Slowly, Bagnell emptied his pockets. There was the fairly crisp $50. And, also, there was a limp $20, and two dim ones, and 50 cents. His sigh was quite immediate. So was Mr Sydney’s reaction. “Oh, very well, the Firm will settle for $70, and will cover State tax. The Firm is not hard-hearted. Keep the two-fifty for lunch. The Museum will probably offer you possum a la taxidermy. Oh, and I shall require you to show some ID and to sign a little piece of paper, and then shall I gift-wrap it for you? No? But remember now: Not more than one week.”
“Company in the parlor,” Curator Larraby said, briskly.
Bagnell blinked. “An odd phrase to come from a self-admitted church member.”
Company, in the small lecture-room (doors locked), consisted of Hughes of the Southeastern Interstate Criminology Institute (commonly called the Crim Lab), and Dr Preston Budworth of every hospital in town. “My colleagues insist that the best specialty is dermatology. They say, ‘The patients never die and they never get cured; they just keep coming back.’ And I say, ‘True, but plastic surgeons make more. Oh boy, yes. Of course, we work hard for it, oh, it’s hell on the feet.’ “
He said no more for the moment, the lights having then been turned off; then he said, “Jesus Christ!” — the slide of the Paper-Man’s head having briefly flashed on the screen. “Course, I’ve seen worse,” said Dr Budworth. “Oh, lots worse. But seen nothing the same. What in salvation is it?” The copy of the ambrotype next appeared. “Soldier boy, hey?” It remained a while, then the severed head, with its cold, sly sneer, came back to grimace at them. Dr Budworth cleared his throat and said, “Looks as though he’d been shot dead at Gettysburg and had his picture taken at Appomattox.”
In a voice slow and heavy, Larraby said, “Perhaps you’re right.”
There was a silence then, broken by Hughes asking, “Is this your question, Curator? ‘Are these two pictures of the same man?’ Is that it?” Larraby said, yes, that was it. Was asked to show both slides side by side. Did so. Hughes then said he thought they might well be. “For example, that drooping — Oh, excuse me, Dr Budworth.” But Budworth told him to go on. “- that drooping eyelid. And then you observe the crease in the ear lobe. Can you see that really very slight scar on the cheekbone, on the opposite side from the drooping eyelid? And, ah, of course in the, I assume, post-mortem photo, some of the teeth are exposed, and you see that the left canine is crooked and protrudes. Of course in the one in uniform, he has his mouth closed, but there is still a slight protrusion just over where that canine would be.
“Now, these are technical observations, though not very technical, and of course my simple guess would have been anyway that it is the same person, some years apart, though I wouldn’t offhand guess how many. Not more than ten, I’d say. Maybe even five, or a bit less, since. war being war, you know. ”
The “post-mortem” photo, a perfectly correct description, certainly, had been cropped in the copying process, and it was not evident that the head was separate from the torso. If Hughes suspected anything, Hughes was not saying. To Bagnell, trying to put aside what he knew, merely the difference in the photographic techniques, more than a century apart, was obvious.
Preston Budworth’s comments were more technical, but he came to the same conclusion. “Of course I would want to make measurements and enlarge the pictures even more, on as close to even-scale as possible, before I’d sign my name to anything, not that I’m going to, anyway. Historical detective work is lots of fun, of course, and nobody waiting to sue you for malpractice. Well. I wouldn’t want to ask where you got that ghouly-looking one from.”
Promptly, Hughes said, “I would. I will. Where?”
But they did not tell him. Not yet.
Military historians identified uniform coat and badges as those of the 23rd Patriot Rifles. Phone calls in all directions finally produced Charles O’Neill Sturtevant, Col., USA (Ret.), who had an enormous collection of Civil War photographs. And -
“Mind you, young man, it’s aloan. Your balls are in bond for it.”
“Yes, Colonel, of course, any time you like, sir,” babbled Bagnell, scarcely knowing what he was saying.
On that red-letter day, against what awesome odds, Ed Bagnell found what he was hoping for: printed off a cracked wet-plate, though only slightly cracked, the likenesses of three young men, frozen stolid, hands on knees; and on the back the signatures — two florid and scrawly/scrolly, one awkward and crammed — Corporal W. M. Ewing. Private Elwen Michaels. Private Ephraim Mackilwhit.
Now for the first time, there was a name.
The 23rd Patriot Rifles had been enlisted in Gainsboro, as far to the South as it was perhaps possible for a Northern town to be, and there Bagnell went as fast as was consistent with speed laws, and energy consistent with small packets of crackers-and-cheese sold in gas stations. In the Gainsboro phone book he pushed a restless finger down the columns in search of people named Mackilwhit.
He found not one.
That is, the current one contained not one. At the public library, in the reference room: “Out-of-date telephone directories? Nooo. We don’t keep them.”
“Oh. ” Sinking voice, sinking feeling.
“But I’ll tell you who does. Mr Rodeheaver does. I’ll write down the address for you.”
Homer would have felt at home in the old room where Mr Rodeheaver worked. Bagnell felt that if he had wanted the directory for Fusby-le-Mud, 1901, it would have been there. Mr Rodeheaver perhaps collected them, perhaps compiled mailing lists, or traced missing heirs. Bagnell didn’t care. Mr Rodeheaver was getting on in years and he listened patiently; then he asked, “What’s it worth to you?”
“Worth —?”
“Is it worth five dollars?”
Mr Rodeheaver began to pull down old phone books and pile them on his dusty desk; beckoned Bagnell to come look. Waited while he did. Ceasing three years before, but as far back from then, farther back than Bagnell cared to go, a Mrs Lambert Mackilwhit had lived at 269 Longfellow Avenue. Bagnell copied the address, handed the man a crumpled five-dollar bill.
“Well, there’s lunch,” said Mr Rodeheaver.
Did she still live there? Had she died three years ago? Had she just given up her phone, there being too few left alive to call her? Or, perhaps, there had been some difficulty about a bill, and she had let her listing lapse, and had a phone installed in the name of a neighbor, friend, or. well, probably not. But. Hurt to try? Might find a lead. Leads had been found, one after another.
Two-sixty-nine was in rather better shape than the other houses, which had all once been neat and bright. long ago. and Mrs Mackilwhit lived in a little room on the top floor, whither he was directed by a series of ageless women in cotton house-dresses, of whom each seemed to have three children and one in utero. But Mrs Mackilwhit was not ageless. Mrs. Mackilwhit was very aged indeed, and her skin hung in heavy flaps.
Did she know of an Ephraim Mackilwhit, who had served in the Civil War? A silence. The room smelled, rather, but of nothing worse than old people’s flesh and of cabbage, and perhaps it was only the neighbors’ cabbage. The room contained what was left of her life as it had drawn in upon itself, decade after decade; there was hardly room enough to move, although no doubt the woman who lived there had moved enough. She sat in her chair and she did not move now, and she stared at nothing which other people could see.