Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
Under the silence of the heavens, within the hush of the great house, having retreated to the kitchen where the Frigidaires softly hummed, by candlelight in the first hour of Saturday, the four of us gathered at the round table to eat Chef Luigi Lattuada’s homemade peach ice cream.
This frozen treat had been produced by a White Mountain ice cream freezer with a hand-crank churner, using ice and salt and cream and muscle.
We enjoyed larger servings than the one we gave to Rafael, but he was happy with his portion and expressed his pleasure with a long sigh and an odorless fart.
Our conversation was minimal at first as we brooded about the disturbing, eyeless Gerber baby.
Soon, however, the siblings were informing me about what they called the “Case of the Plethora of Dead Things,” which had baffled the J.
Edgar Hoover Society earlier in this same year.
Plethora meant an overabundance, an excess.
I doubted Sherlock Holmes—or especially Mr. Hoover—would have used such an uncommon word in the title of a case, but the siblings were proud of it.
Isadora remained somewhat skeptical that a criminal type had been sneaking around and leaving dead creatures in places where they wouldn’t ordinarily be found; she was willing to consider that it might have been just Nature in action.
But Gertrude and Harry were still adamant that a clever trickster with a mysterious purpose had been behind it all, and their sister didn’t rule out that possibility.
The previous March, in the first instance that suggested an evil-minded schemer at work, Gertie had been preparing for bed when she found a dead bird in the closet, in one of her slippers.
She called Izzy to her room. Neither of them was able to explain to their satisfaction how a bird had come to be in a windowless space.
They were mature young women, not repulsed by the tiny carcass.
With respectful solemnity, they wrapped the dead bird in a lace-trimmed handkerchief, tied the hanky shut with a length of blue ribbon, and set it aside for burial in the morning.
The next grisly discovery came four days later.
The Fairchild children were required by their parents to make their own beds in the morning and turn down the bedclothes every evening rather than leave those tasks to the housemaids, who were busy enough.
As Isadora was preparing her bed one night, she found a dead mouse under her pillow.
At that point she hadn’t yet begun to wonder if this might just be Nature being Nature.
Then and for weeks, she believed a villain must be in the house, engaged in skullduggery.
In fact, she and Gertrude suspected their brother of being the culprit.
However, because their parents schooled them in the moral imperative of having plenty of evidence before accusing anyone of anything, they remained mum, watched, waited, and plotted revenge in case it might be justified.
Five days later, Harry hurried them to his bathroom to see a dead mouse, this one curled in the water glass that stood on the apron of his bathroom sink.
This exciting development gave them a yet more important reason not to report these incidents to Franklin and Loretta.
Even good parents, fair and well meaning and with a sense of wonder, would take the investigation from their children and pursue it as an urgent inquisition, resolving the matter in short order.
What was the fun in that? For more than a year, Izzy and Gertie and Harry had been late-night adventuring, inventing ghosts and vampires to chase down, devising dire mysteries for members of the J.
Edgar Hoover Society to solve—and now a real mystery had sprung up around them.
A drama. A puzzle. A challenge. Their self-respect, their integrity, their honor required them to pursue the truth of this situation themselves, for it was them, not their parents, on whom it had been bestowed. They could not shirk their duty.
Occasionally through April and mid-May, dead creatures appeared in unusual places.
A second bird. A third mouse. Most distressing was a cute little rabbit, one of a spring litter, with blood around its nose and mouth but no wound.
Then the plague ended. Bird, mouse, mouse, bird, mouse, rabbit.
As time passed with no further cadavers, Isadora became more willing to conclude that perhaps no human agency had been responsible for these bizarre occurrences.
If some twisted individual had been tormenting them with dead things, what was his purpose, what message was intended?
No less than sane citizens, mad people had their motivations.
If the purpose had been to frighten and disgust the Fairchild siblings, why stop?
Lunatics weren’t known for losing interest in their obsessions so easily.
Now, months later, he hadn’t stopped but, after a hiatus, had only changed tactics.
The Case of the Plethora of Dead Things was surely related to the recent business regarding Le Clerc, Leveret, Darkmoor Lane, and the Gerber’s baby.
The Case of Darkmoor Lane, if that’s what it should be called, seemed to suggest a perpetrator who harbored a grudge or, at the very least, believed that he was on a mission to right an injustice.
As we sat at the kitchen table in front of our empty dishes and our licked-clean spoons, I knew I ought to go straight to Loretta and Franklin with what I’d been told.
However, if I did so, I would risk alienating my fellow members of the Clyde Tombaugh Club for a while and perhaps permanently.
From my extensive reading of novels, I well understood that even happy children lived in a condition of quiet rebellion against the world of adults and that, among those whom they welcomed into their secret society, they valued loyalty above all else.
Isadora, Gertrude, and Harry had accepted me with surprising generosity, but weeks or even months would be required for the cords that bound us to become so tightly knotted that they could not be undone.
I would rather deny myself ice cream and cake and books—even books, even forever and ever—than forfeit the grace of friendship and belonging that I’d found with these three bright souls.
I loved their mother and father, but I loved my siblings no less.
Indeed, I might have loved them more, for I recognized my own vulnerability in them and knew their fears; in a world ruled by the strong, shared weakness spawns a binding sympathy.
In the years to come, considering how busy Loretta and Franklin were, I would be spending more time in their children’s company than in theirs.
I told myself that if the unknown tormentor meant to hurt them, he’d have done so already.
I told myself that my experience of evil would ensure I’d see danger coming before any harm could be done, and then I would go to Loretta and Franklin.
I told myself, in the meantime, I would solve this mystery, after which any risk that might exist would have been removed.
I knew I was being selfish, but I did not believe I was reckless.
I would heed Harmony’s advice. I would enjoy life, but I would stay alert. All would be well if I remained alert.
A short while later, alone in my suite, I finished brushing my teeth.
I returned the toothbrush to the ceramic caddy next to the bathroom sink and looked up to see that I wasn’t reflected in the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet.
As if through a window, I saw Captain in a three-piece tweed and the albino gentleman in a sharply tailored gray suit and pale-gray fedora.
They were standing in a dimly lighted parking lot, next to a Chrysler convertible roadster, as a thin tide of night mist washed low across the blacktop.
Captain said, “I must be crazy—paying a gumshoe this much by the hour.” The pale detective said he was worth twice what he charged and would at last have what was wanted by this time tomorrow.
“He’s looking for us,” I said, and my words erased the image from the mirror much like a hand would wipe a film of condensed steam from a pane of glass.
I had not dozed off. This vision could not be dismissed as a daymare.
I did not know what was happening to me.
I could only hope that it never happened again.