Murder Comes to Eden Read online

  Watch it, O’Leary . . . watch it. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Sudley. It isn’t because we never gave you access to the bridge road, is it? Or are you really opposed to a couple of picnic tables under a beech tree?”

  “Did I ever ask you for access to the bridge road, Mr. O’Leary?” Sudley asked. “And I’m not opposed to picnic tables under the beeches. I’m opposed to people who talk about picnic tables on one side of the bridge to cover up the deal they’re making on the other side . . . with an outfit I wouldn’t touch with a fork I used to spread manure.”

  “Stan Ashton’s the only person who could make any kind of a deal this side of the bridge,” Spig said quietly. “And he’s the one person you could count on not to make a deal.”

  “Mr. O’Leary!” There was a sudden flash of anger in Sudley’s eyes. “Do you think any big-time gambling outfit comes into a small county like this without sounding out the county commissioners, cutting them in on building and maintenance contracts, to grease the wheels and keep the sheriff off their necks? Maybe you and Mr. Stanley Ashton didn’t know that, Mr. O’Leary. Why, that fellow in the blue silk suit sitting right behind you at the meeting the other night—what do you think they sent him down here for? I saw him shaking your hand, congratulating you on a fine speech. Sure, he’s all for zoning . . . once his outfit’s in. But he’d already talked to us, Mr. O’Leary—about the four acres Mr. Stanley Ashton was selling them, for what they call a ‘beach club’ on the Devon.”

  He got in his truck. Spig O’Leary stood there too stunned to move, his face going from an angry flush to pale to flinty grey-white. The truck moved towards him and stopped. Sudley’s voice was charged with passion.

  “Maybe you didn’t know, Mr. O’Leary. Buck Yerby says you didn’t. But I’ll tell you this. I hate gambling and everything that goes with it. I love my land and I love this river. All I wanted the Plumtree tract for was to take care of Miss Fairlie and the road and my river. But by God I’ll sell every inch of land I’ve got, I’ll drive every one of you people out of this place, before I’ll see your cotton-mouth brother-in-law defile it. You tell him. And tell him to keep out of my way. Tell him I’ll kill him if he doesn’t. Sure as you’re born I’ll kill him.”

  The truck moved on. Spig O’Leary stood there blindly, a smoky red haze all around him. “Oh, no. You won’t kill him.” It seemed to him he was almost shouting it. “You won’t have to. I’ll do it. The little swine . . . I’ll kill him myself, if it’s true.”

  CHAPTER IV

  OH NO. You won’t kill him. You won’t have to. I’ll do it. The little swine . . . I’ll kill him myself, if it’s true.

  It seemed to Spig O’Leary he must be shouting it, the way his throat was torn. But Sudley didn’t seem to hear him. He was going methodically about his business, helping the boy unhitch the disker and load it on to the truck. They were lumbering across the narrow bridge over the drainage run down into Plumtree Cove, going out Miss Fairlie’s lane to the old road, when the red haze blinding Spig finally dissolved and he found himself standing there alone.

  He got back into his car and drove on to the pineapple-topped gate posts fifty feet along in the woods on the right. There were two signs, one saying “O’Leary”, the other, “Stanley S. Ashton”. He was conscious of a sort of basic numbness in his brain that seemed to transmit itself to everything around him. Superimposed on it was the shameful awareness of his own humiliation, the writhing remains of his self-esteem. O’Leary, the hot shot of the Eden Neck Home Owners’ League . . . He could see himself at the commissioners’ meeting Thursday night. O’Leary eloquent as all hell, and Sudley and the five other commissioners sitting there, courteously, gravely listening to him sound off on the evils of Devon Death Strip, a menace to our children and a curse to us, quoting the Governor, and the commissioners knowing all about the guy in the blue silk suit sitting right behind him. As Buck Yerby knew . . . and how many others in the crowded room? They think you’re as big a heel as he is a louse . . . thinking he was putting up a civic front for Stan Ashton to work behind. O’Leary, heel or sucker—which was worse?

  He drove in to the fork where the Ashton’s fine new road cut off from the O’Learys’. Or the other way around—it made the O’Learys’ look like a mud track to an illicit still. A few yards along he put his foot on the brake, looking back at it, a smooth, white ribbon of oyster shell going off through the woods. In November, when the Ashtons were building their house, they used the O’Learys’ lane clear in to the dead chestnut tree. This new road wasn’t much over a month old. Spig drew his ginger brows together, trying to recall the way Stan had put it.

  “It’ll give us both a lot more privacy, Spig,” he’d said, “if you’ll let us have a thirty-foot right-of-way closer to the entrance. I’ve got the deed drawn up, to save you the trouble and expense. We’ll give you back our rights to your lane in to the chestnut. And we’ll pay for the clearing and building, and keep it up, of course.”

  “Big of you, old man.” Spig remembered thinking that, amused because old Stan had developed a slightly pompous as well as humourless attitude towards himself and his newly acquired wealth. It explained the businesslike efficiency with which he whipped the deed out of his handsome new pigskin briefcase. Or so Spig had thought. Now he wondered. The right to use the O’Learys’ lane had been friendly, never put in legal form.

  He must have been planning even then . . . O’Leary caught himself sharply, rubbing his hands back over his head, kneading his skull under the short, ginger stubble, trying to think. He didn’t know that what Sudley had said was true. People didn’t like Stan Ashton very much, but a lot of it was prejudice. Kathy had made a lot of friends. It was tactless, bringing in a rich, new wife as he’d done it, and Anita’s giving most of Kathy’s stuff to the church rummage sale hadn’t helped. But now he stopped to think, it was obvious that the whole thing was a fantastic error of some kind. In the first place, there was the letter stipulation. Or second place, anyway. First place was Stan Ashton’s own name and reputation. That alone would keep him from selling out to the kind of outfit Sudley wouldn’t touch with the fork he used to spread manure. Because Stanley S. Ashton’s name and reputation meant more to him and anything else he had. The high priest of highway sanctity wasn’t going to show any cloven hoof that would kick his own face right off the television panel. Not old Stan . . . not if Spig knew him. And there was still the letter of stipulation in young Judge Twohey’s office.

  Spig moved uneasily. It was eerie how clearly there for a moment the old judge’s voice seemed to come to him, almost as if it were recorded there in the whispering leaves of the oak trees. The old judge was gone now, but Spig could hear him speak again.

  It is my duty to tell you that such a stipulation is not legally binding. At most it could be used to show intent.—Gratitude is highly volatile. It seldom withstands the impact of hard cash.—There must never be a threat to Eden in Miss Fairlie’s lifetime. I want your solemn word of honour, Mr. O’Leary . . .

  “You have it, sir . . .” Spig O’Leary spoke back to him across the years, across the silent bourne, as if he knew some way the old judge could hear him, repeating his solemn word. Strangely, he felt calmer then, able to see the thing much more clearly, the fiery catharsis of his rage burned down to ordinary sanity again. There was no doubt Sudley believed what he was saying. But he was wrong. He didn’t know Stan Ashton. The cynic who said that all men were motivated by one of two things—vanity or cupidity—had hit the Stan Ashton nail square on the head, and cupidity was out. Anyone who had seen the fine flowering of Stan Ashton’s ego, watered by the life-giving rain of all the publicity he’d got, would know him better than to think he’d do anything to wither it.

  “And the poor guy’s not a swine,” Spig told himself. “Or if he is, he’s not a fool. He’s not going to commit professional suicide.”

  He looked at the clock on the dash. It was a quarter to seven, just thirty-five minutes since he’d stopped t
o talk to Yerby at the blue glass Three D. He started the car and drove on through the woods, past the old chestnut, towards what the O’Learys called the Home Farm, the five cleared acres where the house was, overlooking the Devon River. I’ll go see him. Right after dinner I’ll go over.

  He rubbed his face hard to smooth away the outward and visible signs of any inward doubt, and creased his eyes and lips into a reasonable facsimile of the happy grin of the home-coming parent, hearing the kids shouting over in Tip’s garden plot as he made the last bend through the woods. He came out into the Home Farm, the grin dying automatically and at once.

  The tree-shaded circle behind the house was full of cars. The Camerons’ and the Potters’ station wagons and the assorted conveyances of the not-so-well-heeled on Eden’s Neck . . . the ones Yerby said didn’t contribute except to live here and bellyache. And wait until they heard about the sign in Sudley’s pasture.

  He felt a sharp jolt then in the pit of his stomach. They’d probably heard already, that’s why they were here . . . if not about Sudley, about Stan Ashton. Then he saw the foreign, yellow, midget convertible with red leather seats nosed in between the station wagons. It belonged to Arthur Dunning, one of the top-flight artists Anita knew and had down to work and be company for her, be a bit of leaven for the local dough-heads—and a black-bearded pain in the glutenus maximus so far as O’Leary was concerned. If it was a home owners’ protest meeting, Dunning wouldn’t be there. Or would he . . . always turning up where he was least expected. But the kids were shouting, streaking bare-footed in blue jeans across the field to the circle to meet him.

  “Daddy! Daddy! I’ve got a contract, Daddy!”

  Tip was yelling it at the top of his lungs. He and a visiting boy were racing ahead, Kitsy, nine now, red pigtails and braces on her teeth, behind them. Behind her was John Eden O’Leary, aged seven, an extravert edition of both Spig and Tip, delayed now because he had to wait for Molly Ashton’s chubby four-year-old legs to catch up with him. Mädel, the German shepherd, circled behind her to help her on.

  “Daddy!” Tip’s freckled face was shining gold, but he pulled himself together with great sobriety. “Dad—this is my friend, Gregory Pappas. This is my father, Greg.” He nudged Greg’s arm. “Now you say, ‘How do you do, Mr. O’Leary?’ and shake his hand. We’re teaching him not to be so scared of grown-ups, Dad.”

  Spig put his hand out. “How do you do, Greg?”

  “How do you do, Mr. O’Leary?” Greg said shyly. His face was shining too. It was clear olive, finely cut, with brilliant dark eyes under a cap of hair black and glossy as a crow’s wing.

  “Greg’s in my room at school, Dad. He got me my contract, for all my vegetables, Daddy! Every one of ’em!”

  “My father’s going to buy them,” Greg said proudly.

  “Every morning I’m going to pick them, and you’ll deliver them for me, Daddy? Till I’m old enough to drive?”

  “Yes, because it’s a long-term contract. Isn’t that what my father said, Tip?”

  “Yes. You’ll deliver them for me . . . won’t you, Daddy?” It was only when Tip was bursting with happiness that he said Daddy, not Dad.

  “Sure I will,” said Sprig. “Glad to. Where——”

  “Just down the road,” Greg put in. “The Three D. You know, my father’s——”

  “Hey, wait . . .” But Kitsy was there then. “How’s my girl?” Spig caught her up and kissed her, and then came John Eden and Molly A. and he was smothered with small arms and sticky kisses, all sweaty like the little field hands they were, their blue jeans covered with top-soil, streaks of it on their glowing, freckled faces.

  Not the Three D. Not after all the stink I’ve made . . .

  The shining pride in all their faces was a stinging barb in his own pride of a baser nature.

  “We’ll see,” he said, as cheerfully as he could. O’Leary would look great knocking on the back door of the Three D with a basket of carrots, O’Leary who was too high-minded to go in the front door.

  Tip’s face had sobered. “If you don’t have time, Dad, Miss Fairlie said she’d lend me the jeep and David could drive me. She says it’s a very fine contract. Didn’t she, Greg? Mr. Pappas is paying me the retail price, isn’t he, Greg?”

  “Yes—because they’re fresh and Tip’s my friend,” Greg’s face beamed.

  “Come on, Tip! We’ve got to hurry! We’re busy, Daddy.” John Eden was through with all that stuff.

  “And you’d better hurry, too, Daddy,” Kirsty said. “Mother’s having a cocktail party. It’s Aunt Mag’s birthday. Tippy said we could give her some squash if we finish mulching. Didn’t you, Tippy?”

  They were off then, Mädel the shepherd circling them. Spig O’Leary stood there. He could see O’Leary lugging a bushel basket into the Three D and Buck Yerby standing there, grinning, the big ape. Not O’Leary. Not if he had to buy the whole bloody crop and eat it raw.

  Now the kids weren’t yelling at him, he could hear the din of cocktail noises coming through the windows from the terrace. They wouldn’t be laughing if they’d heard about either Sudley or Ashton. He went into the house through the “hyphen”—the one-room passage connecting the new dining-room and kitchen with the old cottage—put the papers on the table, and went into the kids’ downstairs bathroom to wash. It would be better to go in and say hallo to people first—they might see his car and wonder. Then he decided a quick slug would be a good thing to help him face the crowd of cheerful inebriates outside, and went through into the old cottage. It had been two rooms originally. Now it was one, and where they lived mostly, especially in winter with the big, old, whitewashed fireplace glowing green and gold with driftwood from the Cove. The drinking whisky was in the cellarette on the far side, across the pine tap table Miss Fairlie had left with them . . . the table where the blood had been.

  You can hardly tell it now unless you know it’s there. Blood disappears. It’s like everything else. All it takes is time.

  “I always keep fresh flowers here, or laurel leaves in the winter,” Miss Fairlie said, the day she had the shutters taken down, and the O’Learys had done the same, without asking the reason, nor did she tell them. There were others who would have gladly, but it was a matter of pride to shut them up a keeping faith with both Miss Fairlie and the old judge. Until the day the rector called and they couldn’t tell him to shut up he was so sweet and so obviously meant no harm.

  “Bless me, there it is . . . how well I recall it. I’d just come to Devonport, my first parish. I knew they were in love, planning to marry as soon as her father was well—he’d strained his heart in the autumn, haying. Poor child. She and her father found him here. It was bitter cold and he’d fallen overboard out at the duck blind. This was the closest place. He wouldn’t let his brother Harlan and Judge Twohey’s boy Nat come in with him, so they went on across the river, oyster tonging. The fire George made was still burning when I came out with the sheriff and old Dr. John. His clothes were there on a chair drying, and he was wrapped up in a blanket, sitting right there.”

  He pointed across the bowl of flowers.

  “He’d been cleaning his gun, his fingers still numb from the cold. When Celia Fairlie and her father found him, he was lying here on his gun, his great heart blown out, the table a sea of his blood. Never, my dear young friends, believe the terrible calumny some heartless people tried to spread. George Sudley never took his own life. It was a wicked and cruel thing to say.”

  He shook his silvery head. “It was hours before David, the coloured boy found them. Celia wouldn’t leave and her father was too ill to force her. David called us. The sheriff carried her bodily home. You didn’t know him—Buck Yerby’s father. He was crying. We all loved George Sudley. He and Celia had known each other all their life before they suddenly fell in love. It was like a flame. It was cruel, but God knows best—I must always believe that, even when it’s difficult for us to see it. It was very hard. His brother Harlan was eighteen, going away to college
. He had to stay home and manage the farm. It changed him, of course. It changed Miss Fairlie . . . But she might have accepted her changed life, as Harlan accepted his and grew with it, if it hadn’t been for the terrible tragedy of two months later. But you know that, of course.”

  “We don’t, sir, but we’d rather not,” Spig said quietly. “We love Miss Fairlie as she is. We don’t want to know anything she doesn’t want to talk about.”

  “That’s very wise, and very kind,” the old rector answered, not knowing they hadn’t known even this much until he told them. “How short is the time of man,” he said softly, his eyes resting on the faint, dark stain on the satin surface of the table. “It was terrible, that day. You can hardly tell it now, unless you know it’s there.”

  “All it takes is time, I guess.” Spig said, quoting Miss Fairlie the way the rector had unconsciously quoted her himself.

  The old man shook his head. “That’s not all it takes, my friend,” he said quietly. “That is the tragedy of Celia Fairlie. It takes more than time. It takes resignation—which she has never had. It takes pity, and kindness, and there was no one who could give her that, or no one she could accept it from. Except old David. There are stars in the crown that’s awaiting him, beautiful stars.” He smiled. “And perhaps, in yours,” he added. “Or is it your son’s? I’m told he is the one who touched Celia Fairlie’s heart. She didn’t seem quite so remote to me when I saw her last. Perhaps he’ll bring her back to us. Who can tell?”

  It had been a long time since Spig had thought of that, as he thought of it now stopping in the door, the nasturtiums in the crystal bowl, there on the shadow where a man’s heart had bled, a bowl of fire and gold, alive and glowing in the cool twilight room with its small windows and dim walls of satiny pine.