I sat for a moment nodding, not speaking. But there was something that needed to be said, and so I said it: “Mrs. Pyegrave didn’t find Dingley Dell to be charmed and beautiful. She was exceptional in that respect.”
Upwitch nodded.
Graham said, “It is the consensus of my friends on the staff of the Encyclopædia of Dingley Dell that the woman was murdered by her husband. This is why her entry must read, ‘expired at a too-early age of undetermined but suspicious causes.’”
I nearly smiled. “Who now is the traitorous agitator?”
“Aye, sir,” returned my fellow scribe. “There is indeed power in words. Most of the lasting change that has been forged in the history of this world from what I have read in the voluminous Ensyke came not from a wielding of the swift and bloody sword of battle but from the shaping scalpel of ideas, and what are ideas, Trimmers, without the words to deliver them? I live for words. We shall, all of us, live and die by our words and the words of others. At least if there be truth to the dribblings of those learned compilers of the Ensyke and our most prolific Mr. Dickens! For they have given us the lens that equip the spyglass with which we view the world, a glass that has been ground and fashioned by the very words that they have written.”
We remained at the Wang-Wang Teahouse until long after the sun had fled the sky, and then the three of us strode back to Milltown together. It became quite dark along the way but there was enough moonlight filtering through the clouds for each of us to see his feet and to see the stones of the road that wended before us, and for me to see with near certainty two hands folded together as hearts will sometimes do.
Chapter the Eighteenth. Friday, June 27, 2003
rs. DeLove had found it necessary to spend two additional nights at the side of her aunt at a hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as the old woman teetered between life and death, and ultimately chose to invest herself for a little while longer in the former. Her niece returned to her home in Lycoming County and discovered a most curious thing: Mr. Trimmers was still there. She learnt this not immediately upon her return, but it was not long thereafter that her daughter came to her with a most strange look planted upon her face — a look that could not be quickly translated into words.
“I haven’t slept, Annette,” said Mrs. DeLove, dropping her luggage heavily upon the floor of her bedchamber. “I’m very tired and I don’t have patience for game playing. What’s wrong? Tell me what’s the matter.”
“You remember the man who was here when you left?”
“Mr. T-something. Trimmers. Yes, I remember him, Annette. What happened? What do you need to tell me? Did he hurt you? I knew after I started for Harrisburg that I shouldn’t have left you here all alone with him, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time. I was so worried about your Aunt Lucille.”
“I’ll tell you, Mama, if you’ll let me get a word in.”
Annette sat down on her mother’s bed and folded her hands. The odd look on her face now transformed itself into an amalgamated display of guilt and contrition and the ever-present disquiet.
With a sudden seizure of maternal alarm: “Did he…rape you?”
“For God’s sakes, Mama, no! He didn’t do anything to me. It was what I did to him.”
Now Mrs. DeLove found need to sit herself down so that she might be better prepared to receive whatever horrible thing her daughter was about to confess. “Tell me, Annette. What did you do to that poor man?”
“I kept him here. Against his will. I handcuffed him to me.”
“You did what?”
“I handcuffed the two of us together.”
“Sweet Jesus, Annette!”
“I used a pair of Daddy’s old police handcuffs.”
“It’s time to put you away, Annette. I mean it this time.You’re certifiable.”
“I knew the minute I did it that I shouldn’t have. But by then—”Annette suspended her confession and took her head into her tremulous hands. “By then what? Say it, Annette.”
“By then it was too late. By then I realised that I’d taken the wrong key from the drawer in Daddy’s workroom. I knew just from feeling it in my pocket that it wasn’t going to fit the handcuffs. I knew that Mr. Trimmers and I would have to go looking for the right key.”
“And how long did that take?”
“A day and a half.”
“Sweet Jesus!”
“The more we looked, the more scared I got that Daddy’d lost the key or had thrown it out or something. I was afraid I’d have to call a locksmith. And then people would know that Mr. Trimmers was here. It was awful, Mama, and you weren’t here to help me.”
“But you found the key. That’s the important thing. Where was it?”
“What?”
“The key, Annette? Where was the goddamned key?”
“Lying on the floor behind Daddy’s workbench. But by then—”
“By then what? Speak to me, Annette. Where is Mr. Trimmers right now?”
“In the extra bedroom. He’s sick.”
“What do you mean sick?”
“I mean that I think he caught my cold.”
Mrs. DeLove shrugged. “So we’ll give him zinc lozenges and Tylenol and he’ll be up and around in no time.”
Annette shook her head. “He’s really sick, Mama.”
“How can he be really sick? It wasn’t even that bad of a cold. You told me so yourself.”
“It must not be the same with the Digglians.”
“The Digglians?”
“The ones who live in the fenced-off valley. I don’t think they’ve been exposed to the same viruses or whatever that we have. I think that’s why it hit him so hard.”
Annette took her mother to the door of the extra bedroom. She opened it slowly and quietly so as not to disturb her slumbering, febrile guest. Her mother put her head in. Glumly she said, “Yes, I see,” and gently closed the door. “What have you done, Annette?”
“I wasn’t thinking. Should we call a doctor?”
“And let it be known that one of them is in our house? Do you think that doctors are any better at keeping that kind of thing to themselves than locksmiths? Provided we can even find a doctor who makes house calls, how long do you think it would be before someone came for him — one of the others — the ones who go after these cursed people? You remember the man they killed? Right in front of this house. He was a Digglian, too. Was it only coincidence that this was when your agoraphobia took hold?
“No, ma’am, I will not have that kind of thing tugging the hell at my conscience, Annette. We’re going to have to deal with him ourselves. And if you ever let another one of these Digglian weirdos into this house, I’m going to drown you in the bathtub.”
Annette nodded, looking even more contrite and more self-deprecating than before. “I like him, Mama.”