Shutter Island(19)
“Someone on the ferry. Maybe more than one.”
“Unless he didn’t leave on the ferry. Could have had his own boat.”
Teddy gave it some thought. “Comes from money. Park Avenue, according to Cawley.”
“So, there you go—his own boat.”
Teddy looked up the wall to the thin wire at the top, the air around them protruding like a bubble pressed against glass.
“Brings up as many questions as it answers,” Teddy said after a bit.
“How so?”
“Why those codes in Rachel Solando’s room?”
“Well, she is crazy.”
“Why show it to us, though? I mean, if this is a cover-up, why not make it easier for us to sign off on the reports and go home? ’The attendant fell asleep.’ Or ’The lock on the window rusted out and we didn’t notice.’”
Chuck pressed his hand to the wall. “Maybe they were lonely. All of them. Needed some company from the outside world.”
“Sure. Made up a story so they could bring us here? Have something new to chat about? I’ll buy that.”
Chuck turned and looked back at Ashecliffe. “Joking aside…”
Teddy turned too, and they stood facing it. “Sure…”
“Starting to get nervous here, Teddy.”
5
“THEY CALLED IT a Great Room,” Cawley said as he led them through his parquet foyer to two oak doors with brass knobs the size of pineapples. “I’m serious. My wife found some unsent letters in the attic from the original owner, Colonel Spivey. Going on and on about the Great Room he was building.”
Cawley yanked back on one of the pineapples and wrenched the door open.
Chuck let loose a low whistle. Teddy and Dolores had had an apartment on Buttonwood that was the envy of friends because of its size, a central hallway that seemed to go on the length of a football field, and yet that apartment could have folded into this room twice.
The floor was marble, covered here and there by dark Oriental rugs. The fireplace was taller than most men. The drapes alone—three yards of dark purple velvet per window and there were nine windows—had to cost more than Teddy made in a year. Maybe two. A billiards table took up one corner under oil paintings of a man in Union army formal blue, another of a woman in a frilly white dress, a third painting of the man and woman together, a dog at their feet, that same gargantuan fireplace behind them.
“The colonel?” Teddy said.
Cawley followed his gaze, nodded. “Relieved of his command shortly after those paintings were finished. We found them in the basement along with a billiards table, the rugs, most of the chairs. You should see the basement, Marshal. We could fit the Polo Grounds down there.”
Teddy smelled pipe tobacco, and he and Chuck turned at the same time, realized there was another man in the room. He sat with his back to them in a high-back wing chair facing the fireplace, one foot extending off the opposite knee, the corner of an open book propped there.
Cawley led them toward the fireplace, gestured at the ring of chairs facing the hearth as he crossed to a liquor cabinet. “Your poison, gentlemen?”
Chuck said, “Rye, if you got it.”
“I think I can scare some up. Marshal Daniels?”
“Soda water and some ice.”
The stranger looked up at them. “You don’t indulge in alcohol?”
Teddy looked down at the guy. A small red head perched like a cherry on top of a chunky body. There was something pervasively delicate about him, a sense Teddy got that he spent far too much time in the bathroom every morning pampering himself with talcs and scented oils.
“And you are?” Teddy said.
“My colleague,” Cawley said. “Dr. Jeremiah Naehring.”
The man blinked in acknowledgment but didn’t offer his hand, so neither did Teddy or Chuck.
“I’m curious,” Naehring said as Teddy and Chuck took the two seats that curved away from Naehring’s left side.
“That’s swell,” Teddy said.
“Why you don’t drink alcohol. Isn’t it common for men in your profession to imbibe?”
Cawley handed him his drink and Teddy stood and crossed to the bookshelves to the right of the hearth. “Common enough,” he said. “And yours?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your profession,” Teddy said. “I’ve always heard it’s overrun with boozers.”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
“Haven’t looked too hard, then, huh?”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“That’s, what, cold tea in your glass?”
Teddy turned from the books, watched Naehring glance at his glass, a silkworm of a smile twitching his soft mouth. “Excellent, Marshal. You possess outstanding defense mechanisms. I assume you’re quite adept at interrogation.”
Teddy shook his head, noticing that Cawley kept little in the way of medical texts, at least in this room. There were a few, but it was mostly novels, a few slim volumes Teddy assumed were poetry, several shelves of histories and biographies.
“No?” Naehring said.
“I’m a federal marshal. We bring them in. That’s it. Most times, others handle the interviewing.”