The House That Jack Built (40 page)

    'He's up at our new house, supervising the building work.'

    'We've already been there, ma'am,' said Sergeant Winstanley. He took out his notebook, licked his thumb, and leafed through it. 'Mr. Bellman wasn't around, but Mr. Norman Moriarty was repairing the library floor with three other carpenters. Mr. Moriarty said that he had given Mr. Bellman a ride to the house round about nine o'clock and that Mr. Bellman had told him that he was going to continue drawing up his priority list of what restoration work needed attention first. That was the last time that Mr. Moriarty saw him.'

    'Then he must still be there.'

    Lieutenant Hook said, 'We searched that old house from basement to attic, Mrs. Bellman. Took us over an hour. If your husband is still there, he's been playing a pretty good game of hide-and-go-seek.'

    'Do you have any idea where your husband might be, Mrs. Bellman?' asked Sergeant Winstanley. 'Have you heard from him at all?'

    'We had breakfast together. I thought he was going to spend the day at Valhalla, that's all. We agreed to meet back here at six o'clock, to get ready for dinner.'

    'Did he seem strange in any way? Unsettled, maybe? Preoccupied?'

    She shook her head, 'Just his normal self.'

    Lieutenant Hook stood up. 'Mrs. Bellman, Sergeant Winstanley and I are going to be around here for a little while. The minute you see your husband, can you please call the county sheriff's office and ask to speak to Deputy Shrike?'

    The deputy handed Effie a card, and said, 'We really need to clear this up as quick as we can, ma'am.'

    The three of them left, and Effie found herself standing alone in the lobby, overwhelmed with grief and hurt, which would forever be intermingled in her mind with the strong fragrance of sweet peas.

    

    

    She rifled through his closet, searching through his socks and his shorts and every single pocket. In his leather toiletry bag, she found a bill from the Restaurant Lafayette, at the Drake Swisstitel on Park Avenue. It could have been an expense-account dinner for one of his clients. But she also found book matches from the Richmondtown Country Club on Staten Island, and he had never talked about entertaining any of his clients across there. In fact, he had never taken Effie there, either.

    She felt shaken and upset, but at the same time she wasn't reacting in the way that she thought she would, if she ever found out that Craig was having an affair. She felt disturbingly aroused, too, at the thought that he had such virility. She tried to stop herself from feeling that way, because she knew she ought to be blazing with fury. But the more she thought about Craig the less angry she became, although she was still seethingly jealous that he hadn't devoted all of his virility to her.

    The right-hand top drawer in the bureau was locked, and Craig had taken away the key. She tugged it and rattled it without success; and then she took out the drawer below and tried to reach into it from the back. In the end she took the long shoe-horn out of the bottom of her closet, wedged the end of it into the gap at the top of the drawer, and forced it downward, breaking the lock. The bureau was a fine Colonial antique, but Effie thought, damn it, Craig can pay for it.

    She tugged out the drawer, accidentally spilling its

    contents all over the carpet. Packs of playing cards, twenty or thirty packs of professional playing cards, most of them still sealed up in cellophane. But at least three packs were unwrapped, and they scattered across the floor.

    Effie knelt down and quickly began to pick them up and arrange them back into suits. Clubs, hearts, diamonds and spades. It was when she reached the first suit of diamonds that she knew what was wrong. There was no nine of diamonds anywhere.

    She sat up on her heels, and she felt shivery with dread. She could guess where those four nines had gone to; and the thought was more than she could bring herself to accept.

    She stood up, sat on the edge of the bed, and picked up the phone.

    'Can you put me through to the county sheriff's office, please?'

    She waited for a while, and then a snappy voice said, 'Sheriff's department, how can I help you?'

    Effie looked down at the cards lying all over the carpet. A house of cards, collapsed. A marriage, fallen apart. Four lives, savagely taken away.

    'Hallo? Sheriff's department, how can I help you?'

    'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It's nothing.' She replaced the receiver, and continued to stare at the cards.

    In the book that she had read about Jack Belias, the author had quoted Athanase Vagliano, one of the Greek Syndicate, who had asked Belias why he gambled. 'What else is there?' Belias had replied. 'The cards are life, and the cards are death, and beyond life and death, what is there to worry about?'

    She picked up the phone again and called Pepper. Pepper said she was mixing up an ouanga for one of her regular clients, and could she call back later?

    'Pepper, this is it. We have to do the cleansing right now. The police have been here looking for Craig. They said they went to Valhalla but he wasn't there. Pepper, he went up there with Norman and he wouldn't have tried to walk back. The police think he's killed some people. The police think he killed the barman from the Hudson Inn. Please, Pepper, we have to do something now!'

    'Hey, hey, hey, calm down,' Pepper soothed her. 'Now what's all this about killing a barman?'

    'They found him dead last night and he was the same barman that Craig was arguing with. And they found a none of diamonds on him and I've opened up Craig's drawer and there's all these packs of cards but none of them have the nine of diamonds.'

    'And the nine of diamonds was the card that Jack Belias used to mock Zographos, right?'

    'Pepper, I don't know what's happened to Craig but please, please help me.'

    'Okay… give me twenty minutes to get my stuff together and then you can come pick me up in that fancy BMW of yours.'

    

    

    They drove up past the Red Oaks Inn and down through the weather-twisted trees. It had clouded over, and a strong, unpleasant wind had risen, so that the lawns were scuttling with leaves and twigs. As they pulled up outside Valhalla's front steps, they heard a deafening slap-rumble noise, and looked up to see a huge tarpaulin flapping on top of the roof like a manta ray swimming through a powerful current.

    Builder's sand whipped up from the patios, and Eftie caught some of it in her eye. She was still trying to nudge it out with the tip of her handkerchief when the front doors opened and Norman appeared. He was brown with dust and his head was wrapped in a green bandana. 'Mom? What are you doing here? Hi, Mrs. Bellman.'

    'Hi, Norman. Is Mr. Bellman anywheres around? We know the cops have been looking for him.'

    Norman shook his head. 'He came up with me this morning. I saw him walk upstairs and that was it. I never saw him again. We looked for him just about like everywhere, but I guess it would be pretty easy to hide for ever in a house this size.'

    Effie said, 'He's done it. I'm sure he's done it. Just like Jack Belias did when Gina Broughton was killed. He's vanished, he's gone. He's left us all behind.'

    'You can't be sure about that,' said Pepper. 'He may just be hiding in the housed-'

    'We still have to cleanse it,' Effie insisted. 'Maybe if we cleanse it, he'll have to come back.'

    'One of them will have to,' said Pepper, picking up the hem of her long maroon kaftan and hefting her tapestry bag on her shoulder. 'The only reason that Jack Belias has been able to take Craig over is because this house is so disturbed. Take away your disturbance, and they'll have to separate - body, personality and spirit. And since two people can't normally occupy the same body at the same time, you're going to have the psychic equivalent of organ-trans-plant rejection.'

    'Sounds, like, messy,' Norman remarked.

    'I've never seen it happen, but I guess it could be,' Pepper replied. 'Look what happens when two people in automobiles try to occupy the same space.' She walked into the house and Norman followed close behind her, carrying her battered brown suitcase full of mirrors. Norman snarled at the knocker on the door and Effie almost expected it to snarl back.

    'We've been working on the library floor today,' said Norman, as they traipsed along the corridor towards the ballroom.

    'Do you think that Craig is still here?' asked Effie.

    Pepper put down her bag in the centre of the ballroom floor, knelt down, and rummaged around inside it. Eventually she produced a dried-looking root on a silver chain. 'Mandrake,' she explained. 'If he's here, it'll soon tell us.' She held it up so that it dangled in the air. 'The legend is that mandrakes grew where the sperm of hanged men dropped onto the dirt underneath the gallows. That's why they're so sensitive to the presence of any man, particularly an evil man.'

    'Come on, Pepper. Craig may have got himself into trouble, but Craig isn't evil.'

    'Maybe not. But Jack Belias was; or is; and right now, who's to lay money on which of them is which?'

    They watched the dried mandrake root slowly winding and unwinding itself on its silver chain.

    'What's it supposed to do when it senses that somebody's here?' asked Effie.

    'Watch,' said Pepper.

    'But the root did nothing but wind and unwind, wind and unwind.

    'Nothing?' said Norman.

    'Not yet,' Pepper told him. 'But I can still feel some serious disturbances. My God, it feels like a storm's brewing up. Can't you feel it, Effie? Can't you feel it in the air?'

    Norman looked around the ballroom. 'I can sure feel some kind of atmospheric tension. You know, like, very low barometer weather. Like it's going to storm soon.'

    'It's not the weather,' said Pepper. 'It's Jack Belias. He's found his way from one page of history into the next.'

    She laid down her mandrake necklet, and then she started to set up her mirrors and her candles like she had before, when Craig had interrupted her. Effie meanwhile paced around the perimeter of the ballroom, listening for any doors opening or closing; or any footfalls. She went over to the library doors, and was about to open them when Norman said, 'Careful! Half of the floor is still, like, up. I'll show it to you later.'

    Effie carried on circling around, waiting for Pepper to finish lighting her candles and angling her mirrors and setting up her herbs and talismans and her pot-pourri. The ballroom was already beginning to smell like the inside of the Hungry Moon. Effie was just about to walk around for a third time when she heard footsteps approaching along the corridor from the direction of the front door. Sharp, decisive footsteps, like those of an angry man.

    'Pepper... he's here!' she hissed, as loud as she dared. 'He's coming along the corridor!'

    Pepper said, 'Who's here? Craig your husband or Jack the gambler?'

    'I don't know- it's just that he's-'

    At that instant, the ballroom doors shuddered open. They all stepped back, Norman included. A tall, dark figure stepped inside, carrying in its arms a large metal box, almost the size of a baby's coffin. It walked slowly to the centre of the room, right up to the circle of candles, paused, and then laid down its burden with infinite care.

    'I found something that might interest you,' it said; and as it turned towards Effie the candlelight swung and brightly illuminated its face, and Effie could see that it was Brewster Ridge, the black surveyor whose partner had died on their very first day of evaluating Valhalla.

    'Mr. Ridge, what are you doing here?' asked Effie.

    Brewster jerked his head towards the battered, green-painted box. 'I took it down to Pig Hill Inn, but they told me you were gone, headed up here. I found it in Albany, in the New York State Archives, while I was searching for any old planning permits that might enhance Valhalla's value. I didn't find any, but this box has been rusting in some old storeroom since 1941. It's padlocked and nobody has the key. Nobody seems to care, either. In all of that time, nobody has claimed it or even asked to see what's inside it.'

    'Well, what is inside it?' Effie demanded.

    'Catalogue number 13444965IJB… a fireproof box containing the diaries and construction plans of Mr. J. Belias, of Valhalla, Red Oaks Lane, Highland Falls, state of New York.'

    'Have you tried opening it?' asked Pepper, excitedly.

    'I wasn't sure that I had the authority.'

    Norman was down on his hands and knees, peering closely at the padlock. 'Want me to give it a try, Mrs. Bellman?'

    'You might as well, seeing that Mr. Ridge took the trouble to bring it all the way up here.'

    Norman reached into a pocket and produced a screwdriver, prised the padlock off and opened up the box.

    They all gathered around it. On the left side, in two neat stacks, were calfskin and crocodile-skin diaries, in red and black, neatly bound together with black ribbon. In the middle were rolls of architectural tracings of Valhalla, plans and elevations. On the right side there were five or six decks of cards, the larger professional size, unopened, a black leather-bound book with gold lettering
The Edicts of Balam
and a large manila envelope, sealed with black sealing-wax.

    Norman lifted out the diaries, untied one of the ribbons, and flicked through two or three of them. They were all written in a slanting, precise hand, in black ink that had faded to a rusty colour with age.

    'Anything interesting?' asked Pepper.

    'If you're a card-sharp, maybe. This is like a record of every game of baccarat and
chemin-de-fer
and
trente-et-quarante
this guy ever played in his life. Nothing else, by the look of it. No intimate confessions. No juicy scandals.' Brewster took out the plans and carefully unrolled them. 'These are worth having,' he said. 'Copies of the original architect's drawings. They could help you a whole lot with your restoration. Look here... the way this parapet was designed, up on the roof. That parapet's gone now, but you could restore it just the way it was meant to be.'