A Noise Downstairs by Linwood Barclay
“No.”
Charlotte was shredding the tissue in her hand. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help him.”
Anna asked her to wait a moment. She went to her office, grabbed the keys she had been holding for Paul, and gave them to Charlotte when she returned to the front of the house.
“You don’t have to take all this on yourself,” Anna told her. “That’s what I’m here for. To help Paul through this period. We need to give him some time.”
“Please don’t tell him I was here.”
“Why don’t you tell him? It might actually mean a lot to him, to know that you’re this concerned.”
“I don’t know,” she said, more to herself than Anna. “I just don’t know.”
Charlotte turned for the door, then stopped. “When I said I didn’t believe in ghosts, you didn’t respond to that. I’m guessing, I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen everything in your line of work. Have you ever encountered anything that would suggest there’s anything to, you know, messages from the . . .” Her cheeks went red, as though she were too embarrassed to complete the sentence. “What I’m trying to say is, you’ve never seen anyone actually get a message from the beyond.”
Anna offered a smile. “Not in my experience.”
“I don’t even know if that’s a comfort. If those two dead women really were trying to communicate with my husband, well, at least that would prove Paul wasn’t crazy, right?”
Thirty-One
Once he’d recovered from his encounter with Harold Foster, Paul found himself at the Connecticut Post Mall.
He needed to walk around, gather his thoughts before he did anything else. So he wandered the shopping concourse from one end to the other, not going into a single store, but finally ending up in the food court, where he bought himself a cup of coffee and sat down to drink it.
He’d had, when he’d left the house, the roughest idea of a plan. Talk to Jill Foster’s husband, then Gilford Lamb, spouse of Hoffman’s other victim, Catherine. He was also thinking of getting in touch with Angelique Rogers, the West Haven political science professor who’d also had a fling with Hoffman, and had been interviewed in that story by Gwen Stainton.
The meeting with Foster’s husband hadn’t gone well, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to press on. He knew there was no reason to think that any of these discussions would go well. He might be the only one seeking a greater insight into Hoffman’s soul. Maybe everyone else just wanted to put the whole nasty business behind them. Foster wouldn’t even allow Hoffman’s name to be spoken in his presence. Kenneth’s wife, Gabriella, Paul feared, might be the hardest to talk to of all of them. If there was anyone who might want to be moving on with her life, it could be Gabriella. And yet, she might, more than anyone else, be the one who held the key to the secrets of Hoffman’s personality.
But for now, Paul needed to clear his head. The mall’s food court wasn’t quite as isolating as a jail cell, but it would do.
As he sat there, watching mothers pushing strollers, teenagers hanging out and laughing, an elderly couple sitting across from each other saying nothing, he wondered whether this quest for understanding was a worthy pursuit.
What guarantee was there that no matter how many people he talked to, no matter how many questions he asked, he’d ever get his answers?
Sometimes people did bad things. End of story.
But now there was more to it.
Something was not right.
That fucking typewriter.
Paul had exhausted all rational explanations for those messages. As unsettling as it would have been to learn Gavin Hitchens had been sneaking into his house to plant them, it would have been a relief to find out he was responsible.
The only other “real world” explanation? Paul was doing it himself. But he wasn’t ready to accept that yet. Sleepwalking was one thing. But inventing messages from the dead and having no memory of it? That was a bridge too far.
That was crazy.
The problem was, the only explanation left to him wasn’t any less insane.
Was it possible the typewriter was some sort of conduit for Jill Foster and Catherine Lamb? Were those two women actually trying to talk to him?
No.
Possibly.
Did Paul believe things happened for a reason? If the answer was yes, then some unseen hand had guided Charlotte to that yard sale. Some force he could not possibly understand told her to get out of the car and check out the junk these people were trying to sell.
And that force knew that when she saw that old Underwood, she’d immediately think it would be the perfect gift for her husband.
The mystical heavy lifting was done.
Once the typewriter was in the house, Jill and Catherine could begin their communication with him.
“God, it’s fucking nuts,” Paul said.
“You talking to me?”
Paul turned. Sitting at the table next to him was a woman he guessed to be in her eighties, blowing on a paper cup of tea, bag still in, the string hanging over the side.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “Excuse my language. I . . . I was just thinking out loud.”
The woman’s weathered, wrinkled face broke into a smile. “That’s one of the first signs.”
That brought a smile to his face for the first time that day. “In my case, you might be right.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, grabbing the string and bobbing the tea bag up and down.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You look like a troubled young man.”
He forced another smile. “I’ve had better days.”
The woman nodded. After what seemed a moment of reflection, she said, “I come here every day and have a cup of tea. I look forward to it. It’s the high point.”
“That’s nice,” he said, although he wasn’t sure whether that was nice, or sad.
“And I watch the people, and I think about their lives, and what they’re going through. I used to read books, but I find it harder to concentrate on them now. So I make up stories about the people I see.”
Paul thought it was time to move on.
“A lot of times, when I see a man sitting here having a coffee, it’s because he’s waiting for his wife to finish shopping. But I don’t think that’s the case with you.”
“And why’s that?”
“You don’t keep looking at your watch, or your phone. So you’re not waiting on someone. You’re here on your own.”
“You’re good,” Paul said.
The woman nodded with satisfaction. “Thank you.” She cocked her head at an angle and asked, “What’s fucking nuts?”
It jarred him, his words coming back to him, from this sweet old lady.
What the hell, he thought. It might be easier to ask a stranger this question than someone he knew well.
“Do you think,” he asked hesitantly, “that the dead can speak to us?”
The woman reacted as though this were the easiest question she’d ever been asked. “Of course,” she said, taking out the tea bag and setting it on a napkin. “I hear from my husband all the time. Do you know what he did?”
Paul waited.
“He died in October. This’d be in 1997. He’d been sick a long time and knew what was coming. So, four months later, a dozen roses arrive at the door. He figured he wouldn’t make it to February, so he had ordered my Valentine’s Day flowers back in September.” She smiled. “How about that?”
“Well,” Paul said. “He must have been something.”
She took a sip of her tea. “He had his moments.”
Paul stood. He tucked his napkin into the empty coffee cup. “You have a nice day,” he said.
He dropped the cup into the trash and headed for the escalator that would take him from the food court down to the main part of the mall. He glanced back for one last look at that woman, thinking he would give her a friendly farewell wave.
She was gone.
<
He decided his next stop would be Gilford Lamb.
The one-time director of human resources at West Haven had not returned to work after his wife’s murder. His initial time off for bereavement leave had turned into an extended sick leave. From what Paul had heard, he had never recovered emotionally from the loss.
Paul looked up his address online and found that he lived in the Derby area of Milford in a simple two-story house. He pulled into the driveway next to a twenty-year-old rusting Chrysler minivan. As he got out of his own car he took note of the uncut lawn choked with crabgrass, the crooked railing alongside the steps to the front door, the paint flecking off the house.
God, Paul thought. It’s only been eight months.
When Paul pushed the button for the doorbell, he didn’t hear anything. Must be broken.
So he knocked.
Not too hard, the first time. But when no one answered, he tried again, this time putting his knuckles into it.
From inside the house, a muffled, “Hold on.”
After ten seconds, the door opened. An unshaven Gilford Lamb looked through a pair of taped glasses at Paul, blinked twice, and said, “Paul?”
“Hi, Gil.”
“Well, son of a bitch. What brings you here?”
Paul guessed Gilford was in his midforties, but he looked more like a man in his sixties. His hair had thinned and turned gray, and Paul bet the man was thirty pounds lighter than the last time he’d seen him, which would have been about nine months ago. His plaid shirt was only half tucked into a pair of jeans that looked like they’d last seen a wash when the first Bush was president.
“I was going by, thought I’d drop in. It’s been a while.”
“Goddamn, yes, it has. Come on in.”
He opened the door, and the second Paul stepped into the house he wanted to leave. The place smelled of sweat and piss and booze and old meat. The living room, or what was once a living room, was a clutter of newspapers, magazines, bottles, and, of all things, an oval model train track on the dirty carpet. But the Lionel steam train would have had a hard time making the loop, given that portions of the track were littered with dropped items including a coat and a busted computer monitor.
“You want anything?” Gilford asked.
“No, that’s okay.”
“Well, I think I will,” he said and disappeared briefly into the kitchen. Paul heard the familiar pfish! of a pull tab. Gilford returned with a can of Bud Light in his hand. “Gosh, it’s great to see you!” His smile seemed genuine. “I was thinking about you the other day, wondering how you were doing.”
“Good to see you, too,” Paul said, working to hide his shock at how Gil’s life appeared to have spiraled downward so severely.
“Grab a seat.”
That was definitely something Paul did not want to do, but he could see no way to refuse. He moved aside some old magazines— science journals, train enthusiasts’ magazines, even a few comic books—from the stained cushion of a lounge chair while Gilford dropped his butt right onto a layer of newspapers that acted as a couch cover. He crinkled as he got comfortable.
“Not many folks from the college come by,” he said. “Well, I guess the truth is, none of them come by. Hear from human resources occasionally, but that’s about it. You probably know I’m still on a leave.”
“Me, too,” Paul said. “But I expect to be going back in September.”
“Head’s all healed?”
“Getting there. How about you?”
“Oh.” He smiled. “I’m never going back. I’ll ride out the medical leave long as I can and then quit. I’ll never set foot on that campus again.”
“How are you . . . managing?” He tried not to look about the room as he asked.
“Oh, it’s day by day.” He chortled. “I don’t much give a fuck.”
Paul didn’t see the point in avoiding the obvious. “It hit you hard,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“Catherine.”
Gilford studied him for a moment, stone-faced, then looked away. “Yeah, well.” His gaze drifted, as though he could see through the wall to the outdoors. “I guess the guilt kind of ate away at me.”
Paul felt a chill. “The guilt?”
“I loved that woman more than anything in the world. I truly did.”
Softly, Paul said, “I’m sure. But I don’t understand the guilt part. It wasn’t your fault, Gil.”
He focused on Paul and said, “Wasn’t it? I sure as hell think it was.”
“It was Kenneth’s fault.”
“Kenneth,” Gil said softly.
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“Maybe he’s the one who slit her throat, but I’m the one who put her there with him,” Gil said. “I drove her away. I was . . . I don’t know. I’d become distant. I took her for granted. I hadn’t remembered her birthday in six years. I know that sounds like I didn’t love her, but I did. I just . . . I’d just stopped being attentive in any way whatsoever. I was living in my own world. I see that now, how I sent her into the arms of another man. And not just any man, but a homicidal maniac.”
“No one saw it coming,” Paul offered. “No one knew Kenneth was capable of something like that.”
Gilford shrugged. “Doesn’t matter anymore, anyway. So tell me this. What brought you to my door this afternoon? I saw you looking around when you walked in here. I know I look like some kind of deranged hermit, but I’m not so far gone that I don’t know when someone is lying to me. You weren’t just driving by and decided to say hello.”
“That’s true.”
“So what’s up?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Kenneth lately.”
“I’ve never stopped.”
“I’m sure. I can’t really explain this, but some things that have happened lately have prompted me to look for answers.”
“Answers to what?”
“To what made him do it.”
“What sort of things?”
Paul hesitated. How did you tell a man his dead wife was sending you messages? He decided to take a chance with Gilford, to at least touch on the more recent developments involving Hoffman.
“Do you think it’s possible,” Paul asked slowly, “for the things that we use in our everyday lives, for them to—how do I put this— hold some kind of energy, to retain something of us in them?”
Gilford said, “What?”
“I’m not putting this well. But let’s say you had something of your grandmother’s. Like a mirror. Do you think that mirror possesses some of her soul?”
Gilford drank from his can of Bud Light. “Where might you be going with this, Paul?”
“What if I told you that I’ve come into possession of something, something that has a particularly dark history, and that individuals who used this item, somehow, in a way that I can’t begin to imagine, are trying to communicate with me?”
“I guess I’d say, what the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s a long story how it all came to be, but I think I have the typewriter.”
Gilford squinted. “The what?”
“The typewriter. The one Kenneth . . . the one he made Catherine and Jill write their apologies on.”
Gilford studied him. “You don’t say.”
Paul nodded.
“That’d be quite something.”
“Yeah,” Paul said.
“And what makes you think this typewriter you’ve got is that very typewriter?”
Paul licked his lips, which had gone very dry. “Well, to begin with, it’s the same kind. And Kenneth’s typewriter was never found by the police. So it’s at least possible that this is the same one.” He paused. “I’ve been finding messages in it. Words on sheets of paper that I’ve left rolled in. Asking why Kenneth did it.”
Gilford leaned forward. “And who’s doing the asking?”
“Catherine and Jill.”
“Well,” Gilford said. “That’s
Paul waited to see whether he had more to add. When it appeared he did not, Paul asked, “You have any thoughts or questions?”
He nodded very slowly. “I do.”
Paul edged forward in his seat. “Okay.”
“All you have to do is look around here and you can tell I’m not doing so well. I’m not like one of those nutcases you see on an episode of Hoarders who seems oblivious to their surroundings. I know this is a pigsty. I am aware that I’m living in a hellhole. The thing is, I don’t give a flying fuck. I haven’t given a shit about anything since that son of a bitch took Catherine away from me. I know the clock is running out on me before I drink myself to death one night or leave something on the stove and burn this place down or maybe one night I just take out that gun I’ve got in the bedroom dresser and blow my brains out, which is something I give some thought to every single fucking day. It would certainly spare me the humiliation of being that crazy person you see wandering the street pushing a shopping cart full of everything they own.”
Gilford Lamb paused to take a breath, then continued. “But never, not once in these last eight months, have I had a notion as ridiculous as the one you just came up with. As bad as things have been for me, I’ve never lost touch with reality. But that, my friend, sounds like what’s happened with you, and you have my sympathy. I know you’ve been through a lot, too. What I’d suggest, before it’s too late, is that you get help, that you find someone to talk to about this, because I’m guessing you got hit harder in the head than you realize.”
“I am talking to someone about this,” Paul said.
“A neurologist, I hope.”
“Him, too.”
Gilford nodded slowly. “Well, that’s a good thing, no doubt about it. It’s been a pure delight having you drop by, Paul, even though I still don’t understand quite why you did. If, the next time you’re driving by, you get the urge to visit me again, I hope you won’t be offended if I ask you now to just keep on going.”
Thirty-Three
Paul was lucky to catch Angelique Rogers when he did.
Paul hadn’t needed to look up an address for the West Haven political science professor. A launch for a book she had written about women in the Civil War had been held at her place a couple of years ago, and Paul and Charlotte had attended. A local bookseller was hawking copies, and Paul had bought one. Paul had embraced the idea of a book that examined the role of women during that period in the country’s history, but the academic writing style had made it a tough slog. He hadn’t been able to make it through the first chapter. The book had sat, ever since, on his study shelf, unread, and while he’d told Angelique he’d thoroughly enjoyed it, he lived in fear she would ask him which chapter was his favorite.