The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library

WHEN I RETURNED to the entranceway, rippling red lights were flickering along the wall. The glow came through the still-gaping double doors. A shiny white police car had pulled up to the manor house, emergency lights flashing.

“I’m sorry if I frightened you, Pen,” Sadie said. “I saw the lights outside and didn’t realize that it was the police. They certainly arrived quickly after you called them.”

The cell phone was in my hand, but I hadn’t yet pushed the buttons. “I didn’t call them.”

Two officers stepped out of the squad car, approached the open door. A second vehicle rolled up beside the first. Now four policemen were staring at my aunt and the twisted corpse on the floor.

Sadie hurried forward to meet them. “Thank goodness you’ve come. Something terrible has happened. My friend, I think he’s dead!”

Sadie’s hands were shaking, and she was tearful. I wanted to corral my aunt, calm her, but a voice in my head stopped me.

Use your noodle, baby. There’s a stiff on the floor. A little opera on your aunt’s part will help convince the cops that you’re as innocent as a pair of Easter chicks.

“But we are innocent,” I silently protested. “We certainly didn’t do anything wrong.”

Step back and look at the fishbowl you’re swimming in, doll. The cops net you at the scene of a suspicious death, practically standing over the coffin stuffer. And you didn’t even tip the law to the rub-out.

“But I was just about to call the police—”

Someone beat you to it. Possibly even the perp.

That got my attention.

I suddenly remembered the sounds I’d heard earlier on the second floor. Had a killer struck Peter Chesley down after we had left, never guessing we’d return so soon?

“You think Chesley was murdered,” I silently said to Jack. “Did you witness anything while I was gone?”

Get a grip, honey. Outside of that fieldstone tomb of mine you call a bookshop, I’ve got no awareness unless you’re around. But we’re both on the same frequency. The old-timer couldn’t walk, and he didn’t fly up those stairs. Did you see an elevator?

“No. And I remember him saying the upper floors were sealed off…. Peter Chesley could hardly walk, yet his slipper is sitting halfway up the stairs.”

It’s a cinch. The perp’s setting up the investigators to think gramps’s big chill came from an accidental fall.

I wanted to talk more with Jack, but an officer had already moved Sadie into the library. Now his partner, a young man in his twenties, thin-lipped with a jutting chin and prominent Adam’s apple, was approaching me. So I shut up. Being seen talking to myself was probably less of a red flag than talking to a ghost, but I didn’t want to be caught doing either.

“Thank God you’ve come, Officer,” I said.

Over the man’s shoulder, I saw the two other uniformed officers examine Peter Chesley. One of them checked the man’s vital signs and shook his head.

Meanwhile, my officer—the name on his tag read DURST—reached into his nylon jacket. He produced a pad and a pen.

“What’s your name and your business here?”

“My name is Penelope Thornton-McClure. My aunt, Sadie Thornton, and I were here to visit Mr. Chesley. That’s the man on the ground. Peter Chesley.”

“You found him that way?” Officer Durst jerked his head to indicate the corpse.

“Well, yes…”

Smart cookie, said the ghost. Tell the truth. And the more often you can keep your answers to one syllable, the better.

“And that’s when you called 911?”

I blinked in surprise. “I didn’t call anyone. I was about to call emergency with my cell phone, but you and your partner showed up before I had the chance.”

It was Officer Durst’s turn to be surprised. “But we were responding to a 911 call at this address. A call of distress, according to dispatch.”

That piece of the puzzle certainly didn’t fit the scene of an accidental fatal fall. I could see the discrepancy troubled the officer, too.

Join the club, buster! I thought.

Suddenly another voice intruded.

Clam up, Penelope, Jack warned. This badge is small fry. He’s playing for time, doing the old softshoe until the big fish shows.

I lowered my eyes, brushed my fingers against my forehead. “I’m, ah…feeling a little faint,” I told the officer. “Can I sit down for a moment?”

“Sure,” the officer replied. “I think we can wait until the detective arrives to get your statement.”

Good play, baby.

I sank down on a hardwood bench, sitting against a stone wall in the foyer. The seat was cold, the walls were frigid—and since the doors were still wide open, the damp nighttime air was streaming in so the front hall was polar, too. I shivered.

Officer Durst took no notice. He was trying to raise someone on his portable radio. A moment later his partner emerged from the library. Sadie was still in there—where a warm fire crackled in the fireplace. I envied her.

Suddenly there were more lights outside, and sirens, too. I heard tires squeal on the wet pavement. Then the sound of doors opening, slamming shut again. A pair of paramedics rushed in. They were followed by an unkempt, florid-faced man with pale gray eyes and thinning brown hair edged with silver.

The man strolled into the possible crime scene with the casual attentiveness of a man looking for an empty table in a crowded diner. His beige raincoat was unbuttoned; under it, his white cotton shirt was wrinkled and untucked. His tie was too wide to be remotely fashionable, the knot askew under a gold shield that hung from his thick neck by a yellow band. The detective was large, his shoulders wide. He wasn’t fat, but, over his belt, a spare tire was evident under his loose shirttails. He stifled a yawn as he approached Officer Durst.

After Durst filled him in, I watched the detective case the foyer. He stood over Peter Chesley’s corpse for a moment, then glanced into the bucket still catching water from the roof. He climbed the stairs, noting the dead man’s slipper without touching it. At the top of the stairs I saw him reach into his pocket and draw out a handkerchief. He used the cloth to pick up something—Peter Chesley’s cane.

“Jack…”

Yeah, I saw it, doll.

He leaned the cane against the tarnished gilt railing. Then the detective moved through an arched doorway on the second floor and out of sight. He was gone for a good fifteen minutes.

During that time, the paramedics had given up trying to revive Peter Chesley. A man from the medical examiner’s office arrived and pronounced the man dead. Then everyone stood aside as a young woman from the crime scene unit took pictures of the area.

The detective finally came back downstairs. After another word with Officer Durst and his partner, the detective approached me. I moved to rise, but he gestured for me to remain seated.

“Please, rest. You’ve had a tough night. My name is Detective Douglas Kroll, Newport Police. I understand your name is Penelope McClure?”

I nodded. Douglas Kroll’s voice seemed impossibly soft for a man so large and imposing—but then I thought of Mike Tyson. Pulling aside his coat, Kroll knelt down on one knee in front of me, as if he were about to propose. He pulled out a pad and rested it on his leg.

“Tell me what happened from the beginning, Mrs. McClure.”

I told him everything. How we’d come and gone then returned to fetch my forgotten purse. I even mentioned the strange noise I heard while my aunt Sadie and I were visiting, suggesting that perhaps someone was lurking in the house.

To my surprise, Detective Kroll shrugged lethargically. “I was just up there. The place is falling apart. You heard the sound of the storm, the wind, and this dump falling to pieces, that’s all.”

“Then you think this was an accident?”

The detective looked at me strangely. “What else?”

His tone didn’t imply that he was suddenly suspicious—more like I was paranoid to suggest anything else.

“Look, Mrs. McClure. It’s pretty clear what happened here. Mr. Chesty there—”

“Chesley,” I corrected. “His name was Peter Chesley.”

“The deceased lost his balance on the stairs.”

“But—”

“His cane was at the top of the stairs. You did say that was his cane, correct?”

I nodded. “But Peter told us he hadn’t gone up those stairs in a year. He said he was too weak to try.”

Kroll shrugged again. “Maybe he wasn’t telling you the truth.”

“He said he had his bedroom moved down to the first floor,” I told him. “Peter said that he was sleeping in a small room off the kitchen.”

Douglas Kroll turned his head. Officer Durst was standing nearby. “You hear that, son?” Kroll asked.

“I did, Detective. I found a bedroom, right next to the kitchen.”

“See!” I cried. “Why would a man as wealthy as Mr. Chesley sleep in a tiny room next to the kitchen if he could climb the stairs?”

“Why would a wealthy man live in a dump that’s falling apart?” Kroll asked, then glanced at his notes. “Anyway, your statement and your aunt’s match up.” He turned to Durst. “You can bring Ms. Thornton back in.”

“What about the 911 call?” I asked. “Officer Durst told me he was responding to a distress call. But I didn’t make it. Neither did my aunt.”

Detective Kroll nodded. “I already checked with dispatch. The call definitely came from this house. A male voice.”

My jaw dropped. “Then the killer was in this house. We might have nearly caught him in the act—”

Detective Kroll squinted. “Now why would you assume that? Look, ma’am,” Kroll continued in the most patronizing tone imaginable, “this same kind of thing happened last year to that fellow over at Bellecourt Castle. He was as old as this geezer—I mean, the unfortunate Mr. Chesley, here. The old fellow who owned Bellecourt, well he got away from his handlers and took a walk around the castle. He was suffering from Alzheimer’s, experienced a bout of mental confusion—”

This guy knows all about mental confusion, griped Jack.

“—And he tripped on the rocks and broke his neck.”

“But who called 911?”

“I’m going to get the transcript of the call, and maybe even a tape the first thing in the morning, but you know what I think?”

I frowned. “No. What?”

“I think the deceased made the call because he felt faint or dizzy,” Kroll said with a touch of smugness. “Or maybe he was even feeling the beginning stages of a stroke or heart attack. Then maybe he went upstairs for his pills, or maybe he just got confused. The stairs are wet, the geezer looks shaky to me. Down he came.”

Sounds reasonable on his end. But that doesn’t make it true.

I was about to argue some more with Kroll when the library door opened. Officer Durst led my aunt out. She hurried to my side.

“Here’s my card,” Detective Kroll said, thrusting it into my hand. “If you have any questions, give me a call. I have your address and your statements. You can both go home. My department will contact Mr. Chesley’s family and notify them of his passing…”

Neither of us spoke as we headed for our car. It took a few minutes for me to maneuver around all the emergency vehicles, but I managed. We were through the gate and a mile down the road before Aunt Sadie broke the silence.

“Do you think Peter’s fall was an accident?”

“No,” I said softly.

“What do you think happened?”

“I…I don’t know…the detective’s got a lot of reasonable answers for what happened to him, but I know that I heard someone upstairs. And I just can’t believe your friend climbed those stairs under his own power—or called 911 himself, for that matter, unless he was afraid of being attacked and called the police for help.”

The vote’s unanimous, Jack said. Gramps didn’t die by accident, he was shoved into his coffin.

“But, Pen, what can we do about it?” Sadie asked.

I squeezed the steering wheel, unhappy to face reality, but the Newport police were all over this case and, to me, Peter Chesley was a virtual stranger. In the end, I had a business to run and a little boy to raise.

“Nothing,” I finally told my aunt. “There’s nothing to be done.”