'I have a terrific idea,' said Edward. 'Why don't you come diving with me over the weekend? If the weather's reasonable, we plan to go down on Saturday morning, and maybe Sunday, too.'
'Are you kidding? I never dived in my life. I'm from St Louis, remember?'
‘I’ll teach you. It's as easy as breathing. It's pretty murky down there, not like diving off Bermuda or anything like that. But you'll love it, once you get used to it.'
'Well, I don't know,' I said, reluctantly.
'Just come try it,' urged Edward. 'Listen, you want to find out what happened to Mrs Edgar Simons, don't you? You want to find out why all these ghosts have been walking in Granitehead?'
'Sure.'
‘I’ll give you a call then, Saturday morning, if the weather clears. All you need to bring is a warm sweater, a windbreaker, and a pair of swimming shorts. I'll supply the wet suit, and all the sub-aqua gear.'
I drained the last of my drink. 'I hope I haven't let myself in for anything terrifying.'
'I told you, you'll love it. Oh — just remember not to have anything too rich for breakfast. If you vomit underwater, it can be really dangerous, sometimes lethal.'
I gave him a slanted smile. 'Thanks for the warning. Is a bowl of Wheaties overdoing it?'
'Wheaties are fine,' said Edward, quite seriously. Then he checked his waterproof diver's watch, and said, 'I'd better be going. My sister's coming up from New York tonight, and I don't want to leave her on the doorstep.'
Edward drove me back up to Quaker Lane Cottage. 'Do you know something interesting?' he asked me, as he drew the Jeep to a jerking halt. 'I once checked back on the origin of the name "Quaker Lane" because it always struck me as incongruous that a lane should have been named for the Quakers when there were never any around here. I mean, most of them, as you know, were centered around Pennsylvania; and as far as I could discover there were no records of any Friends in Granitehead, not until the middle of the 19th century.'
'Did you find out why it was named "Quaker Lane"?' I asked him.
'Eventually, almost by accident. In the flyleaf of an old book that was sent in to the Peabody by old Mrs Seymour, she's always sending us stuff, most of it trash out of her attic. But in this one, someone had written, "Craquer Lane, Granitehead." '
' «Craquer»? That sounds French.'
'It is. It means to crack, or break.'
'So why should anyone have called this Craquer Lane?'
'Don't ask me. I'm only a maritime historian. Maybe the surface of the lane was notoriously broken-up. This was the way they used to carry the coffins up to Waterside Cemetery, remember, so maybe they called it Craquer Lane because they were always dropping the coffins and breaking them. Who knows?'
'That's what I like about historians,' I told him. 'They always bring up more questions than they answer.'
I climbed down from the Jeep and closed the door. Edward reached over and put down the window. 'Thanks for the dinner,' he said. 'And, you know, good luck with the cops.'
He drove off downhill, the wheels of the Jeep splashing and jolting in the puddles. I went back into the cottage and poured myself another drink, and started to tidy up a little. Mrs Herron from Breadboard Cottages sent her maid Ethel up to 'do' for me twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, change the bed, Hoover the rugs, clean the windows; but I liked to have the cottage reasonably clean and tidy in any case, and I always liked fresh flowers around. They reminded me of the happy days here with Jane; the best days of my whole damn life.
That evening, I sat in front of the fire and read as much as I could find about sunken ships, and sub-aqua diving, and the old days in Salem and Granitehead. By the time the Tompion clock in the hallway struck midnight, the wind had dropped and the rain had eased off, and I probably knew as much about raising wrecks as anybody, apart from the real experts. I poked the last crumbling log in the dying fire, and stretched myself, and wondered whether I deserved a last drink or not. It was a peculiar thing about drinking on my own: I never quite managed to get drunk. I got the hangovers, though. It was the punishment without the pleasure.
I locked up the cottage and took a last measure of Chivas upstairs with me. I ran a deep, hot, tubful of water, and slowly undressed. I hadn't slept properly for two nights now, and I felt exhausted.
Once in the bath, I lay back and closed my eyes and tried to let the tension slowly soak out of me. All I could hear was the steady dripping of the hot faucet, which had never turned off properly, and the crackling of Badedas bubbles.
Now that the weather had quietened down, and the wind had stopped sucking and breathing its way around the house, I felt strangely less afraid. Maybe it was the wind that had brought the spirits, the way that it had brought Mary Poppins; and when it changed or dropped, the spirits left us in peace. I prayed to God that they would. But I also added a codicil that the weather should work itself into a frenzy on Saturday morning, just for a few hours, so that I wouldn't have to go diving.
I was still lying in the tub when I heard a faint whispering. I opened my eyes at once, and listened. There was no mistaking it. It was that same whispering I had heard downstairs in the library, a soft torrent of scarcely audible blasphemy. My shoulders felt chilled, and all of a sudden the bathwater felt uncomfortable and scummy.
There was no question about it. Quaker Lane Cottage was possessed. I could feel the coldness of whatever spirits were passing through it as if all the downstairs doors had silently been opened, and wintry draughts were blowing everywhere. I sat up in the bath and the splashing of the water sounded awkward and flat, like a cheap sound-effect.
It was then that I looked up at the mirror over the wash-basin. It had been misted over by the steam rising up from the bathtub, but now the mist seemed to be patchily condensing, forming itself into the pattern of a hollow-eyed face. Dribbles of condensation ran from the darkened eye-sockets like tears, and from the line of the lips like blood; and even though it was probably nothing more than the gradually-cooling vapour, it looked as if the face were alive and moving, as if somehow there was a captive spirit within the silvered surface of the mirror, trying desperately to show itself, trying desperately to speak to the outside world.
I stood up, showering water everywhere, and reached for the washcloth on the side of the basin. With three violent strokes, I wiped the steam off the mirror until it was clear again; and all I could see was my own harassed face. Then I stepped out of the bath, and took down my towel.
It was no use, I told myself, as I went through to the bedroom. If I was going to be visited by whisperers and apparitions every night, then I was going to have to move out. I had read in Architectural Digest about an Italian who happily shared his huge palazzo with a noisy poltergeist, but I was neither brave enough nor calm enough to handle the disturbances at Quaker Lane Cottage. There was a terrible lewdness about the whispering; and a terrible suppressed agony about all the visions I had seen. I felt that I was glimpsing and hearing things from Purgatory, the dreary and painful ante-chamber to hell. The worst part about it was that Jane was there, too, the woman I had loved, and married, and still loved.
I toweled myself dry, brushed my teeth, and went to bed with one of the sleeping capsules that Dr Rosen had given me, and a book about the building of the Panama Canal. It was well past one o'clock now, and the house was silent, all except for the steady ticking of the long-case clock in the hallway, and the occasional chime to mark the quarter-hours.
I don't know when I fell asleep, but I was awakened by the sudden dimming of my bedside lamp, as if the neighbourhood were suffering a brown-out. It dimmed and dimmed, until I could see the element in the light-bulb glowing orange and subdued like an expiring firefly.