The Other Side - J. D. Robb [90]
“Goodness. Yes, I suppose you’d better call them, then.”
A little old lady of a man, Mr. Smoak rubbed his hands together, pink face crinkled with alarm. “This is terrible. Nothing like it has ever happened before. I run a respectable house!”
“Of course you do. Maybe it’s nothing—an accident, a misunderstanding.”
Mr. Smoak didn’t look reassured.
Curiosity is a powerful motivator. Wasn’t it what had inspired her grandfather to invent things? When Mr. Smoak trotted back into his house to call the police, Angie went around the side and up the back stairs. To investigate.
In truth, she’d always wanted to see Henry’s room. Not like this, though. From the look of it, someone had used a crowbar to break the lock on the door, and inside everything was topsyturvy, drawers open, bedsheets askew, his clothes thrown about willy-nilly. Papers everywhere. A burglary? But then why not steal his most, really his only valuable possession—his typewriter? There it was, a Caligraph New Special No. 3, sitting on the pine desk under the window. It still had a piece of paper in the platen. She went closer to read:
Should the Nation Own the Railways?
By Dexter C. Broome
(for Atlantic M’ly?)
and then a paragraph and a half about whether we should nationalize the rail system.
Who in the world was Dexter C. Broome?
She found more essays and articles scattered on the floor, all typed by the Caligraph: “The Irrigation Problem in the South-west,” by Seymour Bixby; “Great Plains Heroine,” by Helen A. Buchanan; “An Afternoon at the General Store,” by Billy Ray Bobbick. Even a poem, “Evening Falls Over the Hiawatha” by Miss E. L. H. And magazines and journals scattered about—North American Review, Harper’s Weekly, The Critic.
Was Henry a writer? And if so, why did he use other people’s names?
Not much else to see in the chaos. He used Dr. Caswell’s Tooth Powder. His comb was missing several teeth. His only spare pair of shoes had recently been resoled. If he had any photographs of loved ones, they weren’t visible, and she was not the kind of girl to snoop. Or so she told herself as she backed out of the room and tiptoed down the back stairs, not anxious to encounter Mr. Smoak again. Or the police.
She’d wanted to see Henry’s room in hopes of unraveling the mystery of him, but all she’d done was tie it tighter.
“I’m not saying I don’t understand the attraction,” Norah Hersh murmured behind the cup of tea she held to her lips. “Appreciate it, even. Heavens. Look at him.”
Angie was already looking at him. Maybe it was the way Henry had combed his hair tonight, straight back from his high, handsome forehead, that made him look not only magnificent (in her completely unbiased opinion) but also somehow Mephistophelian. She assumed the effect was deliberate, and that he knew what he was doing. Mrs. Grimmett certainly appreciated it—she was practically drooling on him. But then, so was placid, moon-faced Mrs. Mortimer. They had him cornered over by the fireplace, where Mrs. Grimmett was trying to impress him with her knowledge of the five different types of ghosts (apparitions, shadows, mists, orbs, and poltergeists).
Angie eyed the very slight bulge in his waistcoat pocket—no one else would notice it, she was sure. Inside was a glove, saturated with a mix of turpentine and pulverized luminous paint. When put on in the dark and then illuminated by a shuttered lantern, it looked like a disembodied hand.
They might or might not use it, though. The turpentine smell was still pretty strong. “We’ll play it by ear”—they’d said that to each other so often, it was their mantra.
“I’m only saying—”
“I know what you’re saying,” Angie interrupted her friend. “That I should be careful. And that’s good advice, but unfortunately it’s come a little too late.”
“Oh, dear. I was afraid of that.”
“But you mustn’t worry about me, Norah. Heavens, I’m older than you are.”
“By six months. The point is, I’m older than you in other ways.”
“The ways of love?” Angie raised and lowered her eyebrows