Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 (3 page)

Ghost-guns rolled and tingled along the sky.

2

Friday, May 14th.

At nine o'clock in the morning the Imperial convertible, open, bowled out of Pearis by way of Pinckney Road to Highway 276, which presently would become Interstate 26 past Columbia, the state capital, south-east to the coastal plain and Charleston.

Alan Grantham who, had he known it, was spiritual kin to Yancey Beale—d
rove at a steady legal 65. Moun
tainously piled into the back, too large to be accommodated by the bucket seat beside the driver, was his friend Dr. Gideon Fell

The fate of Alan Grantham in his mid-thirties might have been envied by many. If Alan himself would not have agreed, it was because he fretted over much in his mind. In addition to the problem presented by the May-nards at James Island, there was the recurrent emotional crisis with Camilla Bruce. Camilla, night or day, was never out of his thoughts. But the enviability of his position had been stressed by
Dr. Fell not long after the lat
ter's arrival on Thursday afternoon.

Alan had been on the platform when the big Eastern Airlines Whisperjet, non-stop Newark to Pearis, trundled in at Pearis-Athenstown Airport. Dr. Fell, wearing a shovel hat and a black cloak as big as a tent, came lumbering down the aircraft steps and rolled across on his crutch-headed stick. Pink face already steaming, bandit's moustache downturned and eyeglasses skew-wiff on the black ribbon, he shook hands heartily with a middle-sized, active young man in slacks and a sports-coat

"Heh!" chuckled Dr. Fell. "Heh-heh-heh! Forgive me, my dear fellow; a blaze of sun has few elements of humor. Do you mind if I remove this incarnadined cloak?"

"Mind? The temperature is 7. I'm wearing a coat only in deference to my alleged academic standing. It's early in the year, of course; the thermometer hasn't really started to rise."

"It has risen far enough," Dr. Fell retorted sternly. "Archons of Athens! In England, as you are well aware, any temperature above 70 constitutes a paralyzing heatwave. Mightn't we... er... ?"

"Drink? Of course. You don't want whisky, do you?"

"The man who would drink whisky in this weather," boomed Dr. Fell, "would don flannel underwear in the tropics and call for hamburgers at a Lucullan feast. No, God forbid! Why do you ask?"

"In this state, Magister, hard liquor mayn't be sold by the glass. We may—and do—buy all we want at liquor stores to guzzle at home. If you crave bourbon (in the South always bourbon, though Scotch is not unpopular either), we must wait till we get to my apartment If beer or wine will do . . ."

"Beer, by all means! Forever beer! There is a place?"

"Here at the airport. This way."

Air-conditioning stroked marble beyond glass doors. In the dusky, pleasant cavern of the bar, with tall glasses of Alt Heidelberg on the table between them, Alan lit a cigarette and his guest an obese meerschaum pipe..

"Nunc bibe
ndum est!"
rumbled Dr. Fell, lifting his glass and blowing out sparks like the Spirit of the Volcano. "I knew you in England, Alan, when you were at Simon Magus, Cambridge. One thing I don't know: it never occurred to me the matter was important enough for enquiry. But in this country, I have discovered, the first question every American asks another is where he comes from.. Let joy be unconfined; I bow to custom: where
do
you come from?"

"Wilmington, Delaware, the shrine of the Du Ponts."

"Now, then! This academic standing you mentioned: to what do you attribute it?"

"I said 'alleged' academic standing, remember. None of my friends, believe me, can find it half as funny as I do."

"A commendable attitude, but try to answer. To what do you attribute it?"

"My M.A. Cantab," replied Alan. "A master's degree from Simon Magus seems to have powerfully stimulating effects."

"What, precisely, are your duties here?"

"At King's College, which celebrates its two hundredth anniversary in 1967 and whose name remained unchanged even when Richard Pearis, its first Tory backer, was chased out of town at the time of the Revolution, I have been delivering the Hughes Burwell Memorial Lectures in English Literature. Only twenty lectures need be given throughout the year; my stint is finished until just before commencement in June."

"Oh, ah! Are you a good lecturer?"

"I have enthusiasm, that's all. As a lecturer, I suppose,
I
can't be more than indifferent. Camilla would say . . ."

"Camilla being Miss Bruce? The young lady you talk of so frequently? What
would
she say?"

"A good deal. Because I can't admire our present-day sacred cows, the much-touted Prousts and Joyces with reputations overblown out of all proportion to their merit, I'm supposed to be an old mossback interested only in sensational melodrama or slapstick farce."

"Is it true?"

"To a certain extent; only a certain extent. They don't seem to mind at King's, though. They've asked me to stay on next year as a regular member of the faculty, which I have every intention of doing."

"I gather from your letters," said Dr. Fell, "you're rather fond of the South?"

"Rather
fond of it? This, very definitely, is the place for your obedient. I like the people; I like their easy
-
going ways, and the freedom from pressures so incessant in New York or thereabouts. In short, I feel at home."

Wheezing, rumbling, brushing ash from the vast slopes of himself, Dr. Fell sat back and blinked at the other through lopsided eyeglasses.

"Has it never occurred to you, Alan, that you are
a
very fortunate chap?"

"Well . . ."

"Consider! Yours is an independent income. You need no academic post if you don't want one. You have youth, health; yes, and beyond doubt enthusiasm: it bubbles or roars through every word. Has your extreme good fortune never occurred to you?"

"'Wheresoever a man liveth, there will be a thorn-bush by his door.'"

"Your particular thorn-bush being—?"

"Camilla. Or mainly Camilla. If only the damn woman could be persuaded to take some interest in me!"

"And she won't?"

"I don't know, Magister; shall we drop the subject? And an anti-mathematician like me mustn't monopolize the talk. How goes it with
you,
Dr. Fell? Has the case at Richbell been wound up?"

"Wound up satisfactorily, or reasonably so, when a police-lieutenant named Spinelli shot the guilty party at an amusement park. I only hope—"

"You hope you're not walking into another one? Is that it?"

"Frankly, my dear fellow, I have no notion where
I
may be walking. The good Mr. Henry Maynard, for instance: what does he want of me? He won't say; he continues to hint. Can you supply any illumination?"

"I don't know either; I'm merely horse to your Lady Godiva. But the Maynards . . ."

"Sat prata biberunt!"
intoned Dr. Fell, finishing his beer and whacking down the glass. "This Maynard business, it seems to me, has more than one curious feature. With your permission, however, we will drop
that
subject until it obtrudes itself on our notice."

And so, at nine on Friday morning, in Alan's Imperial they left town by Highway 276. It was a fine day with a breeze. Dr. Fell in the back had his crutch-headed stick propped in front of him, hands folded on top. He had laid aside his hat, which wouldn't stay on against the wind; his great mop of gray hair blew wildly, as did the ribbon on his eyeglasses. But the pink face beamed all over; chuckles animated his several chins. At intervals he would bend sideways and catch Alan's eye in the- rear-view mirror, a living image of Old King Cole.

They had left Pearis far behind when he spoke.

"By the way," he said, "where are we staying in Charleston? We have both declined Maynard's invitation,
I
gather?"

"Yes. There are two luxury hotels: the Francis Marion at King and Calhoun Streets, and the Fort Sumter on Murray Boulevard overlooking the harbor. Both are first-class; if I prefer the Francis Marion, it's because I have stayed there often and I'm familiar with it. Anyway, I've reserved rooms there."

"Good! Clever-good! The Francis Marion let it be."

"There was something else you started to say, Magis-ter?"

"Oh, ah!" agreed Dr. Fell, in his absent-mindedness looking rather half-witted. "I myself (harrumph!) am not altogether ignorant of the South, though the lecturer's path lies mainly through large cities: Richmond, Atlanta, New Orleans."

'Then you've never visited Charleston?"

"On the contrary, I was there once some years ago, but for so brief a time that I scarcely saw it.

"What can you tell me about the place?"

Dr. Fell squinted at the sun, which always seems to be in your eyes no matter which direction you drive.

"Without wishing to sound like a handy guide," he replied, "I can inform you that the city of Charleston— called Charles Town for King Charles the Second in the later seventeenth century; it did not become Charleston until it was incorporated after the American Revolution —is built on a peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, whose waters unite in a harbor ringed with sandy islands and ancient forts. Hazily I recall a quiet city of pastel colors and graceful church-spires, of houses with double piazzas and gardens in tropical bloom. I recall a very long if rather narrow thoroughfare . . ."

"King Street."

". . . knifing straight down through from the northern suburbs to the Battery. But always," wheezed Dr. Fell, looking still more half-witted, "this dull old brain returns to buzz like a fly round those islands in the harbor. Permit
me
to ask a question or two." "Yes?"

"Sullivan's Island with Fort Moultrie, of course, is famous in song and story. So is Fort Sumter. Where precisely is Fort Sumter?"

"A little way inside the mouth of the harbor, on an artificial island of its own."

"It is notorious (harrumph!)—it is notorious that before daybreak on April 12th, 1861, the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter and inaugurated the unpleasantness between North and South. But how did they fire on it? From a ship?"

"No, Magister. From another fort."

"Another
fort?"

"Yes. From Fort Johnson, at the eastern tip of James Island less than two miles away. You visit Fort Sumter by water; a little steamer makes the excursion every day."

"And the other islands?"

"There are bridges to them all. You can't visit what remains of Fort Johnson; they've built a marine research station at that tip of James Island. But Maynard Hall is very close to there, off Fort Johnson Road. You see where this leads us, Dr. Fell? It leads straight round in a circle to the Maynards, their friends, and our own present embarrassment. Shall we discuss the subject at long last?"

"Oh, ah! We had better."

"I won't go into the history of the Maynards; Mr. Maynard himself can tell us much more than I've been able to find by digging in libraries. Anyway, it's the present situation that seems to be causing a lot of grief."

"And what is the present situation, my dear fellow?" boomed Dr. Fell. "Maynard wrote that he meant to assemble what he called a small house-party. But that was to begin almost a fortnight ago, on May 3rd. Surely the party must have broken up long since?"

"Not a bit of it. They're all still there."

"Archons of Athens!
Who
is still there?"

"Henry Maynard, his daughter (her mother died soon after Madge was born), my Camilla, a former newspaper-editor called Crandall, and a pair of fledgling lawyers,

Northern
and Southern: respectively Rip
ton Hillboro and Yancey Beale. Two others not houseguests but paying frequent calls are a young medical man, Mark Sheldon, and a youngish woman, Valerie Huret, who married the scion of an old Huguenot family and was widowed three or four years ago. The party's still in progress."

"How do you know this?"

"From Camilla. She writes regularly, if coolly."

"And you spoke of 'grief.' What grief?"

"Say alarm and confusion, then; exactly what remains obscure. Camilla's been cryptic, as cryptic as Henry Maynard, so cryptic I can't be certain of one damn fact. Camilla's upset, though. Something rather sensational occurred last Friday night, the 7th, when Mr. Maynard was away on a business-trip to Richmond. Up to then, it seems, he himself had been despondent and down in the mouth. When he returned Saturday morning he was a changed man, hearty and full of beans. The guests were supposed to leave at the weekend; he wouldn't hear of it, and persuaded 'em to stay. Except that Camilla is upset, which bothers me a good deal, that's all I can tell you."