The Walker in Shadows (27 page)

"And you!" Pat turned, with pleasure, to a worthier opponent. "You and your stupid half-baked quotations! This is all your fault. Your idea. You nasty young…
person
, you've been holding out on us all along. What is this book? Where did you get it? It's old. It's…"

With a dramatic gesture, worthy of Mark at his ham-miest, she opened the volume, and the words died on her lips as a sentence seemed to leap up from the page at her. She read it aloud.

"Peter told Eddie he must get the cake while cook was not looking. He didn't want to, but Peter…"

"It's Susan Bates's diary," Pat gasped.

Mark made a gesture of resignation and defeat.

"You've got it, lady."

Mark took the little book from his mother's nerveless hand and put it gently on the desk.

"It's in bad shape," he said reproachfully. "You shouldn't handle it so roughly."

"Where… what…" Anger and amazement robbed Pat of speech.

"So that's where you've been getting your information," Josef said. "I knew there was something. Where did you find it, Mark?"

"In the oak tree," Mark said. "You see, it was like…" He glanced at Kathy, whose cheeks had bloomed into a lovely pink blush, and grinned rather sheepishly. "I told you this was going to be complicated, Kath. Let me think just how to put it…"

Pat collapsed onto the bed. Josef stood by her, his hand on her shoulder. Mark was too immersed in his own difficulties to see this gesture, but Kathy did; her blue eyes took on a look of guileful speculation, and she spoke without embarrassment.

"We met there, Mark and I. After you told Mark we couldn't see each other. It was only a couple of times. The tree is awfully old, there are holes in the trunk. Mark found the book one time when he was waiting for me and I was late. It was wrapped in several layers of cloth and oiled paper."

Pat wondered, with some apprehension, how Josef would take this revelation. His heavy dark brows drew together, but when he spoke his voice was milder than she had expected.

"I'm sure you enjoyed meeting clandestinely, thwarting the heavy father. Romantic as hell, wasn't it? Well, never mind. May I see the diary, or is it reserved for those under thirty?"

"Be careful," Mark said, handing him the book. "It was well wrapped, but damp got in, all the same, and since it's been exposed to the air it has deteriorated. If you don't mind, Mr. Friedrichs, I've got a suggestion…"

"Well?"

"Maybe Mom could transcribe it," Mark said. "She's pretty good on the typewriter." He grinned at his mother, the recollection of last-minute term papers hastily typed fresh in his mind. Pat did not grin back at him.

"It will take forever," she protested.

"Not so long. She didn't keep a day-by-day diary, she just wrote things down when she was in the mood, or when something important happened. And a lot of the text is illegible-rotted by damp, or too faded to read."

"But you've already read it-so I assume," Pat said. "We've got a lot of packing to do. If the poltergeist comes back tonight, it may smash the things that are left."

"Mom-trust me, will you?" Mark leaned forward. A lock of dark hair fell across his forehead, and his eyes burned with sincerity. "I'm right on the verge. I really am. Let's go over it once more. Anyhow…"A look of such consternation came over his face that Pat recoiled, wondering what horrific revelations were in store. "Anyhow," Mark went on, "it's way past lunchtime. No wonder my brain is so weak. You type, I'll read aloud… and Kathy can get lunch."

Pat found it easier than she had expected to keep up with Mark's dictation. Damp had disfigured the edges of the pages, so that the only legible portions were in the middle. There were no dates; presumably they had been written on the illegible tops of the pages. Yet, scattered and broken as the fragments were, floating in time, they formed a picture in Pat's mind as her fingers reproduced the words.

Three children, growing up in the wilderness of western Maryland… The girl, small and delicate and blond, dressed in the calico simplicity her father's spartan creed required: had not the Apostle Paul warned against vanity in women? Her brother, as dark as she was fair, trained to sobriety by the same rigorous faith, yet fascinated by and tempted to mischief by the imperious older cousin.

In all their schemes Peter was the ringleader and Edward was the one who got caught. It was Peter who dared Edward to climb the tallest tree in the yard, but when the younger boy, shorter of limb and breath, was unable to get down, he was blamed, and punished. The idea of dressing up like ghosts and scaring "the darkies" was Peter's; but it was Edward who tripped over the trailing sheets in the act of escaping and was soundly thrashed by his father. Even when Peter was caught, his indulgent parents refused to punish him. "Uncle Al laughed very loud," Susan recorded, on one occasion when the three had gotten tipsy on homemade wine. Poor Edward had to eat his dinner off the mantel for several days after that scandalous affair.

Gradually, over the years, the tone of the diary changed. The early accounts of childhood mischief turned to a young girl's inarticulate record of parties and beaux. The first was Sammy Hart, who kissed Susan at a school picnic. But Sammy did not last long. "He has spots on his face," Susan recorded contemptuously. References to contemporary historical events were few and far between. Like most fifteen-year-olds, Susan was much more interested in her own emotional problems than in national disasters.

Kathy, who was already familiar with the material, made sandwiches, then took over the typewriter while Pat snatched a bite and a cup of coffee. Somehow Mark managed to read and eat simultaneously. Pat went back to the typewriter after a brief interval. She was conscious of a queer feeling of urgency, as if some sort of deadline were approaching, and as Mark read on, her fingers flicked over the keys with a speed that exceeded her best record.

In 1859, outside events shook Susan's peaceful world.

"Father and Uncle Al quarreled again. Something about that Mr. Brown at Harpers Ferry. Usually Uncle Al laughs when they argue, but this time…"

"Go on," Pat said, her fingers poised.

No one answered. She looked up and saw, with a shock of inexplicable alarm, that considerable time had passed. The windows were darkening.

"The rest of that entry is gone," Mark said. "II doesn't require much imagination to finish it, though."

Pat leaned back in the chair, flexing stiff fingers. Josef bent over her.

"Take a break," he urged. "You've been working loo hard."

"Want me to type for a while?" Kathy asked.

"That's okay. Let's all rest for a minute. Isn't it funny what a clear picture we're getting of these people? Mr. Turnbull sounds like an easygoing sort of man."

"I don't think Mr. Bates was so bad either," Kathy said. "He must have relaxed his Puritan ideas as he got older, because Susan talks about pretty clothes and jewelry- and he went all the way to Philadelphia to get the doll she wanted for her birthday-"

"And her mother made a complete wardrobe for it," Pat said. "A little fur muff, and bonnets, and everything."

"They sound like a nice family," Josef agreed. He added sardonically, "Too nice to be poltergeists, is that the idea?"

The others ignored this cynical question.

"The really shadowy figure is Mrs. Turnbull," Pat said thoughtfully. "Susan only mentions her once or twice."

"I guess the poor woman really was sickly," Kathy said. "I though, when we first read the references to her being ailing, that she was a professional hypochondriac." "Women were supposed to be fragile and fainting," Pat said. "The men loved it; it made them feel like heroes."

"Mary Jane wasn't fragile," Kathy said. "No wonder she never caught a husband-as they said in those days."

"She sounds like a tough lady," Pat agreed, smiling, as she recalled Susan's caustic comments about the big sister who spoiled so many of their games and scolded her for being unwomanly because she liked to go fishing with the boys. "But don't forget Mary Jane was already a grown woman when they were still children. She probably thought she was only doing her duty. She never did marry, did she? I wonder why."

"Maybe she was homely," Josef suggested frivolously. "Ugly women don't catch husbands, even today." He smiled at Pat.

"That shows how much you know," she said. "A well-dowered young lady could always get a husband. And I suspect the same thing is true today."

"So, maybe she didn't have a dowry," Josef said. "I suspected Turnbull's financial position was shaky."

Mark had fallen into a brown study, fingering the crumbling pages of the diary. Now he looked up at the others, scowling.

"Do you guys want to hear the rest of this, or are you enjoying your historical gossip? I mean, my God, you sound like Mom and Mrs. Groft when they get started on the neighbors."

"I guess we do at that," Pat said. "All right, Mark, I'm ready. Go ahead."

"It gets worse from now on," Mark said. "The condition of the diary, I mean. Whole pages are stuck together. The next thing I can decipher comes in the middle of a sentence. It just says, '… away to school. I don't know how they found out. We were so careful. Someone must have seen us. I never saw Father so angry. Always before, when I cried, he, would soften; but not this time. He found the loose board in the wall and nailed it shut. But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters now because he is gone and…' "

Mark's voice faded into silence as the writing faded out.

"He being Peter, I gather," Josef said. "Mark, you've known this all along. Why didn't you tell us, instead of pretending to make wild guesses?"

"I didn't know, though," Mark said. "She never mentions his name. Sure, I suspected-the way she talks about him, even when they were kids, like he was God or something… But I wasn't certain till I read Mary Jane's letters. Let me go on. There isn't much more."

Unlike Mary Jane and the other literate ladies of the period, who had been conscious of history, Susan was not concerned with the great events of the succeeding years. She used her diary to express her private feelings, and as the remaining fragments showed, these were unre-lievedly doleful. Reiterated expressions of sorrow and loneliness appeared on the faded paper, whose condition deteriorated rapidly as the book neared its end. Mark, who knew the material practically by heart, skipped over the fragmentary passages and focused on one that had survived.

"I must see him, though conscience says I should not. Yet how can I deny him, when he comes through such dangers, when any day may bring the news that he will never come again? If my kind parents knew…"

" Through such dangers,' " Pat repeated. "Then he must have been in the army at that time. I suppose he sent her a message somehow, when his cavalry troop was in the area on one of those raids you told us about. How foolish to take such a risk!"

"Not necessarily." Kathy's eyes were shining; and Pat thought, uncharitably, that the young of all centuries seemed to prefer romance to common sense. "He'd be safe at home-in the Turnbull house-if he could get there without being seen. I'm surprised the Federal government didn't hassle the Turnbulls."

"Why should they?" Josef said. "Two women alone, one of them an invalid? I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Bates's influence kept them from being bothered. It sounds as if his bark was worse than his bite."

"Let's finish this," Pat said. "Go on, Mark."

"Huh?" Absorbed in some dark, deep thought of his own, Mark started. "Oh. There isn't any more, Mom. The rest of the book is illegible. Except for this."

He held up a sheet of paper. It had been folded several times. The damp that had ruined the remainder of the diary had stained the outside of the sheet, but the message, though badly faded, had survived. The handwriting, now so familiar, needed no identification. But it was not Peter Turnbull's writing that made the hairs on Pat's neck prickle. It was the message-the same message, word for word, that she had read only a few days earlier, written to Kathy by her son. "Meet me at midnight, the same place. Love…" At the bottom of the sheet, in a smaller, more even hand, was the addition, "His last letter."

Pat looked up from the page and met her son's troubled eyes.

"Had you read this, before…?" She couldn't finish the sentence.

"No," Mark said. "I found this book after I wrote the note to Kathy. It was the same place for them that it was for us. That's probably why Susan left her diary there, after… Mom. Let's try the automatic writing thing again."

"No!"

"Then," Mark said resignedly, "there's only one thing left to do. Mr. Friedrichs-"

"What?" Josef asked, visibly bracing himself.

"We'll have to tear down your basement walls."

As she descended the steep wooden stairs, Pat was again struck with a fact she kept forgetting-that the two houses had originally been identical. The upper regions were so altered by structural changes and by differences in decor that the similarities were less apparent, but here, in the utilitarian regions belowstairs, the resemblance was so striking as to be rather unnerving. The same whitewashed walls, the same low ceiling, the same impressing atmosphere. The floor of her basement was of concrete, this one was brick. Otherwise they were the same.

After his initial apoplectic objection, Josef had shrugged and agreed to let Mark go ahead. Mark was as irritating as only he could be, refusing coyly to explain what he hoped to find. One of his bright ideas had backfired. He had insisted on bringing Jud with them- with, Pat surmised, some notion of using the unfortunate animal as a sort of psychic bloodhound. Jud, not the brightest of dogs, had welcomed the excursion with gambols and waggings of tail, and the others trailed along, watching, while Mark escorted the animal through the entire house. But at the top of the basement stairs Jud had come to a sudden halt and refused to budge. When Mark took his collar and dragged him, he howled and produced a puddle-his invariable habit when deeply angry or disturbed.