Kurt Schiller was not surprised. He had never liked Charles Ponsonby, whom he had suspected of secret homosexuality; Chuck’s attitude was a little too subtly knowing, and the art whispered of a nightmare world beneath that anonymous exterior. Not its subject matter, more an emanation from Chuck. In Kurt’s book he had gone down as one of the chains-and-leather boys, heavily into pain, though Schiller had always assumed Chuck was on the receiving end. The passive type, scuttling around to serve some terrifying master. Well, evidently he, Kurt, had been wrong. Charles was a true sadist – had to be, to have done what he did to those poor children. As for himself, Kurt expected nothing. His credentials would guarantee him a post no matter what happened to the Hug, and he had the germ of an idea about transmitting diseases across the species barrier that he knew would excite the head of any research unit. Now that the photograph of Papa with Adolf Hitler was ashes on the hearth and his homosexuality was out in the open, he felt ready for the new life he intended to lead. Not in Holloman. In New York City, among his peers.
“Otis,” Tamara shouted from the door, “you’re needed at home, so get going! I couldn’t make hide nor hair out of what Celeste was saying, but it’s an emergency.”
Don Hunter and Billy Ho ranged themselves one on either side of Otis, helping him out of the row of seats.
“We’ll take him, Desdemona,” Don said. “Can’t have his wonky heart playing up if he’s needed.”
Cecil Potter watched channel six’s footage replayed on CBS in Massachusetts, Jimmy on his knee.
“Man, will you look at that?” he asked the monkey. “Uh-uh! Hooee! I am so glad to be outta there!”
When Carmine opened his door that evening Desdemona charged at him, weeping noisy tears, pummeling his chest angrily. Her nose was running and her eyes drowned.
Hugely gratified, he put her tenderly on the new sofa he had acquired because easy chairs were all very well and good for talk, but nothing beat a sofa for two people to smooch on. He let the storm of tears and ire abate, rocking her and murmuring, then used his handkerchief to clean her up.
“What was all that about?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“You!” she said, hiccoughing. “Bloody huh-huh-hero!”
“Not bloody, and no hero.”
“Bloody hero! Stepping in front to take the buh-buh-bullet! Oh, I could have killed you!”
“It’s great to see you too,” he said, laughing. “Now put up your feet and I’ll fix us a couple of snifters of X-O.”
“I knew I loved you,” she said later, calmed down, “but what a way to learn how much I love you! Carmine, I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”
“Does this mean that you’d rather be Mrs. Carmine Delmonico than live in London?”
“It does.”
He kissed her with love, gratitude, humility. “I’ll try to make you a good husband, Desdemona, but you’ve already had a televised preview of what a cop’s life entails. The future won’t be any different – long hours, absences, stray bullets. However, I figure someone’s on my side. So far I’m still in one piece.”
“As long as you understand that whenever you do foolhardy things, I’ll bash you up.”
“I’m hungry” was his answer. “How about some Chinese?”
She heaved a huge sigh of satisfaction. “I’ve just realized that I’m not in danger anymore.” A tinge of anxiety crept into her voice. “Am I?”
“The danger’s over, I’d bet my career on it. But there’s no point in looking for a new apartment. I’m not letting you leave this one. Sin is in.”
“The trouble is,” he said to her as they lay in bed, “that so much of it remains a mystery. I doubt Ponsonby would ever have talked, but when he died all hope of that died too. Wesley le Clerc! Tomorrow’s problem.”
“You mean Leonard Ponsonby’s murder? The identity of the woman and child with the face?” He had told her everything.
“Yes. And who dug the tunnel, and how did Ponsonby ever get all that gear into his killing premises, from a generator to a bank vault door? Who did the plumbing? A major job! The floor of the place is thirty feet below ground. Most house basements are damp at ten, fifteen feet, but this is as dry as an old bone. The county engineers are fascinated, looking very forward to tracing his drains.”
“And do you think that Claire is the second Ghost?”
“ ‘Think’ isn’t the right word. My gut says she is, my mind says she can’t be.” He sighed. “If she is the second Ghost, she has managed to get away clean.”
“Never mind,” she soothed, stroking his hair. “At least the murders are at an end. No more abducted girls. Claire couldn’t do it on her own, she’s female and grossly handicapped. So count your blessings, Carmine.”
“Count my stupidity, you mean. I’ve bungled this case from start to finish.”
“Only because it’s a new sort of crime committed by a new sort of criminal, my love. You’re an extremely competent, highly intelligent policeman. Regard the Ponsonby case as a new learning experience. The next time things will go better for you.”
He shuddered. “If I have my druthers, Desdemona, there will be no next time. The Ghosts are a one-off.”
She said no more, just wondered.
Chapter 29
Friday, March 11th, 1966
It took just over a week for Patrick, Paul and Luke to go through everything that the Ponsonby killing premises had to offer, from operating table to bathroom. The final report from Patrick and his forensics team pointed out very clearly that it was just as well they had caught a naked Charles Ponsonby bending over a naked abducted girl tied to a bed rigged for torture.
“The place was cleaner than Lady Macbeth. His fingerprints everywhere, yes, but it’s his place underneath his house, so why not? But of blood, body fluids, shreds of flesh or human hairs – no scintilla, iota or anything else microscopically small. As for Claire, no fingerprints, even on the lever behind the stove.”
They had pieced Ponsonby’s cleaning techniques together, staggered at the amount of work involved, the obsessiveness. A medical man, he knew that heat fixed blood and tissue, so the hose he used first and the water blaster he followed that with were fed by cold water; the talisman alcove was sealed off by a steel slider. When every surface was dry again, he steam blasted it. Finally he wiped everything down with ether. His surgical instruments, the meat hook and its hoist, and the penis sheaths were soaked in a blood-dissolving solution before being subjected to the rest of the treatments. They were also autoclaved.
When the room yielded nothing, they started on the drains with a compressor-driven vacuum, which sucked water containing no organic matter. Backwashing didn’t work, leading the county engineers to think that the effluent was not deposited in a septic tank. Ponsonby had his outlet in an underground stream, of which there were many in the neighborhood. Their sole remaining hope was to dig down to his pipes and follow them.
The moment the county engineers began to excavate her garden for no better reason than flogging an already dead horse, Claire Ponsonby took out a lien against willful destruction of her property, and respectfully petitioned the court to grant a blind woman permission to live in said property without perpetual and extremely distressing harassment by the Holloman police and their allies. Given that Charles Ponsonby had been positively identified as the Connecticut Monster and that nothing going on at 6 Ponsonby Lane was necessary to produce further evidence of this, Miss Ponsonby had had enough.