He tamped his pipe and puffed a cloud of smoke toward the set of Dickens on the mantel. His hands weren't trembling now, but he still felt sick to his stomach.
Poltergeist? he thought, allowing the morbid, impossible thought to surface again. It must — actually — have been a poltergeist! A girl in her teens — well, close enough — and sudden breakages or fires in the house when she was emotionally stressed. Are there child psychologists who specialize in… poltergeistery? Maybe it was a one-shot thing, maybe it will have worn off by morning. We'll be able to forget about the whole thing.
One of the cats, a tailless black-and-gray male, was clawing the back of the couch, which was already hanging in tatters from the previous attentions of the cats. "No no, Chaz," said Marrity absently, saying what Daphne always told the cats, "we don't do that. We've talked about it, remember?"
What the hell kind of movie did Grammar leave lying around, anyway, driving little kids nuts? But apparently Grammar did mean to burn it. She would never knowingly hurt a child. Would never have.
Marrity didn't want to use the word poltergeist in Daphne's hearing, since she had seen the Steven Spielberg movie with that title. The little girl in that movie had been contacted by some kind of ghosts through a television screen, and he didn't want Daphne to develop a phobia about TV sets.
His Encyclopedia Britannica — admittedly a set published in 1951 — seemed to take poltergeist phenomena seriously. In the article on psychical research he had also read the section on telepathy and clairvoyance, but though the writer of the article seemed credulous of these things too, there was no mention of the sort of psychic link he and Daphne had.
Their link had shown up in the two years since Lucy's death, but until today it had alternated between them — for a week or so he would be able to catch occasional thoughts of Daphne's, and then the ability would fade out, and a month later Daphne would be able to see some of his thoughts for six to ten days. Maybe the no-telepathy periods had been getting longer, the alternating telepathic periods getting closer together, until now they had actually overlapped. Would they stop, now, after having finally occurred together? He hoped so, even though he was glad he and Daphne had been linked this afternoon, when the fires had started.
At dinner Daphne hadn't eaten much of her chili con came. Twice she had choked, as if she was having difficulty swallowing; but he had caught an image from her thoughts — a brief glimpse of somebody spooning out brains from a broken bald head with a splayed crown on it, seen in black and white and therefore obviously from the damned movie she had watched — and he had not asked her to say what was wrong. Maybe he should have.
More strongly than he had in a long time, he wished that Lucy had not died, leaving Daphne and him adrift. Even two parents were hardly enough to raise a child. He remembered a passage from Chesterton: "Although this child is much better than I, yet I must teach it. Although this being has much purer passions than I, yet I must control it."
Daphne's fingernails were always bitten down to the quick; for these last two years, anyway.
I do my best, he thought, trying the phrase on; and then he wondered how often he really did do his best, and for how long at a time.
Since he wouldn't be setting the alarm clock for tomorrow, he poured more Scotch into his glass, though the ice had long since melted. He wouldn't be paid for tomorrow either.
But there's gold under the bricks in Grammar's shed, he thought. Possibly.
Gold, which Grammar could have expected to survive the shed burning down; and some kind of movie, and some letters, which would reliably have been destroyed. Well, the movie was now burned up.
There had been a message on the telephone answering machine from Mercy Medical Center in Shasta when he and Daphne had got home; he had called them back, and they had confirmed that Grammar had died on Mount Shasta at about noon.
He took a sip of the lukewarm whisky, grateful for the full-orchestra burn of it in his throat, and then reached into his inside jacket pocket and carefully drew out the sheaf of letters that he had taken from the ammunition box in Grammar's shed. Some flecks of broken old brown paper fell onto the Blue Book on his lap, and he brushed them and the booklet off onto the rug. The letters smelled of gasoline, and he laid his pipe carefully in the ashtray.
The first envelope he looked into was postmarked June 10, 1933, from Oxford, but the letter inside was handwritten in German, and Marrity was only able to puzzle out the salutation — Meine liebe Tochter, which clearly meant "my dear daughter," and the signature, Peccavit, which he believed was Latin for "I have sinned."
He flipped through the stack, poking his fingers into the envelopes to find one of the English-language letters he recalled seeing in the shed, and pulled free the first one he found.
The postmark was Princeton, New Jersey, August 2, 1939; the printed return address on the envelope was Fuld Hall, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study; and under it, in pencil, someone had scrawled Einstein Rm. 215.
Marrity paused. Had Albert Einstein written Grammar a letter? That would be worth something!
Hoping it might be from Einstein, and hoping that a couple of others in the batch might be too, he carefully unfolded the yellowed letter. It was typed, and addressed to "Miranda," though the addressee on the envelope was Lisa Marrity.
My dear Miranda, Marrity read, I have sent today a Letter to the King of Naples, advising him of the ominous Behavior of Antonio, and advising him to busy himself in acquiring pre-emptively for Naples the Power toward which Antonio is looking.
Marrity recognized these names — Miranda was the daughter of the magician Prospero in Shakespeare's play The Tempest, and Antonio was Prospero's treacherous brother who had usurped the dukedom of Milan and driven Prospero and his daughter into exile.
Grammar had called her father Prospero.
I did not mention the other Power, the letter went on, and did not the Caliban who is now your chaste Incubus. (And whose Fault?) I can assist Naples with the First, but I will work only to conceal and obliterate all Records of the Other. Ill break my Staff, and bury it certain Fathoms in the Earth, and deeper than did ever Plummet sound I'll drown my Book.
Caliban was an inhuman monster in the Shakespeare play, and the break my Staff sentence was a verbatim quote from the Prospero character.
The letter ended with, And you should do the Same also. Forgive yourself about 1933, and then forget even what it was you did. Starve Caliban with Inattention. I should never have given him Shelter — I've learned my lesson, not to interfere with Suicides! Twice the Interfering has made Disasters, and so I must somehow have the Palm Springs Singularity to be destroyed. And you must burn the verdammter Kaleidoscope Shed!
Marrity actually lowered the age-yellowed letter and looked around the dim corners of the room, as if this were a trick being played on him.
Then he looked back at the sheet of old paper. The letter was signed Peccavit, in the same hand as the first letter he'd looked at.
Was this Peccavit Grammar's father? And was he Albert Einstein? Were all these letters from him?
Marrity realized glumly that he couldn't believe it. It was inconceivable that Albert Einstein could know about the shed he and Moira had played in as children. There were any number of plausible reasons why someone might write Einstein on an envelope.