The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [81]
Twenty-Six: A Visitor
Fatigue held Alan Charterhouse in its ironically tireless grip. He stared out the double-paned window of the coach, while the small phlogiston heater kept the cold mercifully at bay, and Harry the coachman, who had come into the coach to warm himself, spoke in an almost-constant stream of anecdotes about old adventures he’d been on with Beckett.
“. . . of course, that’s the thing about the ectoplasmatists. All kinds of fancy arms and what, but a bullet between the eyes is a bullet, right?” Harry’s storehouse of problems that bullets could solve seemed inexhaustible. Alan blinked and struggled to keep his eyes open. His mind had been wandering far afield over the last…How long have we been here? He thought to himself. Earlier, he’d been sure that he’d seen a tiny, black shape making its way slowly across the field of ice. He’d followed it with his eyes as it moved out of sight, towards Gotheray Castle, and then became convinced that he’d only imagined it.
“Now, I know it was none of Mr. Beckett’s fault,” Harry went on, crooked teeth gleaming beneath the wiry forest of his moustache and mutton-chops, “I’m sure he told that fellow what happened just the way it did, but I think it’s a crying shame that ol’ Harry never made it in to any of those books.”
Alan blinked again. “What books?”
“Why, those . . . oh, what do you call ‘em? Ted East.” The loquacious coachman seemed incredulous. “Don’t tell me, a boy your age, and you never heard of Ted East.”
“No,” Alan said. “I mean, yes. I have heard…I mean, I read them. All of them. What do they have to do with Mr. Beckett?”
“Why, they’re his stories,” Harry replied. “Oh, I mean, they’ve been spiced up a bit, especially the saucy parts with all them foreign ladies. I know he’s sick now, but even when he was young Mr. Beckett weren’t much of a looker. Besides, there never was any time for dilly-dallying like that, if you know what I mean…”
“Beckett is Ted East?” Alan’s voice was soft.
“Well, after a fashion, yes.”
“Harry,” Skinner interrupted suddenly. “Sh.” The coachman was immediately silent and attentive, while Skinner, her face largely inscrutable behind the silver blindfold, pressed her lips together with concentration. “There’s…” She twitched slightly. “An echo. Someone, a coach, coming up from the North . . .”
“Not the North, miss,” Harry whispered. “That’s up the mountain.”
“I know. The South, I mean. The South.” She shook her head. “I can’t seem to…to hear it very clearly…”
“Well, all right,” Harry said cheerfully, pulling on his heavy gloves, hat, and coat. “I’ll have a look, I will.” He grinned at Alan. “Back into the cold again. Make sure the heat stays on, right?”
A blast of frigid air accompanied Harry’s exit, and Alan pulled the door closed as soon as he deemed it polite. After a few moments, the door opened, bringing more cold air with it, and Harry climbed back inside.
“You’re right, miss. A coach is following the trail up from the south. Big one, got the Rowan-Czarnecki crest on it. Should be here in a few minutes, I’d think.”
Skinner nodded. “All right, Harry,” she told him. “You know what to do.” Though she didn’t appear to move her head, Alan was somehow certain that she’d fixed her attention on him. “Well, it is their house, right?”
“Do you think they’re…” Alan began, unsure how to finish. “I mean, it’s their summer home. Are they coming to…?”
“It’s hardly Summer, is it?” Skinner replied. “No. They’re not here for a visit, I think. They’re probably here for us.”
“So, what do we do?”
“Right now, I think we should wait here where it’s warm.”
Alan nodded. “That’s a good idea.” After a moment, he added, “Is Mr. Beckett really Ted East?”
“Yes,” Skinner told him. “He sold his life story to a potboiler novelist so that he could buy his medicine. I wouldn’t say anything to him about it, if I were you.”
“Oh.”
They waited in silence for several minutes, while Alan’s anticipation grew. His young mind, possessed as it was of a fearsome capacity for reason, desperately conjured