Quests of Simon Ark (18 page)

“And why couldn’t Cruz be the killer?” Partell wanted to know.

“The reason for that goes deeply into the character of the man and the whole practice of the Penitentes. It has already been pointed out that neither Cruz nor any of the others would be a party to a simple murder in such a place as this, while in the grip of a religious fervor. Such good and evil just could not exist side by side in the same man. Besides, none of the eighteen would know which cross was occupied by Summer this day. Only Cruz would know that, and he was the most fervent of all—the one person least likely to murder within the walls of his sacred palace. There remained one possibility, however. Suppose—suppose Cruz committed the murder in a fit of religious zeal, somehow believing Summer to be evil? Suppose he had some insane quirk that dictated the very ritual murder we all feared so much.”

Sheriff Partell nodded. “I still think that’s what happened.”

But Simon Ark had not finished speaking. “Consider the man, though. Consider Juan Cruz, deciding he must murder the hanging figure on the cross. Either insane or in an uncontrollable fit of religious passion, he seizes a weapon from the wall there and heads for the basement.” He paused only a moment. “And
what weapon
does he seize?”

The sheriff gestured toward the wall. “All there are are swords and spears. He didn’t have much choice.”

“But he did! He had the ultimate choice. He had the choice between stabbing Glen Summer in the left side with a sword—or a spear like the Roman soldier used on Christ as He hung dying on Calvary …”

We were silent then, all of us, because, somehow, we knew he was right. But then Sheriff Partell spoke again. “O.K., but why does that make it his wife?”

“We have already shown that the killer had to be able to recognize Glen Summer hanging nearly naked in a dimly lit basement, with his entire head covered. Who could have recognized him, for his body alone? Ambrose the bartender? Possible but doubtful. Only one person could enter that basement with the certainty of recognizing the naked chest and legs of Glen Summer. Only one person—the wife who shared his bed.”

And now Vicky Nelson spoke up beside me. “I don’t know too much about this whole crazy thing, but from what I have heard I’d like you to explain how Mrs. Summer or any other woman could walk past eighteen men without being noticed. After all, they were all supposed to be naked to the waist, weren’t they?”

Simon cleared his throat. “What nearly everyone tends to forget in dealing with real-life crime is that it is not at all like crime in books. In a mystery novel a killer must have a foolproof, or seeming foolproof, method of murder before he strikes. But in real life a murderer might be impelled to strike with only a fifty-fifty chance of escape, if the motive was great enough. Delia Summer’s motive was great enough, and her chances of escape were better than fifty’ fifty.”

“But how?”

“She knew about the basement room; she knew about the rite that would be going on this morning. She knew it all because her husband had told her. She entered the villa, took down the sword—perhaps she knew about that, too, or perhaps she had brought some other weapon which she discarded in favor of the sword—and then made her way down the steps to the basement. And then she walked past those hanging men, studying them in the dimness until she recognized her husband.”

“And they never saw her?”

“They never saw her, my friend, because—simply—their eyes were closed. You must remember that these men were religious mystics, in the grip of a highly emotional experience. Each man, as he hung there with the ropes cutting into his wrists, was in a sense another Christ. Each man, deep in his own prayerful thoughts, would naturally have closed his eyes—especially since there was nothing to see in the dim basement. Delia Summer guessed this, and she was right. Moving silently on the stone floor she had perfect safety—until the very moment she plunged the sword into her husband’s chest. And even then the odds were with her. Already in pain from the ropes, there was a good chance he would not cry out in the split second before death. He didn’t, and she won her only gamble.”

Through it all, Delia Summer had been silent. Now she spoke. “Why did I kill him?” she asked, not making it a denial but rather only a question. A question to which she already knew the answer.

“Because, dear lady, your husband told you he planned to sell the
Oasis
and donate the money to the Church. You couldn’t stand the thought of a future of poverty chained to a religious fanatic. So you had to kill him before he carried out his plan. You had to kill so you would inherit control of the Oasis. And you risked killing him here because this was the last place on earth a woman would be suspected.”

I could tell by the faces around us that he’d convinced us all, but I still had a final question. “Simon, what about Ambrose’s tire tracks outside?”

“Simple, my friend. She borrowed his car. I considered the possibility that Ambrose was guilty, but quickly rejected it. He had no obvious motive, and as I’ve explained, it was doubtful if he could have been certain of recognizing Summer’s masked body. In any event, there was a final clue pointing to Mrs. Summer. Sheriff Partell told me that when she arrived here with him, she broke away and ran sobbing to the basement. How did she know the way to the basement, or that her husband had died there? She knew because she’d been here before today—to search him out and kill him.”

“While she was prowling around she might have run into Cruz,” I objected.

“She knew he’d be at prayer. It was no more of a chance than any of the rest of it. When her husband told her of this place, he no doubt went into great detail.”

Sheriff Partell’s expression was somber. “Delia,” he said quietly, “I’m afraid I’ll have to …”

“I know,” she said. “It was the chance I took.”

“You’re confessing?”

But there was still a spark of fire in her eyes. “Not on’ your life! I’ll fight it out with a jury.”

Vicky Nelson turned to me with a low snort. “Didn’t I tell you she was a real bitch? Let’s get out of here …”

Simon and I dropped Vicky back at her car, and that was the last I saw of her—though the memory of those legs stayed with me for many days. We spent the night with Father Hadden, and I know that he and Simon talked far into it, of the strange happenings and the strange things that did not happen. And when we left the next morning the priest was busy telephoning—talking to the eighteen men who were all that remained of the case’s loose ends.

A month or so later I received a letter at my New York office. It was sent to Simon Ark, in my care, and it was from Father Hadden. It had been a busy month for him, but it was a happy letter. He had succeeded in organizing the Penitentes into a group to help him with parish activities, and he had great hopes that their overwhelming piety was being channeled into more normal activities. Juan Cruz, unfortunately, had suffered a mild nervous breakdown—but Father Hadden even held out hope for him. And surprisingly enough he added a P.S. to the effect that Vicky Nelson and Yates Ambrose were planning to be married.

“He doesn’t say a word about the spirits,” I pointed out to Simon.

“It is a happy letter, my friend. Full of the joy of young love and older faith. There will be no more spirits for Father Hadden.”

And one day—it must have been a year later—the priest himself visited us, happy in the midst of a job well done. “I’m here only for a few days,” he said. “I couldn’t pass through without seeing my old friends.”

“How are Vicky and Yates?” I asked.

“Happy,” he said, and that after all was a complete answer.

And Simon smiled down on the man of God. “No more spirits?”

But the priest hesitated before answering. “Only one, Mr. Ark. Only one.”

“One?”

He nodded. “Delia Summer died in the gas chamber last month.” And that was all he would say …

B
EFORE RECOUNTING THE REMARKABLE
events surrounding the search for the lost treasure of Jack the Ripper, it might be well to say a few words about my friend and occasional companion Simon Ark. It was Simon who brought the affair to a satisfying conclusion, as he has so many other times in the 22 years I’ve known him.

I was a young newspaper reporter when I first met Simon Ark back in the mid-fifties. I’d been sent to a remote western town to report on an apparent mass suicide. Simon was there too, looking tall and imposing and very old. He told me later that he was nearly 2,000 years old, that he’d been a Coptic priest in Egypt, and now was doomed to roam the world like some Flying Dutchman or Wandering Jew, undying, seeking a final confrontation with Satan and all that was evil on this earth.

Did I believe any of that?

Frankly, no. Not at first, anyway. I married a wonderful girl named Shelly Constance and moved from a career in journalism to one in publishing. When Simon Ark reappeared in my life, as he kept doing at irregular intervals, I was an editor at Neptune Books. Whether I believed his story or not, I realized his vast knowledge of the occult and the mystic arts could be put to good use. He wrote a book and I published it. This was, after all, the era when every mystic had a book to publish.

In recent years Simon and I drifted apart. I was a middle-aged editor no longer quite up to the sudden journeys to Egypt or Poland or London that used to fascinate me in the old days. And for all I knew, Simon himself might have died of old age. Because I never really believed all that business about Simon being 2,000 years old, did I?

It had been fully five years since our last adventure together when suddenly he was back, on the other end of the telephone, acting as if he’d seen me not ten minutes earlier.

“Hello, my friend:”

“Simon! Is that really you?”

“Are you free for lunch?”

“Of course! But what—?”

“I could not pass through New York without telephoning my publisher now, could I?” I knew his face would have that familiar sly smile as he said it.

I arranged to meet him at one o’clock at a steak house near my office. It had a small back room where customers could talk or drink away the afternoon without interruption, and I often took my authors there to iron out some sticky point in their plots or in our contracts.

“You look the same,” I told Simon, meaning every word of it. His large body and worn but vigorous face reminded me of our first meeting 22 years earlier.

“You are looking good too, my friend. Putting on a little weight, though. How is Shelly?”

“She’s fine. Away visiting her mother in Florida at the moment.”

“Ah, then you’re alone?”

“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.

“Come to England with me,” he said suddenly.

It was the sort of spur-of-the-moment suggestion I would have relished in the old days. “I can’t, Simon. I have my work.”

“We shall have some high old times, as we did in the old days.”

“Still chasing the Devil?”

“Yes. It is an eternal quest.” His face had gone solemn at my question. “Satanism has become a new fad among many young people.”

“I’ve been reading about the resurgence of witch cults in England. Is that what you’re after?”

He shook his head. “Something far more evil, my friend.” The old eyes flashed with a familiar fire. “The treasure of the late Jack the Ripper.”

“At least you admit that he’s dead. Every once in a while someone tries to prove he’s still alive. But I never heard of any treasure.”

“I have a communication from a man in London named Ceritus Vats. A collector of esoterica. He feels my presence is needed to forestall a murder. And to find a treasure.”

I thought about it. I still had a week’s vacation coming, and June was a slow time in publishing. The autumn books were already in various stages of production, the concern of other people, and I wouldn’t have to finalize our spring list for months yet. Shelly would be at her mother’s place another week. There was no real reason why I couldn’t go, except common sense.

And I’d never let that stop me before. If Simon Ark was going to find a treasure belonging to Jack the Ripper, I wanted to be along for the show.

I phoned Shelly in Florida to tell her what was up. She’d always had mixed feelings about Simon Ark, and I knew she was far from delighted to have him back in our lives. But she didn’t argue about the trip. She only said, “Be careful,” and then, “I’ll see you next week.”

At ten o’clock the following night Simon and I were airborne over the Atlantic. It had been a bumpy takeoff from Kennedy, in the midst of an early summer rainstorm, but the flight quickly settled down to a smooth uneventful crossing. “What have you been doing with yourself these past five years?” I asked Simon.

He smiled. “Five years is merely a weekend to me, my friend. A pause, a rest from the search. As a matter of fact, I was studying at an Irish abbey for part of the time. I had only just returned to America when Ceritus Vats got in touch with me.”

“What sort of man is Vats? And how did he know where to reach you? I’ve never known your address in all these years, except for the brief times you stayed with Shelly and me.”

“Ceritus Vats is a bookseller among other things. He operates from a little shop off Hammersmith Road in London. He knows my wants in certain fields, and he knows an address where I may be reached.”

“You mentioned esoterica. The mystic arts, I suppose.”

“In this case, yes, though he deals in a wide range of books and maps. Anything old or rare.”

I was prepared to meet a man who went with his name, but Ceritus Vats was a surprise. Our first afternoon in London was misty with a damp June rain, but the shop of Ceritus Vats was warm and brightly lit. He was a short handsome gentleman with white hair, who moved between the stacks of old books with a nimbleness born of long experience. Though the shop had the traditional hodge-podge look of a good second-hand book store, I never doubted that he could lay his hand on any title in the place at a moment’s notice.

“So good to see you again, Simon,” he said with a smile. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”