Superstition

40

Ward had his manservant prepare a lunch of omelettes and salad. Sam talked about the work of a researcher called Helmut Schmidt, who had used prerecorded random events in the kind of experiments that Joanna had seen demonstrated in the lab when Sam first showed her around. According to Schmidt's results it appeared that subjects were able to influence those random events retroactively: patterns generated months earlier appeared to correspond to an influence exerted only after, sometimes long after, they had been recorded. If true, Sam argued, such results mirrored in a small way what seemed to have happened with Adam.

“There's an essay on time by the Buddhist writer Alan Watts that reflects what you're saying. He says that we tend to think of everything, including ourselves, as creations of the past, driven along by events that have already happened. But that's an illusion. It's not the present that comes out of the past, but the past that comes out of the present. We see it every day. For example, if I say, ‘The bark of a tree,’ you don't know what ‘bark’ means until I get to ‘tree.’ It could have been the ‘bark of a dog.’ Or take a line of poetry: ‘They went and told the sexton, and the sexton tolled the bell.’ You don't know what the first ‘told’ means, or even how it's spelled, until you get to ‘sexton.’ And you don't know that the second ‘tolled’ is any different until you get to ‘bell.’”

“But the Adam we created in the present was a decent man,” Joanna protested, “so it was the past that changed him.”

“We created someone who had to survive in the time and place we put him in,” Ward replied, “and we showed him how to do it.”

“We didn't exactly teach him how to steal and kill,” she said.

Sam put down his fork and leaned back, obviously having little appetite. “Don't you remember Maggie's unease about involving our nice, clean-living young Adam with undesirables like de Sade and Cagliostro? It looks like she had a point.”

“My fault, I'm afraid,” Ward said. “I was the one who brought their names up.”

“But that's just it,” Joanna said impatiently. “They were only names. How can names have that kind of power?”

Ward gave another of his faint smiles. “It's been said that the heart of all magic is knowing the true names of things. If you know the true name of your enemy, you have power over him. And if you know the true names of the gods, they must lend you their power.”

Joanna had placed her phone on the table next to her. Now it rang and she reached for it. Ghislaine's familiar, rapid-fire voice launched straight into the subject without preliminaries.

“Okay, that family tree we talked about-Jenny's come up with some interesting names. One in particular. Very respectable, very old money.”

Both men saw the color drain from Joanna's face as she listened, barely saying a word. When the conversation ended, she put the phone down and sat in silence, staring at her half-eaten omelette, saying nothing.

“Joanna…? Darling…?”

When she didn't respond, Sam reached out for her hand. She jumped at his touch.

“What is it?” he asked, concerned.

“I'm sorry…I'm all right…it's just…”

She turned her face to him. He could see shock in her eyes. And fear.

“Tell me.”

“Adam's granddaughter-one of them-married into a family called Cazaubon. It cemented the merging of two very powerful banking families.”

“Cazaubon,” Ward murmured. “I know that family-well, one branch of it anyway. Huguenots originally, fled from France in the late seventeenth century to escape persecution by the Catholics.”

She turned her head and focused on him. “Do you know a Ralph Cazaubon?”

“Ralph Cazaubon?” Ward thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don't believe I do.”

“In his thirties, obviously has money-it must be the same family.”

“Who is this Ralph Cazaubon?” Sam asked, a note of suspicion in his voice now.

Joanna turned back to him, oblivious of anything except the chilling sense of unease that had been creeping over her since Ghislaine spoke the name.

“He was at the grave,” she said. “I'd met him the day before, by accident. But the next day, Sunday morning, he was there when I found Adam's grave.”

She continued to stare at Sam, though no longer really focusing on him as the implications of what she was saying compounded in her mind. “He even phoned me this morning.”

“Phoned you?” Sam echoed. “What for?”

“He wanted to…say hello.” She made a vague gesture, feeling guilty suddenly, as though she was hiding something. “He asked if we could have lunch…”

She was going to say that she'd refused, but Sam spoke before she could get the words out.

“Do you have his number?” he asked.

“No, I…it's in my apartment.”

“He must be listed.” He reached for her phone. “May I?”

“Go ahead.”

He dialed information, gave the name and the street and the number of the house, which Joanna found she could remember. There was nobody of that name listed at that address. He put the phone down.

“Maybe it's listed under a different name,” she said. “He's only just moved in.”

Sam thought a moment, then got abruptly to his feet. “I'm going over there.”

“I'll come with you.”

They gathered up their things quickly, thanked Ward for lunch, then asked almost as an afterthought if he'd like to accompany them. Sensing perhaps that it would be better if they did this alone, he said he needed to get some rest before the evening. They confirmed that they would all meet at the lab at six.

Fifteen minutes later they got out of a cab on Park Avenue, preferring to walk the last few yards rather than make a slow crawl around two blocks in the one-way system. They looked for numbers to work out which side of the street the house must be on. Having determined that it must be on the south side, they moved to the edge of the sidewalk and waited for a break in the traffic. Just as they were about to step off the curb, Joanna grabbed Sam's arm hard enough to make him almost lose his balance.

“What on earth…?” he started to say, but then saw she had a hand to her mouth as though to stifle a gasp and was staring at something across the street.

He followed her gaze, and saw an elderly couple getting into a smart black town car while a driver held open the door for them. They were both short, the woman wearing the kind of expensive fur coat that would draw stares of disapproval and even open hostility in many places these days, and the man a camel-hair coat and black fur hat. They were glimpsed for only a second before they disappeared into the car's interior.

Perplexed by Joanna's reaction, Sam turned to her, intending to ask again what was wrong. But her gaze was so strangely intense that he remained silent, watching with her as the car drove off. As it passed them, he discerned two vague silhouettes gazing impassively ahead; then it was swallowed up into the flow of traffic going west toward the park.

Still she clung on to him in fear, her eyes fixed on the disappearing car. He had to speak her name twice before she looked at him.

“Joanna? Joanna, what is it? Who were they?”

“Ellie and Murray Ray.” Her voice was flat, like someone in shock, unable to connect with what was happening.

“Ellie and Murray Ray? The couple from Camp Starburst?”

She nodded, mute.

“But you told me he was dead.”

“Yes.”

He paused, taking in what he'd just heard. “So obviously she lied to you. That first day we met, you and I, the old woman had just told you he was dead. Obviously she lied.”

Joanna shook her head. “I checked. I had someone call the hospital.” She looked at him, her eyes seeming to search his face yet unable to focus. “Murray Ray died.”

They continued looking at each other, neither knowing what to say.

“Then that wasn't him,” Sam said, suddenly and decisively. “We were…how many yards? Twenty? Thirty? It probably wasn't her either. You couldn't be sure of recognizing anybody at this distance. You saw two people who looked a little like them, and you imagined it was them.”

She was silent, still pale and clearly shaken, but he felt her grip slacken on his arm.

“Yes, you're right,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “I must have been mistaken. It was just so weird for a second.”

He put his arm protectively around her, and they crossed the street. They walked briskly past the spot where they'd seen the couple getting into their car. Joanna turned to look, as though the ghost of the event somehow still lingered in the air. Sam's attention was on the houses they were passing, calculating which one up ahead must be the number they were looking for.

“One-three-nine…right here,” he said. They slowed outside a big brownstone similar to all the others on the street-except that the windows of this one were shuttered, the paintwork drab and peeling, the whole place exuding an air of neglect as though it hadn't been lived in for years.

“This can't be it,” she said.

“It has to be. There's one-three-seven on one side of it, one-four-one on the other. Are you sure it was this street?”

“Positive.”

“Well, if anybody's living here, they want to keep it a secret.”

There was a clatter from the basement area. Two cats scuttled out of a garbage can that lay on its side amid an accumulation of debris that nobody had cleaned out for a long time. The basement window had bars set into the wall and wooden shutters inside like the rest of the house.

“I told you,” she said feebly, “he's just moving in. When I met him on Saturday he was buying curtains.”

Sam looked up at the house, its stonework streaked and stained from long neglect, its windows grimy and unwashed. “It's going to be a while,” he said, “before anybody needs curtains for this place.”