David Ambrose: Superstition

“One second,” he said. “I'll be right back.”

He slipped out and closed the door behind him, then ran up the stairs to intercept Joanna. They almost collided at the first landing.

“I heard the bell,” she said. “Who was it?”

“It's her,” he said in a whisper, “the woman who was at your parents’ earlier.”

“Where is she-?”

“The sitting room.”

She made a move to pass him, but he blocked her.

“No-I think it's better you don't.”

“But I have to see her. I want to find out who she is.”

“Darling, let me handle it-please.”

“Maybe I know her. Like you said, it could be somebody I went to school with…”

“She's obviously disturbed, I don't think we should risk provoking some kind of crisis.”

“There's already a crisis if she's going around pretending to be me. I want to see her.”

He didn't argue further, just let her pass and followed her down the remaining stairs and into the hall. He made sure he was right behind her as she pushed open the door into the drawing room.

They both stopped and looked around. The room was empty.

She turned to him. “She doesn't seem to be here now.”

He looked around again, bewildered. “She was right there, on the sofa.”

“Well, she must have left.”

Ralph quickly checked the room. There was no hiding place.

“She can't have left,” he said. “We'd have heard the door.”

“Maybe not if she didn't want us to.”

“For God's sake,” he said, “this is ridiculous. Who is she?”

It was almost three in the morning when Sam finally closed Joanna's book and set it down on the table by his chair. For a while he didn't move. Then he ran his hands over his face and through his hair, and got up to pour himself a large whiskey.

As she had told him, it was an extraordinary story-the more so for being familiar in all but a handful of its details. It was everything that the group had invented about Adam, but set out now as historical fact and authenticated by a comprehensive index of sources. Even the various pictures of Adam, attributed though they were to portraitists and sketch artists of the period, were unmistakably of the man drawn by Drew Hearst way back at the start of the experiment.

But this version of Adam had become a very different person from the one they had intended to create. This was a man who had betrayed the trust first of his patron, Lafayette, then of his wife, and subsequently almost everyone with whom he had come into contact. In Paris, during the period leading up to revolution, he had consorted with thieves and whores and scoundrels of all kinds. When asked once by the generous though despairing Lafayette why he behaved so badly, he answered insolently, “Joie de vivre!” It was the only explanation he ever gave for any of his actions.

The magician Cagliostro became his ally, and together they conspired to defraud the gullible Cardinal Rohan of a fortune in the Diamond Necklace Affair. When Cagliostro was thrown in jail for his part in the plot, he kept quiet about Adam's involvement because Adam, who still had connections at court through his unfortunate and much abused wife, represented his only chance of getting out.

Cagliostro's silence was rewarded when Adam did in fact secure his release, but in return Adam demanded the magic talisman which had thus far in his life protected Cagliostro against all enemies. It would do so, Adam said, one last time, when he handed it over in return for his freedom and his life and went into exile outside France.

The talisman was shown in one of the book's illustrations. Sam was familiar with the design it bore. It was the design he had first seen indistinctly in the wax impression left on the floor that terrifying night in Adam's room at the lab, then later and more clearly in the book given to Joanna by Barry Hearst.

According to legend, Adam had kept the talisman with him all his life, even having it buried with him in his tomb. Something else he had never abandoned was his strange love of the French term “joie de vivre,” for which no equivalent existed in English, and which he not only had engraved upon his tomb but also had already incorporated into the Wyatt coat of arms-a vanity he had acquired in England, along with a second wealthy and aristocratic wife.

His return to America after her suspicious death had marked the start of the third long period of his life. Rich, and with the acquired airs and graces of a nobleman, he had become an immensely wealthy and successful banker, and finally even a renowned philanthropist. Whenever, as had happened occasionally, some whispered rumor of the dreadful reputation he had left behind in Europe reached across the ocean and threatened the high regard in which he was now held at home, the bearer of such gossip either mysteriously disappeared, or recanted his lies and lived on in comfort as the willing and obedient servant of the all-powerful Adam Wyatt.

Sam found himself gazing out into the night through the very window on which the words “Joie de vivre” had mysteriously appeared only a few days ago-that common phrase which Adam had distorted and so strangely made his own.

“Dear God,” he murmured to himself, and instantly wondered if unconsciously he'd meant it as a prayer.

He decided that perhaps he had.

The crash woke them both. Ralph reached for the light and swung his feet out of bed in one movement. He grabbed his robe and looked at Joanna, who was sitting up, pale with shock.

“Stay there,” he said, starting out.

“Ralph-be careful. There may be somebody in the house.”

“I doubt it-after making that much noise.”

He ran down the stairs, switching on lights as he went. There was no further sound or movement anywhere. On the floor below their bedroom he pushed open all the doors one by one, including the one to the music room where he worked. There he grabbed his old baseball bat from a corner before taking the remaining stairs to the hall. When he got there he stopped in his tracks.

The antique hat and coat stand that normally stood near the foot of the stairs lay some twenty feet away on its side by the front door. There was a gash on the door's paintwork where it had hit, as though the heavy object had been thrown against it like a missile.

He approached cautiously, holding the baseball bat ready to defend himself in case whoever had performed this considerable feat of strength was still hiding somewhere. But there was no sign of anyone, no sound or movement.

Looking around him and keeping his back to the wall so that nobody could take him by surprise, he reached down and hefted the iron stand in one hand as though to reassure himself that it really did weigh as much as it had the last time he'd had cause to move it. The strength that it had taken to fling it this distance would be frightening to confront; the reason why anybody might have wanted to do it was even more alarming to speculate upon. It made no sense.

He stepped over the stand without even trying to haul it upright. The drawing room was in darkness and the door partly open. He approached in a half-crouch, both hands gripping the handle of the bat, ready to lash out at the first movement. When he reached the door he slammed it with his shoulder, banging it back against the inner wall. At the same time he hit the light switch.

The room was empty, nothing had been disturbed. He went around it, circling the furniture to make sure that nobody was hiding behind anything, bat still in hand and ready to swing. There was nobody, and nowhere in the room where anybody could hide.

As he straightened up, lifting a hand to rub his nose in puzzlement, he sensed a movement in the doorway behind him. He spun around-and only Joanna's cry of alarm checked his swing before the hard wood smashed into her face. He let the bat fall to the floor and grabbed her in his arms, his fingers digging into the flesh beneath the thick white robe she wore.