Barbara Michaels - The Walker in Shadows

"I'd like to know whose room it was," Mark insisted.

"And how do you propose to find out?" Josef demanded.

Mark's eyelids dropped. He had long, thick lashes, and with his bright eyes concealed, his face took on a look of youthful charm that seldom failed to melt his mother.

"I've got an idea," he said sweetly.

After two days of unoccupancy Kathy's bedroom had acquired a hotel-room feeling. Pat went to the windows and threw them open.

Mark prowled, peering behind bookcases and bureaus, mounting a chair to stare at a corner of the ceiling.

"You really did a job on this place," he said to Josef, who was standing with his hands on his hips, watching. "Stripped off all the old paper, repainted, scraped woodwork-"

"I didn't do it; Joe Bilkins, contractor, did. At least I trust he did, that was what I paid him for."

"You shouldn't have," Mark said.

"I suppose we should have lived with the rotted wallpaper and flaking plaster."

"I mean, you should have kept records of what you found," Mark said. "Mom, remember when Dad was working on our house? Remember, he had a scrapbook, describing the color of the original paint, and structural details? He even pasted in pieces of old wallpaper."

"I remember," Pat said.

"See, Dad always said that every little bit of the past should be preserved," Mark explained, turning to Kathy; she was a much more appreciative audience than the others. "He said that the history of mankind is a long story of destruction, and he didn't want to be one of the destroyers."

Pat had packed the scrapbook away. Its reminder of frustrated enthusiasm and unfulfilled plans had been too much to bear.

"He said that if we ever got enough money he'd like to have someone duplicate the old wallpaper," she said. "Of course we never did have enough…"

After one quick glance Josef had turned away and was pretending to watch birds outside the window. She appreciated his tact.

"That is interesting, Mark," he said, over his shoulder. "But I don't see its relevance here. And perhaps your mother-"

"No, that's okay," Pat said. Mark was speaking of his father freely, fondly, without hurt. That was the way she wanted it.

"But it is relevant," Mark said. "Mom, remember the day we were working in the closet of my room? I was helping Dad strip off the paper in there. Remember when we found the name written on the wall?"

"Good heavens, I had forgotten," Pat exclaimed. "I'm surprised you remember, Mark, it was so long ago. You weren't more than-"

"I was twelve," Mark said indignantly. "And I had good reasons to remember it. It struck me as a neat idea, so I wrote my name on the walls too. When Dad found out he made me spend all day Saturday scrubbing."

"What else did you write, Mark?" Kathy asked, smiling. "Just your name?"

"And the date. That was what we found-'Edward Bates, aged twelve, 1857.' It seemed so funny to me then, that some kid, just about my age, had written that, over a hundred years ago. I thought, wow, it would be cool if a hundred years from now some other kid would find my name." Mark grinned. "Dad never did find them all. I put one in the back of my closet, next to Edward's."

"So you concluded your room was once Edward's." Josef's quick intelligence was learning to follow the curious leaps and twists of Mark's mind. "But perhaps he wrote his name elsewhere, just as you did."

"He wouldn't write it in anybody else's closet," Mark argued.

"Hmmm. Possibly. And you think the Turnbull boy did the same here? That's pretty farfetched, Mark."

"No, it's not. Look, you keep thinking about these people as grown-ups. Soldiers, mothers, like that. I think of them as kids. I mean, they grew up together-Peter Turnbull and his cousins, right next door. They must have played together, they were only a year apart in age. There were no other houses close by. Peter was the oldest. He was also an only child; I bet he was spoiled rotten, not only by his parents but by his big sister-"

"It's much more likely that she detested him," Pat said drily, remembering youthful battles with her own elder siblings.

"Boy, are you a cynic," Mark said. "I don't agree. Mary Jane was ten years older than Peter, just the age to appreciate a nice live baby doll. Girls in those days were trained to be motherly. I mean, all this Women's Lib-"

"Get on with it," Josef interrupted. "What are you driving at, Mark? As if I didn't know…"

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Peter would be the leader of the gang. Edward would imitate him, not the other way around. I suspect this was his room, as the corresponding room in the other house belonged to Edward, because it's the best bedroom next to the master bedroom in the front. And I'm hoping to find written proof."

His shining enthusiasm and unconsciously arrogant voice carried conviction. Kathy was an immediate convert.

"Of course! It would be in the closet, wouldn't it?"

She dropped to her hands and knees and began throwing out shoes, clearing the closet floor. Josef, contemplating his daughter's shapely bottom with dismay, exclaimed, "That is the wildest idea you've come up with yet, Mark. I gave orders that this place was to be stripped down to the bare plaster. Nothing like that would survive, even if-"

"We need a flashlight," Kathy's muffled voice remarked from the depths of the closet.

"It's worth a look, isn't it?" Mark said. "The Edward Bates name was written in indelible ink, in the corner near the door. That's the kind of place a painter won't concentrate on-not these days, anyhow."

With a muttered imprecation Josef left the room, returning almost at once with a flashlight.

"I keep one in my bureau drawer, in case of a power failure," he explained. "But I would like to go on record as stating-"

"I know, I know," Mark said. "Get out of the way, Kath, and let me in there."

Pat sat down on the bed. Her conscious mind agreed with Josef; this was the craziest idea Mark had advanced yet. But somehow another part of her brain twitched with surprise when, after a prolonged search, Kathy said, "I don't see anything, Mark."

"It doesn't seem to be down here," Mark admitted. He stood up and, with one grand sweep, shoved Kathy's wardrobe into a mashed confusion at one end of the rod.

"Here it is," he said.

Pat was the last to get a look. The others crowded in before her. And there it was, just as Mark had predicted-faded, barely visible under the shrouding paint, but unmistakable. No modest, secret scrawl, this one; inscribed in the very center of the wall, the bold, spiky letters were over two inches high: "Peter Turnbull, aged thirteen, 1857."

Pat knew the suspicion that had crossed Josef's mind. Yet he must have dismissed it immediately, for the thing was impossible. The name had been painted over, and the paint was uniform. There was no way Mark could have written the name himself, at least not within the last few days.

Yet the survival of the name for over a century seemed almost equally incredible. Patches of the old plaster had fallen and had been replaced; by a strange trick of time (or was it merely a trick?) this particular section had remained firm. The twentieth-century workmen had patched only where necessary and had slapped a quick coat of paint over the whole. It was only a closet, after all. No one wasted time on a closet.

Mark was the least excited of them all. It was as if he had known what he would find.

"He was tall for his age," was his first comment.

Pat started to ask how he knew, and then refrained. People had a tendency to write at their own eye level, she had read that somewhere. No doubt Mark, who thought he knew everything, had calculated the average size of thirteen-year-olds, and could deduce Peter's height to the inch.