The Walker in Shadows (17 page)

"I didn't do it; Joe Bilkins, contractor, did. At least I trust he did, that was what I paid him for."

"You shouldn't have," Mark said.

"I suppose we should have lived with the rotted wallpaper and flaking plaster."

"I mean, you should have kept records of what you found," Mark said. "Mom, remember when Dad was working on our house? Remember, he had a scrapbook, describing the color of the original paint, and structural details? He even pasted in pieces of old wallpaper."

"I remember," Pat said.

"See, Dad always said that every little bit of the past should be preserved," Mark explained, turning to Kathy; she was a much more appreciative audience than the others. "He said that the history of mankind is a long story of destruction, and he didn't want to be one of the destroyers."

Pat had packed the scrapbook away. Its reminder of frustrated enthusiasm and unfulfilled plans had been too much to bear.

"He said that if we ever got enough money he'd like to have someone duplicate the old wallpaper," she said. "Of course we never did have enough…"

After one quick glance Josef had turned away and was pretending to watch birds outside the window. She appreciated his tact.

"That is interesting, Mark," he said, over his shoulder. "But I don't see its relevance here. And perhaps your mother-"

"No, that's okay," Pat said. Mark was speaking of his father freely, fondly, without hurt. That was the way she wanted it.

"But it is relevant," Mark said. "Mom, remember the day we were working in the closet of my room? I was helping Dad strip off the paper in there. Remember when we found the name written on the wall?"

"Good heavens, I had forgotten," Pat exclaimed. "I'm surprised you remember, Mark, it was so long ago. You weren't more than-"

"I was twelve," Mark said indignantly. "And I had good reasons to remember it. It struck me as a neat idea, so I wrote my name on the walls too. When Dad found out he made me spend all day Saturday scrubbing."

"What else did you write, Mark?" Kathy asked, smiling. "Just your name?"

"And the date. That was what we found-'Edward Bates, aged twelve, 1857.' It seemed so funny to me then, that some kid, just about my age, had written that, over a hundred years ago. I thought, wow, it would be cool if a hundred years from now some other kid would find my name." Mark grinned. "Dad never did find them all. I put one in the back of my closet, next to Edward's."

"So you concluded your room was once Edward's." Josef's quick intelligence was learning to follow the curious leaps and twists of Mark's mind. "But perhaps he wrote his name elsewhere, just as you did."

"He wouldn't write it in anybody else's closet," Mark argued.

"Hmmm. Possibly. And you think the Turnbull boy did the same here? That's pretty farfetched, Mark."

"No, it's not. Look, you keep thinking about these people as grown-ups. Soldiers, mothers, like that. I think of them as kids. I mean, they grew up together-Peter Turnbull and his cousins, right next door. They must have played together, they were only a year apart in age. There were no other houses close by. Peter was the oldest. He was also an only child; I bet he was spoiled rotten, not only by his parents but by his big sister-"

"It's much more likely that she detested him," Pat said drily, remembering youthful battles with her own elder siblings.

"Boy, are you a cynic," Mark said. "I don't agree. Mary Jane was ten years older than Peter, just the age to appreciate a nice live baby doll. Girls in those days were trained to be motherly. I mean, all this Women's Lib-"

"Get on with it," Josef interrupted. "What are you driving at, Mark? As if I didn't know…"

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Peter would be the leader of the gang. Edward would imitate him, not the other way around. I suspect this was his room, as the corresponding room in the other house belonged to Edward, because it's the best bedroom next to the master bedroom in the front. And I'm hoping to find written proof."

His shining enthusiasm and unconsciously arrogant voice carried conviction. Kathy was an immediate convert.

"Of course! It would be in the closet, wouldn't it?"

She dropped to her hands and knees and began throwing out shoes, clearing the closet floor. Josef, contemplating his daughter's shapely bottom with dismay, exclaimed, "That is the wildest idea you've come up with yet, Mark. I gave orders that this place was to be stripped down to the bare plaster. Nothing like that would survive, even if-"

"We need a flashlight," Kathy's muffled voice remarked from the depths of the closet.

"It's worth a look, isn't it?" Mark said. "The Edward Bates name was written in indelible ink, in the corner near the door. That's the kind of place a painter won't concentrate on-not these days, anyhow."

With a muttered imprecation Josef left the room, returning almost at once with a flashlight.

"I keep one in my bureau drawer, in case of a power failure," he explained. "But I would like to go on record as stating-"

"I know, I know," Mark said. "Get out of the way, Kath, and let me in there."

Pat sat down on the bed. Her conscious mind agreed with Josef; this was the craziest idea Mark had advanced yet. But somehow another part of her brain twitched with surprise when, after a prolonged search, Kathy said, "I don't see anything, Mark."

"It doesn't seem to be down here," Mark admitted. He stood up and, with one grand sweep, shoved Kathy's wardrobe into a mashed confusion at one end of the rod.

"Here it is," he said.

Pat was the last to get a look. The others crowded in before her. And there it was, just as Mark had predicted-faded, barely visible under the shrouding paint, but unmistakable. No modest, secret scrawl, this one; inscribed in the very center of the wall, the bold, spiky letters were over two inches high: "Peter Turnbull, aged thirteen, 1857."

Pat knew the suspicion that had crossed Josef's mind. Yet he must have dismissed it immediately, for the thing was impossible. The name had been painted over, and the paint was uniform. There was no way Mark could have written the name himself, at least not within the last few days.

Yet the survival of the name for over a century seemed almost equally incredible. Patches of the old plaster had fallen and had been replaced; by a strange trick of time (or was it merely a trick?) this particular section had remained firm. The twentieth-century workmen had patched only where necessary and had slapped a quick coat of paint over the whole. It was only a closet, after all. No one wasted time on a closet.

Mark was the least excited of them all. It was as if he had known what he would find.

"He was tall for his age," was his first comment.

Pat started to ask how he knew, and then refrained. People had a tendency to write at their own eye level, she had read that somewhere. No doubt Mark, who thought he knew everything, had calculated the average size of thirteen-year-olds, and could deduce Peter's height to the inch.

"A big, arrogant guy," Mark continued. "A bully."

"Now, really, Mark," his exasperated mother exclaimed.

"No, look where he wrote his name. Edward's was stuck away in a corner."

"Like he was shy," Kathy contributed, getting into the spirit of the thing.

"Not necessarily." Mark frowned thoughtfully. "He figured like I did-he wanted his name to survive, so he put it in a place where people wouldn't be so apt to notice it. He was more… calculating. Sensible. But Turnbull stood straight up and splashed his name for the world to see-daring them to obliterate it."

"Mark, what are you trying to say?" Pat demanded.

"It's clear enough, I think," Josef replied, before Mark could speak. "Mark thinks he has identified the ghost."

His voice was rich with sarcasm.

"Yes, I do," Mark said defiantly. "It was his room. He probably died in battle, fighting for a losing cause-a cause his cousins despised. Cocky, arrogant, still hating… Peter Turnbull has come back."

For the sake of peace Pat concluded it would be best to separate Josef and Mark for a few hours. She had intended to go to New Market to look for the secondhand bookstore the antique dealer had mentioned, and she managed to persuade Josef to go with her.

It was a gray, cloudy day; the close, muggy air was a foretaste of a Washington summer. Like everything else in her aged Volkswagen, the air-conditioning was functioning erratically. Slumped in the seat beside her, his long legs bent at an uncomfortable angle, Josef was silent for the first few miles. Pat let him sulk.

Finally he sighed deeply and straightened up, with a sudden movement that brought his head into abrupt contact with the roof.

"I'm sorry," Pat said. "This car isn't built for tall people. That's why I bought it; to keep Mark from driving it."

"I should have offered to take my car." Josef rubbed his head and tried to find a place to put his feet. "I was preoccupied. Your son has gotten me to a point where I'm forgetting my manners."

"I guess we'd better have it out," Pat said.

"Wasn't that the purpose of this expedition?"

"Partly. But I really do want to see what we can find in that bookstore."

"You don't mean you really believe all this-this-"

"Well, at least I'm not dismissing it out of hand because of my personal prejudices."

"What prejudices are those?" Josef asked, his voice chill.

"Against Mark. What did you think I meant?" He started to answer, but Pat, aghast at the direction in which they were going, cut him off. She had no more desire than he to go into the other emotional problems that distorted their friendship. "I don't blame you for being skeptical. You can slap Mark down as often as you like when his theories get out of hand; he's young, and he gets carried away. But if you think he's inventing all this in order to-well, to get closer to Kathy-"

" 'Invent' is not the word. I do think he is capitalizing on a most unpleasant situation."

"That's honest." Pat kept her eyes on the road. For a moment they were silent. She could have left it there, and she was tempted to do so. But things rankled in her mind, and she had learned that this was not a healthy situation. "One thing you said," she went on. "About Mark going to the local college-"

"I think I understand that now. I was unjust, and I apologize."

"Schools like that fill a need, and fill it well. Just because a boy or girl goes to a junior college doesn't mean they aren't-"

"I said I was sorry."

"Did you say that to Mark?"

"Damn it, Pat, there is a limit!"

"To what? Justice?" Pat gave him a sidelong look. His profile resembled the stony contours of a Toltec statue- lower lip protruding, brows lowering. "All I'm saying is that Mark is no monster. He isn't trying to-er-"

"Seduce my daughter?" Unexpectedly, Josef's rigid features relaxed. "I'd think he was abnormal if he didn't."

"Then it must be Kathy you don't trust," Pat said.

Immediately she knew she had made a grave misstep. His whole body went rigid.

Oh, damn, Pat thought wretchedly. So that's it. I guess I should have known. Why would a woman leave a man like him-attractive, intelligent, comfortably well off- unless she fell in love with someone else? Well, but there are other reasons, lots of them. He's also arrogant, dogmatic, something of a snob-not easy to live with. Damn, why did I have to say that? Shall I drop the subject, or try to explain?…

"What is it you hope to find in New Market?" Josef asked.

He had raised the No Trespassing sign; and there was no way she could bypass it. Her own position was too vulnerable.

"Nothing in particular," she answered. "I thought we might find some books on local history."

"It's worth a try. I confess I'm becoming curious about the Turnbulls. The people I bought the house from were named Stanton. Does that imply, perhaps, that the Turnbull family died out?"

"Maybe they just sold the house. Or… Wasn't there an older sister? She could have married a man named Stanton."

They continued to speculate-fruitless speculation, since they had so little evidence, but it got them over the bad moment. By the time they reached New Market they were conversing without strain. However, Pat had not forgotten her faux pas.

New Market, advertised as the antiques capital of Maryland, has a single street lined with lovely old houses. The majority of them have been converted into antique shops. Since this particular trade caters to the weekend shopper, the town was crowded, and Pat had to go some distance before she found a parking space. They walked back toward the center of town and the bookstore.

The building was constructed of pale, rough stone. The front door stood open; from the interior came the musty smell of old paper and worn leather bindings.

Josef went immediately to the nearest shelf and began browsing. His absorbed expression told Pat that he belonged to the same breed as Jerry-the book fanatics. Not being of that breed herself, she looked around the dusty room. Shelves lined the walls, stretching all the way to the ceiling. Books filled the shelves and overflowed into untidy heaps on the floor. A desk in the middle of the room was also piled high. The shop was very quiet. A few other browsers stood like statues, pouring over one esoteric volume or another.

Then a head appeared behind the heaped-up desk in the center of the room. Pat stared, amazed, as it rose, and rose, and rose. The man must have been over six and a half feet tall. Drooping white cavalry-style mustache, long white hair, and an old-fashioned string tie and high collar converted him into an image out of the past: a gentleman of the Old South. She was not at all surprised when he addressed her in courtly terms.

"May Ah be of some assistance, ma'am?"

"Uh-thank you. I'm looking for books about the Civil War."