All But Impossible, page 25
“I know just who you’re thinking of,” Ellen joined in. “Archie Quain.”
He nodded. “But the future of art doesn’t belong to the realists. Nothing can be more real than photography. Ten, twenty years from now the great paintings will be abstracts. Surrealists like Dali will reign supreme.”
“Maybe,” I answered a bit uncertainly. Arguing modern art was not one of my strong points and I was glad later in the day when we crossed over into Massachusetts and spotted the first sign directing us to Fall River and then on to New Bedford. The road was bumpy here and the autumn rains had left puddles of water for Winston to splash through.
“Let’s get our rooms first,” he suggested. ‘Then we’ll locate the museum and go see your friend, Ellen.” We found suitable lodging at a motel near the shore and then headed for the museum.
New Bedford had been an important whaling port from about 1820 until the beginning of the Civil War. It was here that Herman Melville had boarded his first whaling ship, the Acushnet, in January of 1841. It didn’t matter that he and a friend had deserted the ship in the South Pacific eighteen months later. The seeds of Moby Dick had been planted in his mind. I learned all this later that afternoon when we arrived at the Melville Museum on Dartmouth Street. It was an old two-story house with a traditional widow’s walk on top, and I imagined a lonely nineteenth-century wife pacing up there for the first sighting of her husband’s incoming ship. As we entered I caught the musty odor of an old building, not quite covered by the fresh paint job.
We were welcomed by Ellen’s friend, who proved to be an old school chum named Martin Faulk. He was tall and muscular, with a few strands of gray in his otherwise coal-black hair. I wondered if the gray was premature or if I’d guessed too low in estimating Ellen Vance’s age. “God, Ellen,” he said, giving her a hug; “you look just like you did the day we graduated from high school!”
She laughed appreciatively. “Thanks for the fib, Martin. This is my husband, Winston Vance.”
Winston shook hands, already sizing up the place. “Glad to meet you, Martin, after all my wife has told me about her school days. How long have you been open here?”
“About three months. We opened the Fourth of July weekend.”
“Do you live here too?”
“No, it’s all museum. I have a small place a few blocks away. You’ll find lots of material on whaling here, but we try not to compete with the city’s Whaling Museum. Our true focus is on Herman Melville and his writings.”
While Martin Faulk and Ellen got caught up on each other’s lives, I looked around at the various exhibits. There were first editions of several of Melville’s books, plus photographs of him at various stages of his adult life, all with a full beard. There were paintings and photographs of whales, of course, and actual examples of the gear used to hunt them. There were harpoons and whaling pikes and gaffs, long cylinders dating from the early 1800s called California Whaling Rockets that a seaman could fire from his shoulder, and pulleys for lifting dead whales onto the ship. There was even a cat-o’-nine tails, used for shipboard floggings. I tried to remember one in a Melville novel. Billy Budd, first published years after Melville’s death, not long after I graduated from college, seemed the most likely, but I was pretty certain the title character had been hanged, not flogged.
“I want you to see the view from our widow’s walk,” Faulk was saying.
“Perhaps if we’re lucky we’ll see Melville’s ghost.” He grinned and led the way upstairs.
“I didn’t realize you were bringing us on a ghost hunt,” Mary Best told Ellen.
“I don’t know a thing about it!” Ellen pleaded. “I think he’s pulling our leg. He was always something of a jokester in high school.”
But we followed him up to the second floor where there was more Melville memorabilia, including a sketch of the author’s birthplace in New York City and woodcuts of early whaling ships. There was even a portion of a sail from an actual whaler. “Just one more flight,” our guide told us with a smile.
Living in New England for most of my life, I’d observed many widow’s walks on the tops of houses, especially those situated near the shore. However, this was my first view from one that actually faced the ocean, with a perfect view of the distant horizon. When we’d all had time to appreciate the view, Faulk pointed in the other direction, toward a more modern house that backed up to his museum. It was more than a hundred feet away, with a semicircular flagstone terrace on the back, facing us. It came out about ten feet from the rear of the house and had a low stone wall around the edge.
There were no steps down to the yard, but a door at the corner of the house provided access.
“I tried to buy that property and the nineteenth-century inn that was on it,” he explained, “because it was where Melville is believed to have stayed the night before he boarded the Acushnet in 1841 for the Pacific whaling waters. But this fellow Ainscott outbid me and built that house two years ago. I can’t complain, because he keeps the property in perfect condition. He grows roses all along the terrace wall in the summer. There are those who say Melville’s ghost has been seen on the terrace, and it’s been hit by lightning during thunderstorms.”
“A haunted terrace!” Winston Vance remarked. “Just the thing for you, Sam!”
Martin Faulk turned to me with renewed interest. “Are you a student of the paranormal?”
“Not really. Occasionally in Northmont we’ve had some crimes of a seemingly impossible nature. I’ve helped Sheriff Lens get to the bottom of them. But they rarely involve ghosts or the supernatural. The folks in Northmont are more down-to-earth. Perhaps it’s your nearness to the sea that brings about these ghostly manifestations.”
We went back downstairs while Winston questioned Faulk about the economics of the Melville Museum. “I see you have a nominal admission charge. That hardly seems enough to support the place.”
“My father left me a little money when he passed away,” Faulk explained, “and I have a backer here in town.”
While we were up on the widow’s walk admiring the view, some other customers had come in down below. Faulk hurried to greet them and collect the admission fee. I could see that Ellen wanted to remain and chat about the old days, so I suggested that Mary and I stroll around the neighborhood and return in an hour. That was how we came to meet Ken Ainscott.
* * *
The museum building was at the top of a hill running almost to the harbor.
Mary Best peered at the slope and decided a stroll down the hill would necessarily mean a stroll back up it. “Not in these shoes,” she decided. “Let’s walk around the other way, Sam.”
The wind had come up a little as the early autumn darkness approached, sending gray clouds racing across the sky. We’d walked around to the new house that backed up to the museum before we encountered a middle-aged man coming quickly along the sidewalk. As he passed us, the dim streetlight’s glow barely reaching my face, he recoiled slightly and reached up to adjust his glasses. “Gallagher? Is that you?”
“No,” I assured him. “Hawthorne’s the name.”
He seemed to realize his mistake. “Hawthorne! A fine New England name. Not related to Nathaniel, are you?”
“Afraid not.”
“For a moment I mistook you for someone else.” He turned in at the sidewalk of the new house and I realized he must be the owner.
“Mr. Ainscott?” I asked, remembering the name Faulk had mentioned.
He paused and smiled. “Do you know me?”
“No, we’re visitors to New Bedford. I’m Dr. Sam Hawthorne and this is my nurse, Mary Best,” I said, making the introduction more formal. “An acquaintance was describing your house and its unusual terrace.”
Ainscott snorted. “Nothing unusual about it.” He studied Mary and me a bit more closely, then added, “I’ll show it to you if you like, Dr. Hawthorne.”
We followed him up the front steps, waiting while he unlocked the door. With a flip of the switch, the downstairs seemed flooded with light. “I understand this was once the site of a country inn where Herman Melville spent his last night ashore before setting sail on a whaling voyage,” I said.
“That’s the story, but who knows what really happened a century ago?”
The interior of the house seemed pleasant enough, its dining room windows at the rear looking out onto the flagstone terrace we’d heard about. The furnishings were Early American, and when I noticed a wall of framed pictures facing the terrace windows I assumed they were portraits of Ainscott relatives and family gatherings. It was Mary who went over to inspect them more closely, and I heard her sharp intake of breath. “Is this Hitler?” she asked.
Ainscott came up behind her. “Yes, the Führer himself. I took those when I was in Germany last year. The rally in this picture was attended by one hundred thousand people.”
“What are your feelings about the war?” she asked.
“I think we should stay out of it. What Hitler is doing so far is good for Europe. Believe me, I am not the only one who feels that way.”
“Tell me about your terrace,” I said, trying to shift to a less controversial topic. “Is it really enchanted? Does Melville’s ghost really walk there?”
“I have never seen him. I believe the stories were started by neighborhood children last Halloween. Sometimes they come around on rainy nights and I have to chase them away.”
“Someone said the terrace has been struck by lightning.”
Ainscott nodded. “At least twice that I’ve seen, though it didn’t do any damage.” He’d opened the terrace doors while he spoke and we followed him outside. Even in the twilight we could see the fine workmanship of the flagstones and the low wall at their edge.
“Was this done by local workmen?” I asked.
“Fellow named Roddy Gallagher. I thought you were him for a moment outside. Fine workman when he’s sober, but there were days when I had to track him down at the bar to get any work out of him.”
I smiled. “That’s the first time I’ve been mistaken for a drunken Irishman.”
“I meant no offense.”
A gust of wind blew some dead leaves from the overhanging trees and Mary shivered slightly. We went back inside. There was no sign of Melville’s ghost.
* * *
Winston and Ellen Vance had enjoyed a nice visit with Martin Faulk, but they were ready to leave by the time we returned to the Melville Museum.
“Good meeting you,” Faulk said, shaking my hand. “I wish I could dine with you tonight but I have to see my backer. How long with you be here, Ellen?”
“Just overnight,” she told him. “We’re on our way to Cape Cod.”
He shook his head. “The Cape in October can be a chilly place. You really feel that wind off the ocean. And you know what happened with that hurricane last year. Why not stay here tomorrow instead, and I’ll take you all to dinner in the evening.”
We exchanged glances, and since the Vances were driving I left the decision to them. “We don’t have reservations on the Cape,” Ellen said. “Why don’t we stay here? We could drive over to the college tomorrow and see the campus. The University of Massachusetts is one of the places our son is interested in.”
So it was decided. Ellen promised to phone Faulk the following afternoon and we went off to a seafood restaurant he recommended. Over cocktails I asked, “Is he like you remembered him, Ellen?”
“Pretty much. Of course it’s been nearly twenty years since we were in school together. Everyone grows up.”
Mary told them about our meeting with Ken Ainscott, about his house and the pictures of Hitler on the wall. “Can you imagine? I feel like I should report him or something!”
“I guess there’s no law against having a picture of Hitler on your wall,” Winston said. “It’s a free country and it’s not our war.”
It wasn’t our war, and even though the following morning’s newspaper carried a story about another British ship sunk by U-boats in the North Atlantic, it still seemed a long way away. Winston drove us to the college and we spent a few hours roaming the campus, experiencing the same sights and sounds their son might experience in two years’ time. If it still wasn’t our war.
When we returned to New Bedford in midafternoon the streets were shiny from a recent to Faulk’s place. The museum was open till six and he’d be there at least that long. We decided on a drink at a neighborhood tavern a few blocks away. A tall, slender man with graying hair was entertaining some of the bar patrons with simple card tricks as we entered. Ellen Vance studied his face and movements and suddenly said, “That man looks like you, Sam.”
Even though we see our faces in the mirror each day, I don’t believe a person can easily spot someone who looks like them. For one thing, appearances have as much to do with gestures and expressions as with the structure of one’s face. In a mirror the face is generally at rest, and we rarely see ourselves as others see us. But Ellen’s words did focus my attention on the man, and I had to agree there was a passing similarity. I hadn’t attempted a card trick since my youth, but I walked over to observe the man with the fleet fingers while the others took seats in a booth.
As he finished a trick involving four aces, I asked, “Your name wouldn’t be Gallagher, would it?”
Closer up, he was probably ten years older than me, but perhaps in the twilight it wasn’t too surprising that Ainscott had confused us. “Do I know you?” he countered.
“I was visiting Ken Ainscott and I admired his flagstone terrace. He said a local fellow named Roddy Gallagher had done it.”
“That’s me. I do fireplaces too. Any sort of stonework. Ainscott’s was a special job. Did he show you the trick to it?”
“No.”
“Here, let me buy you a beer.”
“Sorry, I’m with those other people. I really must get back. Just wanted to see if you were Gallagher.”
He fanned the deck of cards with one hand and gave a little bow. “That’s me!”
I returned to our booth. “He’s the man who built Ainscott’s enchanted terrace.”
Mary’s face brightened. “The person Ainscott mistook you for!”
“They do look something alike,” Winston agreed.
“Does he know anything about the ghost?” Ellen asked.
“I didn’t ask him.” But I was remembering his remark about some sort of trick.
* * *
Ellen phoned Faulk from the tavern and he invited us to stop at the museum for a cocktail before we went off to dinner. We went back to the motel to freshen up, and when we arrived at the Melville Museum about seven I noticed a sporty roadster parked outside. “Looks as if the place is still open,” I commented.
But the door was locked and Faulk had to come in answer to our knocking. “You’re just in time. Come in and meet my backer.”
He ushered us into the main display room where a broad-shouldered woman in a flowered dress stood holding a half-empty cocktail glass. “Hello,” she said with a smile. “I’m Ann Percy. Martin likes to describe me as his backer, but it’s his hard work that is making this museum a success.”
She was older than the rest of us, probably in her late forties, and her bright blond hair had obviously been touched up. There was a middle-aged spread about her that I often saw in female patients of her age. “Ann is a professor of American literature at the college,” Faulk explained. “She’s always been interested in Melville. Despite what she says, this place wouldn’t exist without her.”
We exchanged some pleasantries while Faulk poured more cocktails. “Will you be joining us for dinner, Miss Percy?” Winston asked.
“Martin already invited me but I’m afraid I can’t. I have a meeting with his neighbor, Ken Ainscott. He beat us out on that piece of property, but we’re hoping he’ll give us an easement for an outdoor fair we want to hold in the spring.”
I was still interested in the so-called Melville ghost and the flagstone terrace. “Are you going over there now?”
“Right now.”
“I have a quick question for Ainscott if you don’t mind me tagging along.” I turned to the others. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Ann Percy put down her glass and slipped into a raincoat. “This time of year you never know what the weather’s doing.”
I’d been wearing mine all afternoon, more for warmth than rain protection, but as we stepped out the door I felt a few drops. “It’s starting to drizzle,” I called back to the others.
“Damn!” Faulk grumbled. “I’ll have to go up and close the windows before we leave for dinner.”
The streets were dark, lit only by occasional streetlights that seemed too far apart. “Is this your first visit to New Bedford?” Ann Percy asked between raindrops.
“The first in many years. I came here with my parents once.”
The rain was increasing and I wished I’d brought an umbrella from the car. But Ken Ainscott’s house was not that far and we were ringing his bell before either of us was seriously wet. Ainscott greeted Ann Percy warmly, but he was obviously surprised to see me again. “Hawthorne? I didn’t know you were acquainted with Professor Percy.”
“We’re new friends,” I explained. “I just walked over with her to ask you a question about the terrace.”
“That again! Still looking for ghosts?” He turned to Ann Percy. “And what’s this about an easement?”
“We just need a portion of your backyard for two weeks in the spring. We have some large outdoor exhibits we’d like to display. Of course we’d pay you something for your trouble.”
He nodded. “Let me take care of Dr. Hawthorne first and we’ll talk about it. Now what’s this about my terrace?”
“I happened to run into Roddy Gallagher this afternoon.”
“At a bar, I’ll bet!”
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “He mentioned there was some trick about your terrace. I wondered if—”
“What’s that?” Ann Percy asked suddenly. She was pointing toward the dining room windows that looked out on the terrace. A strange greenish light seemed to have appeared for an instant and then vanished. In the distance there was a rumble of thunder.
