Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007 Read online

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007

  The Carville Ghost

  The Jury Box

  Pickpocket

  The Erstwhile Groom

  Remote Control

  Blog Bytes

  A Rat’s Tale

  The Profane Angel

  Limpopo

  The World in Primary Colors

  Camera Guy

  Parson Pennywick and the Whirligig

  A Cozy for the Jack-o’-lanterns

  No Bones About It

  Moon Madness

  Ideas in My Head

  The Theft of the Ostracized Ostrich

  Blues in the Kabul Night

  Scream Queen

  A Chance to Get Even

  notes1

  * * *

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007

  The Carville Ghost

  by Bill Pronzini

  © 2007 by Bill Pronzini

  Art by Allen Davis

  Bill Pronzini is the author of 66 novels, including three in collaboration with his wife, Marcia Muller, and 32 in his popular “Nameless Detective” series. (See Savages, Forge, ’07). He is a multiple Shamus Award winner, and a recipient of both the PWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award and France’s Grand Prix de la Littérature Policière. A character from this story is borrowed by Marcia Muller for her story “Pickpocket.”

  ❖

  Sabina said, “A ghost?”

  Barnaby Meeker bobbed his shaggy head. “A strange apparition of unknown origin, Mrs. Carpenter. I’ve seen it with my own eyes more than once.”

  “In Carville, of all places?”

  “In a scattering of abandoned cars near my home there. Floating about inside different ones and then rushing out across the dunes.”

  “How can a group of abandoned horse-traction cars possibly be haunted?”

  “How, indeed?” Meeker said mournfully. “How, indeed?”

  “And you say this apparition fled when you chased after it?”

  “Not once but both times I saw it. Bounded away across the dune tops and then simply vanished into thin air. Well, into heavy mist, to be completely accurate.”

  “What did it look like, exactly?”

  “A human shape surrounded by a whitish glow. Never have I seen a more eerie and frightening sight.”

  “And it left no footprints behind?”

  “None. Ghosts don’t leave footprints, do they?”

  “If it was a ghost.”

  “The dune crests were unmarked along the thing’s path of flight and it left no trace in the cars — except, that is, for claw marks on the walls and floors. What else could it be?”

  Quincannon, who had been listening to all of this with a stoic mien, could restrain himself no longer. “Balderdash,” he said emphatically.

  Sabina and Barnaby Meeker both glanced at him in a startled way, as if they’d forgotten he was present in the office.

  “Glowing apparitions, sudden disappearances, unmarked sand... confounded claptrap, the lot.” He added for good measure, “Bah!”

  Meeker was offended. He drew himself up in his chair, his cheeks and chest both puffing like a toad’s. “If you doubt my word, sir...”

  It’s not your word I doubt but your sanity, Quincannon thought, but he managed not to voice the opinion. “There are no such beings as ghosts,” he said.

  “Three days ago I would have agreed with you. But after what I’ve seen with my own eyes, my own eyes, I repeat, I am no longer certain of anything.”

  Sabina stirred behind her desk. Pale March sunlight, slanting in through the windows that faced on Market Street, created shimmering highlights in her upswept black hair. It also threw across the desk’s polished surface the shadow of the words painted on the window glass: Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.

  She said, “Others saw the same as you, Mr. Meeker?”

  “My wife, my son, and a neighbor, Artemus Crabb. They will vouchsafe everything I have told you.”

  “What time of night did these events take place?”

  “After midnight, in all three cases. Crabb was the only one who saw the thing the first time it appeared. I happened to awaken on the second night and spied it in one of the cars. I went out alone to investigate, but it fled and vanished before I could reach the cars. Lucretia, my wife, and my son Jared both saw it last night — in one of the cars and then on the dune tops. Jared and I examined the cars by lantern light and again in the morning by daylight. The marks on walls and floor were the only evidence of its presence.”

  “Claw marks, you said?”

  Meeker repressed an involuntary shudder. “As if the thing had the talons of a beast.”

  Quincannon said, “And evidently the heart of a coward.”

  “Sir?”

  “Why else would it run away or bound away or whatever it did? It’s humans who are afraid of ghosts, not the converse.”

  “I have no explanation for what happened,” Meeker said. “That is why I have come to you.”

  “And just what do you expect us to do? Mrs. Carpenter and I are detectives, not dabblers in paranormal twaddle.”

  Again Meeker puffed up. He was an oddly shaped gent in his forties, with an abnormally large head set on a narrow neck and a slight body. A wild tangle of curly hair made his head seem even larger and more disproportionate. He carried a blackthorn walking stick, which he held between his knees and thumped on the floor now and then for emphasis.

  “What I want is an explanation for these bizarre occurances. Normal or paranormal, it matters not to me, as long as they are explained to my satisfaction. If they continue and word gets out, residents will leave and no new ones come to take their place. Carville will become a literal ghost town.”

  “And you don’t want this to happen.”

  “Of course not. Carville-by-the-Sea is my home and one day it will be the home of many other progressive-minded citizens like myself. Businesses, churches — a thriving community. Why, no less a personage than Adolph Sutro hopes to persuade wealthy San Franciscans to buy land there and build grand estates like his own at Sutro Heights.”

  A cracked filbert, Mr. Barnaby Meeker, Quincannon thought. Anyone who chose of his own free will to live in a home fashioned of abandoned street cars in an isolated, fog-ridden, wind-and-sand-blown place like Carville was welcome to the company of other cracked filberts, Adolph Sutro and his ilk included. He had no patience with eccentrics of any stripe, a sentiment he had expressed to Sabina on more than one occasion. She allowed as how that was because he was one himself, but he forgave her. Dear Sabina — he would forgive her anything. Except, perhaps, her steadfast refusal to succumb to his advances...

  “I will pay you five hundred dollars to come to Carville and view the phenomenon for yourself,” Barnaby Meeker said.

  “Eh? What’s that?”

  “Five hundred dollars, sir. And an additional one thousand dollars if you can provide a satisfactory explanation for these fantastic goings-on.”

  Quincannon’s ears pricked up like a hound’s. “Fifteen hundred dollars?”

  “If, as I said, you provide a satisfactory explanation.”

  “Can you afford such a large sum, Mr. Meeker?”

  “Of cours
e I can afford it,” Meeker said, bristling. “Would I offer it if I couldn’t?”

  “Ah, I ask only because—”

  “Only because of where I choose to reside.” Meeker thumped his stick to punctuate his testy displeasure. “It so happens I am a man of considerable means, sir. Railroad stock, if you must know — a substantial portfolio. I have made my home in Carville because I have always been fond of the ocean and the solitude of the dunes. Does that satisfy you?”

  “It does.” Quincannon’s annoyance and suspicion had both vanished as swiftly as the alleged Carville ghost. A smile now bisected his freebooter’s beard, the sort Sabina referred to rather unkindly as his greedy grin. “I meant no offense. You may consider us completely at your service.”

  “John,” Sabina said, “let’s not be hasty. You know how busy we are...”

  “Now, now, my dear,” he said. “Mr. Meeker has come in good faith with a vexing problem. We can certainly find the time and wherewithal to oblige him.”

  “And naturally you’ll keep an open mind in the process.”

  Quincannon chose to ignore her mocking tone. He rose, beamed at the cracked filbert, shook his hand with enthusiasm, and said, “Now, to business...”

  When Barnaby Meeker had gone, leaving a five-hundred-dollar check, neatly blotted, on Sabina’s desk, she said, “I’m not so sure it was a good idea to take on this case.”

  “No? And why not, with five hundred dollars in hand and another thousand promised?”

  “We’ve a full plate already, John. Or have you forgotten the pickpocket case, the missing Miss Devereaux, and the Wells Fargo Express robbery?”

  “Hardly. You’ll identify the amusement park dip, we’ll find Miss Devereaux, and I have no doubt I’ll locate the Wells Fargo bandits and recover the stolen loot before anyone else can — all in good time.” Quincannon rubbed his hands together briskly and opined, “This ghost foolishness can be disposed of in short order tonight. Fifteen hundred dollars is a handsome fee for a few hours’ easy work.”

  “Don’t be too sure it will be easy. Or that it’s foolishness.”

  “Of course it is,” he said. “Ghoulies, ghosties, things that go bump in the night. Pure hogwash.”

  Late that afternoon, huddled inside his greatcoat, Quincannon drove the hired livery horse and buggy out past Cliff House and Sutro Heights. A chill southwesterly wind blew curls and twists of fog in off the Pacific; the mist was already thick enough to hide the sea from the road, though he could hear the distant murmur of surf and the barking of sea lions. The foghorn on the Potato Patch off Point Lobos gave off its mournful moan at regular intervals.

  This was a bleak, lonesome section of the city, sparsely traveled beyond the Heights. As he rattled past the Ocean Boulevard turning into Golden Gate Park, a lone wagon emerged from the jungle-like tangle of scrub pine and manzanita that marked the park’s western edge; otherwise he saw no one. Empty sand-blown roadway, grass-topped dunes, gulls, fog... a blasted wasteland. There were no lampposts here, south of the park. At night, in heavy fog, the highway was virtually impassable, even with the strongest of lanterns, to all but the blind and the foolhardy.

  The sea mist thinned and thickened at intervals until he reached Carville, where it roiled in like a ragged gray shroud spread out over the barren dunes. Carville-by-the-Sea. Faugh. Some name for a scattering of weather-rusted streetcars and cobbled-together board shacks that had been turned into habitations of one type or another by filberts such as Barnaby Meeker.

  San Francisco’s transit companies were the culprits. When the city began replacing horse-drawn cars with cable cars and electric streetcars, some of the obsolete carriages had been sold to individuals for ten dollars if the car had no seats, twenty dollars if it did; the rest were abandoned out here among the dunes, awaiting new buyers or to succumb to rust and rot in the salty sea winds. A gripman for the Ellis Street line had been the first to see the nesting possibilities; in 1895, after purchasing a lot near the terminus of 20th Avenue, he had joined three old North Beach & Mission horse-cars and mounted them on stilts above the shifting sand. The edifice was still standing three years later; Quincannon had passed it on the way, a lonesome sight half-obscured by the blowing mist.

  Farther south, where the Park and Ocean railway line terminated, a Civil War vet named Colonel Charles Daily made his home in a shell-decorated realtor’s shed. An entrepreneur, Daily had bought three cars and rented them at five dollars each — one to a ladies’ bicycle club known as “The Falcons” — and also opened a coffee saloon. Others, Barnaby Meeker among them, bought their own cars and set them up in the vicinity. A reporter for the Bulletin dubbed the place Beachside, but residents preferred Carville-by-the-Sea and the general public shortened that to Carville.

  Quincannon had been there before, once on an outing with a young woman of his acquaintance, once on the trail of a thief who had used the ragtag community as a temporary hideout before taking it on the lammas to San Jose. It had grown since his last visit over a year ago. Most of the structures were strung close together along the highway, a few others spaced widely apart among the seaward dunes. Most were more or less permanent homes — single or double-stacked cars, some drawn together in horseshoe shapes for protection against the wind, and embellished by lean-tos and fenced porches. A few were part-time dwellings — clubhouses, weekend retreats, or, by reputation, rendezvous for lovers. The whole had a colorless, windblown, sanded appearance that blue sky and sunlight did little to brighten; on days like this one, it was downright dismal.

  The coffee saloon, a single car with a slant-roofed portico, bore a painted sign: The Annex. Smoke dribbled out of its chimney, to be snatched away immediately by the wind. Quincannon pulled the buggy off the road in front, affixed the weighted hitch-strap to the horse’s bit, and went inside.

  It was a rudimentary place, with a narrow foot-railed counter running most of its width. There were no seats or decorations of any kind. The smells of strong-brewed cofee and pitch pine burning in a potbellied stove were welcome after the long, cold ride from downtown.

  The counterman was a stooped oldster with white whiskers and tufts of hair that grew patchily from his scalp like saw grass atop the beach dunes. Quincannon sensed immediately that he was the garrulous type hungry for company and this proved to be the case.

  “One coffee coming up,” the oldster said, and as he served it in a steaming mug, “Colder than a witch’s hind end out there. My name’s Potter, but call me Caleb, ever’body does. Passing by or visiting, are ye?”

  “John Quincannon. Visiting.”

  “Ye don’t mind me asking who?”

  “The Barnaby Meekers.”

  “Nice folks, Mr. and Mrs. Meeker. The boy’s a mite rascally, but then so was I at his age. You a friend of theirs?”

  “A business acquaintance of Mr. Meeker.” Quincannon sugared his coffee, found it too strong, and added another spoonful. “Strange goings-on out here of late, I understand,” he said conversationally.

  “How’s that? Strange goings-on?”

  “Ghost lights in cars and vanishing spooks in the dunes.”

  “Oh, that,” Caleb said. “Mr. Meeker told you, I expect.”

  “He did.”

  “Well, I ain’t one to dispute a man like Barnaby Meeker, nor any other man with two good eyes, but it’s a tempest in a teapot, ye ask me.”

  “You haven’t seen these apparitions yourself, then?”

  “No, and nobody else has, neither, except the Meekers and a fella name of Crabb. Neighbor of theirs out there in the dunes.” Caleb leaned forward and said confidentially, even though there was no one else in the car, “Just between you and me, I wouldn’t put too much stock in what Mr. Crabb says on the subject.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, he’s kind of a queer bird. Wouldn’t think it to look at him, as strapping as he be, but he’s scared to death of the supernatural. Come in here the morning after he first seen the will-o’-the-wisp or what
ever it was and he was white as a ghost himself. Asked me all sorts of questions about spooks and such, whether we’d had ’em out here before. I told him no and ‘twas likely somebody out with a lantern, or his eyes playing tricks, but he was convinced he seen the ghost two nights in a row.” Caleb chuckled, revealing loose-fitting store-bought teeth. “Some folks is sure gullible.”

  “He lives alone, does he?” Quincannon asked.

  “Yep. Keeps to himself, don’t have much truck with any of the rest of us. Only been living in Carville a couple of weeks or so. Squatter, unless I miss my guess. I can spot ’em, the ones just move in all of a sudden and take over a car without paying for the privilege.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “He never said. Mr. Meeker’s boy Jared says he’s a construction worker, but seems to me he don’t go nowhere much during the day.”

  “Jared Meeker knows him, then.”

  “To pass the time of day with. Seen ’em doing that once.”

  Quincannon finished his coffee, declined a refill, and went out to the rented buggy. The branch lane that led to the Meekers’ home was two hundred rods further south. The buggy alternately bounced and slogged along the sandy surface; once, a hidden rut lifted Quincannon off the seat and made him pull back hard enough on the reins to nearly jerk the horse’s head through the martingale loops. Neither this nor the cold wind nor the bleakness dampened his spirits. A few minor discomforts were a small price to pay for a fifteen-hundred-dollar fee.

  The lane led in among the dunes, dipped down into a hollow where it split into two forks. A driftwood sign mounted on a pole there bore the name Meeker and an arrow pointing along the right fork. In that direction Quinncannon could see a group of four traction cars, two set end to end, the others at a right and a left angle at the far ends, like an arrangement of dominoes; mist-diffused lamplight showed faintly behind curtained windows in one of the two middle cars. A ways down the left fork stood a single car canted slightly against the dune behind it; some distance beyond, eight or nine abandoned cars were jumbled together among the sand hills as if tossed there by a giant’s hand. Thick tendrils of fog gave them an insubstantial, almost ethereal aspect, one that would be enhanced by darkness and imagination. A ghost’s lair, indeed.