I crossed the room and looked out through the diamond-leaded windows into the garden. I could just see the back of the swing seat, and the right-hand side of the orchard. In the distance, silvery-gray rain clouds were building up over Salem Sound. Seagulls turned and fluttered around the Neck like wind-blown newspapers. I pressed my forehead against the cold window-pane, and for the first time in my life felt unutterably defeated.
Perhaps I ought to leave Granitehead for good. Sell up the business, and go back to St Louis. There was even a chance that I might be able to get my old job back, at MidWestern Chemical Bonding. I would probably forfeit a few years of promotion, but what was that compared with the extraordinary terror of what was happening here in Granitehead? I was particularly disturbed by the excitement which Walter Bedford had shown when I had told him about the apparition of Jane. There was something grotesquely unhealthy about it, as well as dangerous. The trouble was, I was beholden to the Bedfords not only for bailing me out of jail, but for two-thirds of the finance which had opened up Trenton Marine Antiques and so it was going to be very hard for me to refuse their request to come over to Quaker Lane Cottage and see Jane's apparition for themselves.
I was just about to pour myself a drink when there was a ring at the front doorbell. George Markham, maybe? Or Keith Reed? It had better not be Keith Reed, I'd give him a flea in his ear for telling the police that I had been 'rambling, and deranged.' I called, 'All right, I'm coming,' and went to answer it.
Standing outside in the evening wind was Edward Wardwell, in a plaid lumberjack coat and a peaked denim cap. He said: 'I'm sorry to call on you personally. But I heard what had happened, and I just had to come over from Salem to talk to you.'
As a matter of fact, I was oddly relieved to see him. It was better to have some company in that unsettled house than none at all. And I did want to talk to him about the painting of the David Dark.
'Come on in,' I told him. 'I haven't lit the fire yet. I've only just been sprung, if that's the word.'
'Do you think your attorney can get you off?' Edward Wardwell asked, taking off his cap and stepping into the hallway.
'I hope so. He's my father-in-law. Well, he was my father-in-law, before my wife died. Walter Bedford, of Bedford & Bibber. He's pretty well-connected. Plays golf with the district attorney and gin-rummy with the judge.'
'I've met him,' said Edward Wardwell. 'You forget that I knew your wife. She and I went on a seminar together, to study maritime history. That was, what, three or four years ago now, up at Rockport. She was a very pretty girl, your wife. All the guys there kept trying to date her. She was clever, too. I was sorry to hear that she died.'
'Well, thank you for that much,' I told him. 'Can I get you a drink?'
‘I’m a beer man myself.'
'There's Heineken in the icebox.'
Edward Wardwell followed me into the kitchen and I opened a bottle of beer for him. He watched me closely as I poured it out.
'You didn't kill that old woman, did you?' he asked me.
I looked up at him; then shook my head. 'How did you know?' I queried.
'I have a pretty good idea of what's been going on around here. I don't work for the Peabody for nothing, you know. I know more about the maritime history of Salem and Granitehead than almost anyone, except maybe the Evelith family. But then I don't have their books.'
'You know what's been going on?'
'Sure,' he said, taking the beer-glass out of my hand. He sipped a little, leaving foam clinging to his mustache. 'Granitehead has always had a reputation for ghosts, just like Salem has always had a reputation for witches. Although the town fathers have done everything they can to play it down, there isn't any doubt at all in my mind that Granitehead is a nexus between the spirit world, if I can dare to call it that, and the physical world. More than anyplace else in the whole United States. Perhaps anyplace else on the entire globe.'
'So what happened to Mrs Edgar Simons — you don't think that I was responsible?'
'It's possible that you were responsible, but in my opinion not likely. What you obviously don't know is that there have been six or seven deaths of bereaved people in Granitehead over the past ten years, and all of them have been characterized by the extraordinary and inexplicable ways in which they have occurred. One man was found with his head trapped inside a water-pipe, drowned. The newspapers said that he had put his head down through an access hole to discover what had been blocking the pipe up, but the police report reads different. The access hole was tight around his neck, so that it would have been impossible for him to have put his head through it. The doctors had to cut off his head to get him out, and then flush his head out of the pipe with a strong jet of water.'
I made a face, and Edward Wardwell shrugged. 'Mrs Edgar Simons' death was no different,' he said. 'A physical impossibility. I mean, let me ask you, if you had wanted to kill her that way, how you would have done it?'
'I couldn't. It was like some grisly kind of conjuring trick.'
'Exactly, and the police know that, too. They have to prove in court that you killed Mrs Edgar Simons, and if you can show beyond any question that it was impossible for any human being to have impaled her on the chandelier like that, you're home free.'
'Come through to the living-room,' I said. 'I'd like to get the fire going before the temperature starts falling.'
We went through to the living-room, where I got down on my knees in front of the hearth and began clearing out the fire. Fortunately, there were plenty of logs and kindling stacked beside the grate, so I didn't have to go out to the woodpile. Edward Wardwell put down his beer, and picked up the watercolour of Granitehead beach. He examined it minutely, and when I turned around from the fire to find some rolled-up copies of Newsweek to stuff under the logs, I saw that he was paying particular attention to the ship.
He said, 'Out of those six or seven other deaths, only two people were ever charged with homicide, and both of those were released before their cases got to trial. In each case the district attorney said that there was insufficient evidence to proceed. The same will happen to you.'
'How come you've made such a study of it?' I asked him, as I struck the first match, and lit the corner of the rolled-up magazines.
'Because the maritime history of Granitehead and the spiritual history of Granitehead are inextricably intertwined. This is a magical place, Mr Trenton, as you've discovered for yourself, and what's more the magic is real, and violent. It's not like the Haunted House at Disneyland.'
The fire began to burn up, and I stood up and brushed my trousers. 'I'm beginning to realize that, Mr Orwell.'
'Wardwell. But why don't you call me Edward?'
'All right. I'm John.' And for the first time, we shook hands.
I nodded towards the watercolour. 'I know now why you were so anxious to lay your hands on that picture. I did a little detective work last night, and I found out what ship that is, in the background.'
'Ship?' asked Edward.
'Come on, Edward, don't act so innocent. That ship is the David Dark; and this picture must be one of the only surviving illustrations of it. No wonder it's worth more than 50 bucks. I wouldn't take less than a thousand.'
Edward tugged at his beard, curling the hair of it around his fingers. He regarded me from behind his circular spectacles with watery eyes; and then let out a long, resigned puff of breath. Cough-candy, again; liquorice and aniseed.
'I was hoping you wouldn't find out,' he said. 'I'm afraid I made an idiot of myself yesterday, running after you like that. I should have played it cool.'