Morley looked at her, too. Then he looked at me. "Garrett, let's take a walk. Doc, see what you can do for her. We'll be back."
Numb, I didn't say anything till Morley started leading me upstairs. "What are we doing?"
"That spook's been gnawing on the old man for a year, right? It never bothered anybody else. Right?"
"Yeah." We were headed for my suite.
"Something changed that between last night and this morning."
We reached the fourth floor, me puffing and renewing my vow to get in shape. "I guess. But what?"
He unlocked the door with my key, held it for me. Once we were inside, he took down the portrait of my mystery blonde. "Where'd you spend the night, Garrett?"
I looked at her. I looked at him. I recalled seeing her as I wandered home. I said, "Oh." That's all I had to say. It was a lot to swallow.
Morley went back into the hall, me tagging along. He said, "Time to get an opinion on this from everyone."
"Morley, this isn't possible."
"Maybe not. I hope not." He has no mercy sometimes. His tone was a hot flensing knife.
We returned to the room where Doom and Jennifer were. Doom was disturbed. Jennifer looked a lot better, though. He'd done something for her. She had strength and attention enough now to put herself into better array. Morley placed the portrait on a table nearby, face down. "Peters. Would you get everyone in here? Garrett has something to show everybody."
Peters had been hovering over Jennifer. He looked at me. I said, "Please?"
"The General, too?"
"We can do without him for the moment."
He was gone longer than I expected. I found out why when he came back. "Cook and Kaid were up feeding the General. Garrett, he's damned near gone. Can't even sit up. Can't talk. It's like he's had a stroke. Or had all but the last ounce of life sucked out."
Doom listened but said nothing.
"How soon will they be here?"
"Soon as they get him cleaned up. He fouled his bed. He's never done that before. He always got hold of Kaid or Dellwood. Most times he had enough strength to make it to his chamberpot."
After that there wasn't much to say. I watched Doom fuss over Jennifer and Jennifer continue to improve. I tried not to dwell on what Morley had said without saying it in so many words. There are things you just don't want to believe.
Kaid and Cook came in, Cook grumbling steadily about the interruptions in her schedule. Morley said, "Sit down, please. Garrett?"
I knew what I had to do. I didn't want to, for some reason that seemed almost outside me. But Garrett's got willpower. I looked at Jennifer. Too bad Garrett don't have a little more won't power.
"Snake Bradon was a remarkable artist but it seems he never showed his work. Which is a damned sin. He was able to capture the essence of what it felt like in the Cantard. He painted people, too. With a very skewed eye. This is one of his portraits. I managed to save it from the stable fire. It could be the key to everything. I want you all to look at it and tell me about it."
Morley brought a lamp closer so there'd be more light. I lifted the painting.
Damn me if Jennifer didn't let out a squeak and faint. And Cook, who hadn't deigned to seat herself, collapsed a moment later.
"Hell of an impact," I said.
Doc Doom stared at the blonde. He got the look Morley had last night. He shook himself loose, said, "Lay it down again, please." Once I had, he said, "The man who painted that had one eye in another world."
"He's got both of them there now. He was murdered night before last."
He waved that off. It was irrelevant.
Morley asked, "You see what was in the background?"
"Better than anyone with an untrained eye, I suspect. That painting tells a whole story. An ugly story."
"Yeah?" I said. "What is it?"
"Who was the woman?"
"That's what I've been trying to find out since I got here. Nobody but me ever sees her. The rest of these people say she doesn't exist."
"She exists. I'm surprised you're sensitive... No. I did say she'd manifest frequently. Sometimes they will attach themselves to a disinterested party, gradually trying to justify themselves before an impartial court."
"Huh?"
Morley said, "I get it. I was wrong, Garrett. She's not the killer. She's your ghost. She didn't need secret passages to get in and out."
"Morley! Morley. You know damned well that's impossible. I told you about... " Some sense wormed through my confusion. There was a crowd here. Was I going to be dumb enough to tell them all I'd fooled around with a spook?
Was I dumb enough to believe it myself?
"She's the haunt," Doom agreed. "There's no doubt. That painting explains everything. She was murdered. And it was the culmination of a betrayal so immense, so foul, that she stayed here."
I had it. "Stantnor killed her. His first wife. The one he got rid of. Supposedly he bought her off and sent her away. He murdered her instead. Maybe there is a body in the cellar, Morley."
"No."
"Huh?"
That was Cook, getting up off the floor. "That's Missus Eleanor, Garrett."
"Jennifer's mother?"
"Yes." She moved to the table. She lifted the painting. She stared. I was sure she saw everything Snake Bradon put there, maybe stuff Morley and I missed. "So. He did it hisself. He's lived a lie all these years because he can't give up that alibi. It wasn't no fumble-fingered doctor at all. That lousy bastard."
"Wait a minute. Just wait a damned minute—"
"The story is there, Mr. Garrett," Doom said. "She was tortured and murdered. By an insane man."
"Why?" My voice was in what you'd call the plaintive range. I wasn't calming down any. I couldn't get last night out of my head. That hadn't been any spook... Well, if it was, it was the warmest-bodied, friskiest, most solid spook there ever was. "Doc, I need to talk to you in private. It's critical."
We went into the hallway. I told him. He went into one of his reflections. When he came out a week later, he said, "It begins to make sense. And the child? Jennifer? Did you sleep with her, too?"
Well, hell. They say confession is good for the soul. "Yes. But it was kind of her idea... . " Stop making excuses, Garrett.
He smiled. It wasn't a salacious grin; it was a eureka kind of grin. "It falls together. The old man, your principal, whose life she's been leeching slowly as she sets his feet upon the path to hell, is drained this morning. She'd have had to do that to assume solid form with you. Then the other—her own daughter?—wounds her by taking you to her bed. You, the focus she's chosen to justify. You've been tainted. That has to be punished." He got reflective again.
"That's crazy."
"We're not dealing with sane people. Living or dead. I thought you understood that."
"Knowing it and knowing it are two different things."
"We have to talk to the troll woman. It would be wise to know the circumstances of those days as well as possible before we take steps. This isn't a feeble haunt."
We went back inside. Doom asked Cook, "What reason would General Stantnor have had for doing what he did? From what Mr. Garrett tells me, she was frightened of everything, had almost no will of her own. It would take great evils to animate her to the point where we'd have the situation that exists here now."
"I don't tell no stories—"
"Cook. Can it!" I snapped. "We have the General nailed here. He murdered Eleanor, evidently in extremely traumatic fashion. Now she's getting even. That doesn't bother me too much. I kind of like the idea of retribution. But now she's started on Jennifer. I don't like that. So how about you just puke up some straight answers?"
Cook looked at Jennifer, who hadn't yet recovered.
"I kind of hinted at it but I guess not strong enough. The General... Well, he was obsessed with Missus Eleanor. Like I told you. But that never stopped him from rabbiting around hisself, tumbling every wench who'd hold still while he threw her on her back. He wasn't discreet about it, neither. Missus Eleanor, naive as she was, figured it out. I can't tell you what she felt for him. She wasn't never one to talk or show much. But she had to be his wife. She didn't have nowhere to go. Her parents was dead. The king was out to get her.