'I guess not,' smiled Edward. 'They did the same thing in England, didn't they? Pretending to be diving on the Royal George, when in fact they were looking for the Mary Rose. It was the only way they could throw the scrap merchants off the scent. A scrap merchant would have dynamited the Mary Rose to pieces, just for the sake of her bronze cannon.'
Duglass Evelith beckoned to Enid, and asked her in a hoarse whisper, 'Bring me the charts out of the chart-table. There's a good girl.'
'Enid's your grand-daughter?' asked Forrest, as she went off to get the maps.
Duglass Evelith stared at him. 'My grand-daughter?' he asked, as if he were mystified by the question.
Forrest actually blushed. 'Well, you know,' he flustered. 'It was just an assumption.'
Old man Evelith nodded his head, but offered no clarification as to who Enid might actually be. Maid? Mistress? Companion? It wasn't really our business, but I think all of us would have loved to know.
'Here,' said Enid, bringing a large folded chart of the approaches to Salem Harbour, and spreading it out on the table. Again, that dark glimpse of red nipples against sheer black fabric; strangely arousing and yet equally frightening, too. Enid caught me looking at her, and looked straight back at me, without smiling, without any hint of possible friendship. The thin sunlight illuminated her hair like a black coronet.
Duglass Evelith opened a drawer under the table and produced a large sheet of tracing paper, on which coordinates and transit bearings were already marked. He laid the tracing paper over the chart; although only he knew exactly how it had to be keyed into position, so the chart and the overlay would have been useless to anybody else. One bearing ran through the tip of Juniper Point and the southernmost head of Winter Island; the other bearing ran through Quaker Hill, cleaving a sharp line through Quaker Lane Cottage. About 420 metres off the Granitehead shore an X was marked: the supposed position where the David Dark had gone down, over 290 years ago.
Edward looked at me in excitement. The X was no more than 250 metres south-south-west of where we had been searching the seabed yesterday morning, but under the sea, with its currents and debris and whirling mud, 250 metres was as good as a mile away.
Duglass Evelith watched us with mild amusement. Then he folded up the chart, and laid it to one side, and slipped the overlay back in his drawer.
'You can have this information on several conditions,' he said. 'Firstly, that you never once mention my name in connection with your work. Secondly, that you keep me in daily touch with what you are doing, and that you show me everything, no matter how insignificant, that you bring up from the seabed. Thirdly, and most importantly, that if you locate the copper vessel in which the demon is supposed to be incarcerated, that you do not attempt to open it, but that you pack it at once in ice and bring it here, by refrigerated truck.'
'You want it here?'
'Do you think you can handle it?' Duglass Evelith demanded. 'If it should actually arise, and begin to wield its terrible powers again, do you think you could give it what it craves?'
Forrest said, 'I'm not sure I like this at all.'
But Edward said, 'I don't have any particular objection, provided we can have access to whatever it is, once we've brought it here. We'll want to make all kinds of tests. Normal, as well as paranormal. Bone analysis, carbon dating, ultra-violet scanning, X-ray. Then we'll want to go through the Paarsman test for kinetic energy, and a hypnovolition test.'
Duglass Evelith thought about this, and then shrugged. 'As long as you don't turn my home into an experimental laboratory.'
Edward said, 'I have to be quite straight with you, Mr Evelith. We still lack finance. First of all we have to locate the wreck; then, when we've done that, we have to clear all the mud out of her, collect and tabulate all the broken bits and pieces, and see just how much of the structure we're going to be able to bring up to the surface intact. Finally, we're going to have to rent several large barges, a couple of pontoons, and a floating sheerlegs crane. We have to be talking $5 — $6 million. And that's just for starters.'
'You mean it may be some considerable time before you can bring the wreck to the light of day?'
'That's correct. We certainly can't bring it up next week, even if we find it.'
Duglass Evelith took off his spectacles. 'Well,' he said, 'that's rather a pity. The longer it takes, the less chance I have of seeing it completed.'
'You really want to come face-to-face with an Aztec demon?' I asked him.
He sniffed. The lord of Mictlampa is not any ordinary demon,' he told me.
'Mictlampa?'
'That's the Mexican name for the region of the dead.' 'And does the demon himself have a name?' asked Edward.
'Of course. The lord of Mictlampa is named in the Codex Vaticanus A which was drawn up by Halian monks in the 1500s. There is even an illustration of him, descending out of the night head-first, the way a spider descends his web, to ensnare the souls of the living. He holds sway over all the other Aztec demons of the underworld, including Tezcatlipoca, or "smoking mirror", and alone with Tonacatecutli, the lord of the sun, is entitled to wear a crown. He is always shown with an owl, a corpse, and a dish of human hearts, which are his chief sustenance. His name is Mictantecutli.'
I felt a chill go down my back, and looked at Edward sharply. 'Mictantecutli,' I repeated.
'Yes,' said Edward. ' "Mick the Cutler." '
Twenty-Two
I dropped Edward and Forrest off at Edward's house on Story Street, and then drove directly to Salem Hospital, a gray squarish complex of concrete blocks off Jefferson Avenue, and not far from Mill Pond, where David Dark had once lived. The sky had cleared, and there was a high thin sunset, which was reflected in the puddles of the parking-lot. I walked across to the hospital doors with my hands jammed into the pockets of my jacket, and hoped to hell that Constance Bedford was making a reasonable recovery. I should have insisted that she and Walter stay away from Quaker Lane Cottage. A warning hadn't been enough. Now the woman was blind and it was all because of me.
I found Walter sitting in the waiting area on the fourth story, his head bowed, staring at the polished vinyl floor. Behind him there was a lithograph of a pelican by Basil Ede. Walter didn't look up, even when I sat down next to him. A soft chime sounded, and a seductive telephonist's voice called, 'Dr Murray, pick up the white phone please. Dr Murray.'
'Walter?' I said.
He raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, both from tiredness and from weeping. He looked about a hundred years older, and I was reminded of what Duglass Evelith had said about the man who had sailed on the Arabella. He opened his mouth, but somehow his throat seemed too dry to say anything.
'What's the latest?' I asked him. 'Is she any better? Have you seen her yet?'
'Yes,' he said. 'I've seen her.'
'And?'
'She's better.'
I was about to say something encouraging, but then I realized that there was something wrong about the way he had spoken, some flatness in the intonation that didn't quite ring true.
'Walter?' I asked him.
Unexpectedly, he reached over and took hold of my hand, and held it very tight. 'You just missed her,' he said. 'She died about twenty minutes ago. Massive cerebral damage, caused by intense cold. Not to mention shock, and the physical trauma to the eyes and face. She didn't really have much of a hope.'