Growling, Eldridge sat down. “We’re waiting for Henry Turner to get here,” Carson went on. “He’s comin’ over from the jail now.”
Eldridge and Latham stirred uneasily. Latham took out a soiled handkerchief and mopped his red, sweaty face.
“Yeah, Latham, you got cause to sweat,” Eldridge muttered.
Carson repeated crisply, “Take it easy.” Then he gestured toward me. “You both know Mr. Gates, the county attorney.”
The two men favoured me with black looks and curt nods. They knew me alright. At one time or another, I’d prosecuted both of them; Eldridge for involuntary manslaughter in a bloody car smash-up, and Latham for attempted robbery. I hadn’t managed to convict either one, but that didn’t make them like me any better.
Now the door opened and a short, compactly built man in his early twenties came hesitantly into the already crowded office. “Jailer said you wanted to see me.”
“That’s right, Henry,” the sheriff said. “Why don’t you sit down there beside Mr. Gates? Fine.”
Henry Turner sat down near me, ducked his blond head, then stared steadily at the floor. His large, calloused hands clenched tightly together in his lap.
“Alright,” Sheriff Carson said. He nibbled thoughtfully at the lower fringe of his pepper-and-salt moustache. “Reason I asked you boys to come in this afternoon, Mr. Gates and I want to try again to wrap this thing up. One way or another.”
“Oh, for hell’s sake,” Latham said disgustedly. “Right there sits the killer. Levi Eldridge. If Henry would just go ahead and identify him.”
“Why don’t you give it up?” Eldridge broke in. “You shot Garnet, and everybody in Pokochobee County knows it.”
“Shut up, the both of you,” Carson said, raising his voice for the first time.
Henry Turner cleared his throat hesitantly. “Uh, Mr. Carson, I don’t know what you want with me. I can’t tell you any more than I already have — honest.” He chewed his lips, then added in a rush. “I’d just as soon not be around those fellers, Sheriff. I... I’m scairt and that’s the truth.”
Carson was kindly, “That’s alright, son. You just rest easy. You’re safe here. Now, let’s talk about this murder.”
I tried to get comfortable. I lit a cigarette I didn’t want, from the butt of the last one that I hadn’t wanted either. It was just plain miserably hot in the crowded little office.
Not at all like the day — just day before yesterday, it was, though it seemed much longer — when Garnet Eldridge had been shot four times in the head and body, in the front room of her farm home.
That day, Monday, had been cloudy and unseasonably chilly. Rain had fallen off and on during the morning and early afternoon. Garnet was supposedly alone at the farm, Eldridge having, supposedly, driven into Monroe to get a load of groceries and have a few beers. He had an alibi of sorts, but not nearly good enough to rule him out.
Frank Latham had spent part of the morning at a local attorney’s office, trying to figure out what his rights were, in the tangled mess caused by the triangle of himself, and Levi and Garnet Eldridge. He’d told us that he had spent the rest of the day out at the ragtail little farm he’d taken, out west of Monroe, and a good twenty miles from the much more prosperous Eldridge farm. But he couldn’t prove it, to his sorrow.
Either man could be the killer. Both had motives for wanting Garnet out of the way. As far as we knew, no one else did.
And there had been a witness who actually saw the killer hurrying out of the Eldridge house, just after the shots were fired — Henry Turner. But there was a very crucial gap in Henry’s testimony, and until now, the sheriff and I had been unable to close that gap.
We had hardly any physical evidence, and it was all too clear that unless we somehow got a confession out of the killer, he was going to get away with it. All he had to do was sit tight and keep his nerve.
That was the reason for this meeting of the suspects in the sheriff’s office. We had a card or two palmed, ready to play at the right moment. And maybe, just maybe, he’d crack. I was something less than hopeful, but we’d soon see.
As the sheriff talked on, rambling around without really saying anything, I thought about the dead woman, Garnet Eldridge. Or, to be legally precise, Garnet Latham.
If ever a murder victim had asked for it, Garnet had. From what I’d gathered from people who knew her, she had been a likeable, good-natured woman not overly endowed with brains. I’d never met her, though I had seen her a few times around town.
She was reasonably pretty, more than well-built, and from the gossip I’d heard, had the morals of an oversexed alley cat. Naturally enough, the women of the county didn’t care for her. Just as naturally, the men did.
Some seven or eight years ago, Garnet had decided to try marriage. She settled on Frank Latham. He was a wild, hard-drinking kid then, who had inherited a fairly good farm from his dead parents, and was doing his best to drink up whatever profits the farm brought in.
A few months after the marriage, which had evidently been something less than ideal, Frank and some of his cronies had tried a stickup in the county. They had fumbled the whole business. That was when I met him.
I didn’t send him to prison, but not long after the trial Frank disappeared, leaving Garnet in possession of the farm. Her story was that he just packed a bag and took off, telling her where she could go, and take the farm with her.
So a couple of years went by; then four, and five. By then Garnet had run through the eligible, and not so eligible, males of the county. The farm was in her name now, and with the help of a succession of “hired hands”, she’d built it up into one of the most valuable properties in the country.
Levi Eldridge was the last “hand”. He was a hard-working man, who must have had other not-so-obvious attributes as well. In any case, slightly over a year ago, he and Garnet were married, but she had neglected to divorce Latham beforehand. Since she hadn’t heard a word from him in the intervening years, she thought he must be dead, if she thought at all.
This second marriage seemingly worked out fairly well. Eldridge had evidently been happy enough. People on neighbouring farms had said that his big interest was in the fertile farm that Garnet had cheerfully signed over to him.
And so it stood until last week. Then Frank Latham came back from whatever limbo he’d been in during the last seven years, and things began to pop. Latham wasn’t interested in Garnet too much, but he was very interested in getting back the now valuable farm. He hired a lawyer, and Eldridge hired a lawyer.
Both sides had a reasonable case. It was the kind of thing that could drag on for years, with no certainty it would ever be settled.
Garnet was the key. Legally, she was still Latham’s wife, since she had not taken the trouble to have him declared legally dead. On the other side, Latham had obviously deserted her. It all boiled down to which man Garnet really wanted. But Garnet couldn’t make up her mind.
Latham swore that she had told him she would return to him. Just as emphatically, Eldridge swore she had said she meant to stay with him.
As became obvious during our investigation, it was a toss-up. One minute Garnet leaned one way, the next minute the other. The days dragged on, with Latham and Eldridge applying all the pressure they could.
But still Garnet couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take a definite stand, and it cost her life. Someone got tired of waiting.
About the middle of the afternoon on Monday, Henry Turner was coming along the country lane that passed the Eldridge place. He was, he said, about a hundred yards or so from the big white house when he heard shots. He stopped and stared toward the house, where he saw a tall, wiry, dark-haired man run out, leap off the veranda, and run into the nearby woods. A moment later Henry heard a car start and drive away, although he couldn’t see the car.