CHAPTER 25

“An Inquest into the Death of Wilbur Whateley”

From the Journals of Robert Peaslee September 7 1928

After the first hour I began to wonder what I was doing in the courtroom. The inquest into the death was a complete farce. They had no body. Armitage, Rice, and Morgan claimed that they had seen the man lying in the library where the dog had attacked and torn his throat out. I say that Wilbur Whateley was a man, but from what the three university professors had seen, such a classification would have been unlikely. Based on their sworn testimony Wilbur was a hybrid monstrosity, a chimera, with skin like that of a crocodile, or in some places like that of a snake or lizard. Below the waist, the saurian legs were covered with thick fur and ended in odd, unearthly pads that were neither claws nor hooves. Tentacles with sucking mouths protruded from the thing’s waist, and as they were described I thought of the wounds sustained by Anne Newman when she was raped. There were also apparently vestigial eyes embedded in the hips and behind these was a kind of tubular appendage that could have been a kind of mouth or throat. All of this was unsubstantiated by the time the medical examiner had arrived—the thing that had pretended to be a man had shrunken away, sublimated into the very ether. All that remained was a white, viscous material that tests showed bore a vague resemblance to the cartilaginous material found in sharks.

There was some discussion of the dog being dangerous; after all, Armitage and the others had admitted that the beast had attacked and killed a man. This was countered with two arguments: one concerned the gun that had been found near to the body, which had obviously been brought in by Whateley to do harm, and therefore it could be construed that the animal was defending itself; alternatively, Armitage argued, there was no evidence that a man had actually been killed, despite his own testimony to the contrary. It was rather circular logic, but I learned quite some time ago that such reasoning was perfectly acceptable in the American judiciary system.

The whole process seemed to be coming to a close when I was suddenly called to testify. To what end, I didn’t understand, for I hadn’t actually seen anything of value. I only entered the library with the medical examiner, and by then there was only a noxious odor and that white, gelatinous paste on the floor. I prepared myself to keep my answers short and to the point, and explain that I could neither confirm nor deny what the university professors had said.

The first question was unexpected.

“Detective Peaslee, did you know Wilbur Whateley?”

“No. We never met.”

“Did you know the victim lived in Dunwich?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time in Dunwich lately, haven’t you, Detective?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I have notes here from several reliable individuals that you’ve been seen in Dunwich on a regular basis, almost every weekend, since the beginning of June. Is this true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And these visits had nothing to do with Mr. Whateley? You never visited his farm, or saw him in the village?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re telling this court that in three months of regular visits to Dunwich, you never met the nine-foot-tall freak that was the subject of half the gossip in the village?”

“I didn’t frequent the village, sir.”

“Well, what exactly were you doing in Dunwich—picking flowers?”

“No, sir. It’s a private matter, sir. Family business.”

That didn’t sit well with Judge Hand. Within the hour I was in the chief’s office, learning just how unhappy both he and the judge were with me. I hadn’t actually done anything wrong, but my attitude put me in a bad spot, and the visits to Dunwich, which I wouldn’t talk about, suggested I was hiding something, something they assumed had to do with Wilbur Whateley. In a way it did—he was the impetus for my preparations—but I didn’t have anything to do with his death. It raises an interesting conundrum. Is a man who is preparing to attack another man culpable if he dies by another’s hands? It would have to be left for better minds than mine to determine. I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer what I had been doing in that long-forgotten graveyard or in the old Halsey cabin, or why my car smelled of moldy earth, or what that queer gray dust that seemed to linger on my clothes was. None of it mattered anymore, anyway. Wilbur Whateley was dead and whatever he had been doing in that old farmhouse was over.

Of this I was certain, for amongst the papers filed with the court were inspections of the Whateley farm and house which affirmed that the ancient and crumbling edifice was empty, and that no one else was in residence on the property. I smiled when I read that the investigators had found little of value on the property and had immediately condemned all the structures that occupied the lands. It was surprising that they suggested that the house and other edifices be burned, but as I read I learned that an unwonted stench seemed to pervade the entire property and that the inspectors had suspected that waste, both animal and human, had been improperly disposed of, making the buildings uninhabitable. That they had not seen or heard anything in the old house brought comfort to me. I concluded that the horrible and invisible monster that had been Whateley’s companion that rainy evening in June was no longer there, and I assumed that it had been returned to whatever hellish place it had been called up from. As far as I was concerned, the issue with Wilbur Whateley was closed, and I could go back to looking into the death of Megan Halsey. Unfortunately, the Chief saw things differently.

By September 3rd I was transferred. I wasn’t Arkham’s problem anymore. All the tasks I had undertaken for them, all the stygian darkness I had fought against, all the little horrors I had dealt with on their behalf, all these were forgotten. I was damaged goods, a blemish as far as the department was concerned, and it was clear to me that if I went quietly there wouldn’t be much of an investigation into certain cases that had remained unsolved.

“You seem to like visiting Dunwich, Peaslee,” ranted the Chief as he handed me my orders. “Let us see how you like living out there. Effective immediately, you’re transferred to the State Police barracks in Aylesbury.”