Hide Me Among the Graves

Page 39

 

  McKee frowned and opened her mouth to reply - but at that moment the caged bird cheeped several times, and a banging crash sounded from the front of the house, and then heavy boots were clumping in the hall.

  Christina sprang nimbly to the doorway and leaned against the wall beside it, one hand in her handbag; Johanna snatched her knife out of the sheath inside her shirt, swearing softly as she gripped it in her greasy right hand; Crawford sprang toward the cabinet where the scalpels were kept and slipped on the wet floor and sat down hard; and McKee, shaking her head, crossed her arms and stood in the middle of the tile floor.

  She was looking through the doorway into the dining room, and she said, "Tom, what the hell are you doing?"

  "Don't speak to me, whore!" yelled a big unshaven man who now reeled into the room. "Where is he?"

  His face was red under a shapeless hat, and the old black coat he wore was stretched across massive shoulders, and in his gnarled fist he gripped a foot-long iron rod. He blinked blearily at the people in the room, and his watery gaze fixed on Crawford, who had hurriedly got back on his feet.

  "Hah!" the man said to him. "You don't even buy her clothes! I do!"

  "Tom," said McKee loudly, "go back home. You know I buy my own - "

  Tom turned toward her and raised the iron bar -

  And a short, sharp explosion concussed the air of the little room, and everyone flinched.

  Crawford, still clutching a scalpel with a ludicrous inch-long blade, straightened and blinked around. His ears were ringing, and the reek of burned gunpowder now eclipsed the room's ordinary smells.

  Tom had stepped back, half lowering the iron rod, his face blank; Johanna had ducked under the counter; and McKee was staring at Christina, who was holding a smoking revolver in both hands.

  Crawford's gaze swept over Tom, but he saw no blood, and then Johanna, peeking up from under the counter, pointed behind him. Crawford turned and saw a ragged hole in the plaster of the wall.

  McKee stepped forward and wrenched the bar out of Tom's hand. "Well done, Sister Christina!" she called, without taking her eyes off him.

  Abruptly a second gunshot shook the room, and this time Crawford cringed at the shrill twang of a ricochet and saw the pistol spin across the tile floor. Johanna darted out and snatched it up and pointed it at Tom, who now had his eyes clenched shut. The goldfinch was fluttering wildly in its cage.

  Johanna briefly caught Crawford's eye and nodded toward the cabinets in the dining-room side wall, where another hole had been punched through the white-painted wood of one of the doors.

  Christina had evidently dropped the gun, and it had gone off when it hit the floor - and the bullet must have missed her by only a yard or so.

  Her face was white, but after looking around at everyone, she managed an awkward laugh. "I'd dig those out," she quavered. "They're silver. "

  "You get out of here," said Johanna, straightening up but keeping the gun barrel leveled at Tom. "Never come back. "

  "Johanna," said McKee, "he's your - "

  "Stepfather?" said the girl calmly. "I'll step on him. "

  This disrespect seemed to snap Tom out of his daze.

  "Give me that," he growled, stepping forward.

  Johanna cocked the hammer with her thumb and smiled at him, and Crawford wondered if the child might have killed someone before.

  "Bullet holes in the walls," Johanna said, "respectable people menaced in their own home by a drunk vagrant, a little girl kills the man - you think I'd do any time? - even be arraigned?"

  "Vagrant!" Tom sputtered. "Drunk!" But he had retreated to the doorway.

  "Go home, Tom," said McKee. "Nothing immoral is going on here. I'll be along in an hour. "

  Tom was breathing hard, and he wiped a grimy hand across his mouth. "Your front rooms stink of garlic," he said gruffly, "and you got mirrors everywhere - and I know the uses of silver! There's people who go the other way, drink out of purple glasses under London Bridge - I can bring your troubles to you, wait and see if I can't. "

  Then he had spun and was clumping quickly through the dining room to the hall.

  McKee caught Johanna as the girl began to hurry after him. "Let him go, child. "

  The front door banged loudly.

  "We need to kill him!" Johanna protested, as McKee grabbed the gun with her thumb under the hammer and pulled it out of the girl's hand.

  "Johanna, he's my husband!"

  "Do you have any sherry?" Christina asked Crawford.

  Crawford nodded and stepped past McKee, who was holding on to the gun. A moment later he was back from the dining room with a decanter in one hand and a small glass in the other.

  "You won't drop it again?" McKee was saying to Christina as she handed the gun back to her.

  "No," Christina said sheepishly, tucking it back into her handbag. "I hope I didn't sprain my hand shooting it! I only carry it in case I should run into something like what Gabriel shot, that day in Regent's Park. "

  "The eighteen-hundred-year-old British queen," said Johanna, still scowling toward the front of the house, "who looked like a dog. "

  Christina stared in evident surprise at the girl.

  Crawford mussed Johanna's hair and told her, "You did very well there. "

  "Not as well as Nancy would have," said the girl darkly. "I think he broke our front door. "

  Christina took the glass of sherry after Crawford had poured it and handed it to her, and she gulped it and held it out again.

  "That was - " she began, as Crawford refilled it. "Uh," she went on, "the child lives here, I gather? With her father?"

  "That was my husband, yes," said McKee with a defiant look. "And yes, Johanna lives here, for now. "

  "Only one glass?" said Johanna. "I could use a bracer myself. "

  McKee looked down at her in alarm and said, "Never mind, I think we could all use some tea. In the parlor, if my husband has verifiably left the premises. "

  "I CAN NAIL IT shut," Crawford said as they sat down in the parlor, "and we can come and go by the back door until I get a carpenter in. "

  The garlic smell was, as Tom had noted, very strong in the room.

  "I'll pay for it," said McKee.

  "You didn't do it," said Crawford.

  Johanna put in, "Let him sell a lot of spoons to pay for it. " One of the three-legged cats pulled itself up onto the couch beside her and she began petting it.

  Crawford cleared his throat. "We imagine," he said to Christina, "that you know your uncle is up again. Whatever it was you did at the cemetery worked for these seven years, but - "

  Christina's hand had flown to her mouth. "Has he . . . molested you people? His connections were all broken then, I'd have hoped - "

  "Yes," said McKee. "He seems specifically to want our daughter. "

  "I'm so sorry! We've got, my siblings and I, a plan to stop him finally, kill him. We hope to - "

  "How?" asked Johanna.

  "When?" added McKee.

  "Well - soon. Gabriel is getting permission to . . . to go to where he is, where his physical form is . . . "Her voice trailed off.

  "And it's a statue, the physical form, you said," recalled Crawford. "Small enough for a fourteen-year-old girl to put under her pillow and sleep on. "

  "And you rubbed blood on it," added McKee.

  "I'm glad you're my father," Johanna remarked, "not that old shit wagon. "

  "Damn it, Johanna," McKee burst out, "that old shit wagon is my husband!"

  "Common law," said Johanna.

  Christina was frowning and had closed her eyes.

  Crawford started to speak, but he feared that his voice might catch if he spoke, so he just reached across the table to pat Johanna's hand.

  Johanna noticed Christina's evident disapproval. "At least I know better than to wake up devils," she said, "and I'm only thirteen. "

 
Christina opened her eyes and nodded. "A valid point, my dear. "

  "Where is the statue," asked McKee, "that you need to get permission to go there? A vault in a museum?"

  Christina looked distressed. "I can't - it's not my secret to reveal - "

  "It's in a grave in Highgate Cemetery," said Johanna casually. "He dreamed about it a lot when I was with him. "

  Christina turned to face the girl. "Do you know if it's still there, in the grave? We fear that his recent activity might be the result of the statue having dug its way out. "

  Johanna shook her head. "Do I still look bitten? I haven't been with him since that day you killed him. " Then she shivered and clasped her hands. "But the statue doesn't have to be out of the grave for him to be out. "

  "That's true," conceded Christina.

  "It's in her coffin?" asked Crawford. "Lizzie's? Or was, at least? You buried it that day?"

  "No," blurted Christina, "it's in my father's coffin - in his throat, to be precise!" She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and patted her forehead. "We buried Lizzie right on top of him and put mirrors in her coffin to reflect him back on himself. "

  "Then it must have unburied itself," said McKee, "or else somebody dug it up. " She shook her head. "No use you getting permission to open the grave - and was that your whole plan?"

  Christina took a breath. "Yes," she said, exhaling.

  "Damn. I was hoping you could do the 1862 thing again. I wonder if we could flee to America. "

  "We offered you passage to America ten years ago," said Christina, "as an indentured domestic, and you can still do that. " She looked at Crawford. "And they might need veterinarians. "

  "And their child?" asked Johanna.

  "I'm - not sure," Christina admitted.

  "Tom would never agree to go," said McKee hopelessly.

  For several seconds no one spoke. And, thought Crawford, in any case they probably have as many spoon sellers in America as they need.

  He cleared his throat and said to McKee, "I wouldn't go without you, not again. "

  "That's the boy!" said Johanna.

  "We, my family and I," said Christina hurriedly, "are going to find out, try to, tonight, whether in fact the statue is still in the grave. "

  McKee raised her eyebrows. "Find out how?"

  "We're going to try to talk to Lizzie. " She shrugged and rolled her eyes upward. "We're going to hold a seance. "

  THE BAY WINDOW HAD been repaired since the devils had crashed through it four evenings ago, but the side panels were now unlatched and swung open to the cool night air. A bell at the nearby Church of St. Luke tolled eight P. M. , giving punctuation to the fainter bells of boats on the river.

  Gabriel and his assistant had carried a smaller table into the dining room and pushed the long table to the side. A pad of drawing paper and a handful of pencils had been laid out on the smaller table.

  The gas jets had been turned off, and a candle on the table, and half a dozen more on the mantel, made the long room seem churchlike and much bigger.

  Maria sat at the far end of the room, expressionless but nevertheless radiating disapproval, and Christina sighed and got up from beside her to cross to the table.

  "Where have you sent Algy tonight?" she asked Gabriel.

  He sat down beside William and waved his sister to the third chair. "He's off at . . . some club he belongs to. He probably won't be coming back here. "

  "Just as well," said William. "He wouldn't be serious. "

  Christina suppressed a smile as she sat down. Who would have thought that the skeptical William would be so earnest about fishing in the supernatural? But of course he considered it science.

  "How do we do it?" she asked, ignoring a sigh from the far end of the room.

  "I've written the alphabet," said Gabriel, "on the top sheet of paper. One of us asks a question aloud and then touches each letter in turn - the table will rap, or perhaps tilt, when the right letter is touched. If the question can be answered yes or no, one rap means yes, two means uncertain, and three means no. Five is a request to use the alphabet again. "

  "They're not always . . . precise," warned William. "Even the brightest of them has trouble spelling, sometimes. "

  "Do they lose their intelligence, when they die?" Christina asked, remembering her father's fishlike ghost in the river.

  "I think it's more that they don't clearly see the paper," William replied, "and . . . well, and they do seem to lose some power of concentration. " He smiled. "So we have to concentrate especially hard. " Formally and more loudly, he said, "Is any spirit present?"

  Several seconds ticked past.

  Then a knock shook the table, and Christina shivered and glanced at her brothers, but they were both frowning intently at the paper.

  "Spell your surname," said William, and he began touching the penciled letters slowly, one by one.

  As he touched the letters, four spaced knocks shook the wood under Christina's hands.

  "E-R-O-S," said Gabriel. "Eros? Hardly helpful. "

  William said, "Is E the initial of your Christian name?"

  A single rap.

  "Is R the initial of your surname?"

  Another rap. Gabriel's face gleamed with sweat in the candlelight.

  William said, "Are you Lizzie, my brother's wife?"