Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 106, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 648 & 649, October 1995

The Great Man by Adele Glimm

© 1995 by Adele Glimm

A frequent traveler, Adele Glimm got the idea for the following story while on a visit to Thomas Carlyle’s house in London. When she is at home, she works as a public relations writer and teaches a fiction workshop at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Ms. Glimm’s previous published work has appeared in McCalls and Redbook. Her new story for us is a creepy Halloween treat.

Promptly at eleven, the big brass knocker on the front door sounded for the first time that day. “Oh, go to the Tower of London, why don’t you!” the caretaker shouted from the basement kitchen. But she scraped back her chair and reached for the gnarled walking stick. “Tourists, they can’t give old Mags an extra minute, swallow my tea, oh no, no time for that.”

Clinging to the frayed rope banister, she dragged herself up the worn stone steps from the kitchen and reached the front door just as the couple on the doorstep was summoning the courage to knock again: She could tell from the way the young man quickly hid one hand in his trousers pocket.

“We wanted to see the house?” the young lady said with that peculiar way the younger Americans had these days of speaking question marks at the ends of sentences that asked nothing.

“I didn’t suppose you’d come to take me for a spin,” the caretaker said, allowing the door to open just enough to admit them. They were thin people but too short. “Umbrella in there if you please.” She pointed to the Chinese umbrella stand which held only one tall black frayed umbrella. “That’ll be two pounds fifty. Each. Two more if you want the official guide to the house.”

“She doesn’t need a guide, she’s been reading about him and this house all summer,” the man said, handing over a five-pound note.

“Just the same, I’d like a guide, Chuck,” the girl flung over her shoulder as she moved down the hall, poking her nose into one old photograph after another.

Back to the pocket for two one-pound coins.

“Oh? Saw the films, did you?” the caretaker said.

“Well, sure we did, a couple of times, but my wife’s an English teacher. She teaches his work. She’s been wanting to come here for years.”

“Just start looking about then,” the caretaker said. “I’ll hobble after and say my piece but I’m slow these days.” She gestured with the walking stick at her bandaged ankle, barely missing a Staffordshire vase on a low table near the sitting-room door. The wife was already circling that room in a kind of trance.

“A bad sprain?” the husband asked. “I’m a doctor. I just got my M.D. but I’m still training. It takes a long time.”

“Tripped over the dog,” the caretaker said. “Smells his food and he’s under my feet in a second.”

The wife looked up from her study of the photographs on the sitting-room wall. “Didn’t you hate it that the dog in the first movie wasn’t anything like his dog.” She pointed to a portrait of the writer with his dog at his knee. Why didn’t her voice go up at the end when she asked a real question?

“It’s not every dog is an acting dog,” the caretaker said, shrugging. “And dogs of the breed of Pharaoh are not the fashion now, you never see them.”

She took a deep breath then and began to talk in a different voice, a memorized voice. “He lived in this house from eighteen twenty-one until his death nearly forty years later. He wrote most of his books in the third-floor study where his pen and his pipe still lie on the desk where he left them when his last illness overtook him.” She paused to breathe. “He was married to his wife, Margaret Scarrow, right in this sitting room because his philosophy disallowed him setting foot in a church. If you pass through that archway you can see the dining room where he entertained other great men of his day, Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle among them.”

“Did his wife eat dinner with them?” the young wife interrupted, caressing the plush backs of the dining-room chairs.

“Please do not touch the exhibits,” the caretaker said. “She didn’t, no, the conversation bored her.”

“What an idiot! I wish I’d been there.”

“At the top of the first staircase you’ll find the bedrooms,” the caretaker said coldly. “You’ll get there before me but remember not to touch anything. The human hand is an instrument of destruction.”

She was out of breath when she finally joined them in a back room with a white-canopied bed, a dressing table, and a flowered china washstand and pitcher. A black lace shawl was spread over the high back of a wing chair.

“You can see plain, this was his wife’s bedroom. His only child, a son, was born in this room and died in the nursery next door, less than six months later. The cradle is visible through the doorway.”

“What did he die of?” the doctor asked. She could tell it was the first thing since her bad ankle that had caught his interest.

“In those days children died. A cough and a fever and the lungs filled up and it was over. They didn’t have the tests and the drugs and the National Health.” She stared them down. It wasn’t, after all, her fault.

In the big front bedroom across the hall, the wife stood with bowed head at the foot of the wide mahogany four-poster. “If you’re thinking he died in this bed, you’d be right,” the caretaker said. “When he was dying they laid down straw in the street outside to quiet the noise of the traffic. You wouldn’t think horses and carriages could make a great noise, but they did.”

The ceiling of the study at the top of the house was fitted with a huge skylight, like an artist’s studio. It had begun to rain and the noise of the rain on the glass punctuated her words, which seemed to come faster and faster as the rain beat down harder. “There’s the pen and the pipe and a supply of the nibs his wife kept sharpened for him. The bookcases contain reference works and books his friends wrote, but none of his own. He always said the failures he’d allowed to get into print would prevent him from writing another word if he let them into the room.”

“Failures!” cried the young wife, twisting the strap of her leather handbag. “What a tragedy! Didn’t he realize what a genius he was?”

“They say none was ever harder on him than he was himself,” the caretaker answered.

Downstairs again, and the husband said could they skip the kitchen or they’d miss their lunch reservation at The Cheshire Cheese.

“Fine with me, I’m sure he didn’t waste his time in the kitchen,” his wife said. “But isn’t Pharaoh’s grave in the garden?”

“Yes, surely, but the rain is raining on it,” the caretaker said.

“As if I’d care about that!”

Through the glass of the back garden door, they watched her kneel to read the small granite headstone. “She’s a real fanatic,” the husband said, sighing.

“They mostly are, who bother to come here.”

When they had gone, she could look forward to a rest. The house was closed for two hours at lunchtime. She clumped down to the kitchen and put a frozen dinner in the microwave which hid behind the pantry door with all the other machines they hadn’t yet invented in his day. She sank into a rocking chair, stretching her bad leg out to rest on a stool.

“Did you see that then?” she said. Her voice was old Mags’s voice once more. “How nice he was to her? He didn’t want to be here, he’d have preferred to tour St. Giles Hospital or a nice clinic somewhere. But he came along with her, nice as pie. When did you ever take me anywhere I wanted to go? I’d have liked to go out of a night to the music hall but no, that was too common for you.”

The microwave chimed and she removed the plastic plate and settled herself at the ancient scrubbed-pine table. “What’s that you say?” Her mouth was full now. “You say she works to pay for his doctor studies? Well, didn’t I slave to cook and serve for all that ragtag bunch you said would help you get published and get the good reviews and such rubbish? And then when they gave you a bad review you beat me; it was a good thing the clothes that was then was all covered up, I don’t know how wives manage now with the bare things they have to wear.”

She was silent for a time, chewing on a chicken leg. When she had stripped it of flesh, she tossed it across the kitchen floor. “Here you are then, Pharaoh, you four-footed creature from the other side, and don’t you go chew it on that hall carpet neither.”

She made a cup of tea and drank it, nearly nodding off, then tidied up the remains of lunch and ascended slowly two flights to the bedroom floor.

In his wife’s bedroom, she sat on the bed to remove her shoes, then stretched out carefully in the very middle of the white bedcover, talking all the time. “Oh, what a relief it was when I insisted on a room of my own. They all think you were so high-minded but I know the dirt you liked to get up to.”

Silence, her eyes closing for a few minutes, then opening wide as she sat up, startled. “Oh, I thought I heard the baby crying! That’s the worst, when that happens. Is it you then, what’s wrong, are you needing a cuddle?” She rolled toward one side of the bed. “You’re like a baby yourself, you hate sleeping alone in that big bed. You can get in and cuddle with Mags for a bit. You know I never mean half I say.” When she finally slept, she snored.

It seemed that the rain would keep all visitors away that afternoon. It was nearly four before the knocker fell. The caretaker, who had awakened feeling lonely, was hovering in the front hall and immediately snatched the door open.

The tall thin man on the step wore khaki trousers and a dark polo-neck sweater. His hair was the color of wet sand. He carried a briefcase and was shivering in the damp air.

He was the type of man who apologizes. He began to apologize for knocking too loudly, for dripping rain on her floor, for wanting to see over the house. “You see, I’m writing a paper about his work and I thought for the atmosphere...”

He sounded American, but of course if you’ve been away from a place for a long time, change is to be expected.

“We’ll go through the house bottom to top, if you don’t mind,” the caretaker told him, excitement coursing through her body like a river pouring over a flood plain.

He ran his hand over the stone countertop in the kitchen. “Picturesque, I guess, but pretty inconvenient to cook in.” Though he spoke politely, his eyes kept straying to the ceiling and she knew he was eager to climb higher, which was natural.

“I see you’ve noticed the beams, they’re very old, they used to hang hams from them to keep them from the rats.” What was wrong with her voice, she couldn’t keep it from shaking. “One of these days I’ll be trotting down to the butcher’s for a nice piece of mutton for a meat pie. Nothing like a good open coal fire for lending flavor to the meat.”

“Could I see his study?” the man said, not quite interrupting her but getting in fast at the end of her sentence.

“All in good time. There’s the drawing-room floor, isn’t there, and the bedrooms.” But she began to lead him upward, talking all the time. “Tell me, do you smoke?”

“Not here, I wouldn’t dream—”

“Oh, it’s not forbidden. This house is used to the smell of smoke, it’s soaked into the pores. Many’s the night I smell pipe smoke even now.”

They stood in his bedroom. “Are you chilly? You’re shivering. There’s a jacket I could lend you hanging right in that wardrobe near your right side. A good thick maroon wool it is, old but solid still. I keep everything mended and safe from the moths.”

He looked at her oddly. “Thank you, I’m not at all cold.”

“Well, I just wondered. You’re about of a size. And the color your hair’s gotten to be, red hair always fades young to that color, doesn’t it.” They were at the top of the house, in the study by now.

The man squinted at the titles of the books behind their glass doors and she talked on. She said, “This head of mine is gray as a floor mop now but it was pale gold then and a yard long when he drew out the pins at night. He liked to do it himself but—”

“I beg your pardon,” the visitor interrupted in a new tone now, a firmer tone, as if attaining the study at last had made him more sure of himself. “I’m sure what you’re saying is fascinating to some, but it’s his work I’m concerned with. Would you mind giving me a little quiet so I can hear myself think?”

“Work! Work, is it?” She moved quickly closer to him and he backed away until he was up against the writing table. “There’s other things more important than work though you never had enough human feelings to know it. You just stay here and work if you’ve a mind to! You’ll have more quiet than you can do with before I’m through with you!”

He sprinted past her towards the door, but he tripped on the marble hearthstone and fell, sprawling across the faded kilim as she ran out, slamming the door and locking it with the great rusted iron key.

Shaking, she limped downstairs to the ground-floor sitting room and sank into the armchair in the bow window. She could see out to the street where occasional tourists, sheltering their cameras and maps beneath umbrellas, pottered by, but no one knocked.

There was no sound from the top of the house. She remembered the day he had convinced her to lock him in, to force him to finish some work that was overdue at the publishers, and though she had done as he asked, she returned in less than an hour. “What do you want, I was working well,” he’d protested, but she’d said, “I can’t leave you here, what if there was a fire and I lost my head and ran out, you’d be burned to a cinder, I can’t leave you.”

He had laughed and told her: “It’s you that starts my fires,” and pulled her onto his knee, and then he made love to her on the kilim in front of the fireplace, but later he’d shouted that she’d made him lose his way with his work, she’d done it on purpose to ruin him.

When she heard the noises, she started up, for one second thinking it was the door knocker clattering at last, but then she heard it for what it was: heavy footsteps descending from the top of the house. So she’d had no need to worry that other time, he could get out when he wanted.

She forced herself to sit still in her chair, not breathing, until he stood in the sitting-room doorway. He wore the maroon wool jacket and the dead pipe was clenched in one fist. He said: “Is it too much to expect to find fresh tobacco in the house?” The American in his voice was fading away with every word, she could hear it going.

“You could buy it yourself, I’m not your slave.” But having said her piece, she added, “I’ll fetch it when I go to buy the dinner.”

“I suppose you’ll need money again, then?” He reached under the jacket to his trousers pocket.

“I won’t, no,” Mags said, pointing her chin at him. “I don’t depend on you or any man, not anymore I don’t. I have a proper job. The Trust pays me good wages to look after this house and show it to people.”

He laughed, coming into the room and throwing himself down on the sofa, his muddy shoes swung up on the blue brocade as if he owned it. “Who’d want to see over the house if it weren’t for me? And you think you’re not still dependent on a man!”

Tears unshed for over a century blinded her. “It’s the old argument we’re having, isn’t it? How important your work is and where is the money coming from? I tell you, it isn’t your dusty books that brings in the pounds now, it’s those films they made. It’s the gorgeous actors, though that one that plays the woman you made me into isn’t half the beauty I was. And they pay to see the photography, it’s so lovely you could die, lovelier than life or anything you ever wrote in a dry old book.”

“It’s none of that,” he argued. “It’s the sex they put in the films that rakes it in. In our day, I’d have seen the inside of a prison if I’d tried to write what they do to each other on the screen.”

“You could have made money one way or another, other men did. Where was the money when our baby was dying? We couldn’t pay for the doctor and you wouldn’t take charity. When I said he was sick, you told me he coughs for attention, but you were the one wanted all the attention.”

He sprang off the sofa and stood over her, shaking his fist in her face. “You witch! You spent the money for the doctor on that hellish black shawl! I should have tossed it in the fire the day it came into this house, turned it to ashes like that manuscript you claimed you burnt up by mistake. Mistake!” From the red, raving look of him, she thought his heart must explode. “And do you think I don’t know Pharaoh died because you poisoned him?”

“I never—”

“You knew that meat was rotting, you were too mean to throw it away and get him something sound to eat.”

She said, “The dog was yours to care for. I had enough work without that — never a servant girl and what if we’d had one? You’d never have kept your hands off her!”

The end of her sentence competed with the sound of the knocker falling loudly, twice. “It’s ten past the hour,” she complained. “I don’t do tours past five o’clock.”

“Let them in,” he ordered. “Go and do your job, for God’s sake, since you’re so proud of being a wage earner.”

“Oh, what’s the use arguing.”

The young girl she let into the hall wore old jeans and a red cable jumper. Pale hair hung long and loose down her back. She was a beauty.

“I have the guidebook already,” she said in response to Mags’s question, producing it from the brown leather bag that hung from her shoulder. “You sold it to me last time I came here.”

“I thought you looked a bit familiar,” Mags said.

“I’ve rented the videos since then and watched them over and over,” the girl said, smiling at her own foolishness. “I thought, now the house will mean even more to me.”

“Then I won’t trouble you and myself with speeches. Just walk where you will.”

The girl smiled politely at the man standing at the end of the sitting room beneath the writer’s portrait, but she did not linger there. She wandered through the dining room and into the back parlor, moving with the grace of a dancer.

“What do you think?” Mags asked in a low voice. “She’s much like that music hall hussy that came between us, isn’t she?”

He said, “I don’t know whom you’re referring to.”

“Never mind that talk. We’d had all we wanted of each other by then. I never blamed you half as much as I let on.” She sank into the armchair and spoke, looking not at him but straight out the bow window, as if addressing the wind and the rain. “I was glad enough for my body to be free of yours. Body, ha! It wasn’t long before it was a body and no pleasure to anyone, lying waiting for you in the churchyard, for they put us together again in death. Think of me, lying among all those great men in that honored place! More men than ever I lay with in life, in spite of the way you accused me.” Together they listened to the girl’s gentle footsteps, running up stairs and along hallways and down again. Mags continued: “Where does she lie? I never knew.”

“She died young,” the man said. “Her parents took her. That’s all I knew.”

“I haven’t as many things to pack up as last time,” Mags mused. “I’ll be out of your way by tonight.”

The girl looked shyly in at them through the hall door. Mags struggled out of her chair. “Won’t you have a cup of tea before you go?”

“Me?” Confusion crossed the perfect features. “Tea here? The guidebook doesn’t say you do teas.”

Mags laughed. “No, we don’t as a usual thing. It’s just — I didn’t hear you go down to the kitchen, did I? So I thought, while you’re seeing over the ground floor, I’ll be happy to pour you a cup.”

“Well, it’s kind of you.”

“No bother at all. Just this way. Come along.”

She led the way down the stone staircase, stepping more surely than she had all day. At the bottom, at the end of the dark hall, she said: “I don’t think the storeroom was open to visitors last time you came.”

She held open the heavy oak door. As the girl passed in front of her, Mags looked her up and down, anger and jealousy and fear mixing lightly with pity.