I KNOCKED AND LET MYSELF IN. Annie was sitting next to Lord Hurlingthon, checking his reflexes. Marlon had remained stoic in his corner since my departure, as if time didn’t pass by for him. How did he manage to keep up with the rhythm of the house? He was eighty-three.
I cleared my throat and called everyone’s attention.
“Excuse me, Dr. Kensington? Don’t forget we have that meeting to attend.”
“Is it time?”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” I answered with a big smile.
Marlon pierced through me with his tired eyes, trying to figure out what was going on. If he could, I bet he would’ve run up to me and sniffed me out, from the soles of my shoes to the hair on the top of my head. Anything to get a trail to follow and find out where I had been. Quite a nose, I have to say.
Annie continued the pantomime a little longer before proceeding to put an end to it by making Marlon sign the form. I took advantage of the spare time and informed Lord Hurlingthon that I was making slow but steady progress based on a lead I had gotten from one of the newspaper clippings. And I would be presenting a full report to him on Monday. He was pleased and I have to say, it made me feel better. Marlon’s face had remained carved in stone throughout this brief encounter. Dr. Kensington packed her belongings and we said our goodbyes.
“Mr. Saussure,” Lord Hurlingthon called me. “I noticed that we haven’t discussed your fee yet. I take it as a sample of your gallantry, but I am not doling out charity and your time isn’t free. In the event of unexpected success, I have left a check at your disposal with Marlon. I believe you will find the sum to be an appropriate expression of the delicate investigation you’re conducting.”
My meal ticket was to be delivered by the hound of the Baskervilles. Great.
“I appreciate your concern, Lord Hurlingthon. Uh–one more thing sir…”
“Yes?”
“I went through all the information you provided me with, but I was unable to find the place where your parents are buried.” Annie couldn’t restrain herself and threw a bewildered look at me. “I was wondering if you could let me know, Lord Hurlingthon.”
Marlon broke out of his stately posture to approach his master. He started to rearrange the clothes messed up or removed by Annie’s examination.
“Certainly, Mr. Saussure. They’re at the Sacred Heart Cemetery. In the family graveyard.”
“Thank you, sir. Until Monday. We’ll see ourselves out so Marlon can help you with your clothing.”
Annie and I practically flew to the ground floor and left the mansion. Inside the car and outside the property, we were silent as never before. Close to Annie’s office, she finally broke out of the muted mood.
“Don’t you want to know if he’s insane? Isn’t that why you dragged me there?”
Yes, that. Also, I needed bait. Sorry, Annie, I understand now why you never liked me. I swear I do.
“He’s not crazy.”
“You don’t believe in God, but you believe that that man is two hundred and thirteen years old?” Annie looked out the window. Then, she stuck her hand inside her handbag and retrieved a pair of gloves which she started to put on. “Did you get a look at the paintings at least?”
Instead of answering any of the questions, I removed the letters from my pocket and tossed them over her lap. She immediately recognized the seal and removed the certificates from their respective envelopes, without saying a word. And she didn’t say a word for several minutes afterwards.
“Is this the date you found in the news–?”
“Yes.”
“I told you someone had stolen his identity.”
“Oh, and…here.”
I remembered the scalpel, so I returned it to its owner.
“You don’t expect me to exhume the bodies, right?” she asked, taking the blade and storing it in the leather case.
I explained to her why I had borrowed it and how I intended to check the burial records at the cemetery. Also, having a front row seat to examine Marlon’s facial expressions in the rare event of saying something that might alter them was a big plus for bringing up the cemetery and the article stuff.
Annie remained lost in thought, probably contemplating all the different roads the case could take. I certainly was. Even if my next step was clear, my brain had turned into scrambled eggs after all the sudden discoveries.
“You never discussed money with this super-man. That was stupid.”
Yeah, fine. Maybe she and I were not on the same page.
“Look, if the money from the check isn’t good enough, I’ll take the golden vases by the fireplace. They look expensive.”
I might sound like I was improvising to get Annie off my back, but I had actually thought about it. If anything, with all the money decorating the entire manor (hanging from the ceilings, covering walls and floors) getting paid would be the easy part of the case.
I dropped Annie off and I decided to drop myself inside Grumpy Al’s place. I needed my mid-morning-almost-lunch coffee. It was a cold day, but a few rays of sunlight would occasionally hit that side of the world. Nonetheless, the moment you stepped inside Grumpy Al’s diner, the muddiness swallowed you and a quiet atmosphere of anonymity settled over you.
“Al.”
My coffee and cheese sandwich greeted me with the usual “Richard”. I was grateful for the smelly liquid caffeine in front of me. The taste of haunted souls still lingered on my tongue. Maybe that was the scent Marlon had picked up after my return from the ghost house.
Basically, with the date the death certificate provided, I could estimate Adora’s pregnancy as far as two months when Frederick’s life was ended.
But now it was Adora’s note that didn’t fit in. Who did she try to murder? Did she succeed? Did she try to kill the real Frederick or the impostor? All conjectures were useless at that point. I didn’t understand the timeline of events. Who died when Hugh was in his mother’s womb? Who died when Hugh was an adult? And why did his mother commit suicide? All the questions remained unanswered, or with a million possibilities as to the real response. There was too much death around him and not enough in him, like Irupé had told me.
Another option was that Lord Frederick had faked his own death, and when the plan failed, he pretended it was a mistake. Still, it was too far out there and it didn’t cover most of the matters in need of an explanation. After all the breakthroughs, I had to go back to the little bits and pieces and have them edited for the coming Monday. Maybe I should have let it all out at my meeting with Lord Hurlingthon. Any luck and he would have a heart attack during our reunion. Marlon needed to be there, as well. He was holding something back (aside from my paycheck) and he wouldn’t say. Big ears and small mouth is a bad combination for someone who was supposed to be a witness.
I paid for my nutritive comfort and asked Grumpy Al for his phonebook. I looked for the Sacred Heart Cemetery and wrote the address down. I had to go east. A good two, maybe three-hour drive. Grumpy Al remained on the other side of the counter staring at me, pretending to be cleaning coffee mugs, registering every single action I took.
“If there’s anything you want to say, now is the time, Al. I mean it. Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
He put the cup down, hung the damp dishcloth from his right shoulder and reduced the physical breach between us. The social positions supplier/customer disappeared.
“I can’t speak now and break someone else’s peace. Do you understand?”
“No, Al. I don’t. You can help him through me. Why won’t you?”
“Because that would be messing with the essential order of things. They already did that. More than anyone should have. It’s time to let the pendulum return to its natural balance.”
I leaned forward and over the counter.
“Are you saying he’s unnatural?”
“That poor man is a victim, Richard. He is suffering the punishment for a crime he did not commit. Somehow, the turn of the screw has transformed him into the consequence of an
atrocity and the receiver of the sentence at the same time.”
I returned to my initial place. Alistair knew. He really knew what was going on with my case. But pushing him wouldn’t work. I had tried it before when I visited the enchanted woods of the druid. The same forest that had swallowed six lives in sets of three. He knew about that, too. That’s why he broke out the monosyllabic rhythm of our interactions to warn me. The previous conception I had had about Grumpy Al was incomplete. I thought he knew everything about other people’s lives. But as it turned out, he also knew about their deaths. Maybe instead of asking straight out what it was, I needed to resort to broader questions.
“Is it something I can deal with?”
“Not as a policeman.”
“That’s all I am.”
“You’re also a human being.”
“Is it...” I leaned forward again “the Devil?”
Grumpy Al shook his head and gave me a half-smile.
“You’re too naive, Richard. The Devil doesn’t exist. Besides, I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
How did he know that?
“Exactly, prayer means nothing to me. Quite frankly, I’d rather recite Gower if I’m in the mood for repeating old words I don’t understand.”
“What keeps you alive is what will help you.”
“My brain.”
“Your heart.”
This conversation was falling off the moving train that would take me to Lord Hurlingthon’s death.
“Am I on the right track, at least?”
Grumpy Al straightened himself as much as he could, and with a wistful gaze, he recited:
“Death is a dialogue between
the spirit and the dust.
‘Dissolve,’ says Death. The Spirit, ‘Sir,
I have another trust.’
Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
The Spirit turns away,
just laying off, for evidence,
an overcoat of clay.”[1]
I took that as an affirmative answer (as much as I could, anyway) and headed for the door.
“That’s not Gower, Al. That’s Dickinson,” I replied as I glanced at Grumpy Al one last time.
“So?”
“Dickinson’s for girls.”
The sound of the door closing behind me announced that the rabbit chase was back on. I had to be light on my feet again. And, at that moment, it meant pressing my bottom against the driver’s seat for a couple of hours until reaching consecrated ground.
Even with Grumpy Al showing me his mystic lover side, if he believed Hugh Hurlingthon was an unnatural being, it meant something. Although I couldn’t be certain that whatever Grumpy Al knew wasn’t based on the conversations he had heard over from customers. I had been a member of the force for fifteen years. I should’ve heard something, smelled it in the air. The man was a talking corpse living just outside the central part of town. How could a phenomenon like that not leak through to the people walking the streets? Grumpy Al had more connections than I was aware of. Was that the reason he always kept his presence off the radars?
This case had turned my life upside down in five simple days. The town had completely redefined itself in front of my eyes and it was bewildering. I could not fathom my place in that new community: a man that wouldn’t die; a doctor who believed it to be possible; a glowing forest with a bouncing gnome and a mute giant; and a murderer who managed to reproduce his crime seven years later without leaving prison. And please, let’s not forget that the woods helped him by locking the exit door.
I could’ve gotten this case a week later.
Annie was right. I should have given myself a few days off to mourn Kara and the family we should have become. A trip to the cemetery wasn’t the best plan to deal with the five-year anniversary of an open wound. It was only a way to cast a thin overcoat of clay over it, leaving it nothing but dirty.
The gilded gates explained why the Hurlingthons had chosen a place so far away to bury their loved ones. If money could buy you a place in heaven, that is where you would purchase your first-class ticket. Trimmed lawn. Gravel paths. Marble gravestones. Flowers on every tomb. On the other hand, if heaven doesn’t exist, that seemed to be a nice place to stay.
I approached the offices to figure out how I could take a look at the burial records. Being a private cemetery, it was possible they had some issues with disclosing information to non-family members, which was also another good reason for choosing it in the event of having to bury an embarrassing cadaver. The state cemeteries were in those early years, so full of soldiers, it was impossible to keep track of every person visiting them. The wind carried the sweet smell of the flowers. Few people were visiting graves, but Friday evening didn’t exactly scream cemetery! so that was understandable.
As I had anticipated, they wouldn’t let me go through their records without the family’s permission. I wrote down the manor’s phone number and handed it to a lady with square, thick glasses and red lipstick.
“This might take a while,” was her answer when she realized I wasn’t leaving.
“Why? Do you have a bunch of bodies piled up at the back that you have to bury?”
She pouted with heavy disapproval pursing her lips.
“I would appreciate some respect for the deceased, sir.”
“Sure, as soon as you show some respect for the living. Trust me, it will be better if you just let me take a quick look. I get paid by the hour, so...The longer you make me wait, the deeper my pockets get. Take. Your. Time.”
One more red pout and I was in.
I asked for the book of the year on Frederick Hurlingthon’s death certificate and sifted through it, looking for the exact date.
June third, June third, Jun...Bingo.
Four people had been buried on that date. Two were women. So that only left two who could be Frederick Hurlingthon. Of the two men, according to their birth and death dates, one was only fourteen years old. This left just one man linked to the death of Lord Frederick Hurlingthon. His name: Piotr Chichikov. I wrote down the number of the parcel. Maybe visiting his tombstone might do some good. From his name alone, I could tell he was a foreigner…or so they wanted everyone to believe.
I thanked Red Lips for her kind attention and left looking for the grave. I found it at the farther corner to the right, the one less close to the roads.
There it was. Lonely. Flowerless. And utterly gray.
The tombstone said he was Russian. And to my surprise, he was buried right next to the Hurlingthon graveyard. What a nerve.
The family graveyard wasn’t a mausoleum as I had expected, but an open piece of land with a statue of angels rising to the sky among all the graves. All the cherubs in heaven could not fix or take away whatever they had done wrong. This space had a low black fence that separated it from the rest of the cemetery. Piotr Chichikov was with them, but always staring from the outside.
As I stood in front of whoever that dead person really was, a live one, a man to be more accurate, came out of the Hurlingthon’s space. He was at the tomb behind the angels’ statue and that’s why I hadn’t seen him before. When he reached the fence, he acknowledged my presence for the first time. The man, of no more than forty years of age, with a black coat and matching hat, bowed at me before continuing his march out of the parcel. As soon as he was out, I hastened inside the land and read the gravestone hidden behind the angels.
Adora’s.
That’s when I finally recognized him. Without his thin blond mustache, it had taken me a minute. I ran after him, jumping over the fence and calling him out as he had rushed out when he noticed there were witnesses.
“Frederick!” He hadn’t aged a day, nor was he dead. He could help his son. “Lord Frederick Hurlingthon! Lord Hurlingthon!”
Nothing. The man didn’t even flinch. I resumed my chase. It was him. I had seen him in the large painting at the guesthouse. He looked exactly like baby Hugh.
A police hunch attacked my guts ag
ain. I hadn’t seen Lord Frederick.
“Mr. Piotr Chichikov! Mr. Chichikov! I need to talk to you about your son!”
He came to a sudden halt. I was seeing the big picture now.
XIV