, he picked her rug off the chair and shook it out. Elisabeth’s recovery seemed worryingly slow. Sebastian wasn’t sure whether to blame her actual injury or the degree to which it had shaken her, but he’d seen no real improvement since the day he’d brought her home. She hardly slept. Any movement or disturbance during the night would cause her pain.

He took the poker from the grate and gave the fire one last rake-over. Then he wrapped the rug around himself and settled into a chair for the night.

The river now widened so that in places it looked like a long lake; it wound in every direction through the endless marshy plain, whose surface was broken here and there by low mountains. The splendor of the sunset I never saw surpassed. We were steaming east toward clouds of storm. The river ran, a broad highway of molten gold, into the flaming sky; the far-off mountains loomed purple across the marshes; belts of rich green, the river banks stood out on either side against the rose-hues of the rippling water; in front, as we forged steadily onward, hung the tropic night, dim and vast.

T
HEODORE
R
OOSEVELT
,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
J
OHN
M
URRAY
, 1914

No less than six weeks were spent in slowly and with peril and exhausting labor forcing our way down through what seemed a literally endless succession of rapids and cataracts. For forty-eight days we saw no human being. In passing these rapids we lost five of the seven canoes with which we started and had to build others. One of our best men lost his life in the rapids. Under the strain one of the men went completely bad, shirked all his work, stole his comrades’ food and when punished by the sergeant he with cold-blooded deliberation murdered the sergeant and fled into the wilderness.

T
HEODORE
R
OOSEVELT
, L
ETTER OF
1 M
AY
1914

TO
G
ENERAL
L
AURO
M
ULLER