Murder Comes to Eden Page 9

  But it was Point I that was the immediate problem. Aside from reminding you of the black snake seven feet long . . . That was the only tinge of the unorthodoxy Nat Twohey had been afraid of—and the rhetorical approach was the only difference between it and the conclusion that Harlan Sudley and Spig O’Leary had come to independently of it. Whether there was time for Nat’s imagination and legal resourcefulness to get off its prat and start to function instead of it was something else again.

  He got up with a kind of sardonic awareness that whatever the hand arranging the pattern, it was doing okay. This was probably the only time in the last seven years that O’Leary could go downstairs and hunt for a removable stone in the fireplace without interference. He wrapped the air mail sheets back around the sealed letter, put the whole thing back into the envelope, held his lighter to the wax seals and pressed them into place again. Then he took off his shoes, got out a pair with rubber soles and slipped them on.

  Molly’s door was still shut as he went quietly down the stairs and into the old cottage room. He closed the door, switched on the lights and then, on an off-chance, drew the curtains across the windows. He went over to the side of the fireplace next to the cellarette. The chimney breast was a good three feet thick, to accommodate the crane, cooking pot and dutch oven. It had been whitewashed a couple of times since they’d been there. There were no visible cracks around any of the stones. He went to the desk, got the paper knife and came back, and tensed sharply at a rasping scratch on the door across the room. Nervous. He grinned then, remembering the dog, and tensed again. The dog couldn’t open the door, not that slowly. The cold prickles skidded down his spine as a single bare foot six inches off the floor moved, edging the door open silently, inch by inch. He relaxed as he saw the wrinkled pyjama leg attached to it. The door swung open then and there was Tip, eyes wide, face pale, the dog beside him, at ease, wagging her tail. O’Leary was at ease, too, for half a second, before he saw the rifle in his son’s hands.

  “What the hell are you doing with that thing?”

  “I thought it was . . . somebody else.”

  Tip swallowed, a baffled look on his own face as his eyes rested on the paper knife in his father’s hand.

  “What . . . what are you doing with that, over there? Are you trying to . . . to find the box?”

  Sprig nodded.

  “Who . . . told you it was there?”

  “Judge Twohey. He wrote a letter he wants put in it.”

  Spig O’Leary was aware suddenly that there was something essentially comic in his standing there in the corner, being catechized, as if Tip were indeed the Lord Proprietor. But there was something not at all comic about the .22 in the kid’s hands.

  “Don’t you think you’d better put that rifle away?” he asked quietly. “Who did you expect to find here, anyway?”

  “I didn’t know.” But it was obvious he did know even before he said, “Mr. Dunning hasn’t any right coming over here all the time.” He went across the room and set the rifle in the corner.

  “Is the safety catch on?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. Now listen to me, Tip. We’ll see about Dunning. But we leave guns out of it. Strictly out. Do you understand that?”

  Tip’s jaw was like his father’s. “I understand,” he said. His voice had nothing in it to suggest pliant amenability to reason, sweet or otherwise.

  “Okay, then. Remember it.”

  The whole new deal of Tip had Spig O’Leary in an untracked wilderness, with no experience to go on, least of all his own. A summary court with punishment, swift, direct and no hard feelings had been the technique of Spig O’Leary, West Point ’16. but none of the eight O’Learys had faced their father with Tip’s impassive assurance. He watched the kid calmly coming across the room to him.

  “About this box,” he asked. “How did you find it?”

  “Miss Fairlie showed it to me,” Tip said. “It has something of hers in it. I’m supposed to give it to you if she should die. It’s a secret, but she said I could tell you if I thought I should.”

  He stood soberly making up his mind for a moment. Then he pointed back to the bowl of nasturtiums on the pine tap table.

  “Where the blood was,” he said. “There was a man killed there. He was a friend of Miss Fairlie’s.”

  “I know.” There was a certain irony in all the care the O’Learys had taken never to mention the blood you could hardly tell unless you knew it was there. “He had an accident cleaning his gun.”

  “No.” Tip shook his head. “That’s what they said, but it isn’t true. Another man shot him, on purpose. Because Miss Fairlie was going to get married to him—the one that was killed.”

  A chill wonder moved in Spig’s mind as he looked at his son, sober and completely matter-of-fact.

  “He was murdered. Miss Fairlie told me so. But it doesn’t matter, because the man’s dead now, too. The one who did it, I mean.”

  In the part of the room where Spig was there was a muted silence. He was remembering Nat Twohey. With George Sudley dead, I hoped . . . But it didn’t work that way, of course.

  When he spoke at last he tried to make it sound as if it didn’t matter to him, either. “When was it Miss Fairlie told you, Tip?”

  “Oh, it was a long time ago.”

  O’Leary swallowed, relieving the constriction in his throat.

  “It was that day you and Mother wanted to take Miss Fairlie in to Judge Twohey’s funeral and she wouldn’t go,” Tip said. “She came over here, instead. That’s when she told me, and showed me how to open the box.”

  A long time ago. Six months is a long time when eleven years is the grand total.

  “It was the same day Uncle Stan brought the men over that wanted to buy our place.”

  Spig brought himself sharply back to the present. “What men that . . .”

  “Just some men. Kitty told them it wasn’t for sale.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “We tried to when you came home. But you said to just shut up and beat it. But we did tell Miss Fairlie. She——”

  The sharp jangling of the telephone cut him off. Spig reached quickly over the desk to keep it from ringing a second time and waking Molly, forgetting she wasn’t in the bed upstairs by the extension.

  “O’Leary speaking.”

  There was no answer. Someone was there. He could hear the rise and fall of breathing.

  “Hallo,” he said impatiently.

  There was still no answer, only the breath drawn longer and more audibly in his ear. He listened a moment and put the phone down.

  “Who is it, Dad?” Tip asked.

  “I don’t know.” Spig turned back to the chimney. “Now about this box.”

  “It’s here.” Tip pointed. As he raised himself on his toes to reach it the phone rang again.

  Spig turned and picked it up. “Hallo,” he said sharply.

  “Mr. O’Leary?”

  It was a man’s voice, very suave and very friendly.

  “Speaking.”

  “You wouldn’t recognise my name, so I won’t bother you with it, Mr. O’Leary,” the voice said pleasantly. “But I’ve heard you may try to block the Ashton sale. I wouldn’t if I were you. I’ve heard you’ve even threatened to kill Ashton. That’s very stupid. I’m not threatening you, O’Leary—I’m just telling you. Get out and stay out. Your wife and children are perfectly safe . . . if you mind your own business. Can you hear me, O’Leary—or can’t you?”

  O’Leary started to speak, but there was no one to speak to. He stood there, the dial tone zinging steadily monotonous, in his ear.

  CHAPTER IX

  “WHO IS IT, Daddy?”

  Spig O’Leary’s heart tightened sharply. The kid with the rifle in his hand a minute ago was suddenly a round-eyed boy, terribly young, a little scared, more bewildered.

  “Just some clown.” He put the phone casually back in the cradle. “Thinks it’s Hallowe’en, I
guess.”

  “You didn’t look like you thought it was a joke.”

  “I didn’t. But my sense of humour’s shot to-night.”

  He turned back to the chimney breast. “Now about the box,” he said. “It’s time both of us were in bed.”

  “It’s that one.” Tip pointed up to one of the stones, smaller and more evenly cut than the rest. It was set in the centre of the pier, well under the jutting end of the chestnut mantel. “You push hard.”

  He raised himself on tiptoe and pressed one side of the stone. The whitewash fell in tiny flakes as the slab, dressed no more than a couple of inches thick, moved in. A rude iron bar, morticed upright with two iron rings around it set in the slab, formed a primitive hinge.

  “It was while they didn’t like Catholics here, Miss Fairlie said,” Tip explained soberly. “She said one of the Edens married a Catholic and built this house for a priest she knew to live in. This is where he hid the Host—like in Holy Communion.”

  The opening was no more than six inches wide but the space behind it hollowed out, lined with hammered metal.

  “Her letter’s at the bottom. But you’re not supposed to touch it now. You promise, don’t you, Dad?”

  “I promise.” Spig took the letter out of his pocket. “And you promise not to tell anybody this is here—not even Miss Fairlie.”

  Tip nodded. “I promise.”

  Spig dropped the envelope into the hollow and pushed the stone back into place.

  “You can hardly tell it unless you know it’s there,” Tip said.

  “That’s right.”

  Spig glanced over at the bowl of nasturtiums. The shadow under it seemed to have darkened, now that he knew the depth of the tragedy behind it . . . three lives blasted in the violent blasting of the one. George Sudley may have been the least unfortunate of the three, the old judge the most, living on so many years in the wasteland of his own heart, seeing the wasteland he’d made of Celia Fairlie’s. He turned back to his son, the chill that had been with him earlier there with him again. Perhaps it was right that violence begets violence, and the murder of George Sudley there in that room was in some way responsible for the loaded rifle in a boy’s hand, murder in a boy’s heart. There was very little doubt in his mind that, if it had been Arthur Dunning there in the room, there could have been more blood there that night.

  “Let’s go get something to eat, Tip,” he said. “Bring your gun.”

  He was acutely conscious of it standing in the corner as they divided the casserole he’d left on the kitchen counter.

  “Now look, son,” he said. “You remember the deal you made with your grandfather?”

  It was General Dulaney who’d given Tip the gun for his tenth birthday a year ago.

  Tip swallowed. “Yes, sir. I have to ask permission to use it. Or . . . or I have to call him up and ask him to keep it for me till I’m ready to . . . to respect a gun.”

  “All right. You think it over and let me know in the morning. Now, about Dunning.”

  Tip’s jaw tightened. His eyes met his father’s without flinching.

  “I’m not going to have him over here poking around all the time,” he said. “What if he found the box?”

  “Is that why you don’t like him?”

  Tip’s eyes were hot, his mouth sullen. He looked down and shifted uncomfortably. “No,” he said. He shut his lips tight again.

  “Okay. I won’t ask you if you don’t want to tell. But I want you to get this straight. Dunning’s my business. He’s not yours.”

  “He’s mine when he comes out in my garden and paints his dirty pictures. That’s all they are, dirty—dirty mean. And I’m not going to let him paint my mother’s picture. I won’t. I’ll kill him.”

  “Now, wait a minute.” Spig cut him off quietly. “That’s all we’re going to have of that stuff. Absolutely all—do you hear me? Dunning’s my business. Not yours.”

  “But you’re not here . . .”

  “I’ll be here the rest of the week.”

  Tip’s jaw relaxed. “Well, all right. If you’re home.”

  “Thanks.” There was no irony perceptible to Tip. “So that’s the deal. I’m home. You leave Dunning to me. And we stack the shooting irons. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. Now take your gun and put it away. What else do you do?”

  “I unload it.”

  “Right.”

  Spig watched him go over, get the gun and take out the shells. He went with him and watched him put it on the rack in the hyphen and put the shells in the box on the shelf.

  “Okay,” he said. “Bed.”

  Tip hesitated. “Dad . . . I won’t have to call Grandfather, I’ll remember. I’ll ask permission just like he said.”

  “All right.”

  There was a bear-hug for a moment before Tip let go, and Spig hoisted him up to the landing where the dog was waiting.

  “Good night, Daddy.”

  The dog got up and followed him upstairs to her place outside his door.

  Three minutes before the alarm was to go off at six-thirty the next morning Spig O’Leary reached automatically to turn it off.

  “Wake up, Molly.” He said it automatically, before the empty bed next to him brought the whole thing back to him. He kicked off the covers and got to his feet. She was already up. He could hear the house awake and alive, and see Tip and Greg out in the garden, picking peas for the Three D.

  There was one unbreakable rule in the O’Leary house—they never quarrelled in front of the children. He was aware of it as he came downstairs, showered and dressed, out into the kitchen and saw her, cool and detached, the cheek she turned for him to kiss even cooler, in spite of the heat of the argument going on between Kitsy and John Eden, still at their breakfast at the built-in nook at the end of the counter.

  “You don’t even know what three o’clock is,” Kitsy was saying. “Does he, Mother?”

  “That’s enough, Kitsy,” Molly said. “Eat your cereal. It doesn’t make the least difference to either of you.”

  “What doesn’t?” O’Leary poured himself some orange juice and a cup of coffee.

  “Whether Lucy got home from a movie at three o’clock, or whether she didn’t,” Molly said tartly.

  “But I heard her, Daddy.” Kitsy was eating as directed, but she could still talk. “The car lights woke me up, and it was three o’clock, and she said, ‘Thanks for the movie, Uncle Art, I’ve had a lovely time.’ And it was too three o’clock. And Tip says there aren’t any movies——”

  “That’s enough, Kitsy,” Molly said sharply. “Now stop it. And clear the table if you’re through. John Eden, take Molly A. and tell Tip Daddy’s down and he’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  She turned back to Spig. “I told them they could go with you.”

  “I’ve got to go into town . . .”

  “That’s all right. They can walk back through Mr. Sudley’s pasture. It isn’t too far. Helping deliver the first batch is half the fun. You wouldn’t spoil it for them, would you?”

  It was obvious from the tone that she knew nothing would please him more.

  “And Tip tells me you’re taking a week off to stay at home,” she added lightly. “That’s wonderful, because now I can go to Baltimore with Arthur Dunning to-day.” She was smiling at him, but the flecks in her eyes, greener than brown, were molten gold. “There’s a Swedish exhibition at the museum out by John Hopkins. He asked me last night and I said I couldn’t go. But if you’re home it’ll be a pleasure. And Kitsy dear . . .” She turned from him to her daughter gathering up the children’s dishes. “The reason I don’t want you to talk about what time Lucy gets in is that that’s none of our business. Or where she went, or why. Neighbours don’t spy on each other—not good neighbours.”

  “I wasn’t spying. I just heard her, is all. Because Mädel barked and it woke me up.”

  O’Leary buttered a piece of toast and stayed out of it. With the Ashtons
downwind, Lucy wouldn’t have to speak too loud for the sound to be audible through Kitsy’s open windows . . . but it would have to be louder than an ordinary “Good night and thank you, Uncle Art.” Maybe she was just letting Uncle Art know his car was safely back. Or maybe it was Anita she was fooling. How Charlie Sudley had made it in was also none of the O’Leary’s business—as Molly was just saying.

  “What other people do is no affair of yours, Kitsy, dear. You don’t want Greg to think you’re an old gossip, do you? Come on, let’s us go help Tippy, too. Daddy can do the dishes while I’m in Baltimore.”

  They went out. O’Leary pushed his cup and saucer back and got to his feet. Well, the hell with it. If that’s the way she wanted it, let her have it. He gave the cat, rubbing affectionately against his ankle, a kick that sent her winding. “Sorry, cat,” he said then as she promptly came back. He pushed her aside and went into the hall to get his coat.

  Tip and Greg, Kitsy and two bushel baskets of peas and yellow wax beans were in the car, pride and happiness in addition leaving small room for O’Leary.

  “Good-bye, darlings. Careful crossing the highway.” Molly laughed and waved to them with John Eden and Molly A. beside her. O’Leary she didn’t see. He could have been a leper without his bell. But it wasn’t O’Leary who spoiled half the fun of the first delivery. It was Greg who first saw the pile of blue glass glinting where it had been swept up and the great jagged hole with the ripped slats of the Venetian blind dangling behind it. It was in one of the octagonal sectors away from the road, next to the kitchen added on to the rear of the blue glass of Your Last Chance to Dine, Drink and Dance.

  “Look . . . look!” he whispered. “They did it. They did it anyway . . .”

  Spig stopped the car next to the crates of bread and milk still waiting to be taken inside. He looked around at Greg.

  “Who did it?” he asked quietly.

  The boy’s lips were pressed tight shut as he shook his head, his face dead white.

  Spig opened the car door. “You kids wait here a minute. You too, Greg.”

  He pushed the service door open and went in. The kitchen was empty. He went on through it. Inside there was another pile of blue glass on the floor, the tables pushed back, the floor covering marred where feet had trampled the glass in. He crossed over to the archway into the bar. Nick Pappas was there, sitting on one of the blue leather stools, his face haggard, streaked where the tears had dried.