Murder by Magic (28 page)

“Then we are agreed,” Nesbit said, lacing his fingers and leaning a bit forward. “I have other commitments. I hope to investigate the affair that brought me here expeditiously. I shall submit my report and depart. Your cooperation—”

“Second thing,” Collins said. “My wife has been . . . ill. One of your degrees is in psychology. I don’t need to explain more. That’s why she’s seeing ghosts. You’ll treat her respectfully. No digging around in her mind. She’s delicate. And my men tell me you’re discreet.” Collins leaned forward himself. “See that you stay that way.”

“—would be most helpful in arranging a rapid and satisfactory conclusion to this affair,” Nesbit continued mildly, as if no interruption had occurred. “May I presume on your patience to ask a few questions, Mr. Collins?”

“I’m not happy that you’re here,” Collins said.

“I’m sure you aren’t,” Nesbit said. “Did the events that caused your wife to write to me happen in the main house there?”

“What? Yes.”

“Ah, thank you. I’ll be brief. How long have you lived here?”

“Seven years.”

“Who lived here before you?”

“The place was empty when I bought it. It belonged to an old lady, who had it in trust from her husband, who made his money in railroads. I suppose you won’t believe me if you don’t see the deeds.”

“That may not be necessary,” Nesbit said, sitting back and reaching for a notebook. “Do you have servants or hired help?”

“Three. George is the gardener and chauffeur. You’ve met him.”

“Not formally,” Nesbit said. “And the others?” He opened his notebook.

“Dolores cooks for us. Helen cleans three days a week.”

“Do the servants live on the grounds?”

“Just George. The others live in town.”

“May I interview them?”

“Don’t ask them impertinent questions. And don’t waste their time. I’m paying them to do their jobs.”

“Is George married?”

“No.”

“I see. You and Mrs. Collins. How long have you been married?”

Collins thought for a moment, as if counting to himself. “Ten years.”

“Three years before you moved here?”

“Yes. How is that important?”

“Have you ever personally seen any unusual events in this house?”

“No, I have not. And I don’t believe in spooks.”

“Nor do I,” Nesbit said with a thin smile. “Your wife’s letter spoke of a window that opened by itself. Have you ever observed that window doing anything out of the ordinary, as windows go?”

“I’m sure that it’s just been Helen, leaving it open and forgetting that she’d done so.”

“If you will indulge me.” Nesbit looked down at his notebook. “Is there a particular time of day or day of the week when the window is more likely to be found open?”

“Not so I’ve noticed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m a busy man. Good day, Mr. Nesbit.” Collins stood, turned, and walked out into the brilliant sunshine, putting on his hat as he crossed the threshold.

Nesbit continued to write for a few more minutes before closing his notebook with a snap. At the bottom of the page, near the margin, was the word “affair?” underlined twice.

Journal of Orville Nesbit—

Visual apparitions are rare, but among them the majority are of the living. The friend who lives in a distant city and so on. What kind of apparition we are facing here, if indeed there is one, remains to be seen.

The woman who answered the knock on the door was tall, rawboned, and saturnine. She wore a black dress with a white apron, and a white cap on her head.

“Orville Nesbit,” Nesbit said with a slight bow. “Is Mrs. Collins in? I believe she is expecting me.”

“Come in, sir,” the woman said, stepping back from the door. Nesbit entered, removing his hat as he did so and pulling off his gloves. He stepped through the door into a hallway. A small table stood to his right, an umbrella stand to his left. To his right, a door opened onto a parlor where a grand piano glistened in the setting sunlight.

The servant took his hat and gloves, vanished into the parlor, and returned a moment later empty-handed to say, “This way, sir.” She led and he followed back through the house. Gold-framed paintings hung on the walls.

“Excuse me,” Nesbit said, “are you Helen?”

“Dolores,” the servant replied, without breaking stride. “Helen is off on Tuesdays.”

“Ah. Have you been working here long, Dolores?”

“Since last August.”

“Only two months?”

“No, the August before that.” They reached the far tea room, where bay windows overlooked the garden. “Wait here, sir,” she said, and departed without another word or a backward glance through the door to the right.

Nesbit walked forward, brushing his gaze over the tea table with its beige cloth, and the airy white chairs around it. He walked over to the French doors to the right of a bay window. One of the doors was partly open. He pushed it open all the way. A formal garden extended beyond, a bee humming over the flowers of red and yellow. Shears clicked off to his left, and he saw the man who had driven him in the touring car, now dressed in boots, denims, and a soil-stained green apron, at work trimming the verge along the brickwork of the foundation. George, that would be.

“Good afternoon,” Nesbit said pleasantly. “If I may be so bold, when do you get off work?”

“Eight, unless I’m called for,” George said, not looking up from his task.

“May I call on you then?” Nesbit asked.

“Is it okay with Mr. Collins?” George asked.

“He promised me full cooperation from everyone,” Nesbit replied. “I shan’t ask any embarrassing questions.”

“All right,” George said, moving farther down the wall, shears still busy.

Nesbit heard a footstep on the floor and saw a bit of motion out of the corner of his eye. He turned back to the tea room and saw another woman enter. She wore a green pastel suit, the skirt coming just below her knees. Her stockings were silk, and her gloves and her open sandals matched her eyes, a cold sea-foam blue.

“Mrs. Collins,” Nesbit said, stepping toward her, raising his hand to take hers. She lifted her own hand, allowing him to take it and lift it to his lips. “Orville Nesbit, very pleased to meet you.”

“Enchanted,” Mrs. Collins said. “Please, call me Mary.”

“Mary,” Nesbit echoed. “Orville.”

“Well, Orville,” Mary said, walking to the tea table and sitting at it, gesturing him to the seat across from her. He slid back the chair and sat. “I’m so delighted you could come. I’m sure I was just being silly and there’s nothing that could interest you here.”

“Since I came all this way,” Orville said as Dolores appeared and set a tea tray on the table between them, “perhaps you can tell me about your adventures.” He eased a notebook from his inner pocket and uncapped his pen.

Mary waited until Dolores had poured the tea and departed before she spoke again.

“I feel like I’m being watched,” she said.

“Ah. And when did this start?”

“After I saw the ghost.”

“You’re quite sure that’s what it was?”

“Completely.”

“Tell me about the house, Mary.”

And for half an hour, while he sipped tea, Orville heard about the house, the grounds, and the town. At last he asked, “And where did the séance take place, Mary?”

“Right here,” she said, one hand sweeping over the table.

“Could I trouble you to show me the window?”

“Of course! How silly of me.” She stood and led the way to a staircase, wide, with a curved mahogany rail, and a Marrakech carpet held down with brass bars at the foot of each riser. “Do you know what I think?” Mary asked as she climbed the stairs. “Sometime, many years ago, there was a poor servant girl here who was thrown to her death from that window. And only now is she feeling strong enough to ask me for help.”

“A plea for help can motivate ghosts,” Orville commented—not adding that revenge or protecting a place was more common still, and commonest among ghosts were those who simply did not know they were dead and kept rehearsing significant events from their earthly lives.

They came to an upstairs hall, bedrooms opening off both sides. “There,” Mary said, gesturing to the double-hung panes at the far end.

“And is there a particular time of day when it opens?” Orville asked. The window was closed right now.

Mary became silent. After a moment she said, “Not so I’ve noticed.”

“Well, is there a time when it never opens?”

They approached the window. It was locked. Outside and directly beneath the window he could see the garden.

“Not so I’ve noticed,” Mary said again. “Do you always ask so many questions?”

“Sometimes,” Orville said. He took a tape measure from his right-hand coat pocket and measured the window, writing the dimensions in his notebook. He closed his eyes and laid the fingertips of his left hand gently on the glass. Then he opened his eyes and, still with his left hand, briskly reached out and snapped open the lock. He took a step back and consulted his pocket watch.

“I was told that dinner is at seven,” he said. “It’s nearly time.”

And so they descended.

Mr. and Mrs. Baxter were guests that evening at dinner. The two men talked business and politics, and the two women talked flowers. Orville sat mostly silent, observing as George and Dolores served them and answering politely when spoken to. After dinner the men retired to the smoking room, where a billiard table beckoned. Orville accompanied the ladies to the parlor as Mr. Baxter and Mr. Collins left the dining room. The last word Orville heard was a muttered “Fairy” from Mr. Baxter.

In the parlor, Orville turned to the two ladies. “I wonder if you would indulge me,” he said, “by re-creating your recent séance.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Mrs. Baxter asked.

“I will be present,” Orville said. “I think it is a . . . necessary . . . idea.”

“I’ll fetch the Ouija board,” Mary said, leaving the room, while Shirley cleared a dried flower arrangement from the table and drew the curtains.

Shirley took a pair of candlesticks from the mantelpiece and placed them on the table. Orville pulled a box of matches out of his pocket and said, “Allow me.” He lit the candles. As he did so, he asked, “What was the nature of Mrs. Collins’s illness of”—he took a guess—“a year ago last August?”

“Oh, that,” she said. “She was in an automobile accident. The silly thing, trying to drive. She crashed into the gatepost at the foot of the driveway. She was taken to the hospital, and for three days Roger didn’t leave her side. Such a devoted man.”

“And the effects of her accident?”

“She was in a coma those three days, poor dear.”

“Thank you.” The candles were burning now, the flames tall and straight. He backed away.

With tapping of heels, Mary reappeared, a pasteboard box held before her in her hands. She opened it and removed the board, made of varnished wood with painted letters and numbers—the words “Yes” and “No” on either side, “Ouija” in larger letters in the center.

The two women sat, one on either side of the table. Orville switched off the lights. In the twin candle flames their faces changed to the visages of haggard crones.

Orville took out his notebook and his pen as the two put fingertips on the celluloid planchette. Nothing happened for a long time. Orville could hear the snick of billiard balls from elsewhere in the house. Then the triangle of plastic began to move, indicating letters.
N . . . E . . . D
. . . The planchette trembled, and the candle flames, hitherto steady, flickered and burned low.
R . . . A
. . . A gust of wind from the French doors snatched at the flames; the right-hand one went out.

“I’m so cold,” Mary said, snatching her fingers from the planchette and hugging her arms around herself.

“Upstairs,” Orville said. He flicked on the light, then led the way along the path Mary had led him on earlier. In the hall, the window stood open.

Journal of Orville Nesbit—

The recording accelerometer that I left in the guesthouse shows a slight tremble at 9:22 this evening, the very moment when the draft blew through the house—made possible, I suspect, by the opening of the upstairs window. I have a hypothesis that I will test in the morning. Tomorrow also I must check the newspaper archives in town, to see if any murders or suicides are associated with what is now the Collins house.

My interview with George, the chauffeur, proved interesting. None of the servants currently employed have been in the house longer than Dolores, and she dates her employment from after Mrs. Collins’s accident. The previous chauffeur, he states, was sacked for leaving the automobile running in the circular driveway in front of the house the day of that accident, after driving her from an appointment of some kind in town.

When I inquire after the house, I shall inquire after the previous staff as well. Perhaps they will have stories to tell.

Morning. Breakfast was a quiet one, with Dolores serving silently, and little conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Collins. Orville said even less. He was wearing a morning coat, a bit formal, but giving him what he felt was an aura of power.

“So many kinds of power,” he had written in his notebook. “The earth, the wind, the fire. All that was missing last night was the water.”

He took a sip now from the water goblet by his right hand.

After the plates had been cleared away, Orville stood and spoke to the Collinses. “If you will indulge me, I have an experiment to perform upstairs. Either or both of you may witness it. And if I may be so bold as to ask George to accompany us and bring his toolbox?”

“If it hurries the day this farce ends,” Mr. Collins said, and Mary said sharply, “Roger!” Mr. Collins nodded to Dolores and said, “Fetch George.”

When the gardener arrived, wooden toolbox in hand, the group proceeded upstairs. They walked to the end of the hall, Orville in the lead.

The window was closed and locked.

“Yesterday afternoon,” Orville began as he snapped the lock open, “when I first saw this window, I unlocked it. And as I went down the hall, before coming to the nearest door, I secretly stretched a single long blond hair across the hall at knee level. Last night, when the window opened, that hair was still in place. No human had been down this passageway or opened it. But,” and he slapped his hand on the wall, “the window opened”—another slap—“nonetheless.”