Palindrome

CHAPTER 46

The three of them, Liz, Germaine, and James, sat silently in Angus Drummond's study, drained. Nobody seemed to know what to do next. "I suppose we ought to think about a time for the funeral," Germaine said finally. When no one said anything, she went on. "Today's Thursday.

We'll want the announcement in tomorrow's papers, and we'll need to allow some time for people to travel-Hannah and Aldred will come, I'm sure, and there'll be others from Atlanta and Jacksonville. I think Monday morning should be good. We'll have a special run of the Aldred Drummond Monday morning, and I'll give everybody lunch at the inn after the service. What do you think?"

"That sounds sensible," Liz said.

"It's fine with me," James said. "I'll just miss school that day."

"Well"-Germaine sighed-"there doesn't seem to be anything else to do here. I'll go back to the inn and phone the papers. I'm fully booked this weekend, too, and I've got some things to do around the place."

They rose to go, and, as they did, the doorbell rang. They went together to answer it and found Dr. Blaylock standing on the front porch. The sheriff's helicopter was just landing on the front lawn.

"I've just heard about your grandfather, from Hamish," Blaylock said, and he looked upset. "Please accept my sympathy, Germaine; he was a wonderful man and my friend for a long time."

"Thank you, Dr. Blaylock," she said. "What's the sheriff doing back, I wonder?"

"I'm afraid I called him, as I said I would yesterday. It was before I ran into Hamish and learned about Angus's death. I'm sorry this is such a bad time, but I really must speak to you and the sheriff now, Germaine."

"All right," she replied. "And you, too, Miss Barwick," the professor said. "We're going to need your advice, as well as the family's."

"If this is a family matter, then James should be there, too," Germaine said. "He's my grandfather's son, and everybody had better start getting used to the idea."

"All right," Dr. Blaylock said. The sheriff had alit from his helicopter and was striding toward the house. They all stood in the disused dentist's office, and Dr. Blaylock had switched on the light box. He took an envelope from his pocket and arranged some radiograph films on the box; then he produced a set of Polaroid photographs. "I've been through all the dental records and X rays; I began by eliminating the women and children and older men. There weren't that many more records to search." He paused. "I've found films that match the teeth of the skeleton we found in the Light-Horse Harry Lee grave."

"Who was he?" Germaine said. "If he had his teeth worked on here, I must have known him."

"He didn't have his teeth worked on, except on one occasion," Blaylock said. The professor was starting to look uncomfortable.

"So," the sheriff said.

"I've got a very good match, here," Blaylock said, holding up the Polaroids next to the film on the light box. "Looks the same to me," the sheriff said. "What's his name?"

"I don't know that, yet," Blaylock said.

"Wasn't his name on the dental records?" the sheriff asked.

"I'm afraid there were two names on these records," said Blaylock. "There was no indication which X rays belonged to which person." He held up a file folder.

"The Drummond twins," the sheriff read aloud. There was absolute silence in the room while everyone absorbed this news.

"I'm missing your point, Dr. Blaylock," Germaine said finally. "My point is, the skeleton in the Light-Horse Harry Lee grave is one of the Drummond twins, either Hamish or Keir."

Liz suddenly felt as if she had been struck in the chest with a heavy object. She wanted to run from the room.

"But that's clearly impossible," Germaine said reasonably. "You've met Hamish, and Keir is here on the island, too; I've seen him, and so has Liz. The records have obviously been mixed up in some way.

"No," Dr. Blaylock said, "there's no mix-up. Neither of these boys ever had so much as a filling in his head. The only dental work they ever had, apart from an occasional cleaning, was when they were sixteen; they both had their lower wisdom teeth removed on the same day. That's when these films were taken." When Germaine still did not seem to grasp what he was saying, the professor spoke again. "My point is that one of the twins is lying over there in that shed. Or at least, his remains are."

Germaine stared disbelievingly at Blaylock, but did not seem to be able to speak.

"Are you saying," the sheriff said, "that one of those boys murdered the other one and has been pretending to be his brother?"

"No, I'm not saying that. I have no idea how or when that boy was killed. But," he said, "it's my guess that Buck Moses can tell us."

"I think you're right," Liz said.

"Why do you think Buck knows?" Germaine managed to ask.

"Buck stole the toolboxes from the professor's camp," Liz said. "I saw them at his house. He must have done it because he didn't want the Light-Horse Harry grave disturbed."

"I think that's exactly right," Blaylock said. "I think Buck buried the boy in that grave on the day he was killed."

Germaine sank heavily into a chair. Liz held on to a table, trying to gain some control over her emotions.

"Germaine," she said at last, "when was the last time you saw the twins together?"

"I remember exactly," Germaine said. "It was the day they left to go off to college, in September of-let's see, the twins are thirty-seven, and they were eighteen then-nineteen seventy. Buck Moses took them to Fernandina in Grandpapa's launch." She rubbed her temples with her fingers. "Hamish arrived at Princeton, I remember, but Keir didn't. We didn't hear from him until Christmas, when we got a letter from New York, Grandpapa and I nearly went crazy waiting to hear from him. Grandpapa had private detectives looking for him."

Dr. Blaylock turned to James Moses, who had been listening in silence. "James, has your grandfather ever said anything to you about this?"

"No, sir," James said. He looked as stunned as Germaine and Liz.

"Well, I think you'd better go and get him and bring him to Dungeness," Blaylock said.

Buck Moses sat in Angus Drummond's study, his hat in his lap, and wiped his face with a bandanna. "Them boys loved each other like nothin' I ever seen," he said, "until that girl come to the island."

"I remember," Germaine said. "Gilly something-I can't remember her last name. Her mother brought her down here from New York for the month of August that year."

"They loved that girl," Buck said, "both of them. They loved her to death. I never saw 'em like that, 'cept that one time."

"What happened, Buck?" Germaine asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"I come here to Dungeness to get 'em, to carry ' em to Fernandina, to get a taxi to the airport. They was havin' breakfast."

"I remember," Germaine said. "We said good-bye to them, Grandpapa and I. They didn't want to change into suits."

"That's right. They was wearing them jeans, and they said they's gonna change on the boat. Well, I got 'em on the boat, and they started arguing something' awful, 'bout that pretty girl, the way boys do, and they had a fight. I stop the boat, but I couldn't do nothin' with 'em, I just couldn't. They was rasslin' around, and they fell down, and one of them boys didn't move no more. They was blood on the back of his head, where he done hit it on a bronze cleat." Buck closed his eyes. "They was brains on that cleat."

"Which one hit his head, Buck?" Germaine asked, leaning close to the old man.

"I swear to God, I don't know. I didn't never know. I put the other boy off at Fernandina and tole him to go to school and keep his mouth shut, and I was gon' take care of his brother."

"And he went off, just like that?"

"He in a daze, like. He just do what I tole him to do.

I put him in the taxi and sent him off. Next time I see him, he was home at Christmas. He was Hamish." Buck wiped his face again with the bandanna, and tears rolled down his ebony cheeks. "Next time I see him was the next summer, and he was Keir. He done got to be both those boys."

"And what did you do with the other boy when you left Fernandina?" the sheriff asked.

"I brung the boat up through the marsh to the graveyard, and I put him in ol' Harry's grave, and I said my prayers over him. Then I come back to the dock at Dungeness and didn't say nothin' to nobody, never again, 'bout that day, 'till this minute. I never even said nothin' to Hamish and Keir-whichever he was. He act like it never happen, and so did I. We never said nothin' again 'bout it."

Nobody in the room said anything for a long time; then the sheriff stood up. "Germaine," he said, "this is no business of mine; I've got no interest in what's happened here. There's no crime, as far as I'm concerned, only an accident-involuntary manslaughter at worst, and the statute of limitations ran ut on that years ago. I'm not about to arrest somebody as old as Buck for covering up a death, twenty years ago. It's history, and family history, at that, and I'll leave you to do what you will about it." He flicked dust off his Stetson. "I'll bid you all good-bye, and I'm going to forget this day just as fast as I can. Germaine, I'm real sorry about Mr. Drummond." He left the room and the house. Moments later, the helicopter departed from the front lawn.

"Buck," Germaine said to the weeping old man, "I don't know if you did the right thing, but I know you didn't do wrong. You've got nothing to feel bad about. I want to thank you for letting me have my brothers for all these years."

James stood up. "Come on, Granddaddy, I'll take you home." The two departed, and Dr. Blaylock stood up.

"I'm going to tell my students that I didn't find any matching records. I'm going to tell myself that, too." He handed the X-ray film of the twins to Germaine. "Here, you get rid of these." He left the house, and the two women were alone in the study.

Germaine looked at Liz. "Oh, Jesus, honey," she said, "what are we going to do?"

Liz spoke through her numbness and grief. "We're going to get some help," she said.

Liz sat at Germaine's desk and held the telephone, while Germaine anxiously listened in. "That's the worst story I ever heard," Dr. Douglas Hamilton said. "What have you done about it?"

"Nothing, so far," Liz said.

"Then you've done the right thing," Hamilton said. "This man has spent the past twenty years pretending to be-no, not pretending-actually being two people. It's a sort of self-induced schizophrenia, and it's very deeply ingrained. I'll wager that when he is one of the twins, he has no conscious memory of what happened when he is the other."

"That doesn't seem humanly possible," Germaine said.

"The human mind can exclude whatever it wishes, if it's well enough motivated. Your brother's guilt is such that it is unbearable, so he has excluded the memory of his twin's death, and the only way he can keep his twin alive is by living his brother's life, as well as his own."

"But how can we stop this?" Germaine demanded. "How can we help him?"

"You can't stop it, and you can only help him by continuing as before." Hamilton sighed. "Germaine, if you force him to confront reality, you will destroy him. For an identical twin, the act of killing his brother is tantamount to suicide, and the only way he could avoid that was by refusing to acknowledge it. If he is made to acknowledge it, then it's very likely that he would take his own life."

"If you saw him, could you treat him?" Liz asked.

"I doubt it; not everyone is treatable psychiatrically, you know, just as physical illness is sometimes untreatable. From what you've told me, he is successfully conducting two different, but reasonably stable existences, and only if the tissue separating those two lives is torn is he likely to show symptoms of mental illness. If that happened, and if he survived the experience, then he might be treatable, but I doubt very much if he could survive."

"How long is this likely to last?" Germaine asked.

"Until his own death frees him," Hamilton said.

"Thank you, Ham," Liz said. "We won't take any more of your time."

"Liz," Hamilton said, "I gather that you are in love with this man."

"I am," Liz replied.

"Then I had better warn you of something. I think Drummond has found a way to live with himself, and that he can go on functioning that way. But you know something he doesn't, and knowing it is likely to make life with him difficult, perhaps impossible for you.

You're never going to have more than half of him, or, at best, all of him for some of the time. And you're never going to be able to sublimate his secret, as he has; you'll have to live with it every minute. Before you decide to continue with this relationship, you'd better think hard about whether you can live with that."

"Thank you, Ham. Can I call you again sometime?"

"Any time, Liz."

She hung up the phone and turned to Germaine. "Well, Jesus," Germaine said, "this is going to be tough enough on me, but what the hell are you going to do?"

"I guess I'm going to have to find out if I can live with it," Liz said.