CHAPTER 79
FOLLOWING A BRIEF STOP IN THE KITCHEN, Ethan returned to his apartment, intending to put away the six items that had come in the black gift boxes. If Fric saw them, he would inevitably ask questions that couldn?t be answered without making him worry unnecessarily about his father?s safety.
In the study, the computer screen glowed. Ethan had not switched it on since coming home.
He quickly searched the apartment but found no intruder. Someone must have been here, however. Perhaps someone who had come and gone by mirrors.
Returning to the desk, taking a closer look at the screen, Ethan saw that a message had been left for him: HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR NETWORK E-MAIL?
Network e-mail-netmail for short-originated from computers on the estate, those in Channing Manheim?s offices on the studio lot, and those in the hands of the security detail on location with the actor in Florida. Netmail was sorted into a different box from the one containing e-mail sent by all other correspondents.
Ethan had just three messages in the netmail box. The first was from Archie Devonshire, one of the porters.
[508] MR. TRUMAN, AS YOU KNOW, I AM NOT ONE WHO FINDS IT INCUMBENT UPON HIMSELF TO MONITOR AELFRIC AND TATTLE ON HIS BEHAVIOR. IN ANY EVENT, HE?S AS WELL BEHAVED AS ANY CHILD CAN BE AND USUALLY ALL BUT INVISIBLE. THIS AFTERNOON, HOWEVER, HE WAS ENGAGED IN SOME CURIOUS BITS OF BUSINESS THAT I MIGHT HAVE DISCUSSED WITH MRS. MCBEE HAD SHE BEEN IN-HOUSE. YOUR VISITING FRIEND, MR. WHISTLER, BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT AELFRIC-
Ethan read the startling revelation without fully comprehending it, and had to back up to read it again.
YOUR VISITING FRIEND, MR. WHISTLER, BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION-
The ghost or walking dead man, whichever he might be, if either, had ceased to perform his mysterious work at the edges of perception, and had boldly walked the halls of the mansion, talking to staff.
-BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT AELFRIC WAS UNPLUGGING QUAKE LIGHTS FROM ODD PLACES IN THE HOUSE, GATHERING THEM IN A PICNIC HAMPER. MRS. MCBEE WOULD SURELY DISAPPROVE OF THIS BECAUSE OF THE RISK THAT, IN A NIGHT EMERGENCY, SOME MEMBER OF STAFF OR FAMILY MIGHT FIND HIS ESCAPE FROM THE HOUSE HINDERED OR ENTIRELY THWARTED BY THE ABSENCE OF THE VERY QUAKE LIGHT CRUCIAL TO HIS EXIT.
Up in Santa Barbara, Mrs. McBee was no doubt uneasily aware that something had changed.
Archie Devonshire?s netmail continued:
LATER, WHEN I ENCOUNTERED AELFRIC WITH THE HAMPER, HE TOLD ME IT CONTAINED HAM SANDWICHES, WHICH HE CLAIMED TO HAVE MADE HIMSELF, AND THAT HE INTENDED TO HAVE A PICNIC IN THE ROSE ROOM. LATER I FOUND THE HAMPER EMPTY IN THAT VERY ROOM, WITH NO EVIDENCE OF BREADCRUMBS OR SANDWICH WRAPPINGS. THIS SEEMS ALL VERY ODD TO ME, AS AELFRIC IS GENERALLY A TRUTHFUL BOY. MR. YORN HAS LIKEWISE HAD AN UNUSUAL ENCOUNTER AND INTENDS TO WRITE YOU ABOUT THAT SEPARATELY. YOURS IN SERVICE TO THE FAMILY, A. F. DEVONSHIRE.
The netmail from William Yorn, the groundskeeper, proved to be in a tone different from Devonshire?s.
[509] FRIC IS MAKING HIMSELF A HIDEY-HOLE IN THE CONSERVATORY, STOCKED WITH FOOD, DRINK, AND QUAKE LIGHTS. YOUR FRIEND WHISTLER BROUGHT IT TO MY ATTENTION. IT?S NONE OF MY BUSINESS. OR WHISTLER?S. BOYS PLAY AT ROBINSON CRUSOE. THAT?S NORMAL. FRANKLY, YOUR FRIEND WHISTLER SCRAPES MY NERVES. IF HE TELLS YOU I WAS ABRUPT WITH HIM, PLEASE UNDERSTAND I MEANT TO BE. LATER, I SAW FRIC AT THE ROSE-ROOM WINDOWS. HE SEEMED TO BE IN A TRANCE. THEN HE SHOUTED SOMETHING AT ME ABOUT HAM SANDWICHES. LATER, IN RAIN GEAR, HE WENT OUT TO THE LITTLE WOODS PAST THE ROSE GARDEN. HAD BINOCULARS. SAID HE WAS BIRD WATCHING. IN THE RAIN. HE WAS OUT THERE TEN MINUTES. HE HAS A RIGHT TO BE ECCENTRIC. HELL, IF I WAS IN HIS SHOES, I?D BE FULL CRAZY. I?M WRITING YOU ABOUT THIS ONLY BECAUSE ARCHIE DEVONSHIRE INSISTED. ARCHIE GETS ON MY NERVES, TOO. I?M GLAD I WORK OUTSIDE. YORN.
The thought of Duncan Whistler, dead or alive, prowling Palazzo Rospo, secretly watching Fric, brought a chill to the nape of Ethan?s neck.
He suspected that the mind of a detective was inadequate to solve this increasingly Byzantine puzzle. Deductive and inductive reasoning are poor tools for dealing with things that go bump in the night.
CHAPTER 80
BEFORE COMMITTING AN ILLEGAL ENTRY, Hazard rang the doorbell. When no one responded, he rang it again.
Darkness in the Laputa house didn?t mean that the place was deserted.
Rather than slinking around to the back of the residence, where his furtive behavior might catch the attention of a neighbor, Hazard entered boldly by the front. With the Lockaid, he popped both locks.
Pushing the door inward, he called out, ?Anyone home or is it just us chickens??
This was prudence, not comedy. Even when silence greeted his question, he crossed the threshold cautiously.
Immediately upon entering, however, he located the wall switch and flicked on the foyer-ceiling fixture. In spite of the rain and fog, some passing motorist or pedestrian might have seen him enter. The unhesitating use of lights would establish his legitimacy in suspicious minds.
Besides, if Laputa came home unexpectedly, he would be alarmed to see one lamp lit that had not been on when he?d left, or the beam of an inquiring flashlight in the darkness, but he would be disarmed [511] to find the house blazing with light. The success of an operation like this depended upon boldness and quickness.
Hazard closed the door but didn?t lock it. He wanted easy exit in the event of an unexpected confrontation.
The ground floor most likely did not contain the incriminating evidence that he sought. Murderers tended to keep mementos of their crimes, gruesome and otherwise, in their bedrooms.
The second-favorite repository for their treasures was the basement, often in concealed or locked rooms where they were able to visit their collections without fear of discovery. There, in an atmosphere of calculated dementia, they could dreamily relive the bloody past without fear of discovery.
In respect of land prone to earthquakes and mud slides, houses in southern California seldom had basements. This one, as well, had been built on a slab, with no door that opened to a lower darkness.
Hazard toured the ground floor, not bothering to search cabinets and drawers. If he found nothing upstairs, he would take a second pass at these rooms, probing them with greater care.
Right now he cared only about establishing that no one lurked in any of these chambers. He left lights on everywhere behind him. Darkness was not his friend.
In the kitchen, he unlocked the back door and left it standing ajar, providing himself with a second unobstructed exit.
Tentacles of fog wove through the open door, drawn by the warmth but dissipating in it.
Everything in the house appeared to have been scoured, scrubbed, vacuumed, polished, and buffed to a degree that approached obsession. Collections of decorative items-Lalique glass, ceramic boxes, small bronze figures-were arranged not with an artful eye but with a rigid sense of order reminiscent of a chess set. Every book on every shelf stood precisely half an inch from the edge.
The house seemed to be a refuge against the messiness of the world beyond its walls. However, in spite of conveniences aplenty, in [512] spite of comfortable furnishings, in spite of cleanness and order, the place was not welcoming, with none of the warmth of hearth and home. Instead, entirely apart from the tension that Hazard felt due to being here illegally, an air of edgy expectation was endemic to the place, and a desperation not quite nameable.
The only clutter on the ground floor lay on the dining-room table. Five sets of charts or blueprints, rolled and fastened with rubber bands. A long-handled magnifying glass. A yellow, lined tablet. Rolling Writer pens-one red, one black. Although these items had not been put away, they had been arranged neatly side by side.
Satisfied that the lower rooms held no nasty surprises, Hazard climbed to the upper floor. He was confident that his activities thus far would have drawn an inquiry if anyone were home, so he proceeded without stealth, switching on the lights in the upper hall.
The master bedroom was near the head of the stairs. This, too, proved antiseptically clean and almost eerily well organized.
If Laputa had killed his mother and Mina Reynerd, and if he had kept tokens of remembrance, not of the women but of the violence, he would most likely have chosen pieces of their jewelry, bracelets or lockets, or rings. Probably the best that could be hoped for were bloodstained articles of clothing or locks of their hair.
Often, a man of Laputa?s position in the community, a man with a prestigious job and many material possessions, if driven to commit a murder or two, might keep no memento. Motivated not by psychopathic frenzy but rather by financial gain or jealousy, their type had no burning psychological need to relive their crimes repeatedly in vivid detail with the aid of souvenirs.
Hazard had a hunch that Laputa would prove an exception to that pattern. The uncommon savagery with which Justine Laputa and Mina Reynerd had been beaten suggested that within the upstanding citizen resided something worse than a mere hyena, a Mr. Hyde who relived his brutal crimes with pleasure if not glee.
The contents of the walk-in closet were organized with military [513] precision. Several boxes on the shelves above the hanging clothes were of interest to him. He studied the position of each before he moved it, hoping to be able to return all the boxes to exactly the position in which he?d found them.
As he worked, he listened to the house. He checked his watch too often.
He felt that he was not alone. Maybe this was because the back wall of the closet featured a full-length mirror, repeatedly catching his attention with reflections of his movements. Maybe not.