All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred thirty-four)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

(part two hundred thirty-four)

Demrose hadn’t a notion how or when the brochures had arrived. His wife had them.

In her hand? Beside her plate? Among her correspondence?

In her rooms, where I would go fiveish, to dine. She had them when Arnulfa brought them, and she showed them to me. This occurred, obviously, before I stopped at the agency to pay the fare. I recall the Chief leaving ahead of the others, the basis, I think, for Regina’s choosing it. Cornish House, the one we lease with option of purchase, is strangely close-aired. Windows on the southern exposure shaded by maples. Rooms that side still hot. Flat roof, no attic to speak of.

Does all that interest you? How buildings are constructed?

No. Oh, I see. You expect something my grief fails to deliver. I think of Regina at odd times of the day, Mr. Monaghan, and I miss her very much. At other times, I am not quite aware of her being gone.

The house was hot.

I suppose she felt worse than she let on. But I was amenable to leaving the city for a week or two.

“Where the brochures came from you may think a minor point. I have them in evidence, two, while Miss Buckley suggests three. Sir, do you wish…?”

“To see one?” Élucide’s father asked. “No.”

“The agency displays them on a shelf in their waiting room. The articles are printed by the offerers of excursions, shipping lines and rail companies, resorts… The agency does not purchase them, the customer does not purchase them, therefore no one makes inventory of them, beyond the disposal of outdated ones. No postal markings, as they arrive by lad. Each is stamped Superior Travel, a task for the agency’s lad, who has been with Mr. Royal Deakins, proprietor—and uncle—two years come September. Mr. Deakins employs a clerk as well, who will be at the outside desk greeting traffic. The agency keeps only regular hours.

“The clerk, a John Bellman, has been with Deakins from ’75, and knows Mr. Demrose by appearance. Bellman attests to Demrose stopping on May the 26^th, receipt has it 3:19 p.m., fare paid. Deakins says he will come out for a word, did on the 26^th, Demrose being a valued patron. Deakins says also that if Mrs. Demrose had requested brochures, he’d have sent the lad posthaste, with a note of esteem.”

“But she did not,” said Ebrach.

“Brochures with the Superior stamp can be found at hotels up and down the street, Deakins having that arrangement, recommendations back and forth.” Monaghan struck the posture of a judge, clasping hands on the table before him. “Household odds and ends. It is an easy belief, we acquire it from our own experience, that these objects fill our rooms unaccountably, and on the rare occasion of being wanted, vanish equally so. But brochures do not enter a house by mystery. Mrs. Demrose was the only inmate who wanted them. Miss Zucker, and the Deakins establishment, are stalwart recordkeepers, with no cause under heaven to lie. It was not in accordance with household routine for Miss Buckley to have performed any errand, even to have left the house at all, outside the company of her mother. Demrose… I have traced his movements, and they are tedious ones, though common enough for an idle gentleman. Demrose drives his rig along the lakeside. He spends his afternoons in the coffee rooms of various hotels. He will engage with his fellows on the topic of horse racing. He has no political opinions. He both could, Mr. Gremot…”

Élucide’s father had stirred to speak.

246

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred thirty-five)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)