“What about food? Is there any particular store where you buy it? Your mother didn’t mention such details in her letter. I—”
She stopped, startled in spite of herself at that mention of the letter. She stood for a moment, hands rigid in the hot water; then forced on:
“Your poor mother! It was such a tired letter she wrote. I cried when I read it.”
From under half-closed eyes she saw that the girl’s lips were trembling – and she knew her victory. She had a brief blazing exultation at the way every word, every mood of this moment was under her control. She said swiftly:
“We can talk about those details later.”
The girl said tearfully: “We have a charge account at Graham’s General Store in Agan. You can phone up. He delivers this far.”
The woman walked hurriedly into the dining room to get the dishes that were still there, and to hide the irrepressible light of triumph in her eyes. A charge account! The problem of obtaining control of the money had actually made her feel sick, the consciousness that legal steps might be necessary, the conviction that she must first establish herself in the household and in the community.
And here was her stepping-stone: a charge account! Now, if this Graham’s store would only accept her order – what was the girl saying?
“Mrs Carmody, I want to apologize for not answering your question about my notebook at breakfast. You see, the neighbors always want to know what great-grandfather says about them; so, at breakfast, when he’s strongest, I ask him questions, and take notes. I pretend to him that I’m going to write a book about his life when I grow up. I couldn’t explain all that in front of him, could I?”
“Of course not,” said the woman. She thought sharply: So the neighbors were interested in the old man’s words about them. They’d be interested and friendly with anyone who kept them supplied with the latest titbits of news. She’d have to keep her ears open, and perhaps keep a notebook herself.
She grew aware that the girl was speaking again: “I’ve been wanting to tell you, great-grandpa really has the gift of seeing. You won’t believe that yet, but—”
The girl’s eyes were bright, eager; and the woman knew better than to let such enthusiasm pass.
“Why, of course, I believe it,” she said. “I’m not one of these skeptics who won’t face facts. All through history there have been people with strange powers; and besides, didn’t I see with my own eyes Mr Wainwright step through a solid gate. I—”
Her voice faltered; her own words describing that incredible action brought a vivid return of reality, and she could only finish weakly: “Of course, I believe it.”
“What I meant, Mrs Carmody,” the girl was saying, “don’t be offended if he seems to say something unpleasant. He always thinks he’s talking about events that have already happened, and then, of course, there’s the way he talks about your sister, if you’re a woman, and your brother if you’re a man. It’s really you he means.”
Really you—
The woman’s mind spun curiously; and the memory of the words stayed with her after the girl had ridden off to school, even after Graham’s accepted her order on behalf of the Wainwright farm with a simple, utterly effective: “Oh, yes, Mrs Carmody, we know about you.”
It was not until nearly noon that she went out onto the porch, where the old man was sitting, and asked the question that had been quivering in her mind:
“Mr Wainwright, yesterday you mentioned you had seen my sister in Kempster. W-what did she have to say?”
She waited with a tenseness that startled her; and there was the queer thought that she was being utterly ridiculous. The old man took his long pipe out of his mouth, thoughtfully. He said:
“She was coming out of the courthouse, and—”
“Courthouse!” said Mrs Carmody.
The old man was frowning to himself. “She didn’t speak to me, so I cannot say what she was doing there.” He finished politely: “Some little case, no doubt. We all have them.”
Kent was aware of the car slowing. The driver nodded at a two-story wooden building with a veranda, and said:
“That’s the hotel. I’ll have to leave you now and do some chores. I’ll finish that story for you some other time. Or, if I’m too busy, just ask anyone. The whole district knows all about it.”
The following morning the sun peered with dazzling force into his hotel room. Kent walked to the window and stared out over the peaceful village.
For a moment there was not a sound audible. The little spread of trees and houses lay almost dreamily under the blue, blue sky.
Kent thought quietly: He had made no mistake in deciding to spend the rest of the summer here, while, in a leisurely fashion, he carried on negotiations for the sale of the farm his parents had left him. Truth was he had been overworking.
He went downstairs and amazed himself by eating two eggs and four slices of bacon in addition to cereal and toast. From the dining room he walked to the veranda – and there was the ghost sitting in one of the wicker chairs.
Kent stopped short. The tiny beginning of a chill formed at the nape of his spine; then the old man saw him and said:
“Good morning, Mr Kent. I should take it very kind if you would sit down and talk with me. I need cheering up.”
It was spoken with an almost intimate pathos; and yet Kent had a sudden sense of being beyond his depth. Somehow the old man’s friendliness of the day before had seemed unreal.
Yet here it was again.
He shook himself. After all, part of the explanation at least was simple. Here was an old man – that ghost part was utterly ridiculous, of course – an old man, then, who could foretell the future. Foretell it in such a fashion that, in the case of Mrs Carmody, he, the old man, had actually had the impression that she had been around for months before she arrived.
Apparently, he had had the same impression about Kent. Therefore –
“Good morning, Mr Wainwright!” Kent spoke warmly as he seated himself. “You need cheering up, you say. Who’s been depressing you?”
“Oh!” The old man hesitated, his finely lined face twisted into a faint frown. He said finally, slowly. “Perhaps, it is wrong of me to have mentioned it. It is no one’s fault, I suppose. The friction of daily life, in this case Mrs Carmody pestering me about what her sister was doing in court.”
Kent was silent, astounded. The reference of the old man to the only part of the story that he, Kent, knew, was – shattering. His brain recoiled from the coincidence into a tight, corded layer of thoughts:
Was this – alien – creature a mind reader as well as seer and ghost? An old, worn-out brain that had taken on automaton qualities, and reacted almost entirely to thoughts that trickled in from other minds? Or –
He stopped, almost literally pierced by the thought that came: Or was this reference to Mrs Carmody, this illusion that Mrs Carmody was still looking after him, one of those fantastic, brain-chilling re-enactments of which the history of haunted houses was so gruesomely replete?
Dead souls, murderess and murdered, doomed through all eternity to live over and over again their lives before and during the crime!
But that was impossible. Mrs Carmody was still alive; in a madhouse to be sure, but alive.
Kent released carefully the breath of air he had held hard in his lungs for nearly a minute. “Why don’t you tell her,” he said finally, “to ask her sister about what she was doing in court!”
The thin, gray, old face wrinkled into puzzlement. The old man said with a curious dignity:
“It is more complicated than that, Mr Kent. I have never quite understood the appearance of so many twins in the world during the recent years of my life; and the fact that so many of them are scarcely on speaking terms with each other is additionally puzzling.”