The Case of Ambrose Abernathy (Part Two)

     "Miss Kindermass?" he managed at last. "I am Mr. Ambrose Abernathy, from the Department of Extranatural Affairs." He shuffled out his wallet and produced a card. She took it with her free hand and looked at it as if he had handed her a dead lizard. "We--I've come to do some follow-up investigation. You remember Mr. Sackett was here before..."

     The lady snorted. It pinched her nose even thinner.

     "And a fat lot of good he did. You people took your time getting back to us." She shifted the dog to get a better grip. "Well, I suppose you'd better come on in. Wipe your feet!" she added sharply.

     Abernathy desperately scuffled his feet on the mat, hung his hat on the coatrack behind the door, and hurried after the disappearing figure of Miss Kindermass into the dimness of the house. With the gathering clouds outside it was growing darker by the minute. He stumbled past obscure pictures and brushed by tiny tables burdened with dusty flowers and bell-jars, following the flag of the lady's rapidly receding skirts. She threw open a parlor door after a final sharp turn down a corridor, flooding the hall with the light of a blazing fire.

     The room inside was stifling and overstuffed with ormolu and chintz. He skittered to a halt, panting and wheezing, as the lady abruptly stopped, set the dog down, and with a precise gesture introduced him to what appeared to be an enormous bundle of laundry and a fragile china doll seated in deep frilly chairs by the fireplace.

     "My sisters," she said, "Miss Anne and Miss Sarah."

     He bowed hastily and began, "Ladies...," but at that instant the pug bounded over to the chairs and clambered enthusiastically up into the capacious lap of the larger sister. The attentions of both the seated ladies were immediately galvanized.

     "Poopschen!" Miss Anne oozed. Her voice was like a bubbling pot of lumpy oatmeal. She began vigorously scratching the beast behind the ears, and he spread himself in ecstasy, puddling his furry folds across her lap. "Has 'oo come to see your Mumsy? Yes 'oo has, yes 'oo has!"

     The tiny Miss Sarah spread her arms out to the dog, like a child asking to be picked up.

     "Oooh, Chessy, come see little meez!" she piped. "Hasn't Chessy got a little kissee for his little meez!"

     Abernathy looked back and forth at them as they caressed and cajoled the pug, at a loss for words. They seemed totally unaware of his presence. He cleared his throat and started again.

     "Ladies..."

     "It's no use, Mr. Abernathy, they're both cracked as cuckoos," the elder Miss Kindermass said matter-of-factly, as she turned away. "The only things they talk to are me and that demanding little creature."

     "Then why...?" he began.

     "It's only manners," she said abruptly. She frowned. "I suppose now you would want to get your investigation started. So we can get this over with?"

     "Oh, yes. Please." The agent hesitated. "Do you think before I begin, I could get a drink of water? I tried the well--"

     "That old thing hasn't worked in ages. I'd have thought that was obvious." She sniffed. "Come into the kitchen."

     The hall was even darker after the brightly lit parlor. As they passed the occasional window it was no better. Outside the clouds had swallowed up the setting sun, and a growing, grieving wind was starting to make its presence known.

     The kitchen was so filled with potted herbs that he gagged on the spiciness of the air. As he gulped down a glass of sulfurous yellow water that he had to pump himself, a low rumble of thunder rattled the plates in the cupboard. The elder Miss Kindermass -- he now thought of her as THE Miss Kindermass, as she had not supplied her first name -- tapped her toe while he drank. His throat tickled, somehow even scratchier after his refreshment, as she lit a lamp and led him back through the halls and into the apparent center of the disturbances.

     She swung open a heavy pine door at the very rear of the house.

     "The master bedroom," she announced. "This is where our father died, and from this room my brother Wallace vanished, over twenty years ago."

     The room was bare, absolutely bare, except for a sturdy bed draped in a dust cover and a huge built-in wardrobe. After the crowded nature of the rest of the house, it was like stepping into a lifeless arctic wasteland. With a grim, measured gate Miss Kindermass entered the space, lamp held high. It seemed to stream shadows more than light down into the room. The agent shivered. In the quivering flame, the bed looked like a squat, bestial specter.

     "Vanished," she continued. "And with him, his beloved bitch, Topsy. Over the years, several other dogs have gone missing from this house. Spotty, Gertrude, Mattie, Brownie, Lucinda, Ginger..."

     She sniffed. Abernathy looked up at her and was surprised to see tears watering in those severe blue eyes. She sniffed again and shook herself.

     "These disappearances always centered on this room. The girls would be gone, and we would find the door hanging ajar. We kept it up, you know, as a guest room, but eventually we stripped it down and put a lock on it, and since we got Chester, we've had no problems with the other phenomena. But I still worry."

     "Other phenomena?" The little agent hastily pulled out his notepad and a stub of a pencil. "What other phenomena would those be?"

     "I told your man Sackett all that." She frowned. "Didn't he report any of it?"

     Abernathy thought guiltily of the dossier that he had glanced over briefly in contempt, now lying buried some certain fathoms below the earth inside his lost kit.

     "Oh, well, of course," he stammered. "But we like to go over it again firsthand. Confirmation from primary sources, and so on. Just to make sure, you understand?" He smiled at her and nodded his head, trying vainly to garner assent.

     The lady sighed wearily.

     "The stupid waste of it all! Our tax dollars at work, I suppose. Not to mention the time. Very well. There are sounds, every now and then, not very loud, like groans or rumbles, not human, you know, not voices, but not the house settling. I know that sound very well, and this is nothing like it, so don't try to persuade me that it is."

     "Oh, no, of course not," he said. His pencil flew over the notepad.

     "And some people have said they've seen a pale, fishy kind of light. I never have, myself." She walked over to the window and set the lamp down on the sill. "They can never tell quite where it's coming from. But I have smelled the smell."

     "The smell?"

     "Please don't ask me to describe it; it's like nothing I've ever known. The most I can say is that it has something of a chemical tang, but also earthy, somehow. Oh, how can one explain a smell? Other people have smelled it, and have had the same difficulty as I."

     Abernathy raised his eyes.

     "Other people...?"

     "Cleaning girls; we used to have them. Also, neighbors and friends, when they would still visit. Dead now, most of them, or too old to get about, and the young folk don't care to ... well, the young are mostly unpleasant people, anyway." She shrugged, and closed up again, like a touch-me-not.

     "Well, are you going to start 'investigating' then?" she asked.

     "Of course, Miss Kindermass," he said hurriedly. What a lonely life she must lead, he thought, and felt ashamed of the sudden personal insight behind the spiky old woman's facade. The case, the case, he reminded himself. "Would you mind leaving me alone for a bit, while I perform the preliminary examination?"

     "What? Why?" Her voice was sharp with suspicion.

     "Well, I need quiet … the etheric vibrations ... psychic emanations, and so on ... don't want to skew the readings and impressions -- strong personal influence, don't you know..."

     "Sounds like a bunch of humbug to me. Well, I have to check on Anne and Sarah anyway, and start supper." She passed him and headed out the door. She turned quickly with one hand on the knob before she left, a finger on the other raised in warning.

     "No pulling up the floorboards, mind. Or punching holes in the walls, either."

     Abernathy, who had begun to relax a little as she left, contracted once more in alarm.

     "No, of course not, ma'am, of course not!"

     She shook her head vigorously once, in grim, satisfied affirmation, and pulled the grinding door shut.  Abernathy heard the lock click with a little jump of his heart. He was alone in the desolate room.

Notes

Of course there had to be three old spinster sisters at the house; that's traditional, almost like the Three Witches or Triple Goddesses in the old tales. 

I'm sorry I do not have the LOTR post that might nave been expected today just yet; I'm feeling uncommonly lazy on this cool morning. Perhaps later this afternoon, if I can get more steam up.