Mysteries of Winterthurn Page 19

  (As to what Xavier meant by the slurred reference to “childish diversions,”—this had to do with his shameful imprisonment in the fruit cellar, and the circumstances of his rescue, some months before. Unable to grasp the motive, or the meaning, or even the nature, of Perdita’s prank, Xavier sometimes questioned whether, in truth, it had actually been deliberate,—or an accident resulting from a sudden fright, experienced by the delicate girl; or even a sudden gust of wind, snaking its way down the stairs, to strike the heavy door with exceptional force. Withal, the abashed youth, who still prized his cousin in his innermost heart, found it most felicitous, in general, not to dwell upon the puzzling incident; nor even to recall Thérèse’s kindness.)

  While we envision Xavier zealously bicycling along the near-deserted streets of Winterthurn City,—southward, and eastward, along Wycombe, and Pinckney, and Hazelwit; past Parthian Square with its great plane trees; past Courthouse Green, where the sturdy columns of the Courthouse glimmered pale in the half-light; to the darkened expanse of the picturesque River Road, which will carry him, in less than ninety minutes, to Glen Mawr—it were well to record certain elements of the scene that doubtless made very little impression upon Xavier himself: the ceaseless rippling play of the river’s shadowed waves on his right hand; the patches and wisps of cloud blown across the moon,—itself an etiolated presence in the autumn sky; and the unnatural dreamlike silence that engirded all, beyond the mournful sound of the wind high in the trees.

  And, too, as Xavier so fearlessly pedals along, it were well for me to record, that the youth would have made this second investigation of the scene of the crime some days earlier, but had been prevented by the unreliable behavior of his brother Colin: who, since the excursion in late May to the Upchurch farm, seemed to have suffered some minute, though distinct, alteration in character, so that Xavier could not foresee when he would retire for the night, or, once abed, when he would sink into his customary sensual abandonment, of deep slumber; nor could the perplexed Xavier predict whether Colin would remain abed,—for every fifth or sixth night, it seemed, he gave the impression of waiting, with cunning, until Xavier slept, so that, with uncharacteristic stealth, he might slip from his bed, and from the room. (Brooding over the puzzling metamorphosis in his brother, who was, of late, given to frowning and twitching silences, and outbursts of irascibility, and sudden displays of temper,—which manifested themselves in jabs, pokes, and actual blows, directed against Bradford and Wolf, as well as Xavier, and Colin’s own friends—Xavier could not decide whether, of late, Colin had taken to running with a set of “young bloods,” as Wolf did; or whether he had succumbed to a romance of some unknown sort, with a girl of questionable upbringing. It was Xavier’s conclusion, after many hours of ratiocinative detective work, that Colin,—and no spectral apparition—had stolen the ruby ring Xavier had secreted in the fireplace; but of course he could not prove his suspicion, and hardly dared raise the issue with Colin, save in oblique and sly asides, which, to his way of thinking, provoked guilty flushes in his brother’s face and a decided evasiveness of manner.)

  Despite the daring, if not the actual recklessness, of this night’s undertaking, Xavier felt very little trepidation as he approached the front gate of the Manor, which was chained and bolted shut: for it was scarcely a secret through town that the great old house was now completely empty of human inhabitants, and that the authorities had counted it a superfluous task to close off the entrances, and board up the doors and windows, and post signs warning against unauthorized visitors,—for who in his right mind, as Norland Clegg had remarked to Xavier, would choose to trespass in that ghoulish place; or even to venture onto the property itself—? “He would have to be a consummate fool, indeed,” the sheriff’s deputy had said, with a bemused shake of his head.

  TO THIS, XAVIER HAD of course murmured a politic assent; but privately shivered, with an indefinable, yearning anticipation,—a sense, it almost seemed, of being on the verge of deliciously, ecstatically, finally awakening; of being roused from a slumberous trance, to the purity of uncontaminated oxygen; and to some remarkable vision, which, though thrust upon him from without, yet corresponded to something uniquely his own, from within . . .

  Of late, the activities of home and school that had long absorbed his energies seemed both tedious and futile, the preoccupations of mere boys: he disappointed his teachers by daydreaming in school, he disappointed his father by daydreaming in the workshop, he quite worried his mother by unaccountable silences and sulks and absences, and, ah!—his shrinking from her touch. (Mrs. Kilgarvan supposed it normal that a youth of sixteen years should no longer wish to be caressed and petted by his mother; but she did miss the special attachment, for she considered him her baby still.) The family took note that Xavier’s moody countenance brightened only when the subject of the “mystery” at Glen Mawr was raised; and then he was likely to say the most disagreeable things,—for instance, that any fool could see that Imogene Westergaard had not been murdered by the same agent that had murdered Mrs. Whimbrel’s baby, as “the modes of death were radically different.”

  Indeed, as Xavier once said at the breakfast table, the “mystery” of the situation was, in a manner of speaking, why all of Winterthurn wanted to link the disparate deaths—!

  WITH BUT A LITTLE DIFFICULTY, Xavier managed to gain entry to the forbidden house by way of a pair of French doors, opening onto a side terrace, that had been boarded shut in a most slovenly and desultory manner: and, not yet needing to light a candle, as a consequence of the moon’s diffuse glow, made his way, neither hastily nor with an excess of caution, through a shadowed drawing room that smelled of dust, to the high-domed foyer, with its Grecian columns, and wide curved stairway, and air of arrogant ostentation that had so stung the youth’s pride and envy some months before: ah! and roused him to a yearning for justice, or for revenge, that had thrummed along his fevered nerves—! Not wishing to pause, and to risk the incursion of a melancholy thought, in sudden recollection of Perdita, Xavier ascended the staircase as swiftly as discretion would allow: and, with a dreamlike alacrity, found himself in the upstairs corridor: scarcely daring to breathe as he approached the doorway of the dread Honeymoon Room, in which his uncle had lately died, and his bride had been so affrighted, it was said the unhappy woman would never regain her sanity . . .

  Here, overcome by a sudden spasm of shivering that, to his shame, caused his teeth to rattle, Xavier did pause, but only for a minute: and, fumbling to light a candle, proceeded to enter the room,—which impressed him, beyond the sickening beat of his own heart, as wondrously tranquil. Steeled against attack, the very hairs on the nape of his neck astir, Xavier came forward with his candle aloft, that he might glance swiftly on all sides, and breathe in the air of this forbidden place,—a singular, yet not entirely repulsive, admixture of dust, and damp, and age, and melancholy splendor, faintly tinged with the odor of blood. He paused, listening: but no sound ensued: and, it seemed, even the night’s capricious wind had ebbed. His eye gleaned, from the divers contours, shapes, shadows, and glassy surfaces, no evidence of any presence save his own: and that, a pale ghost-figure, hesitant of step, and indeterminate of age, gender, and identity, ensconced in utter silence, within the gilt frames of the numberless mirrors. Only the enormous trompe l’oeil mural,—the grim-visaged Virgin with Child, surrounded by a host of floating angels—drew his attention, and this but momentarily. “A mere room,—four walls, and a ceiling, and a carpeted floor,” he murmured aloud, “—yet what secrets does it contain?”

  Here, sprawled across the blood-soaked bed linens, one hand, it was said, trailing against the floor, and his ravaged head tipped back at a most grotesque angle, Xavier’s Uncle Simon Esdras had been found by his manservant, on the morning of October 10, stone dead: his bride half-hidden, in a far corner of the room, crouched on her haunches and swaying slightly from side to side, blood liberally splashed upon her beribboned white nightgown, and her expression,—so the terrified servant
told the authorities—more frightful in its vacuity than his master’s had been in its anguished horror. Untouched, evidently, by the agent that had so barbarously killed her bridegroom, Mrs. Murphy,—which is to say, Mrs. Kilgarvan—proved so bereft of her senses, she took no notice of the servant as he approached, or, later, of Mr. Shearwater and his deputies: but strenuously resisted their efforts to aid her, and, in the end, had to be borne bodily out of the chamber of death, writhing, and squirming, and twisting mad as an eel, her scream, as it was afterward reported, the more horrific,—for being silent.

  That this hideous scene had transpired less than a fortnight previous, in this very space, struck Xavier as remarkable, for now all was peaceful indeed; and, as he busied himself lighting candles at strategic positions in the room,—including the twelve candles, part-melted, of a many-branched candelabrum set upon the bedside table—Xavier wondered at a sudden infusion of his own strength, returning to him in waves; and a sense of mingled excitement, and boyish belligerence. Was it not within his grasp, conceivably, to resolve this mystery before the night was over?—and to bring his findings homeward, in triumph? How amazed all would be who knew him, and had too readily dismissed him as a mere schoolboy—! With a delicious rapidity his fears now transformed themselves into certitude, and muscular excitation: for Xavier could not help but feel, even in this place of slaughter, that God watched over him,—nor even that God’s especial love for him might be, in certain spaces, suspended.

  Thus it was, he prepared himself for his vigil: taking a seat in a chair equidistant from the bed and the door, but pushed back prudently against the wall; and drawing his legs cautiously up, to sit “Indian style”; with his satchel close beside him, opened, in case he had sudden need of Wolf’s knife, or any other handy implement for self-defense. (As for the great canopied bed itself, which had witnessed such inexplicable suffering,—though the offensive bed linens had been taken away, and replaced by a spotless white eiderdown coverlet,—Xavier had no more the stomach to too closely investigate the condition of the mattress than he had the temerity to stretch out on the bed. He much envied the casualness with which certain detectives and police investigators examined such blood-soaked evidence, but had begun to doubt whether he would ever acquire it.)

  Doubtless it was the influence of the host of candles burning in divers areas of the bed-chamber, their commingled glow being most gentle, and soothing, and harmonious, and suffused with a romantic sort of beauty: for it was not many minutes before, falling into a light drowse, Xavier began to think of his cousin Perdita; and remembered with a pang that irradiated pleasure through his being, even as it stung, the perfection of her heart-shaped face,—the petal-smooth pallor of her skin,—the haunting conjunction in her of the childish, and the woefully mature. Ah, if only she were with him now, how exhilarated he should be, despite the loneliness of his watch—! He recalled a church service of some Sundays previous, before Simon Esdras’s death, when his eye had moved upon his cousin’s bent profile, in a pew not far distant: lingering sadly, yet, as it were, hungrily, upon it: taking no note (I am sorry to say) of Thérèse, who sat beside her, in no less girlishly devout a posture. Far overhead, as if in Heaven itself, the organ sounded its thunderous chords, and the congregation reverently sang,—

  Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!

  Praise Him all creatures here below!

  —and Xavier felt the breath of an angel close beside him, feathered wings in such rapid motion, it were as if a hummingbird had drifted near, warm, and perfumed, and delightful to the eye!—yet startling him into waking, so that his head jerked upright, and his eyelids fluttered, and, for a moment, he scarcely knew where he was: languorously embraced in a dream, in his own boyhood bed; or many miles distant, in a forbidden chamber of his “ancestral” home. There was some confusion, too, as to whether Perdita had been his guide to this place, or whether he had made his way alone . . .

  He stirred in his cushioned chair; and looked uneasily about; seeing nothing that hinted of life, or motility, save his own dim and vaporous reflection in a mirrored door nearby that caught other like reflections, to toss them, it seemed, back and forth, most vertiginously, from one side of the room to another, and one corner to another, to Infinity. He rubbed his eyes, to goad himself to greater wakefulness; and saw that the French furnishings of the room, and the glittering chandelier, and the bronzed, gilded, and glassed surfaces, and, not least, the remarkable painting by Eakins, were indeed impressive; and wondered that he could have been so unfeeling as to have missed their uncommon value earlier,—in truth, to have judged them as ostentatious and vulgar. “Or is it,” the perplexed youth inquired of himself, “a consequence of the recent tragedy, and the spillage of Kilgarvan blood in this very space, that accounts for an air of the solemn, and the exalted?”

  At some distance there sounded the faint tinkling laughter of children, predominant among them a girl’s high-pitched breathless titter: yet was she to be chastised for being merely restless, and silly?—and not at all naughty! Xavier’s eyelids drooped; his head began to nod on his shoulders; all evenly, and deeply, his breath came and went. “Yet I am not asleep,” he declared boastfully, “for that would be a most tragical error, in this damned place.”

  A tall, willowy, slope-shouldered angel, burdened with the most comical wings,—narrow, and oily-black, the feathers densely curled—drew near the boy in the chair, and murmured something sly, and puckered his lips as if to kiss: but, in the next instant, vanished utterly—!

  Whereupon more laughter sounded. And the exhalation of breaths was such, every candle-flame in the room cowered: and one or two actually went out.

  The released fragrances of jasmine, rosewater, lilac. A closer, more intimate odor, which Xavier could not identify. Ah, if he might burrow, burrow, burrow!—to the very foot of the bed, beneath the heavy quilt! But that is forbidden. As certain scents are forbidden.

  So rapidly did the paired hummingbirds draw near, they revealed themselves as bats, with cruel hooked wings, and tiny red-glaring eyes. Xavier reached out smilingly to stroke them,—for he was but a baby, and could not know wickedness—but recoiled at the chill leathery touch of their skin. Very white, very wet, their small needlelike teeth! O do not hurt me, Xavier begged. Where is Momma, that she would allow them so near—?

  Mrs. Kilgarvan closed the book of nursery tales, the one with the Cat and the Fiddle and the Cow and the Moon embossed in red and gilt on the cover. All silently she laid the book aside; and rose to her feet; and blew out the candle, though Xavier was fully awake and pleaded with her not to leave him alone in the dark. Stooping to kiss him, she smelled of eau de cologne: Xavier stared helplessly at her through his sleep-locked eyelids. If she loved him, how could she leave him alone in the dark—?

  Now the Virgin Mary in her somber blue robes deigned to glance in his direction; and, on her lap, the Christ Child cast a peevish jealous gaze: for was not Xavier as comely, and far more manly?—thus two cherubs whispered, their breaths close upon Xavier’s face, and their plump fingers running lightly over his body. He stirred; he shivered; he groaned aloud,—yet in exquisite silence; he watched them with apprehension through his closed eyes; while still the Virgin Mary regarded him with an air of intense concentration, her eyes like burning agates, her skin so whitely hot, no mortal would dare draw near.

  Caressing,—tickling,—pinching,—most brazenly stroking: thus the pretty cherubs hovering over Xavier; while in the near distance a hornpipe sounded, high and lewd; and a mandolin, strummed with yearning fingers; and something very like a child’s tambourine. Xavier would have squirmed free of the cherubs’ fingers, but, alas, was he not paralyzed, in his every muscle?—in even his neck, and his head? Nor could he truly open his eyes, to gain freedom, and to recall his soul.

  “Unclothe yourself! O beautiful boy! You are not ashamed, surely? For you are one of us,—oh surely!”

  “Is he ashamed? Then he must be chastised!”

  “He must
be set right!”

  “Sweet Cousin, most handsome of brothers—”

  “Sweet Xavier, do not resist: ah, yes: like this—”

  “But he is ashamed!—he does not love us!”

  “He dares not love us!”

  “He is cruel!—he is wicked!”

  “Unclothe him at once!”

  “O beautiful boy, our own—”

  Blushing, Xavier cowered, and squirmed, and protested in a child’s affrighted voice,—but in silence; all passionately he would have pushed away the hot, shameless, pinching, poking fingers,—had he been able: but, alas, was he not trapped in the lurid comfort of sleep, paralyzed through his being?—was he not so amazed, at the sly pinches of his earlobes and nipples, the rough strokes against his thighs, a cherub’s fleet kiss, a ghost-bite, a sucking sensation beneath the downy curve of his jaw,—so amazed, and, indeed, so overwhelmed, that anyone should touch him in such secret wise, he dared not draw breath?

  And, ah! what an intoxication astir in the air!—angels with eyes that glared with love, and skin white-hot, and wings giddily beating!—now a breath perfumed, it seemed, with the most fragrant of dried flowers, from out Mrs. Kilgarvan’s potpourri jar; now a breath bespeaking the shadowed interior of the milkman’s empty cans, a most disagreeable, yet alluring, blend of the metallic and the rancid! The tender notes of a flute grew ever more high-pitched, and higher still: and now the random kisses turned to bites: teeth, lips, tongues; the most greedy of mouths, the most emboldened of caresses; the fluttering of dark-feathered wings, the eructation of harsh laughter; a commotion in the air, a frantic beating, beating—