Mystery

Tom had been half-fearing, half-expecting that another spell of illness would overtake him as they approached Goethe Park; by now, he scarcely knew what he expected from a visit to Hattie Bascombe, but was certain at least that he did not want to get sick in front of Sarah Spence. He still had not told her that all he knew of the old nurse’s whereabouts was that she lived in the old slave quarter, and that was embarrassment enough.

The street numbers marched from the twenties into the thirties as they drove down Calle Burleigh, and he was relieved to feel no symptoms of distress. Neither of them spoke much. When the row of houses and shops before them yielded to the great cream-colored façade of a church, and after that to trees and open ground, he told her to turn left at the next block, and Sarah went around the nose of a dray horse and through a cloud of bicycles into 35th Street.

To their right, children pulled their parents forward toward hot dog vendors and balloon men. Exhausted tigers and panthers lay flattened on the stone floors of their cages; some other animal howled in the maze of trails between cages. Tom closed his eyes.

For two blocks past the south end of Goethe Park, where young men in jeans and T-shirts played cricket before an audience of small children and wandering dogs, the houses continued neat and sober, with their porches and dormer windows and borders of bright flowers. Bicycles leaned against the palm trees on the sidewalks. Then Sarah drove up a tiny hill where a clump of cypress trees twisted toward the sun, and down into a different landscape.

Beside the grimy red brick and broken windows of an abandoned factory came a stretch of taverns and leaning edifices much added to at their back ends and connected by ramshackle passages and catwalks. On both sides of the street, handwritten signs in the windows advertised ROOMS T? LET and ALL SORTS OF JUNK PURCHASED AT GOOD PRICES. OLD CLOATHES CHEAP. HUMIN HAIR BOUGHT AND SOLD. The wooden buildings on both sides of the street blotted out the afternoon sun. At intervals, archways and passages cut into the tenements gave Tom glimpses of sunless courtyards in which lounging men passed bottles back and forth. From the windows a few faces stared out as blankly as the signs: BONES. WARES BOUGHT.

“I feel like a tourist here,” Tom said.

“I do too. It’s because we’re never supposed to see this part of the island. We’re not supposed to know about Elysian Courts, so it’s kind of invisible.”

Sarah drove around a hole in the middle of the narrow street.

“Is that what this is called?”

“Didn’t you know about the Elysian Courts? They were built to get people out of the old slave quarter—because the quarter was built on a marsh, and it turned out to be unhealthy. Cholera, influenza, I don’t know what. These tenements were put up in a hurry, and pretty soon they were even worse than the slave quarter.”

“Where did you hear about them?”

“They were one of Maxwell Redwing’s first projects, around 1920 or so. Not one of his most successful. Except financially, of course. I guess the people who live there call it Maxwell’s Heaven.”

Tom turned around on the seat to look back at the leaning tenements: their outer walls formed a kind of fortress, and through the arches and passages he could see dim figures moving within the mazelike interior.

They were out in the sun again, and the harsh light fell on the poor structures between the walls of Elysian Courts and the old slave quarter—tarpaper shacks and shanties jammed hip to hip on both sides of the narrow descending street. Hopeless-looking men lolled here and there in doorways, and a drunk swung back and forth on a lamppost with a shattered bulb, revolving south-east, east-south, like a broken compass.

The shanties came to an end at the bottom of the hill. Tiny wooden houses, each exactly alike with a minuscule roofed porch and a single window beside the door, stood on lots scarcely bigger than themselves. The whole of the small area, no more than four or five square blocks, seemed oppressively damp. At the far end of the old slave quarter, visible between the neat rows of houses, was an abandoned cane field that had evolved into a vast, crowded dump; beyond the chainlink fence enclosing the dump was the bright sea.

“So that’s the old slave quarter,” Sarah said. “After you’ve seen Maxwell’s Heaven I suppose you’re ready for anything. Where do we go? You have her address, don’t you?”

“Turn right,” Tom said, having seen something between the shacks.

“Aye-aye,” Sarah said, and turned into the road that ran along the northern edge of the quarter. Before them was an isolated shack, two or three times the size of the others and in noticeably better condition, with a large handpainted sign propped on its roof.

“Go behind that store,” Tom said. “Fast. He’s coming out of her door.”

She looked over to see if he were serious, and Tom pointed to the back of the store. Sarah jerked the car into low and stepped hard on the accelerator. The Mercedes flew over the mud and stones of the road, and skidded to a stop behind the store. It seemed to Tom that only a second had passed since he had spoken. His stomach was still back on the road.

“That fast enough for you?” Sarah said.

The face of a little girl with braids and an open mouth popped into a window at the back of the building.

“Yep.”

“Now will you tell me what’s going on?”

“Listen,” he said.

In a few seconds they heard the clopping of hooves and the creaking of leather.

“Now watch the road,” Tom said, and nodded back toward the way they had come. For a long time, the sound of the horse and its carriage came nearer the shop; then the sound subtly changed, and began going away from them. After a minute or two, a pony trap appeared retreating down the track, driven by a man in a black coat and black Homburg hat.

“That’s Dr. Milton!” Sarah said. “What would he—”

A small scurrying shape hurtled around the side of the building and jumped into Sarah’s arms. When it stopped whirling and began licking Sarah’s face, Tom saw that it was Bingo.

She held the dog in both her arms and looked at Tom, amazed.

“I think Dr. Milton must have seen him somewhere near the hospital, recognized him, and decided to take him on his errand before bringing him back,” he said.

“His errand? In the old slave quarter?” Sarah lifted her chin away from Bingo’s tongue.

“He decided that he told me too much,” Tom said. “But now I know where Hattie Bascombe lives.”

Sarah deposited Bingo in the well behind the seats. “You mean, he came out here to tell her not to talk to you? To threaten her or something?”

“If I remember Hattie Bascombe right,” Tom said, “it’s not going to work.”

Sarah parked behind a pile of fresh horse droppings, and Tom got out of the car. “What if he was just calling on a patient?” she said. “Isn’t that at least a little bit possible?”

“Do you want to come with me and find out?”

Sarah gave him another long look, then patted Bingo on the head and said, “Stay here,” and got out of the car. She looked around at the rows of shacks, at the chain-link fence and the long expanse of garbage. Gulls circled and dove; a faint but definite odor of human excrement and rot came to them.

“Maybe I should have brought my gat after all,” Sarah said. “I’m afraid the rats will come out to get Bingo.” But she came around the front of the car to join him, and together they walked up on the porch. Tom knocked twice.

“Get away from here,” said a voice from within the shack. “Git! Had enough—don’t want any more of you.”

Sarah backed down off the porch and looked toward her car.

“Hattie—”

“You said it all! Now you want to say it all again?” They heard her moving slowly toward the door. In a quieter voice: “I looked at you thirty years, Boney, I don’t have to see you one day more.”

“Hattie, it’s not Boney,” Tom said.

“No? Then I guess it must be Santa Claus.”

“Open the door and find out.”

She cracked the door and peered out. Alert black eyes in a suspicious face took in Tom’s tall figure, then moved to Sarah. She opened the door a notch wider. Her white hair was skimmed back from her forehead, and the lines on her face that had seemed bitter now expressed a surprisingly youthful curiosity. “Well, you’re a big one anyhow, aren’t you? You people lost? How you know my name?” She looked hard at Tom, and her whole face softened. “Oh, my goodness.”

“I was hoping you would recognize me,” Tom said.

“If you hadn’t turned into a giant, I would’ve recognized you right away.”

Tom turned and introduced Sarah, who was lingering awkwardly in the little yard, her hands in the pockets of her shorts.

“Sarah Spence?” Hattie said. “Didn’t I hear from Nancy Vetiver, all that time ago, that you visited our boy here in the hospital?”

Tom laughed at her perfect recall, and Sarah said, “I guess you did. But how could you remember …?”

“I remember about everybody came to visit Tom Pasmore. I believe he was the most left-alone little boy I ever saw, all the time I worked at Shady Mount—you were, you know,” she said directly to Tom. “I hope you two fine young people didn’t plan on spending your whole visit here standing on my porch. You’ll come in, won’t you?”

Hattie smiled and stepped out to hold her door open, and Tom and Sarah went into the little interior.

“Oh, it’s so pretty,” Sarah said, a second before Tom could say the same thing. Threadbare but clean patterned rugs covered the floor, and every inch of the walls had been decorated with framed pictures of every kind—portraits and landscapes, photographs of children and animals and couples and houses. After a second, Tom saw that most of them had been clipped from magazines. Hattie had also framed postcards, newspaper articles, letters, hand-printed poems, and pages from books. She had brought the bent-back chairs and her table to a high shine which was increased by her brass lamps. Her bed was a burnished walnut platform softened by many pillows covered in fabrics; her table looked as though George Washington might have owned it. In one corner a huge birdcage held a stuffed hawk. The whole effect was of profusion and abundance. A dented kettle painted fire-engine red steamed on the gas hob beside the small white refrigerator against the back wall, covered like the others with photographs in frames. Tom saw Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, and a self-portrait in a golden robe of Rembrandt that gazed out with the wisest and most disconcerting expression Tom had ever seen on any face.

“I do my best,” Hattie said. “I live next to the biggest furniture store in all Mill Walk, and I’m a little bit handy, you know. Seems like rich people would rather throw things away than give ’em away, lots of times. I even know the houses a lot of my things came from.”

“You got all this from the dump?” Sarah asked.

“You pick and choose, and you scrub and polish. People around here know I’m fond of pictures, and they bring me frames and such, when they find ’em.” The kettle began to whistle. “I was making a cup of tea for Boney, but he wouldn’t stay—just wanted to throw a scare into Hattie, was all he wanted. You two won’t be in such a rush, will you?”

“We’d love some tea, Hattie,” Tom said.

She poured the boiling water into a teapot and covered it. She brought three unmatched mugs from a little yellow cupboard to the table, a pint of milk, and sugar in a silver bowl. Then she sat beside them and began talking to Sarah about the original owners of some of her things while they waited for the tea to steep.

The big birdcage had been Arthur Thielman’s—or rather, Mrs. Arthur Thielman’s, the first Mrs. Arthur Thielman, and so had her brass lamps; some shoes and hats and other clothes had also been Mrs. Thielman’s, for after her death her husband had thrown out everything that had been hers. Her little old-fashioned desk where she kept her papers and the old leather couch had come from a famous gentleman named Lamont von Heilitz, who had got rid of nearly half his furniture when he had done something—Hattie didn’t know what—to his house. And the big gilded frame around that picture of Mr. Rembrandt—

“Mr. von Heilitz? Famous?” Sarah said, as if the name had just caught up with her. “He must be the most useless man ever born! He never even comes out of his house, he never sees anyone—how could he be famous?”

“You’re too young to know about him,” Hattie said. “I think our tea’s ready by now.” She began to pour for them. “And he comes out of his house now and again, I know—because he comes to see me.”

“He comes to see you?” Tom asked, now as surprised as Sarah.

“Some old patients come around now and again,” she said, smiling at him. “Mr. von Heilitz, he brought me some of his parents’ things himself, instead of tossing them on the dump and making me drag them home. He might look like an old fool to you, but to me he looks like that picture of Mr. Rembrandt up on my wall.” She sipped her tea. “Came to visit you too, didn’t he? Back when you got hurt.”

“But why was he famous?” Sarah asked.

“Everybody knew about the Shadow once,” Hattie said. “Used to be the most famous man on Mill Walk. I think he was the greatest detective in the world—like someone you could read about in a book. He made a lot of people uncomfortable, he did—they had too many secrets, and they were afraid he’d know all about them. He still makes ’em uncomfortable. I think a lot of folks on this island would be happier if he passed real soon.”

Sarah turned a reflective glance on Tom, and he said, “Hattie, did Dr. Milton come here to warn you off talking to me?”

“Let me ask you something. Are you making ready to sue Shady Mount? And do you want Nancy Vetiver to help you do it?”

“Is that what he said?”

“Because you had to have that second operation—they made a mess of the first one, you know. Tom ain’t that stupid, I said. If you could be sued on this island, it would have happened a long time ago. But if you want to, Tom, you go ahead—you might not be able to win, but you could smear him a little.”

“Dr. Milton?” asked Sarah.

“Hattie once told me I ought to take my fork and stab him in his fat fish-colored hand.”

“Should have too. Anyhow, you want Nancy’s address, I got it. I see Nancy once a week or so—she drops in to talk to me. Boney can try to get me thrown out of my house here, it might be harder than he thinks.”

“He said he’d get you evicted? Don’t you own this place?”

“Tossed out on my old black ass, was the way he said it. Every month but June, July, and August, I pay rent to a man who comes collecting for the Redwing Holding Company. Jerry Hasek is his name, and he’s just the man you’d send if you wanted to scare the rent out of seventy-seven-year-old ladies. He wouldn’t be good for much else. In September, he takes four months’ money all at once. Summers, he goes up north with all the Redwings, and a couple other no-goods Ralph Redwing keeps on the payroll.”

“I know him,” Sarah said. “Well, I know who he is. Acne scars, always looks worried about something?”

“That’s him, that’s my rent collector.”

“You know him?” Tom asked.

“Sure—he drives Ralph, when Ralph uses a car. And he’s a kind of bodyguard.”

“So,” Hattie said. “You gonna take on Boney? It don’t look that way to me.”

“No,” Tom said. “I just saw him at the hospital this morning—I asked him about Nancy, and he told me she was suspended, but he wouldn’t say why. I don’t think he wants you to tell me why, either.”

Hattie scowled down into her mug of tea, and all the lines in her face deepened alarmingly. An almost ferocious sadness had claimed her, and Tom saw that it had always been there, underlying everything she had said. “This tea’s gone cold,” she said. Hattie pushed herself up and went to the sink, where she rinsed out the mug. “I guess that man died. That policeman who got shot. Reminds me of the old days, with Barbara Deane.”

“Mendenhall,” Tom said. “Yes, he died this morning. I saw them taking his body out of the hospital.”

Hattie leaned back against her sink. “You think Nancy Vetiver was a bad nurse?”

“I think she was the only one as good as you,” Tom said.

“That girl was a nurse, same as me,” Hattie said. “She could have been a doctor but nobody would let her, so she did the next best thing. Didn’t have the money to be a doctor, anyhow, so she went to the nursing school at St. Mary Nieves, same as me, and when they saw how good she was, they hired her for Shady Mount.” She looked at each of them with the fierce sadness Tom had seen earlier. “You can’t tell someone like that not to do her job—you can’t say, do bad now, we don’t want you to be good today.” Hattie lowered her head and wrapped her arms around her chest. “This island, this is some place. This can be some damn place, Mill Walk.” She turned from them, and seemed to look at her wall of framed photographs.

“Nancy came here a couple times, the last few weeks. Seemed like it was getting worse. See, if she got suspended, that meant she couldn’t keep her place anymore, because the hospital owned her apartment. They told her. Told her.”

Hattie turned around again. “You know what? Boney’s scared of something. Tells you Nancy got suspended, and doesn’t have sense enough to make up a good lie about why.” She crossed her arms over her chest again, and looked amazingly like the stuffed hawk in the birdcage. “Makes me mad—damn mad. Because I halfway believed the man.”

She looked up at Tom. “Everything about this thing makes me mad. Two kinds of law—two kinds of medicine. Boney coming out here, all sweet and nice, then telling me that if I talk to you he might have to—to ‘respond to my disloyalty,’ that’s how he said it—hard as that would be for him, he says, when he already got Nancy out of the hospital. See, he went too far then too!” She seemed to blaze as she came across the floor to Tom: it was as if the hawk had come to life and swooped toward him. She put her thin old hand on his shoulder, and he felt her talons clamp down. “He doesn’t know who you are, Tom. He thinks he knows, he thinks he knows all about you. Thinks you’ll be just like all the rest—except one. You know who I mean, don’t you?”

“The Shadow.” He looked at Sarah, who sipped her tea and looked calmly back across the top of the cup. “You said something about a woman named Barbara Deane? She was a nurse?”

“For a time. Barbara Deane was your midwife.” She dug her fingers into his skin. “You want to see Nancy Vetiver? If you do, I’ll take you to her.”

“I want to come too,” Sarah said.

“You don’t know where she is.” Hattie turned sharply to face her.

“I bet I do. Dr. Milton or whoever it was wanted to scare her into doing what they wanted, right? So who owns the hospital? And what else do they own?”

Hattie nodded. “Dressed like that? Looking like you look? You can’t.”

“Can’t what?” Tom asked.

“Go with you to the Elysian Courts.”

Tom looked up at Hattie, and Hattie raised her eyebrows, amused and impressed.

“Give me something else to wear, then. I don’t care what it is, I just need something to cover me up.”

“I got something here might work,” Hattie said. She moved across the room, knelt by the bed, and pulled a trunk from beneath it. She opened the trunk, swept aside layers of bright fabrics, and drew out a long black shapeless thing. “Nobody’s touched this since the first Mrs. Arthur Thielman.”

“What’s that?” Tom asked. “A parachute?”

“It’s a cape,” Sarah said, springing up to try it on. “It’s perfect.”

The red lining flashed against the black silk as Sarah twirled the cape over her shoulders, and then the whole thing gathered and swung and fell back into its natural folds, covering Sarah from her neck to her feet. She instantly looked ten years older and more sophisticated, another kind of person altogether.

For a second, Tom thought he was seeing Jeanine Thielman.

Then Sarah said, “Wow! I love it!” and she was Sarah Spence again, and in the next second, swept to the window and bent down to see if her dog was still where she had left him. Evidently he was, for she straightened up and made another twirl that exposed her tennis shoes. “Jamie’s grandmother used to wear this? What do you think she was like?”

Hattie gave Tom a sly look, and said, “Tuck your hair in, turn up the collar, keep the front closed, and we’ll be ready to visit Nancy, I reckon. Nobody’ll mess with you now, as long as I’m with you.”

Hattie ushered both of them back outside into the hot sun, the sweet, sickening odor drifting from the dump, the wheeling gulls, and the rows of identical houses.

Bingo barked once, then recognized Sarah.

“How do you get three people and one dog into that car?” Hattie asked.

“Do you mind sitting on Tom’s lap?” Sarah asked.

“Not if he doesn’t,” Hattie said. “We can put the car across the street from Maxwell’s Heaven. Friend of mine will keep it safe—the dog too.”

Hattie climbed in after Tom, and seemed to weigh no more than Bingo. As if she were a child, he could see over the top of her head.

“Tuaregs and lascars, here we come,” Sarah said, and turned around on the narrow road.

“God help us,” said Hattie.

Soon they were driving in the darkness between the listing tenements. Hattie told Sarah to turn down into a nearly invisible cobblestone path beneath a shadowy archway, and around various corners past curtained windows and peeling walls until they came to a small cobbled court with a blue scrap of sky at its top, as if they were deep in a well. Barred windows and heavy doors stood on every side, and the air smelled of must. One of the heavy doors creaked open, and a large bearded man with a leather cap and apron peered out at them. He frowned at the car before recognizing Hattie, but immediately agreed to keep watch on the car and look after the dog for half an hour. Hattie introduced him as Percy, and Percy took the willing dog under his arm and led them into the building and up stairs and through vast empty rooms and small rooms crowded with bags and barrels. Bingo stared at everything with intent interest. “Who is Percy?” Tom whispered, and Hattie said, “Bone merchant. Human hair.” The man took them through a dusty parlor and back out into the slanting street. They were across the street from Maxwell’s Heaven.