All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred twenty)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

(part two hundred twenty)

“I telegraphed to the editor of the Nashville Banner. The boiler of Buckley’s steam yacht exploded, cause of death presumed. Off the South Carolina coast…very broken up, in the environs of Charleston. The coast, that is, doubtless the yacht as well. None of the bodies recovered. And so, by telegram again, I was able to learn from a newspaper fellow in the town of Mt. Pleasant, that the accident was witnessed, in its fashion. A pleasure cruiser called Contra Costa, making to Cuba, the passengers, a few, saw fire on the horizon, reported it to the captain, who said it was the sunset they were seeing. Odd pieces of debris washed onto Sullivan’s island, thereabouts. Nothing giving such conclusive witness as a lifebuoy with Zandrine lettered on, no, but… But Miss Buckley says it herself. That there was no speaking to her mother, what she inclines to say of Mrs. Demrose, as you’ll have noted from her statements. But that there was no mystery in her father’s death.”

“Well, then,” said his auditors.

The feeling was of classroom failure, while the lapse wasn’t that, exactly. You took people’s chatty little tales as they came to you. Only a bias seemed exposed; or, worse for business, a credulity. With concentration, Élucide brought the words back…Regina had said it could not have been the boiler. There would have been witnesses, debris would have washed to shore. Weem’s point brought to life.

To a reporter, or a Monaghan, the answer must be the obvious one.

To Regina, with proofs not blindingly irrefutable, the answer might be anything—a pleasing bit of drama. Élucide began to believe, with a shock, that Manfred could hang for circumstance. Weem was only too right. Every mind had its slotted shelves, the article that fit sliding in promptly. As no one knew the size or shape of the truth, how often could there be an opening just suited to it?

Mrs. Koker knocked a repressive lesson for the forward policeman.

Ebrach said: “Please come in.”

She kept to the threshold. “Mr. Phelan is here and that Mr. Thacker. Mr. Monaghan, I won’t say what you asked me not. But he’s got here and I took him to wait with the relatives. It’s what he said he wanted.”

In the guest parlor, Phelan’s notes on the table still divided in their stacks, Weem and Phelan rose. Élucide took her seat. Ebrach sat. Monaghan did not. He had become host in Ebrach’s house, had dispatched Ebrach’s housekeeper on an errand, and was giving them the back of his coat, his head round the door. Shortly, he made grunts and motions, to imply the arrival of an expected person.

The person was Walter A. Gremot.

“Now there is a reason I feel Mr. Gremot must be party to our affairs. I have a thing to ask of him, and he shall apprise himself, as I cannot advise him, whether he will or no.”

232

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred twenty-one)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)