Mallory's Oracle (22 page)

“You never told me you knew Estelle Gaynor.”

“You never asked. At my age it's not unusual to know several dead people.”

“Several murdered people?”

And what about Samantha Siddon? Had the fourth victim also been on nodding acquaintance with dead people before joining their company?

The doorbell chimed with light musical notes. Jonathan Gaynor was admitted. After a brief handshake with the enthroned Redwing, he allowed his introduction to be made to Mallory as though they had never met. He winked at her as his hostess led him off to another part of the room. Another white-haired woman with a survivor's eye for dangerous moving objects stepped out of his way when the sharp angles of his jutting elbows came perilously close to her.

As long as he was sitting down and not colliding with anyone, not tripping on anything, Mallory thought he fit in well with the old women who fawned over him and fed him nourishing sugar cookies. He touched the wrinkled, dry hand of an octogenarian to make some point with tactile emphasis, and the woman came all undone. Mallory reevaluated her opinion on the death of sex after forty.

Her attention turned to a tall, thin woman who had joined them on the couch. The lean body was created for designer dresses. The expensive razor cut of her short white hair framed a fine bone structure beneath the webs of wrinkles. The woman was saying to Edith, “Oh yes, we knew Samantha Siddon quite well. She never missed a seance after the second murder. She said it was life on the edge, and she hadn't been to the edge for more than fifty years, and then it was only for a moment.”

Mallory accepted a delicate teacup from the maid and turned back to the woman with the mannequin frame. “Ma' am?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Aren't you afraid? Three murders so close to home. Those women—”

“Oh no, dear, not at all. Now take Pearl Whitman, she wasn't killed in the square. Oh, but it was the same lunatic, wasn't it? Of course it was. You know, what frightened Pearl most wasn't death. It was the prospect of invalidism, lying in a hospital bed for years, waiting to die or waiting for someone to visit, always being disappointed, always waiting.”

“Miss Whitman attended the seances, too?”

“She was a charter member. She thought murder made the whole thing more exciting.”

“And Estelle Gaynor?”

“She hosted the very first one.”

“No, dear,” said a voice behind Mallory's chair. “Anne hosted the first one.”

Mallory looked up into the bright eyes of a blue-haired woman with a perfectly round face.

“Anne?”

“Anne Cathery, the woman who died in the park,” said the moon-faced woman.

“You're both aware of the connection?”

“The murders and the seances? Of course we're aware. All of us.” The wave of her hand included the entire room. “What's left of us. How could you fail to notice a thing like that? I swear, you young people must think we were all born with liver spots and Alzheimer's.”

The mannequin leaned toward Mallory and said, more kindly, “It's all right, dear. You're supposed to take old women for doddering fools. You're young, that's your job. I certainly don't mind. I find it gives me an edge in all my dealings with your generation.”

The round-faced woman winked at the mannequin. “Like that young financier you took for a ride last year?”

“Netted me a million in profit, April dear.” She looked back to Mallory. “The young man assumed my position on the board of directors was some honorary title for the widow of the majority stockholder. But you seem more interested in murder than money. That speaks well of you.”

“So you're not afraid.”

“Of dying? I'd have to think on that, dear. Most days I'd have to say yes. But then, there are those days, you know? No, of course you don't. You're a child. You don't know the joys of incontinence and flatulence. I don't think Samantha Siddon much cared if she lived another year. She had lived too long, she thought, surviving her own children. Now there's a crime of crimes.”

“Didn't she have a cousin?”

“Margot. Strange child. I don't think she cared for Margot very much. She used to brag on the child's visits every week, but I don't know that she enjoyed them. No, Samantha probably didn't mind dying.”

“But a death like that—”

“There's an excitement to a quick ending,” said the mannequin. “It's a momentous thing, death. But you wouldn't know that.” She rested one paper-light hand on Mallory's. “You think you're immortal, don't you, dear? Of course you do.”

The moon-faced woman sat down and well back in the couch cushions. Her plump feet did not quite touch the floor. “Well, anyway, the seances certainly made Samantha's last days more exciting. It was almost like a lottery. Or perhaps you'd prefer the more clichéd analogy of a Bingo game. Ah, the Bingo parlor, God's little waiting room for the blue-hair set.” The woman sighed. “And now it's another month to wait for the next one.”

“The next séance?” asked Mallory.

“No, dear,” said the mannequin. “The seance is once a week. She's talking murder. They're usually four weeks apart.”

“Did anyone mention the seance connection to the police?”

“Oh, worst possible idea. Redwing wouldn't like it. It might cause a rupture in her karma. Artists are so fragile. You're not going to rat us out, are you, dear?”

Markowitz had taught her to scout the terrain. And now she was immersed in the land of canes and cataracts, blue hair and support hose, conspiracy and murder.

A bell tinkled in the hand of the maid.

The illusion of bird women stayed with Mallory as, from different points about the room, they rose in a flock and settled back to earth around the table with its white cloth, with whispers in the shush of material, creaks and shuffles of chairs, settling down and settling in. Mallory sat between Jonathan Gaynor and a woman with a bobbing head. Edith sat between this woman and their hostess. Redwing grasped the hands on either side of her, and the rest of the assembly followed suit in joining hands.

A dish with a black unlit candle sat at the center of the table beside a brightly painted statuette of a Madonna and Child. Piled in front of Redwing was a collection of objects. Markowitz's pocket watch was there, gleaming among other items—the rings with bright gems, a key, a ribbon-tied lock of gold hair so fine it must have belonged to a small child.

Heavy drapes were being drawn across the sunlit windows by the maid. As the room grew dark, the candle at the center of the table came to life, of its own accord, to provide all the light there was. And with that light came the sweet odor of incense, which thickened and overpowered the perfumes of the women. A trick of the wavering candle flame made the tiny Madonna statuette move in a flickering dance.

Redwing closed her eyes, and her head rolled against the back of the wing chair. “Our Father Who art in heaven,” she said, and the gathering closed their eyes, all save Mallory, and repeated the words after her, all save Mallory.

Mallory only moved her mouth in the little heresy of the handicapped make-believer with severe limitations which stopped short of buying heaven.

And it was only hour by hour that she kept at bay the realization that Markowitz was in that hole in the ground and feeding the worms.

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, dead was dead, and a stiff was a stiff. All alone in the cold ground. Markowitz.

Never.

The boy stole up behind Redwing's chair and stood there with less life to him than the wavering statuette. Mallory was planning his incarceration in Juvenile Hall as quickly as she confirmed all the signs of a drugged child. It had always made her a little crazy to see someone strike a child, and this was worse. It called up some gray area of earliest memory which just as quickly slid away from her like a dream lost and beyond recalling. Not that she tried, for every good instinct said, ‘Let it go.'

The gramophone began to play. The music was classical, melding into twenties tunes, and then to old fifties-style rock ‘n' roll. Mallory lifted her chin only slightly in recognition of an album from Markowitz's basement collection.

Redwing plunged her hand into the pile of objects at the center of the table and pulled out Markowitz's watch. The music stopped.

Redwing held the pocket watch by its chain, and her eyes closed as the watch dropped lower and lower, finally lying flat on the table. The gold chain drifted from her splayed fingers. Redwing's eyes were rolling back in the sockets. Her hands pressed flat on the tablecloth. She began to rock slowly, gently at first, and then faster and faster, jerking violently now and shuddering into a spasm. She jolted the table, and her chair rocked on its four legs, beating out a staccato rhythm. Suddenly, the rocking stopped, her body became rigid, leaning far back in the chair. She pressed her head into the upholstery and lowered her face until it made three chins below her open mouth.

Her face lifted and her eyes fixed on Mallory. She gathered up the flesh of her face into Markowitz's smile. The eyes all but disappeared in the merry slits melding into laugh lines at the outer edges.

Everyone else at the table was smiling. Markowitz had that effect on people. Only Mallory did not smile.

“Hey, kid, how're you doing?” said the voice of Markowitz, in his low octaves and Brooklyn accent.

Mallory and Markowitz stared at one another across the table.

“Don't call me kid,” she said.

Markowitz laughed, and would not stop laughing. The table began to move, shuddering under Mallory's hands. She felt lightly drunk with the sound of his laughter.

The boy behind the armchair stepped out to the side in plain view. She watched the child going into a trance of his own. The table rocked, though Redwing's hands were splayed flat and the boy was not touching the table. The music had started again. Buddy Holly was singing about love and the roller coaster. The music couldn't be coming from the gramophone. The turntable wasn't moving, yet it came from that direction.

Markowitz stopped laughing. His smile was wide and easy now, his eyes locked with hers. “Was there something you wanted to tell me, Kathy? ... No? ... Well, maybe there was something you wanted to ask?”

“Who knows what evil lurks ...” she began in a small version of her own voice, which trailed off to no voice at all.

“The Shadow knows,” said Markowitz.

Beside the chair, the boy's mouth moved in silent concert with the words. His thin body rocked back and forth. Markowitz began to laugh again, and the boy laughed in silent tandem, eyes closed, swaying to the music, laughing, paunching out his belly.

Everyone at the table had their hands flat on the cloth. The table continued to rock. It skittered inches left and then right. Mallory could feel the energy coming up through her palms. Her body tensed. Markowitz laughed on as her heart beat on the wall of her chest, and the table rocked with a violence, all but upending itself, energy building like the makings of a ticking bomb, blood icing, mind racing. The laughter was louder now.

The boy was no longer miming the mirth, his eyes were full of sheer terror. He was holding up his arms, fending off unseen blows, screaming in silence as the laughter rolled on. He clutched his gut in the place where Markowitz had been stabbed. The statuette rocked back and forth until it tumbled over. The small plaster head broke off from the body and rolled across the tablecloth to Mallory's hand.

She wasn't conscious of rising from the table. Consciousness surfaced as she was crossing the thick carpet of the front room, waking from a dream, heading for the door and away. Behind her, Markowitz was screaming, screaming.

The women were a chorus of twitterings and whispers. Almost at the door now. And back there, furniture was sliding across the floor away from the table. She passed through the door and into the hallway as Markowitz's wailing diminished into groans. She walked quickly down the hall, seeing only the iron grille of the elevator door before her, thinking of nothing but being away and gone.

The footsteps behind her belonged to Edith Candle, who was running to catch up with her. Silently, they both passed into the elevator. The ornate iron box carried them down and down, falling, caged behind the ironwork. For three floors of deep shadow and bright light, in and out of the dark they fell, and finally, to earth.