Ed McBain - Ghosts

“Did you go down there?”

“Just got back, in fact. Left a team there to dust the jewelry counter and the doorknob and anything else the guy may have touched. Dozens of people go in and out of that place every day, Steve, but maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Yeah, maybe. What’d the guy look like?”

“He fits the description. Young guy with black hair and brown eyes.”

“When will the lab boys let you know?”

“They’re on it now.”

“What does that mean? Tomorrow morning?”

“I told them it’s a homicide. Maybe we’ll get some quick action.”

“Okay, let me know if you get anything. I’m at the Hampstead Arms, you want to write down this number?”

“Let me get a pencil,” Hawes said. “Never a fuckin’ pencil around when you need one.”

He gave Hawes the number of the hotel and the room extension and then filled him in on what he’d learned at the Coroner’s Office. He did not mention any of Hillary’s psychic deductions. When he hung up, it was close to 6:00. He looked up Hiram Hollister’s home number in the local directory and dialed it.

“Hello?” a woman said.

“Mr. Hollister, please.”

“Who’s calling?”

“Detective Carella.”

“Just a moment.”

He waited. When Hollister came onto the phone, he said, “Hello, Mr. Carella. Get what you were looking for?”

“Yes, thank you,” Carella said. “Mr. Hollister, I wonder if you can tell me who typed that report filed by the inquest board.”

“Typed it?”

“Yes.”

“Typed it? Do you mean the typist who typed it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would’ve been the inquest stenographer, I suppose.”

“And who was that?”

“This was three summers ago,” Hollister said.

“Yes.”

“Would’ve been Maude Jenkins,” he said. “Yup. Three summers ago would’ve been Maude.”

“Where can I reach her?”

“She’s in the phone book. It’ll be listed under Harold Jenkins, that’s her husband’s name.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hollister.”

He hung up and consulted the telephone directory again. He found a listing for Harold Jenkins and a second listing for Harold Jenkins, Jr. He tried the first number and got an elderly man, who said Carella was probably looking for his daughter-in-law and started to give him the number for Harold Jenkins, Jr. Carella told him he had the number, thanked him, and then dialed the second listing.

“Jenkins,” a man’s voice said.

“Mr. Jenkins, I’m Detective Carella of the 87th Squad in Isola. I wonder if I might speak to your wife, please?”

“My wife? Maude?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well…sure,” Jenkins said. His voice sounded puzzled. Carella heard him calling to his wife. He waited. In the next room, Hillary Scott was still on the phone.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.

“Mrs. Jenkins?”

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Carella of the 87th Squad in Isola…”

“Yes?”

“I’m here in connection with a homicide I’m investigating, and I wonder if you’d mind answering some questions.”

“A homicide?”

“Yes. I understand you were the stenographer at the Stephanie Craig inquest three years—”

“Yes, I was.”

“Did you type up the report?”

“Yes. I took the shorthand transcript, and then I typed it up when the inquest was over. We try to have the same person typing it as took it down. That’s because shorthand differs from one person to another, and we don’t want mistakes in something as important as an inquest.” She hesitated and then said, “But the drowning was accidental.”

“So I understand.”

“You said homicide. You said you were investigating a homicide.”

“Which may or may not be related to the drowning,” Carella said. He himself hesitated and then asked, “Mrs. Jenkins, did you yourself have any reason to believe Mrs. Craig’s death was anything but accidental?”

“None at all.”

“Did you know Mrs. Craig personally?”

“Saw her around town, that’s all. She was one of the summer people. Actually, I knew her husband better than I did her. Her ex -husband, I should say.”

“You knew Gregory Craig?”

“Yes, I did some work for him.”

“What kind of work?”

“Typing.”

“What did you type for him, Mrs. Jenkins?”

“A book he was working on.”

“What book?”

“Oh, you know the book. The one that got to be such a big best seller later on. The one about ghosts.”

“ Deadly Shades ? Was that the title?”

“Not while I was typing it.”

“What do you mean?”

“There wasn’t any title then.”

“There was no title page?”

“Well, there couldn’t have been a title page since there weren’t any pages. ”

“I’m not following you, Mrs. Jenkins.”

“It was all on tape.”

“The book was on tape?”

“It wasn’t even a book actually. It was just Mr. Craig talking about this haunted house. Telling stories about the ghosts in it. All nonsense. It’s beyond me how it got to be a best seller. That house he was renting never had a ghost in it at all. He just made the whole thing up.”

“You’ve been in that house?”

“My sister from Ohio rented it last summer. She’da told me if there’d been any ghosts in it, believe you me.”

“This tape Mr. Craig gave you…”

“Uh-huh?”

“What happened to it?”

“What do you mean, what happened to it?”

“Did you give it back to him when you finished typing the book?”

“Didn’t finish typing it. Got about halfway through it, and then the summer ended, and he went back to the city.”

“When was this?”

“After Labor Day.”

“In September?”

“That’s when Labor Day is. Each and every year.”

“That would’ve been after his wife drowned,” Carella said.

“Yes, she drowned in August. Late August.”

“Was Mr. Craig at the inquest?”

“Didn’t need to be. They were divorced, you know. There was no reason to call him for the inquest. Besides, he’d already left Hampstead by then. I forget the actual date of the inquest…”

“September sixteenth.”

“Yes, well, he was gone by then.”

“How much of the book had you finished typing before he left?”

“I told you, it wasn’t a book. It was just this rambling on about ghosts.”

“More or less his notes for a book, is that how you’d describe—?”

“No, it was stories more than notes. About the candles flickering, you know, and the door being open after someone had locked it. And the woman searching for her husband. Like that. Stories.”

“Mr. Craig telling stories about ghosts, is that it?”

“Yes. And using a sort of spooky voice on the tape, do you know? When he was telling the stories. He tried to make it all very dramatic, the business about waking up in the middle of the night and hearing the woman coming down from the attic and then taking a candle and going out into the hall and seeing her there. It was all nonsense, but it was very spooky.”

“The stories.”

“Yes, and his voice, too.”

“By spooky…”

“Sort of…rasping, I guess. Mr. Craig was a heavy smoker, and his voice was always sort of husky. But not like on the tape. I guess he was trying for some kind of effect on the tape. Almost like an actor, you know, telling a spooky story on television. It sounded a lot better than it typed up, I can tell you that.”

“Mrs. Jenkins, have you read Deadly Shades ?”

“I guess everybody in this town has read it.”