Mystery

He had forgotten to leave lights on in the lodge, and he groped around the big sitting room, walking into furniture that seemed to have moved and changed places while he was gone. Then his hand found a lampshade, his fingers met the cord, and the room came into being again, just as it had been before. He fell onto a couch. After a moment he got up and turned on another light. Then he stretched out on the couch again and read a few more pages of The ABC Murders. He remembered being dissatisfied with it yesterday, but could not remember why—it was a perfect book. It made you feel better, like a fuzzy blanket and a glass of warm milk. A kind of simple clarity shone through everything and everybody, and the obstacles to that clarity were only screens that could be rolled away by the famous little grey cells. You never got the feeling that a real darkness surrounded anyone, not even murderers.

Tom realized that Lamont von Heilitz had begun talking about Eagle Lake the first night they had met—almost as soon as Tom had walked in the door, von Heilitz had brought out his old book of clippings and turned the pages, saying here and here and here.

Tom swung his legs off the couch and stood up. He tossed the book down and went into his grandfather’s study. Light from the big sitting room touched the hooked rug and the edge of the desk. Tom turned on the lamp beside the desk and sat behind it. He pulled the telephone closer to him. Then he lifted the receiver, dialed 0, and asked the operator if she could connect him to Lamont von Heilitz’s number on Mill Walk.

She told him to hold the line. Tom turned to the window and saw his face and his dark blue sweater printed on the glass. “Your party does not answer at this time, sir,” the operator told him. Tom placed the receiver back on the cradle.

He placed his hands on either side of the phone and stared at it. The telephone shrilled, and he knocked the receiver off the hook when he jumped. He fumbled for it, and finally put it to his ear.

“Hello,” he said.

“What’s going on up there?” his grandfather roared.

“Hello, Grand-Dad,” he said.

“Hello, nothing. I sent you up there to enjoy yourself and get to know the right people, not so you could seduce Buddy Redwing’s fiancée! And go around pumping people for information about some ancient business that doesn’t concern you, not in the least!”

“Grand-Dad—” Tom said.

“And break into the Redwing compound and go snooping around with your popsy! Don’t you know better than that?”

“I didn’t break in anywhere. Sarah thought I might like to see—”

“Is her last name Redwing? If it isn’t, she doesn’t have any right to take you into that compound, because she doesn’t have any right to go in there herself. You grew up on Eastern Shore Road, you went to the right school, you ought to know how to conduct yourself.” He paused for breath. “And on top of everything else, on your first day there, you go into town and strike up a relationship with Sam Hamilton’s son!”

“I was interested in—”

“I won’t even mention your consorting with that nauseating queer, Roddy Deepdale, who ruined the lot next to mine, but I wonder what you thought you’d accomplish by physically assaulting a member of the Redwing family.”

“I didn’t assault him,” Tom said.

“You hit him, didn’t you? Frankly, once you got to Eagle Lake you set about destroying most of what I’ve been building up during my lifetime.”

“So do you want me to come home?”

His grandfather did not speak.

Tom repeated the question. All he heard was his grandfather’s breathing.

“Sarah Spence isn’t going to marry Buddy Redwing,” he said. “Nobody can make her do that—she isn’t going to let herself be bought.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” his grandfather said. His voice was surprisingly mild. “Tell me, what do you see when you look out the window, this time of night? I always liked nights up at Eagle Lake.”

Tom leaned forward to try to see through his reflection. “It’s pretty dark right now, and—”

The lamp beside the desk exploded, and something slammed into the wall or the floor with a sound like a brick falling on concrete. The chair shot out from beneath him, and he landed hard on the floor in the dark. His feet were tangled up in the legs of the chair, and small pieces of glass glinted up from the floor all around him. Other shreds of glass had fallen into his hair. His breath sounded as loud as a freight train chugging up a grade, and for a moment he could not move. He heard his grandfather’s tinny voice coming through the phone, saying “Tom? Are you there? Are you there?”

He untangled his feet from the chair and raised his head above the top of the desk. One light burned in the Langenheim lodge. Cool air streamed through an empty hole that had once been an upper pane.

“Can you hear me?” came the shrunken, metallic sound of his grandfather’s voice.

Tom snatched at the phone and pressed it to his face. A sliver of glass fell from his hair onto his wrist. “Hey,” he said.

“Are you all right? Did something happen?”