The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (7 page)

As they walked back in the deepest dejection, the fleeting thought struck Harris that had he put his shilling, or even his sixpence in the collecting box instead of the brass button, they might have been in time. Then he shook his head. No god could be
that
petty.

“At least we know where she is,” said Bostock hopefully, and secretly considered the shilling he'd sacrificed in church had been money well spent. Of such strange materials is faith built, unbuilt and built again, in ever changing designs.

By the time the two friends drew near their homes, they were buoyant again. Harris's eyes were gleaming and Bostock watched him admiringly. He knew that Harris's large brain was fairly humming to devise a plan to rescue Adelaide from the poorhouse. He did not anticipate any further problems.

They shook hands at the corner of Harris's street and parted, each confident that their troubles were all but at an end. Harris was whistling under his breath, and as he entered his house, his spindly, wrinkle-stockinged legs did a jaunty, doorstep jig.

“This is my son, sir,” said Dr. Harris wearily as Harris entered the parlor and the stranger smiled.

He was shortish, stout and quietly dressed. He wore a neat bagwig and had soft, large eyes. With an unaccountable chill, Harris saw he had a clubfoot whose grim black bulk seemed to belie the gentleness of his expression.

‘This is Mister Selwyn Raven,” said Dr. Harris to his suddenly pale son. “He has come to get at the truth about Adelaide.”

“
A SAD AFFAIR,
my young friend,” said Mr. Raven. Harris nodded warily, his eyes moving from Mr. Raven's mild face to his unnatural black boot.

“I don't wish to pry, young man, into any of your private secrets, but a few questions, if you'd be so kind, eh?” He nodded to Dr. Harris, who looked momentarily distressed, as if on his son's behalf, then hurriedly left the room.

Harris felt curiously abandoned. He did not know what to make of Mr. Raven, who kept shifting his wicked boot as if to draw attention to it.

“You are interested in such things?” asked the inquiry agent, observing Harris's fascination. “But of course! Being a physician's son such deformities must seem commonplace.”

Harris nodded and smiled casually. Or believed that he did.

“Would you care to see it?” offered Mr. Raven eagerly. He bent down as if to remove the boot.

“No!” said Harris quickly. He had been seized by a sudden dread that the deformed foot might have been something altogether frightful. Mr. Raven looked mildly surprised and apologized for embarrassing the young gentleman. He had not intended to do any such thing, but when one had such a misfortune it was difficult to judge its effect. He himself had always found it was better to be open with it, not to attempt to hide it, or even to pretend it wasn't there. After all, it was an act of God, and one didn't deny God—

“You do believe in God, young man?” he asked anxiously; and then, before the startled Harris could reply, he smiled and added, “But of course. You've just come from church. When did you last see your sister?”

“I—I don't remember,” said Harris faintly. The abrupt change of direction made him break out in a sweat. Mr. Raven was an eerie adversary.

“I didn't mean to pry into your religious beliefs, young man,” said Mr. Raven gently. “But I like to know where we stand.” Again he moved his horrible boot as if, having discovered exactly where Harris was standing, he intended to flatten him under it. “Did you see any stranger in the neighborhood yesterday? A woman, perhaps?”

Again the abrupt change of direction, but this time
Harris was ready. “Yes!” he said quickly. He was anxious to transfer Mr. Raven's attention to someone else.

“Interesting,” said the inquiry agent, but strangely did not pursue the point. Instead he rapped his boot sharply with a stout stick that had been leaning beside his chair. He chuckled disarmingly and explained that the deformed member was inclined to “go to sleep,” and he liked to wake it up from time to time . . .

Harris began to feel sick. He longed for Mr. Raven to go. He was morbidly terrified of him. Now Mr. Raven was asking him if he knew of any enemies the household had—a dismissed servant, perhaps? Fiercely Harris retreated within himself. You're a genius, Harris! he screamed in his heart. And he's a—a madman! You are more than a match for him. Outwit him! Be calm! Smile! Answer him, don't be rushed! For God's sake, be careful! Nonetheless, in spite of the certainty of his own intellectual superiority over this man, Harris could not keep down a terrible desire to confess to Mr. Raven and so get rid of him. I took her! he longed to shout out. Bostock and me! We took her!

He felt the words rattling in his throat. He coughed and swallowed to keep them to himself.

“This strange woman you saw,” said Mr. Raven smoothly. “Can you describe her?”

“What woman?” said Harris, bewildered by the suddenness of the question.

“Oh, nothing. I must have been mistaken. Only I
thought you said you saw such a one in the neighborhood. I must have misheard you. Pardon me.”

Harris bit his lip. He'd slipped. The devilish Mr. Raven had caught him. All desire to confess vanished under a flood of panic.

“No matter,” murmured the inquiry agent, hobbling to his feet. “I shall be at the Old Ship Inn. If anything occurs to you—if you remember anything you think might interest me—come and see me. I shall be waiting, my young friend . . . any time, any time . . .”

With that, he clumped from the room and was presently out of the house, which seemed somehow less upright and secure than when he'd entered it.

The inquiry agent limped along the street, his stick and his great boot tapping and thumping inquisitively on the ground, as if searching for a weakness or a symptom of rot. Mostly he kept his eyes downward, but from time to time he glanced at the houses he passed and then up to the splendid sun. And as always his eyes remained mild, and his expression innocent. It was only his boot—his monstrous boot—that suggested Mr. Raven was a terrible man.

He was deeply acquainted with the darknesses of the human soul, and he knew too well the terror of the guilty spirit as it twists and turns to escape. Suspicion was second nature to him, and he had no first. Wearily he brooded on his last interview, with the boy Harris, whose spirit had fled almost visibly for refuge to his boots.

The inquiry agent shrugged his shoulders. He was all too used to being greeted with fear and guilt. Where was innocence? A dream—a milky idea in the noddles of fools, and nowhere else. It was not even in the hearts of children, all of whom had their corrupting little secrets they struggled to hide from the light of day.

What had the boy Harris been trying to hide with his frowns and grins, his rapid, sideways eyes and his dismal attempts at honesty of manner? A theft from a neighbor, perhaps. Or a furtive tryst with some sluttish maid, etcetera?

The word “etcetera” was a very necessary one to Mr. Raven. It was like a great black bag in which he tumbled men's thoughts and deeds when he sensed they were too deep and foul for other words.

Mr. Raven knew it all. Nothing surprised him any more. Guilt was in every heart; even infants in their cradles tended to look fearful and evasive when Mr. Raven stared mildly down on them. The Gypsy child in the Harrises' usurped cot had crumpled its face and turned from the inquiry agent's bland eyes as if suddenly conscious of the original sin that had dealt it, like the ace of spades, into the frightened household's hand.

“Yes, my young friend,” Mr. Raven had whispered. “
You
know—and soon, very soon, so shall I.”

At length he reached the Old Ship Inn where he asked for a mutton chop and a pint of sherry to be sent up to his room. The Harrises had not seen fit to ask him to luncheon. Not that the omission rankled
particularly, but Mr. Raven had noted it. He sat by his window and stared out onto the smooth Sunday sea and considered the strange affair of Adelaide Harris. Or, rather, the strange affair of the mysterious baby that now lay in her place. It was glaringly clear that Adelaide had only been removed to make way for it. The Harrises were ordinary folk, and however they might have rated themselves, Mr. Raven knew they were of no consequence in the world, so their infant could have been of no value to anyone. Its only possession was the space it had occupied—its cot—and
this
it was, rather than the infant itself, that had been stolen. For the dark one . . . for the dark one . . .

The importance of the black-haired baby fascinated and tantalized him. “What secret lust begot you, my young friend?” he murmured to himself. “And what shameful womb nourished you, etcetera? Discover that, and we discover all!” He rapped his boot with his stick as if seeking confirmation.

Indeed, it was almost as though he conversed with his monstrous appendage and received from it answers as black as itself. “Was it your mother or your father who passed on the telltale Gypsy blood?” Before there could be an answer, his sherry and mutton chop came in at the door on a tray carried by the bootboy, since none of the maids would venture into Mr. Raven's room.

The boy put the tray down and glanced inquisitively at the inquiry agent's boot and wondered if he ever took it off. Night after night there was only the
commonplace right one left out to be cleaned. The great ugly left boot never appeared but on Mr. Raven's foot. The boy went out and Mr. Raven ate his chop and continued to worry at the problem.

Two things were plain. The Gypsy baby must have been important enough for it to have been laid in a private cot rather than entrusted to the stony mercy of some church night; and there must have been a traitor in the Harris household to have opened doors, and closed them afterwards.

The inquiry agent washed down the mutton chop with the sherry and returned to staring out of the window from which he could see the quiet sea endlessly unrolling on the shingle like some wide, secret document displaying itself, then drawing back with a whisper before it could be read.

“What is it saying?” murmured Mr. Raven, tapping his boot.

That there is nothing so black as the human heart, came the answer. Under the sea lie poisoned bones and ribs all chipped by knives. Bullets roll inside skulls and ghastly captains lash long-dead cabin boys with whips of trailing weeds, etcetera. Yet the sea's surface is as bland and fair as a baby's cheek . . . So plunge deep, Selwyn Raven, and deeper yet till you reach the gloomy depths where human motives coil and strike. For every action there is a foul motive, and this it is your sacred task to find.

“Alas!” whispered Mr. Raven, gazing down on his boot with a mixture of fear and repugnance. “Were it not for you, I might not be cursed with
such bitter knowledge. I too might be blind like other men and not be burdened with such truth. Before this affair of Adelaide Harris is done with, great families will totter and guilty souls will plunge into hell. Murder may be done, etcetera . . .”

So it was, that with these thoughts in his mind, he clumped from his room and went downstairs to the back parlor, where sherry and claret were loosening devious tongues and unlocking tangled hearts. Secrets black, secrets gray, all came to the ears of Selwyn Raven as he sat and listened and distilled them into the bitter draught of guilt.

RALPH BUNNION, HAVING
risen at last from his bed and taken a cautious lunch, was on his way to meet a friend. He walked carefully, for the effects of the calamitous night had not entirely worn off. His face was deathly pale and the double scratches had gone black and venomous looking, as if some dissatisfied artist had made an attempt to cross him out. Nonetheless he was dressed with his usual care, wearing a dark blue coat cut away to display a lavish waistcoat embroidered with the yellow and purple flowerets of love-in-idleness. Maggie Hemp had stitched it for him during a lull in the first weeks of their passion and had woven her name into the design.

Sunday walkers, crossing his path, glanced
curiously at him, but he returned a look of dignified aloofness and glided on. In his own way, Ralph Bunnion was something of a hero. Though he knew Major Alexander's accusation to be false and the challenge therefore unjust, he scorned to say so, partly because he knew he wouldn't be believed and partly because the notion of a duel was grandly romantic.

A great many noble and even tragic ideas thronged his brain and he tended to look on the passing landscape as bidding its last farewell to the gay and dashing Ralph. Already he'd determined, if he should fall, that he would bequeath his collection of waistcoats to Frederick.

Frederick was the friend he was meeting, and it was he who owned the pair of dueling pistols. Ralph would certainly have preferred swords, but in the end it turned out that he didn't know anybody who had a pair and it seemed undignified to hire them. So pistols it was to be, with Frederick as his second.

Or one of his seconds. Ralph frowned. His father had gone and saddled him with that sly, sour fellow Brett as the other. Ralph disliked Mr. Brett, and it was humiliating to be seconded by him. But there was no help for it now. Brett was to fix up about the surgeon, and there again his father had interfered. Sometimes Ralph wondered who it was who was supposed to be fighting the duel. His father insisted on having Dr. Harris, whose brat was at the school. He fancied this might keep things in the family, as it
were, and prevent them from getting out all over the town.

An expression of melancholy contempt came over Ralph's face. What good could even Dr. Harris do when the glorious Ralph lay quiet and still with only his red blood moving, moving away from a hole in his breast?

Ralph's heart beat rapidly. Why did he always think of himself as being dead? Was it an omen? “What will be, will be,” he whispered philosophically, and entered the Old Ship Inn.

There were few people in the dim back parlor where Ralph and his friends delighted to hold court and sing and drink the night into day, but good old Frederick was among them. He was thinner than Ralph and would need to fill out before the waistcoats would fit him. Ralph shivered as once again his thoughts implied his own death.