Murder Comes to Eden Read online

  MURDER COMES TO EDEN

  THE Eden of Spig and Molly O’Leary was a lovely, peaceful place. There the O’Learys acquired a home, largely through the sudden generosity of Miss Celia Fairlie, an odd, vague and unexpectedly shrewd old lady who had taken a great liking to small Tip O’Leary. When Spig is already involved in preserving this idyllic spot against industrial encroachment, another, older story begins to unfold: a story that goes back into the past of Miss Celia Fairlie, concerning a mysterious death many years before. In both stories—the present crisis and the secret of the past—Spig O’Leary becomes involved; in his bitterness and anger he blunders badly and even his marriage seems threatened. This brilliant new story moves at a dazzling pace. Even the greatest admirers of Colonel Primrose will forgive the author his absence from Murder Comes to Eden.

  By the Same Author

  INVITATION TO MURDER

  THE LYING JADE THE BAHAMAS MURDER CASE

  MURDER IS THE PAY-OFF SHOT IN THE DARK

  HONOLULU MURDER STORY

  THE DEVIL’S STRONGHOLD THE WOMAN IN BLACK

  THE PHILADELPHIA MURDER STORY

  CRACK OF DAWN SIREN IN THE NIGHT

  PRIORITY MURDER MURDER DOWN SOUTH

  A CAPITAL CRIME ROAD TO FOLLY

  ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT SNOW-WHITE MURDER

  THREE BRIGHT PEBBLES THE TOWN CRIED MURDER

  MR. CROMWELL IS DEAD

  THE SIMPLE WAY OF POISON

  MURDER

  COMES TO EDEN

  by

  LESLIE FORD

  Murder Comes to Eden

  Copyright © 1955, renewed 1983, by Zenith Brown.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  CHAPTER I

  TIPTON JAMES O’LEARY had his war all taped out. Mission: no entangling alliances. Method: off duty, stick strictly to those spots where you don’t run into any. It was a conclusion he’d come to the sixth time he was best man at a hasty wedding, fortified every time he saw a girl with a lost look in her eye and a kid in her arms waving good-bye on a station platform. He finished his last year in college and enlisted when he was twenty-one. He was a staff sergeant in a cadre at Fort Bragg when he was twenty-three, dropped in at a USO dance for a minute because he was fed up with a crap game, and that was that. She had red-gold hair and a green dress. She was standing over in a corner all by herself, like something cool and lovely that had slipped up from the crystalline caves of the sunlit sea.

  “Who is that girl?” he asked the hostess.

  “That’s Miss Dulaney. Shall I take you over to meet her, Sergeant?”

  “No, thanks,” said Sergeant O’Leary. He went over by himself. “I’m Tipton James O’Leary. Spig, for short,” he said.

  She looked up at him, laughing. Her eyes were greenish brown, flecked with sparkling gold, and there was a faint almost milk-blue transparency under the long golden lashes that shaded them.

  “I’m Mary Margaret Dulaney. Molly for short.”

  “May I have this dance, Molly—and all the rest? Then I’d like to take you home, if your father the Sea King doesn’t mind.”

  “You may have this dance,” Molly said. “More than one’s against the rules. And my father the Sea King’s coming for me at half-past twelve.”

  “You leave the rules to me,” said Spig O’Leary. “A sergeant can do anything.”

  At twelve-thirty he took her out. The Sea King’s car was khaki-coloured, with a flag on the fender, a flag with two stars on it. He got out, giving his daughter a testy glare.

  “Daddy, this is Staff Sergeant Tipton James O’Leary—Spig, for short.—My father, General Dulaney.”

  Spig saluted. The general returned it. He was a short, peppery man.

  “ ‘Spig’ ” he said. “No relation to old Spig O’Leary, West Point ’16?”

  “My father, sir.”

  “Ha. Where is the old horse?”

  “Washington, sir. War Production Board.”

  “Ha.” He looked at Spig’s GI uniform. “What are you doing in that?”

  “Backbone of the Army, sir. Save money. No uniforms to buy.”

  “Sounds like old Spig himself. Too bad. Loss to the Army.”

  “Eight kids to feed, sir.”

  “Tough going with three, myself. Give him my best. Hurry up, Molly.”

  “I’d like permission to see your daughter again, sir,” said Spig. “Immediate mission: matrimony.”

  The general started. “No way to save money.” He glowered around at his daughter. “I told your mother she was a fool to let you come here.” He looked at his watch. “Now you’re here, the sergeant can walk you home. I had to leave the only Christian hand I’ve had all night. Your mother’ll be delighted. Daisy Tipton was one of our bridesmaids.”

  He returned Spig’s salute and got back in his car, and Spig kissed Molly then in front of a streetful of cheering soldiers.

  Spig O’Leary was six feet one, his hair, what the barber had left of it, ginger-red, his eyes grey, his mouth wide, his lips thin, his jaw round but appearing square.

  “I don’t know what our kids are going to look like,” he said. “Have you had biology? What do two reds make—any idea?”

  “Blue, I think,” Molly said. “But I only got as far as frogs.”

  Two weeks later they were married.

  “It’s a mistake,” the general said. “Nineteen’s too young.”

  “He’ll have to take a commission, now,” said Mrs. Dulaney.

  “We need the money,” Molly O’Leary said. “I’ve been in plenty of officers’ clubs. The backbone of the Army, Daddy. I’ve heard you say it. And he’s leaving so soon, Mother, you won’t be embarrassed long. Oh Daddy, I love him! I’m going to get an apartment in Washington. Maybe he can hitch a plane back once or twice. . .”

  “A sergeant can do anything,” the general said.

  Sergeant O’Leary made it five times—once, just before Normandy, for twenty-seven minutes on a darkened airstrip in Virginia. In May, 1947, he came back to the Sea King’s daughter and two small kids—older, tougher, quieter, profoundly happy, profoundly in love. Molly had a three-room apartment in a rabbit warren of brick with “Keep Off” signs on the patch of grass in front of it. He’d been home two weeks the morning she plunked the coffee pot down on the table, her eyes flashing, the gold flecks tinder-bright.

  “Spig O’Leary . . . we can’t stand this!” she said hotly. “We’ve got to have a bigger place to live. That box you threw in the garbage yesterday had Tippy’s leaves in it, the ones he’s been collecting all spring every time we took a walk. This marriage has gone beautifully all the time you were away. It’s going bust in six months unless——”

  “Not ever, Mrs. O’Leary. This marriage is never going bust.”

  “It is unless we get a little room to move around in. And Tippy’s just got to be outdoors. Look, Spig. We’ve got thirty-five hundred dollars we’ve saved. We could buy a little piece of land and get a GI loan to build us a small house. Just some place. On the water, maybe. Maybe down in Devon County where the Camerons are. Joe commutes. You could do it. Mag Cameron says there are lots of places down there. It’s Garden Pilgrimage Week. We could go look . . . just look, anyway, Spig.”

  They put the two kids in the car and went down to Devon County. It was forty miles and the roads were narrow and winding. But it was lovely. The dogwood was in bloom and the honeysuckle sweet all along the barbed wire fences. They took their lunch and had a picnic under an oak tree in somebody’s field. Tippy wouldn’t eat. He was too absorbed in gathering violets, leaves and blades of grass. He was such a minute and perfect image of his father that Spig laughed every time he looked at
him.

  “I know who his father is, all right. I’m not sure about his mother. But what I really don’t get is this Nature Boy stuff. Doesn’t he ever whoop it up like other kids? You didn’t just sit concentrating on Socrates, did you? Or some big wheel in botany?”

  “You’re being the heavy father before he’s even out of nursery school,” said Molly. “I don’t know what we’ve produced, but it’s something special. He adores things that grow. That’s why we’ve got to have a place with a yard of some kind.”

  A few miles along they saw the sign: “Devon Manor—Waterfront Lots—$250 and Up.” The ones on the water were “Up” $500.

  “They’re beautiful, Spig.”

  “We’re planning a club house, with dances Saturday nights, oyster roasts and crab feasts,” the man said.

  “Well, let’s not rush it,” Spig said. “Let’s look at one House and Garden—and have a drink with the Camerons.” He looked at the Pilgrimage guide folder they’d picked up at a service station. “Here’s one. ‘The Garden of Eden. Miss Celia Fairlie, owner. House not on view.’ That’s fine. The kids won’t break anything. Maybe they’ll have the snakes on view, up the apple tree.”

  “Do snakes live in apple trees?” Tippy asked.

  “No. Just a joke, son. About another Garden of Eden.”

  “I’d like to see the apple tree,” Tippy said. “I’ve seen snakes at the zoo.”

  They went through Devonport, a quiet little town with a courthouse square and nobody much around. The green arrows tacked to the trees led them out a narrow road through pastures and newly planted tobacco fields. The gate marked “Eden” was a couple of miles from town. They followed a lane for half a mile between oaks and beeches, the fields on either side gleaming through shimmering masses of dogwood and shining green holly. There was another gate set in a serpentine brick wall, beyond a small Greek Revival building where a woman with a cigar box came out to take their money.

  “I’m sorry—no children,” she said with a toothy smile of no regret. “Miss Fairlie wouldn’t want the flowers trampled. Now, this building is the old estate office. John Eden landed here on the Devon in 1729. That’s why it’s called Eden’s Landing. Miss Fairlie is a direct descendant; her mother was a Miss Eden. Just the gardens. The house isn’t on view. It’s supposed to be haunted.” She laughed. “Now, if you’ll just park by the gate. The children can get out, but they must stay on this side.”

  Molly looked at Spig. Spig looked at his son and felt a sharp tug at his own heart.

  “Let’s not bother, then,” he said. “We’ll go some place else.”

  “No,” said Tippy. “We’ll stay by the car. We can see it when we grow up. We can look at the trees on this side.”

  But it took all the fun out of it for Spig and Molly. It wasn’t as if the place were crowded. There was only one other customer, a tiny old lady in a white dress, with a stiff, white sailor hat and white gloves, and a parasol standing by the iris border near the gate. She and an old, coloured man in his Sunday suit guarding the house were the only people in sight.

  “We’ll do it quickly,” Molly said. “Then let’s go and buy the lots.”

  “Right,” Spig said. The lost expression on Tippy’s face had decided it. They went rapidly along the turf walk between the borders, hardly seeing them, and both looked back then as their son’s earnest treble reached them across the peonies. He was through the gate, his sister by the hand, talking to the old lady with the sailor hat.

  “Lady, do you think it would be all right if we stood here and looked at the flowers, if we didn’t touch anything?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said the lady.

  “I’d better go back,” Spig said. But Molly was suddenly pale green. He got her over to a white iron bench. “You sit down till I get them back in the car.” He was still hearing his son’s voice.

  “My name is Tipton James O’Leary, Jr. My mother calls me Tippy. My father calls me Tip. I’m four and a half. This is my sister Kitsy. She’s only two.”

  Spig was starting towards them when he heard the lady’s voice.

  “I’m Celia Fairlie. I’m sixty-one. And I’m very happy to meet you and Kitsy, Tip. I hope you will enjoy my flowers.”

  “Thank you, Celia Fairlie,” Tip said.

  Spig grinned and came back to Molly, sat down and took her hand in his. “He’ll be all right.” They could still hear his voice.

  “We don’t have a place for a garden where we live,” he was saying. “It’s very small. It was all right till my father came home, but he’s very large. That was my father and my mother we came with. We’re going to have another baby, but we don’t know whether it’s going to be a boy or a girl till it’s born. We don’t know where we’re going to put it. It’s a present for my father, because he’s been away a very long time.”

  Spig got up hastily. “Look, the rat . . . Couldn’t you tell him to tell people I was home for a week six months ago?”

  “Sit down,” Molly said. She was blushing and less green now. “I’ll be all right in a minute. Let’s go and get our lots then.”

  But even Molly was startled when they heard Tippy go on. “Have you any children, Celia Fairlie?”

  They didn’t hear Miss Celia Fairlie’s reply. The three were moving away behind the boxwood.

  “We’d better go,” Molly said. “I feel fine. It was emotional, I guess. He was so disappointed. Let’s go get our lots. You find him.”

  But Tippy refused to go. “I’d like to stay with Celia Fairlie,” he said. He slipped his hand into hers as Kitsy toddled back to her father.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Fairlie,” Spig said. “We thought the children were staying outside.”

  “I like them inside,” said Miss Fairlie. She was very small and very erect, with pale, faraway, blue eyes. Her voice was faraway, too. “If you have some other house you want to see, Tip may stay here till you come back. Tell the woman at the gate so she doesn’t charge you a second time. Very grasping.”

  Molly and Spig looked at each other, avoiding their son’s eyes.

  “I’d like very much to stay,” he said soberly, but there was a little catch in his voice. “Miss Fairlie says she’ll show me the apple tree. She says they do have snakes, but down in the water, not in the garden.”

  “He could stay a little while, then,” Molly said. “We can come back on our way to the Camerons’. We’ll take Kitsy.”

  “I’m not sure about this,” Spig said as they got in the car.

  At the little, white-pillared office the toothy lady stopped them, smiling officiously. “The little boy . . . where is——”

  “He’s staying with Miss Fairlie a while.”

  “Oh . . .” She looked very startled indeed.

  “She said he might.”

  “Oh, well . . . I mean, I’m sure it’s all right. David—the old coloured man—he was there, wasn’t he?”

  “Down by the house,” Spig said.

  “Oh, well, it’s quite all right, then.” She smiled brightly. “I just wanted to check, that’s all.”

  They went on three or four miles. “Spig,” Molly said. “That woman. What do you suppose she meant?”

  “I guess she thought the old man’d keep him off the flowers.”

  But Molly was disturbed. “Let’s go back, Spig.”

  “Oh, he’s all right. They were doing fine, I thought.”

  They went on, but just as they got to the sign Molly put her hand quickly on his arm. “No, Spig, I know I’m being difficult. But I’d be a lot happier . . .”

  “Okay.” They went back. The woman at the gate smiled at them cordially.

  “He’s quite all right. I’ve kept my eye on them.”

  And he was all right. He and Miss Fairlie came around the turf between the borders, walking very solemnly. Then Tippy ran to meet them, his eyes shining like brand new stars.

  “Miss Fairlie says she has lots of land and lots of water!” He stopped breathlessly and ran back. �
�Didn’t you, Miss Fairlie? Didn’t you say that?”

  “Yes, I did,” Miss Fairlie said.

  “I told her we didn’t have very much money. But she said that’s all right. Didn’t you, Miss Fairlie?”

  Spig and Molly stared at them. Miss Fairlie came up, her pale childlike eyes resting on them quite definitely a moment before the far away look came back. She stood there, her white-gloved hands folded in front of her, blinking vaguely a moment before she spoke.

  “Tip said thirty-five hundred dollars. Is that correct?”

  “That’s . . . correct,” Spig said.

  “Then you may have that piece on the other side of the Cove.” She turned and pointed across the gardens. “The house is old and very small. But if you paid me two thousand dollars, you’d have enough left to add on to it. There’s several acres. It goes to those trees you see this side of Mr. Sudley’s tobacco fields. There’s a pleasant piece of beach the children would enjoy, I think.”

  Neither Spig nor Molly could speak. Tippy’s face had no need of words.

  “There’s a great deal of honeysuckle. In fact, it’s completely overgrown, except around the cottage. I’ve kept that clear. You’d have to fix the road, but you could use mine as far as the old wagon trail. I’ve kept the bridge repaired. I don’t think you’ll mind the blood. You can hardly tell it unless you know it’s there.”

  “She says you can hardly see it now, anyway,” Tip said urgently.

  “That’s . . . wonderful, Miss Fairlie. But——”

  “No. Blood disappears. It’s like everything else. Time is all it takes. We can go look now, if you like.”

  “I don’t know. My wife——”

  “We can go through the gardens. It won’t be too much for her.”

  “Let’s go, Daddy! Please, Daddy! Please, Mother!”

  There was a narrow, white bridge at the bottom of the garden.

  “This isn’t the bridge I was talking about,” said Miss Fairlie. “This is my own bridge. The other one is over that way.” She waved vaguely out through the jungle of sassafras and locust, all matted with fox grape and honeysuckle. “The wagon trail is under there.” She indicated the jungle again. “We take this path.”