Castleview (8 page)

Read Castleview Online

Authors: Gene Wolfe

BOOK: Castleview
4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
SHOTS IN THE NIGHT
THERE WAS a knock, soft and almost furtive.
Not Seth. Seth would’ve come straight in, and she had not heard the car.
Another neighbor with another jar of soup, another covered dish. Sally wished, suddenly and detestably, that Tom had died a year ago, that Tom was already buried, that healing grass had grown and been cut over his grave all summer.
Tap, tap, tap?
Whoever it was could see that the lights were on inside—old Mrs. Cosgriff from across the street, probably. Old Mrs. Cosgriff had not come yet. Old Mrs. Cosgriff would know that she, Sally Howard, was still up. Wearily she rose and went to the door.
It was a small, swarthy, thinly bearded man in a long coat. In place of a casserole he carried a worn leather briefcase like a lawyer’s.
“Yes, what is it?” Somebody from the company, she thought. They’ve sent him from the home office.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you.” He spoke softly, with an accent she could not quite place. For no reason she could have put a finger on, she thought of the Deep South and of its coast—of desolate, muddy beaches that lay below Washington but were much further from Washington than the moon.
“I’m sorry?” she said.
He bobbed his head. “Wouldn’t want to disturb
you
… saw your light—” From the back of the house there came the sound of breaking glass.
Sally stiffened. “What was that?”
The dark stranger smiled. “Only a glass, I think. Someone dropped a glass, or knocked one over.”
“My mother’s gone home,” Sally said.
He looked at her blankly.
“I’m alone in the house.”
“Per’aps your cat?” He reminded her of a cat himself.
“We don’t—I’d better see what it was.” She turned away.
“Per’aps it would be better if a man accompanied you.”
“Oh! Oh, yes.” He was not large and did not look strong, yet she knew he was right, that two people would be more apt to frighten away a prowler than one. “Thank you very much. Won’t you come in?”
Somehow he was across the threshhold and past her, walking noiselessly but swiftly down the hall toward the back of the house.
Then he was gone.
She called, “Is it all right?” and hurried after him. The rooms were dark, and he did not know the house—he was probably groping for the light switch, and the prowler might attack him, might even kill him, while he groped.
And yet she felt certain she was wrong; that there was no small, dark, briefcase-carrying stranger, and no prowler; that she was alone in the house, save for Tom’s ghost. “Tom,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me. Don’t hurt me like that, Tom.”
She turned on the light. There was no one in the kitchen, but the window above her sink had been broken. Shattered glass had fallen into the sink; more lay upon the brown vinyl-covered floor.
“Sir!”
she called. “Mister? Where are you?”
There was no answer. She went from room to room, switching on the lights in the pantry, in the dining room and
the bathroom and the big master bedroom; but she was alone in the house save for Tom’s ghost. When she sat down on the bed, she felt certain that the ghost was sitting in Tom’s chair, smoking one of Tom’s pipes; but when she went back into the living room, eager to see even a ghost if the ghost was Tom’s, she could not see it.
Someone pulled up outside; she heard the car door slam. It was strange, she thought, that she had not heard the small dark stranger’s car. Had he walked, or come in a taxi? Wouldn’t she have heard the taxi’s engine, the closing of the taxi’s door?
The doorbell chimed, slowly and almost sadly. It struck her that she hated those bells, and had hated them for years. They had sounded so fine in the store, so elegant when she and Tom had picked them out; the clerk had never warned them, never told her how dismal they might sound in an empty house at night.
They chimed again, and she went to the door.
This man was very different from the first, a big burly man—bigger even than Tom had been—with a wide-brimmed hat that he pulled off as she opened the door. “Mrs. Howard?” He held up a small leather case, like a wallet; there was a star-shaped badge in it. “Deputy sheriff.”
“Thank God you’ve come,” she said. “I should have called. How did you know?”
“Know what, ma’am?” His voice was bigger and deeper than Tom’s, too, Sally thought. But it wasn’t as smart. This man couldn’t manage a factory, would never be asked to take over a bigger one in Galena.
“There’s somebody in my house. Somebody’s broken in,” she told him.
“Broken in, ma’am?”
“Yes, I’ll show you.” Sally hurried off. She was always hurrying tonight it seemed, now that there was nobody to hurry for. She heard the deputy’s slow step behind her.
Foolishly she had feared that the broken glass would be gone, the window whole again—that she had dreamed everything
and would look a fool; but the triangular shards still lay in the sink and on the vinyl flooring she always wanted to call linoleum as her mother did. Everything was just as before.
“See?” Sally said.
The deputy grunted, nodding. “You got any notion when this happened, ma’am?”
“About five minutes ago.”
“Five minutes?”
“I was in the living room, and I heard it—heard it break. There was a caller, a man at the door. He said he’d look, and he went back there. Then I went, too, and turned on the lights, but I didn’t see anything.”
The deputy had drawn his gun. She had not noticed it, but it was in his hand, its barrel pointed at the floor. “Where’s he now?”
“The man who was at the door?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since he went back here.”
“You go through the whole house, ma’am?”
Sally shook her head. “Just downstairs. Not even all the downstairs rooms.”
“I’ve got to report this. All right if I use your phone? Then we’re going to go through your whole house and make sure nobody’s in here. You didn’t hear this fellow go out the front while you were checking the back?”
“No. He could have, of course. I wouldn’t necessarily have heard him.”
“That’s right—but he might not have, too. That’s why I’m going to look.”
Half an hour later, the deputy seated himself heavily in Tom’s favorite chair, right on top of the ghost.
Sally asked, “Can I get you something? There’s coffee, and there’s Coke and beer in the refrigerator.”
“Coffee will be just fine, ma’am.”
She went back to the kitchen, feeling there that something
was going to spring out at her. Broken glass still lay in her sink and on the floor. She picked up the largest pieces and put them in the garbage; they tinkled and clashed like wind chimes.
Seth was still gone. Sally wondered briefly what Seth was thinking about, going out like that with his father dead today. Only today. Probably, she decided, he wasn’t thinking at all, just driving aimlessly nowhere, perhaps alone, perhaps with some friend. She hoped he was with a friend. It wasn’t really late yet anyway, only half past eight.
She poured coffee, remembered she had forgotten to ask if he took cream and sugar, and put the little blue sugarbowl and cream pitcher on the tray, hesitated, then poured out a cup for herself.
“Thank you, ma’am,” the deputy said, as she had known he would. He picked up a cup and sipped. Black.
“You’re very welcome.” She set the tray on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa.
“Let me tell you, ma’am. I don’t think anybody came in through that window.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I believe I am, ma‘am. That window’s just awfully small, and the hunks of glass that stayed in the frame are still right there. They’d cut hell—I beg your pardon. They’d cut anybody who tried to crawl through, even a kid. But maybe this man who was at the door had a friend hit that window with a stick. You catch my drift, ma’am?”
Sally nodded. “I think so.”
“First thing I thought of was a rock, but there wasn’t any rock on the floor. He could’ve picked it up when he went back there, but you said he didn’t turn on the lights, so that’s not too likely. Doesn’t matter, really. You don’t have a dog, do you, ma’am?”
“We used to,” Sally said, “but Rexy was hit by a car. We didn’t want to go through that again.”
“You ought to think about it, ma’am. Specially now, with Mr. Howard gone. A dog’s awfully cheap protection.”
“All right, I will.”
“I didn’t get much chance to say how sorry I was about Mr. Howard. One of the other officers investigated, and he told me about it. I am sorry, truly.” The deputy swallowed coffee.
“Thank you. Did you know Tom? Is that why you’re here?”
“I wasn’t a friend or anything. I knew who he was because I’ve got a brother-in-law that works at the plant. Fred Davis?”
Sally sighed. “I don’t—I didn’t know many of the people who worked for Tom. Mostly just the office people.”
“I suppose. Well, ma’am, you asked why I was here. Have you heard about Mr. Roberts?”
“Dad?” An icy hand caressed Sally’s heart.
The deputy had pulled a battered little notebook from his shirt pocket. “Mr. Leonard Robert Roberts. That’s him?”
Sally nodded mutely.
“I guess you haven’t heard from him in the past few hours? He hasn’t come over to tell you how sorry he is? Or maybe help about the funeral?”
“No,” she said. “Has anything—Yes! Wait—yes, he did! My mother told me. My mother was here with me, and she made me take a sleeping pill, and before she went home she told me he’d just heard and he called. She talked to him.”
The deputy nodded heavily. “Yes, ma’am. We’ve talked with her and your sister already.”
“She said he was at the museum—he’s on the board—so when she’d gone I tried to call him. Mr. Shields was there; he’s the new owner where Dad works. He said Dad was with him, and he was going to ask Dad to call me back. Then I went back to sleep for a while. I suppose I missed his call.”
“That’s a shame,” the deputy said, “if you did, ma’am.”
“So Dad was all right. That was—I don’t know—six-thirty or a quarter to seven. Something like that.”
The deputy nodded again. “We’ve talked with Mr. Shields, too, ma’am. He was the one that called us.”
Sally waited in silence, staring at him.
“When he went looking for your pa for you, he couldn’t find him anyplace. They’d gone over to the museum together, and the car was out front with the keys in the ignition. It was raining on and off. Mr. Shields says he figured your pa wouldn’t go off without saying something, and he wouldn’t walk through that rain when there was a car right there he could use.”
Sally said, “Dad wouldn’t take somebody else’s car.”
“This was from View Motors, ma’am. They were just using it because Mrs. Shields had Mr. Shields’s car. Anyway, Mr. Shields couldn’t find your pa anywhere. The calliope started playing, and I guess that shook him up. You know the big calliope they’ve got out in the old carriage house?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ve played it. I play the piano, a little, and the organ at church.”
“Do you, ma’am?” The deputy drained his cup. “That’s very interesting.”
Sally looked down at her own untouched coffee. “You think it might have been me. Do you know how that calliope works?”
“Yes, ma‘am. It’s got a switch on it—not like an electric switch, but a big lever. Push it one way, and a person can play it just like you play the organ at the church. But if you push it the other way, it reads off a roll, like a player piano. The thing is, ma’am, that Mr. Shields knew the tune. It was the Sad Waltz—he called it some foreign name, but he says that’s what it means—from a piece called
Peer Gynt.
There isn’t a roll for either one, so what he heard was somebody playing. Your ma says your pa’s not musical. You were asleep in bed then?”
Sally shook her head. “I was asleep, yes. Not in bed. I was lying on that sofa.”
“And there wasn’t anybody with you?”
“No.” Sally sipped her coffee: tepid and bitter. “My son had gone out earlier. Seth was terribly upset about Tom, and so was I, I suppose. After Mom left, I was alone.”
“They got him over at Fouque’s, ma’am, if you want to see him.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m going tomorrow morning.”
“And you don’t have any notion where your father might be?”
“Not if he isn’t at home or at View Motors.”
“We’ve been there, ma‘am. The man there—Mr. Camberwell—was getting ready to lock up. There wasn’t anyone there except him. Did your father have many friends, ma’am?”

Other books

Bash, Volume II by Candace Blevins
Unraveled (Undone) by Jennifer Dawson
One Wicked Night by Jamieson, Kelly
Dark Summer by Jon Cleary
Family Secrets by Rona Jaffe
I Remember You by Harriet Evans
Surrender Your Heart by Spencer, Raven J.
Clockers by Richard Price