“Don’t know how he got away with it,” she said. “Claimed it was a true story and then didn’t tell anybody where the house actually was. Said it was to protect the innocent. What innocent? Frank Loomis has been dead for fifty years, and his two sons are living in California and couldn’t care less whether there are ghosts in the house. All they’re interested in is renting it each summer. Still, I guess he might’ve been afraid of legal complications. You’d know more about that than I would,” she said, and smiled at Carella.
“Well, I’m not a lawyer, ma’am,” Carella said, and returned the smile, aware that he’d just been flattered. “I wonder if you can tell me who rented the house three summers ago.”
“Yes, I looked for the lease right after you called. It was a man named Jack Rawles.”
“What’d he look like?”
“A pleasant-looking person.”
“Young, old?”
“In his late twenties, I’d say.”
“What color hair?”
“Black.”
“Eyes?”
“Brown.”
“And his address?”
She gave him the slip of paper on which she had copied Rawles’s Commonwealth Avenue address from the lease, and then she said, “It’s not an easy house to rent, you know. Frank never did modernize it. There’s electricity, of course, but the only heat’s from the fireplaces. There’re three of them, one in the living room, one in the kitchen, and another in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It’s not too bad during the summer, but it’s an icebox in the wintertime. Are you sure you want to go out there just now?”
“Yes, we’re positive,” Hillary said.
“I’d go with you, but I haven’t fixed my husband’s supper yet.”
“We’ll return the key to you as soon as we’ve looked the place over,” Carella said.
“There’s supposed to be a dead woman there, searching for her husband,” Mrs. Barton said.
At a local garage Carella bought a pair of skid chains and asked the attendant to put them on the car while he and Hillary got something to eat at the diner up the street. It was still snowing when they left the town at 7:00. The plows were working the streets and the main roads, but he was grateful for the chains when they hit the cutoff that led to the strand of land jutting out into the Atlantic. A sign crusted with snow informed them that this was Albright’s Spit, and a sign under it warned that this was a dead-end road. The car struggled through the thick snow, skidding and lurching up what Carella guessed was a packed sand road below. He almost got stuck twice, and when he finally spotted the old house looming on the edge of the sea, he heaved a sigh of relief and parked the car on a relatively level stretch of ground below the sloping driveway. Together, the flashlight lighting their way, he and Hillary made their way to the front door.
“Yes, this is it,” Hillary said. “This is the house.”
The front door opened into a small entryway facing a flight of stairs that led to the upper story. He found a light switch on the wall to the right of the door and flicked it several times. Nothing happened.
“Wind must’ve knocked down the power lines,” he said, and played the flashlight first on the steps leading upstairs and then around the small entryway. To the right was a door leading to a beamed kitchen. To the left was the living room—what would have been called the “best room” in the days when the house was built. A single thick beam ran the length of the room. There were two windows in the room, one overlooking the ocean, the other on the wall diagonally opposite. The fireplace was not in the exact center of the wall bearing it; the boxed stairwell occupied that space. It was, instead, tucked into the wall beyond, a huge walk-in fireplace with a black iron kettle hanging on a hinge, logs and kindling stacked on the hearth, big black andirons buckled out of shape from the heat of innumerable fires. On the mantel above the fireplace opening, Carella found a pair of candles in pewter candlesticks. He did not smoke; he asked Hillary for a match and lighted both candles.
The room, he now saw, was beautifully furnished in old American antiques, the likes of which could hardly be found for sale anywhere these days, except at exorbitant prices. There were several hurricane lamps around the room, and he lighted these now, and the richly burnished wood of the paneling and the furniture came to flickering life everywhere around him. If there were ghosts in this house, they could not have found a more hospitable place to inhabit. In a brass bucket by the fireplace he found several faded copies of the Hampstead News. The dates went back two years, the last time the house had been rented for the summer. He tore the newspapers to shreds, laid a bed of kindling over them, and stacked three hefty logs on top of that. The fire dispelled the lingering chill in the room and, with it, any possible notion that poltergeists might pop out of the woodwork at any moment. Outside, the wind howled in over the ocean and the shutters rattled, but the fire was crackling now, and the lamps and candles were lighted, and the only ghosts visible were the fire devils dancing on the grate. Carella went out into the kitchen, lighted the candles and lamps there, and then started another fire in the second fireplace. Neither he nor Hillary had yet gone up to the second story of the house.
In one of the kitchen cupboards he found an almost full bottle of scotch. The ice-cube trays in the refrigerator were empty, and the tap water had been turned off. He was starting out of the room with the bottle and two glasses when he noticed the kitchen door was ajar. He put down the glasses and the bottle, went to the door, and opened it all the way. The storm door outside was closed, but the simple slip bolt was unlatched. He threw the bolt and then studied the lock on the inner door. It was a Mickey Mouse lock with a spring latch that any burglar could open in seconds with a strip of celluloid, a knife blade, or a credit card. He locked it nonetheless, yanked on the knob to make certain the door was secure, and then went back into the living room, carrying the bottle of scotch and the two glasses. Hillary was standing at the fireplace. She had taken off the raccoon coat and also the green cardigan sweater. She stood with her legs slightly spread, her booted feet on the stone hearth, her hands extended toward the fire.
“Want some of this?” he said.
“Yes, please.”
“Only spirits in the place,” he said, intending a joke and surprised when she didn’t even smile in response. “We’ll have to drink it neat,” he said.
He poured generously into both glasses, put the bottle down on the mantel, raised his own glass, said, “Cheers,” and took a swallow of whiskey that burned its way clear down to his toes.
“See any ghosts yet?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Would you know one if you saw one?”
“I’d know one.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“No. But I understand the phenomenon.”
“How about explaining it to me?”
“You’re a skeptic,” she said. “I’d be wasting my time.”
“Try me.”
“No. I’d rather not.”
“Okay,” he said, and shrugged. “Want to tell me about Craig’s working habits instead?”
“What do you mean?”
“How did he work? There was a sheet of paper in his typewriter on the day he was killed. Did he normally type his stuff?”
“Yes.”
“Always? Did he ever write in longhand, for example?”
“Never.”
“Did he ever dictate?”
“To a secretary, do you mean? No.”
“Or into a machine?”