Mystery

“I got something here might work,” Hattie said. She moved across the room, knelt by the bed, and pulled a trunk from beneath it. She opened the trunk, swept aside layers of bright fabrics, and drew out a long black shapeless thing. “Nobody’s touched this since the first Mrs. Arthur Thielman.”

“What’s that?” Tom asked. “A parachute?”

“It’s a cape,” Sarah said, springing up to try it on. “It’s perfect.”

The red lining flashed against the black silk as Sarah twirled the cape over her shoulders, and then the whole thing gathered and swung and fell back into its natural folds, covering Sarah from her neck to her feet. She instantly looked ten years older and more sophisticated, another kind of person altogether.

For a second, Tom thought he was seeing Jeanine Thielman.

Then Sarah said, “Wow! I love it!” and she was Sarah Spence again, and in the next second, swept to the window and bent down to see if her dog was still where she had left him. Evidently he was, for she straightened up and made another twirl that exposed her tennis shoes. “Jamie’s grandmother used to wear this? What do you think she was like?”

Hattie gave Tom a sly look, and said, “Tuck your hair in, turn up the collar, keep the front closed, and we’ll be ready to visit Nancy, I reckon. Nobody’ll mess with you now, as long as I’m with you.”

Hattie ushered both of them back outside into the hot sun, the sweet, sickening odor drifting from the dump, the wheeling gulls, and the rows of identical houses.

Bingo barked once, then recognized Sarah.

“How do you get three people and one dog into that car?” Hattie asked.

“Do you mind sitting on Tom’s lap?” Sarah asked.

“Not if he doesn’t,” Hattie said. “We can put the car across the street from Maxwell’s Heaven. Friend of mine will keep it safe—the dog too.”

Hattie climbed in after Tom, and seemed to weigh no more than Bingo. As if she were a child, he could see over the top of her head.

“Tuaregs and lascars, here we come,” Sarah said, and turned around on the narrow road.

“God help us,” said Hattie.

Soon they were driving in the darkness between the listing tenements. Hattie told Sarah to turn down into a nearly invisible cobblestone path beneath a shadowy archway, and around various corners past curtained windows and peeling walls until they came to a small cobbled court with a blue scrap of sky at its top, as if they were deep in a well. Barred windows and heavy doors stood on every side, and the air smelled of must. One of the heavy doors creaked open, and a large bearded man with a leather cap and apron peered out at them. He frowned at the car before recognizing Hattie, but immediately agreed to keep watch on the car and look after the dog for half an hour. Hattie introduced him as Percy, and Percy took the willing dog under his arm and led them into the building and up stairs and through vast empty rooms and small rooms crowded with bags and barrels. Bingo stared at everything with intent interest. “Who is Percy?” Tom whispered, and Hattie said, “Bone merchant. Human hair.” The man took them through a dusty parlor and back out into the slanting street. They were across the street from Maxwell’s Heaven.

“Just follow me now, and don’t talk to anyone or stop to stare at anything,” Hattie said.

Tom crossed the narrow street a step behind her. Sarah gripped his arm through the cape. The series of linked tenements built by Maxwell Redwing seemed to grow taller with every step.

“Are you sure you want to come with us?” he whispered.

“Are you kidding?” she whispered back. “I’m not going to let you go in there alone!”

Hattie walked unhesitatingly into an arched passageway and disappeared. Tom and Sarah followed. The light died. Hattie was visible only as a small dark outline before them. The air instantly became colder, and the odors of must and dry rot—along with a thousand others—seeped from the walls. They hurried forward, and seconds later followed Hattie out of the passageway.

“This is the First Court,” Hattie said, looking around them. “There are three, altogether. Nancy’s in the second. I’ve only been as far as her place, and I suppose I’d get lost if I tried to go any farther.”

In the jumble of first impressions, Tom had taken in only that the space around him looked vaguely like a prison, vaguely like a European slum, and more than either of these like an illustration from a sinister comic book—tilting little streets connected by wooden passages like freight cars suspended in the air.

Three or four ragged men had begun shambling toward them from a doorway next to a lighted window across the court. Hattie turned to face them. The men shuffled and whispered to each other. One of them gave Hattie a wave that flapped the entire sleeve of his coat. They shambled back toward their doorway, and sat down, puddled in their coats, before Bobcat’s Place.

“Don’t mind those old boys,” Hattie said. “They know me.… Tom! Read this writing.”