Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 56, No. 2. Whole No. 321, August 1970

Post-Obit by Elizabeth Palmer[6]

This is the 345th “first story” to be published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine… An off-trail, change-of-pace story that you will find provocative and puzzling. Our reading staff came up with four different interpretations. Which meaning will you think the correct one? Or will you come up with a fifth explanation?...

The author, Elizabeth Palmer, is in her late forties and a housewife. She and her husband are New Yorkers, and during most of her adult years Elizabeth Palmer “worked in or on the periphery of the publishing world.” Her writing had been “intermittent,” and in the past few years she has written several stories which she “didn’t enjoy and subsequently tore up.” (Which may be a great pity — who knows what she may have mistakenly destroyed?) Finally she decided to combine two genres she “dearly loves — fantasy and mystery fiction.”

Further comment after you’ve read Elizabeth Palmer’s story…

I am beginning this record primarily to prove to myself that I am able still to put coherent words on paper. I must decide if I have to deal with the truly fantastic or some nightmare creation of my own. If I am mad and they cart me off one day, at least the doctors can read this and it may help them to know the nature of my delusion.

That ghosts might be a subject for serious consideration had never crossed my mind, and this of course left me totally unprepared for my present predicament.

I read constantly, but my material is dictated mostly by my research needs and the desire to keep myself up to date on the work of my fellow historians. This covers a great deal of ground, but never has it provided me with information on the supernatural.

My extracurricular reading has included a bit of M. R. James, Walter de la Mare, Arthur Machen, and a few others, but none of them made a lasting impression on me. They hardly equipped me to deal personally with a ghost. My religious training, completely conventional and rather dimly remembered, has served me no better.

I think tonight I will try to describe this apparition. Seeing him transposed into precise, unemotional type may help me to retain my shaken grip on reality.

He seemed — still seems — so real, so solid, that at first I could not believe he was anything but flesh and blood. He stands at least six feet under a crop of startlingly blond hair. There is nothing misty or wavery about him. When he appears he is as much of a presence as my big oak desk. His features are pleasant; his extremely blue eyes express intelligence and promise humor. He looks like a man whose company I could enjoy despite an age difference of possibly 25 years and the fact that my bald pate reaches only to his chin.

He seems about 35 and very fit. If that last sounds ridiculous I can’t help it. That is exactly how he looks, fit and healthy. He doesn’t moan or clank. Sometimes he whistles softly. He doesn’t drift, he strides. One of the first emotions I was conscious of, after I had ascertained that he was indeed spectral, was resentment. What right has a ghost to look like that! According to my admittedly limited knowledge it is completely unorthodox. I think this prime-of-life aspect upsets me more than anything else. Perhaps I concentrate on resentment to help combat the terror that threatens to overwhelm me.

Looking back at what I wrote last night, it does help me to be more objective to see him described in uncompromising typewriter type. So I will continue.

I began to suspect the truth when I discovered he could neither see nor hear me. I will admit that for some days I almost accepted the premise that I was losing — or had lost — my mind. Then I made certain that solid though he might look, he was nothing but a phantom. I tried to attract his attention by putting my hand on his arm. Of course it took a while to get up enough courage to do this. Frankly, it took almost a week, but he did not appear every evening.

This past Friday, I think it was, I felt I could no longer just watch him. I had given up shouting and waving my arms. So I touched his sleeve — and felt nothing. After this I had to sit down for a bit. I tried again to touch him. This time I actually grabbed his hand — my fingers closed on air.

Since then I have put my hand on his several times, impelled by a horrible fascination and an increasing desire to study more carefully this incredible phenomenon. After each of the first two attempts I was too aghast to note any reaction on his part, but later I noticed that when I seemingly touched him he did look up from his book and glance quickly round the room. I could also see he was having trouble settling down to his unearthly reading again.

One of the weirdest aspects of this whole affair is that I can hear as well as see him. I can hear him! I can hear him turn the pages of his book; I can hear the glass he usually has by him click on my metal coaster. I can hear him yawn, sigh, and as I said before, occasionally whistle.

He does not always come in to the library to read. Sometimes he sits at my desk and writes letters. These he always carefully seals and takes out of the room with him somewhere into limbo, so I have been unable to find out whether or not I am able to read them. I must confess I would feel hesitant thus to invade his privacy. This has also kept me from looking over his shoulder as he writes. He is so vulnerable, so totally unaware, poor fellow.

By now I have completely accepted the fact that he is a ghost. Certainly there is nothing in my recent or distant past to account for my suddenly going mad. Nevertheless, I may go mad if this continues, and oddly enough it will be because of the aura of complete normality about the manifestation. If he had appeared in a Cavalier’s costume, o r possibly a Nineteenth Century frock coat, I could have moved quickly from horror and shock to curiosity, and finally, I am sure, to actual enjoyment of the situation. But he is so unmistakably contemporary in his sports jacket and gray slacks. This stranger who makes my home his own is no revenant from another era.

I hardly sleep at all these nights. I spend most of my time in the library. If he is not there ahead of me I wait for him, although frequently he does not appear. I never see my interloper in the rest of the house. Only in this room.

Tonight perhaps I will rest more easily. I think I might at last have the answer. He must have lived in this house at one time, and the reason he appears only in this room is that he loved it as much as I do. His most satisfying hours must have been spent here. That is why he is irresistibly drawn back to this one spot.

Maybe his desk was about where mine is, as well as his favorite chair. After all, I placed mine in the most logical places. This is my sanctuary and I take care of it myself. My housekeeper is never allowed in here. Perhaps he felt the same way. Pitiful lost soul, it must represent the only refuge he can now find.

I have often speculated that the architect who designed this room created it with genuine affection. Records show it was added some years after the house was built. As the Elizabethan Age is my speciality I expected to loathe this unabashed reproduction when it was first described to me. However, it won me over as soon as I stepped into it. It was designed with exquisite taste and restraint: the paneling, the leaded glass, the huge fireplace — none of it seemed too much. And to a collector like myself, the crowded book shelves covering two walls more than made up for any lack of authenticity.

I am trying to remember what I have heard about the owner just before me. That would go back only ten years. Contemporary enough.

Watching him sip his drink tonight, I realize I have actual proof of his ghostliness apart from my inability to communicate with him. When I leave the library late at night, the ashtray is full if he has been there, the glass Sitting beside it. When I return the next evening, the ashtray is empty and spotless, the glass clean and standing back with the others. I purposely touch nothing, so obviously these subsidiary illusions only manifest themselves when he materializes. All I do now before I leave the room is dust the desk and lamp and take a final gratifying look round at the books. One of the compensations for being a bachelor is that no one ever barges in to rearrange and disturb things. It’s a good life.

I am becoming so used to sharing my library with my phantom that he no longer frightens me. I feel only compassion. How he must yearn for his earthly retreat to have achieved this much of a return — a thought I find chilling. Nevertheless, I am accomplishing nothing. The strain of this unexplained apparition keeps me constantly on edge. I am a little hazy as to how long ago I first saw him, but from that night on I have found it understandably difficult to concentrate on my work. Aside from this record I have not written a word. Obviously I will have to do something about him soon as he has completely disrupted my life.

Perhaps he will just disappear as unexpectedly as he appeared. I notice he too has been increasingly restless of late. He keeps putting down his book and getting up to pace the room. Also he is taking two or three ghostly drinks a night instead of his usual one. And he is not appearing as often. I have a feeling he will be forced to leave me before too long. I only hope he finds what he needs elsewhere, and I wish him Godspeed.

Last night I decided to call the real estate agent who sold me this house and ask about the former owner. However, I cannot remember the agent’s name. It will come back to me and then I will investigate. Perhaps some tragedy took place here, or some crime. I will have to find out if I am ever again going to settle down to a normal existence. I have been so absorbed by this monstrous problem I am at times hardly conscious of the world outside. All that interests me is getting back to this room every evening.

I don’t quite know why I am adding these final pages to my record. I have the answer to my mystery, to my ghost. At first I laughed aloud. What a stupendous joke! Then I wept. It was a tragedy after all.

I got my answer just a short time ago. When I came in tonight I immediately noticed something new in the room. A sleek ivory telephone sat on one corner of my ponderous old desk. I had never had a phone in this room. It would have been an intrusion. But evidently my predecessor had one. So far his personal manifestations had not appeared until he did. Tonight was obviously going to be a more complicated visitation. Possibly an anniversary of the tragedy I have surmised.

By the time he came through the door I was trembling. The situation had become so familiar, so predictable; but now a new note was to be introduced. I was again threatened by the unknown.

Tonight he did not take up a book at all. He stood in the middle of the room and looked slowly around. Then he gave a shrug that was almost a shudder and walked over to the telephone. He lifted the receiver and dialed. I could hear it all. That is the part I still cannot reconcile. I cannot actually touch him but I can hear him.

His conversation I record here. I was stunned, but only for a few moments. Subconsciously I must have begun to suspect his true story sometime ago. And when I heard it I never doubted it was the truth. I knew.

“Roger? Alec here. I’m calling from the house. The phones were put in today. Listen, Rog, I can’t take it any more. I’m moving out.”

The phone squeaked a few times.

“I know it’s everything I wanted — even furniture after Sylvia took ours. This whole setup is ideal. And you know how I felt about the books in the library. God, what a room! But what’s the use of having it if I can’t enjoy it!”

He listened a moment. “Yes, yes, I know. It could be imagination, but every instinct I have tells me it isn’t. There is something in or about this room that stands my hair on end every time I’m in it. It’s not that I’m scared exactly. I don’t think there’s anything — anything evil; but I can’t get over the feeling I’m never alone, and it’s driving me nuts!

“Laugh all you want but, much as I hate to be corny, this room was to have been a sanctuary for me; now it’s not that at all — it’s a place of — of danger, peril.”

This time he listened for more than a minute.

“Well, maybe I rented it too quickly. I should have come back a couple of times, but it’s such a wonderful old house it wouldn’t have been on the market a week. Remember, I heard about Professor Matthews through the university long before they had decided what to do with the place. If I hadn’t spoken up then, I’d never have got it. Then to be able to have the use of his entire library besides! I just had to jump at it.”

He paused. “Funny, I never laid eyes on the guy, but sometimes when I look out the front window of this room… He was hit right in front of the house, you know. I swear I can almost see him hurrying across to his library for the last time.”

The telephone crackled.

“No, I mean library. Hell, Rog, all you have to do is spend an hour in this room and you know the rest of the house was no more than a blur to him. This was an ivory tower to end all ivory towers.” My ghost sighed heavily. “I know as well as you do that his leaving everything to the university was a tremendous stroke of luck for me as his successor, but I wish it had come about some other way. Damn it, this room is still his!”

After another pause he nodded. “I guess you’re right. Well, I’ll give it another week. Then if I haven’t been able to talk myself out of it I’ll leave. Thanks, Rog. See you.”

Now I have to leave my room, my books. As I look down at the pages I have written I realize that either they will never be seen, or if they exist they will probably be blank. So be it. They were my shock absorbers.

I find my cheeks still wet with tears, but most of the fear has gone. I am calm. And now that I know, I realize there must be something ahead. I have, after all, come this far.

(signed) John Kingsley Matthews, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

Editorial Comment: Our reading staff’s four different interpretations were: first, and most obvious, that the “ghost” is merely an hallucination, no more; second, that the ghost and Dr. Matthews are somehow one and the same; third, that this is the story of a crease or fold in Time, a disjointment or overlapping of Time; and fourth, that it is not Alec who is the ghost — Alec is alive and it is Dr. Matthews who is the ghost (a neat switch!).

No doubt some of you came up with other explanations.

But surely this type of story should end with an air of mystery. So all we’ll say further is that we think the main clue to the correct interpretation lies in the very first thing the author gave you — the title of the story, Post-Obit…