“And now what you are doing? You are telling police?” “I’m not telling the police. Unless you killed someone.”
“Kill? I not kill, you cannot say I kill, I am in house, not killing!” In his panic, his voice rose. We’d been speaking in whispers, so that the sudden shout was shocking.
Fatigue was making it hard for me to concentrate. Also I was getting a crick in my neck from staring up at him. “I want to come upstairs so we can talk properly”
As I started up, he began to retreat, his big eyes not wavering from my face. The staircase ended in a large open area with skylights overhead. So this was where light seeped out for Geraldine Graham to see. When Catherine came, she and the boy sat talking by flashlight or something. I switched off my headlamp-I hoped before Geraldine noticed it.
The roof was pitched steeply here. Odd corners stuck out into the room to accommodate the house’s four chimneys. This had been the servants’ common room during Geraldine Graham’s childhood. I pictured a wistful girl with dark braids sneaking up the stairs to watch the maids play poker.
Old furniture was piled against one of the walls-I made out a couple of dressers, a jumble of chairs and a bed frame. The boy and Catherine must have dragged out the leather-topped desk that stood directly under the skylights. Some books were stacked neatly along one side next to a plate, cup and glass. I assumed the desk and the rest were Graham family discards-they looked too old to have been part of the nou-nou family’s brief tenure.
The boy’s eyes darted from me to the stairwell; he was trying to summon his courage to make a break for it.
“You can run down the stairs and out the doors.” I kept my tone level, even friendly: good cop. “I won’t try to stop you. But you won’t get far, especially not without Catherine to guide you over the ground.”
He slumped on the top step, his head on his knees, forearms pressed against his ears, so desolate that my heart was touched. Instead of Catherine, his one friend, whom he’d been longing for, he’d gotten me.
I walked over to the north wall, which overlooked the back gardens. The windows were small and set up high, but he had moved a chair over so he could stand and see out. I climbed up. From here, you could watch for someone to appear around the corner of the garage. You could spend long lonely nights on this chair hoping she had gotten away from Chicago to come see you. You could also see the pond.
I climbed down and explored the rest of the attic. The common room led to a short wide hall with six monastic bedrooms and a Spartan bathroom. I turned the taps; cold water came out. At least he could use the plumbing. A mattress with a sleeping bag on it was set up in one of the rooms; his few clothes were neatly folded on yet another chair. A couple of flashlights and a box of batteries stood next to the bed.
When I came back to the large room, he was still sitting on the top stair, head on his knees.
“Who are you? Why are you hiding here?” I asked. He didn’t answer me, didn’t move his head.
“It’s cold up here. You probably haven’t had a proper meal in-however long it’s been. Come on with me and tell me about it.”
“I wait for Catterine. When she say `going,’ then is safe I going.” His knees muffled his voice.
“She can’t come. You can see the pond from your window here; you must have seen her grandmother arrive this evening. Her grandmother will not let her leave the house again tonight, and her grandmother may well call the police. We probably have until the sun comes up to get you out of here, but I need to know who you are and why you’re hiding.” I laughed suddenly. “You saw me, too, this evening, didn’t you, jumping in and out of that wretched pond. Poor Sister Anne, with nothing to do but watch the horizon, did you see-“
“I am not girl!” His head jerked up and he glowered at me ferociously. “Who said anything-oh, Sister Anne. A character in a children’s story who has to keep watch from a tower. I know you’re not a girl. But I know you saw me this afternoon. And you must have been watching for Catherine on Sunday. Sunday night, someone killed a man outside this house. They put his body in the pond. Did you see this?”
When he didn’t answer, I moved so I was standing directly over him.
“You were watching for Catherine; you knew she was coming that night, or, anyway, some night soon. You saw the killer put the man’s body into the water. Who put him there?”
“Nothing, I seeing nothing.”
“Did you help kill him? Is that why you’re hiding?”
“No and no and no, and now-oh, where is Catterine? Only she-” He broke off and looked at his knees again. “I am a girl, crying, hiding behind another girl, I am a baby and a girl.”
He lapsed into a mortified silence. I frowned, trying to force my tired brain into some useful line of questioning that would get him to tell me who he was-and what he had seen on Sunday. Finally, I went to the leather-topped desk to look at the books: one of them might be his, one of them might have his name in it. I needed more light than the moon provided. Hoping this wasn’t one of Geraldine Graham’s wakeful times, I switched on my headlamp and picked up the open book.
I had never seen anything as beautiful as the coral reef. It stretched away for miles and was soft to the touch, like velvet. Stupidly I forgot the dangers that lay all around as I watched the many bright-colored fishes swim through the red reef. Suddenly I felt a pain in my left leg so sharp I tried to scream, forgetting in my fear I was underwater. I took in a mouthful of water around my breathing tube. I looked down in terror. A giant clam had grabbed my leg!
I flipped to the title page. Eric Nielsen on the Great Barrier Reef, published in 1920. “Calvin Bayard, His Book,” was printed underneath the title in a child’s drunken hand. There were two other Eric Nielsen adventures, along with Treasure Island and an old Tom Swift. Catherine Bayard must have raided her grandfather’s library for books she thought might appeal to a boy trying to learn English.
The other books were in Arabic, along with an English-Arabic dictionary. I looked again at the boy, light dawning.
“You’re Benjamin Sadawi, aren’t you? Catherine is hiding you from the FBI.”
He jumped up in terror and started down the stairs, then came back and
snatched up one of the Arabic books from the desk. I seized his arm, but he broke free and tore pell-mell down the stairs. I followed closely but didn’t try to grab him-I didn’t want to hurtle us both down on our heads.
We landed in the great front hall. Two wings led behind us and Benjamin darted down one, only to find himself in a closet. When he turned back, I wrapped my arms around his torso. His heart was beating wildly. I dragged him back to the stairs and sat him down. He was still clutching the book he’d snatched from the desk upstairs.
“Listen to me, you young fool. I am not giving you to the FBI or the police. But I am going to take you away from this house. It isn’t safe here anymore, and it isn’t healthy, anyway: cold house, no heat, no company.”
He struggled in my arms. “You must not hold me, you woman.”
“True enough, I’m a woman. With zero interest in your body: I’m old enough to be your mother.”
A thought no less depressing for being true, but I took my arms from his shoulders. He edged away from me on the bottom step but didn’t try to run again.
Glass panels framing the great oak doors let in just enough light that I didn’t need my headlamp to see him, although I couldn’t make out the details of his expression. I also couldn’t see the different blocks in the tessellated marble floor, the one that had taken Italian workers eight months to install, but I knew the marble was there: it was bleeding cold through the soles of my running shoes.
“Come on.” I stood up. “We have a bit of a hike to my car, and then we’ll get you someplace where you can sleep and be warm and not worry about whether someone’s coming into the house.”