Even so, the one really good thing of the year, for I knew, of course, that we wouldn’t have George for long, was that Reggie Crossland came back from Australia. And now he was in the throes of setting up his own sheep farm where the rocky ridges slope up gradually from the valley to Stoney Mountain.
The last crumb cleaned off the plate of sandwiches between them, Earl and Polly decided it was time for bed. “Busy day tomorrow,” Earl said. Turning into her room Polly said: “They come in threes, you know, deaths.” I’ve often thought that if any one person typified the mood of Longvalley it was Polly. On that sepulchral note we sought sleep.
The news that Nora was being accused of shooting her husband hit us Saturday morning. Beamer Ross was doing the broadcasting in our market, because that’s where he knew he’d find the crowd. And crowd it was, since those who’d been homebound Friday night because of the storm were there with the usual Saturday shoppers. Earl, Polly, and Ron were busy. I helped when no one needed post office business. I close the post office at noon Saturdays.
“I seen her right there at the back of the hotel parking lot, among the trees,” Beamer said. “She’d the gun smoking in her hand. And Harry was there laying shot, dead on the ground. I’d had to come out to... well, I’d had quite a few beers. Tom had bounced Harry a few minutes before. A right nasty mood Harry was in. Just starting to rain it was, thundering and lightning something fierce.”
“Mind your big mouth, Beamer,” Earl said. “Harry wasn’t shot on the hotel parking lot. Across the street from here on the vacant lot is where it happened. You told the chief this tale about the parking lot?”
“Damn right I told him. Down there he is right now checking things out. Across here on the vacant lot, you say. No way. Plain as day I see Nora back in them trees at the hotel parking lot. There’s a flash and I see Harry go down, see him lying there on the ground. The horse, he’d a holt of it by the bridle rein. He’d been trying to mount, but that horse it kept on jumping sideways because Harry’d up with his foot to it. A right nasty mood he was in, which was why Tom had had to bounce him.”
“And you ran over to put him up on the horse, I suppose?” Polly gritted. “Shot dead like he was. And the horse galloped up here and threw him on the vacant lot across the street.”
“Not me! I runs back into the bar to tell the lads what’s happened. They come out with me to see. And that’s what I don’t understand.” Beamer looked about wildly. “Harry ain’t there. Him and the horse is both gone. I tell you, last night some devilish power was let loose. And somebody tell me, who else’d have reason for murdering Harry?”
“Beamer, last night you’d had a few too many, that’s all,” Ray Marston, a worker at the lumber mill, said. “Couldn’t mount, you say. So right he couldn’t. Me and my wife saw him and the horse come out of the hotel parking lot. Going up Main Street Harry was at about nine thirty, just as the rain started. We’d been visiting Amy’s folks. All the way up Main Street Harry is trying to mount, hanging onto that poor horse, yelling and scaring it, it prancing sideways. Time and again he fell down, but hung onto the bridle rein. I’d a bit of a job to start my car, and when I finally got in I took a look up the street to see how Harry was making out. He was about level here with Earl and Emma’s place, still not mounted. ‘That horse’ll walk him home,’ I says to Amy, ‘when it ain’t dragging him.’ We drove off going south. And that’s the last we saw of him.”
Jack Stevens, a farmer, told the same story, as did Reed Scott, a plumber who lives at the north end of town. In both cases the time they quoted was “nine thirtyish,” just as it was coming on to rain. “Hurrying to get home before the worst of the storm hit,” Reed said. “Yep, I passed Harry and the horse, them heading north on Main Street.”
So that no one gave much credence to Beamer’s story, not even the chief, he well aware of Beamer’s tendency to the fabrication of wild tales. But, of course, he had had to check Beamer’s story out; Heavy rain had washed the sandy soil along the down slope of the hotel parking lot, obliterating any footprints. If shotgun shells had been ejected, they were nowhere to be found. Furthermore, three men who had been in the bar at the time Beamer had rushed back in testified that they had gone out to see. There had been no sign of Harry or the horse, nor had any of them seen anyone in the trees at the back of the parking lot. The story that Beamer had told them, they said, was that the horse had reared and knocked Harry to the ground, finishing him off right there. Only when the news reported Harry dead by shotgun blast did Beamer say that he had seen Nora with the gun. But he did stick to his story of seeing Nora at the back of the parking lot among the trees, not far from the river.
“Just to get noticed that guy will tell a tale like that,” Earl said.
Various rumors flew about all of that Saturday, Sunday too. And then came Nora’s admitting to having been at the back of the parking lot at the time in question. “I was there,” she said. “But I did not kill Harry. I’d gone to get my horse when the thunder and lightning broke. I knew that Harry would have her tied to a tree. She’d panic. I couldn’t stand it, just sitting there knowing the way he treated that fine mare. I’d begged him not to ride her. He did it just to spite me. I ran by the river path, both going there and coming home. Yes, I have a shotgun, a double-barrelled one that used to belong to Charlie. Right now I don’t know where it is. I did not have it when I went to the hotel parking lot. I saw Harry and the mare leave the lot and turn north onto Main Street.”
Whether Chief Hurley believed what Nora told him we didn’t know. Nora didn’t know either, for she herself, coming in for groceries, told us about that. I have to say that she looked a totally different Nora from the one I’d seen a few weeks back: stronger and more confident, very thin and drawn it’s true, but with eyes sort of fierce, and mouth grim. Yet who else but Nora could possibly have a motive for killing Harry? I didn’t say that to anybody, but I knew that Earl was thinking the same thing when he said, coming back from taking the groceries out to her truck, “A miracle she’ll need to get clear of this mess.”
I’d offered to stay nights with Nora. She’d thanked me and said: “I’m okay, Emma, better able now to think than I’ve been for months.”
Nora’s story was that she had been in the kitchen when she heard the horse come galloping into the yard. The bridle rein was hanging in front of it and the riding saddle had slipped a little sideways. Because Rory, the hired man, was off for the evening, she had put the horse in the stable and had rubbed it down. It was her own mare that Charlie Fitzmaurice had given her for an anniversary that Charlie’s friend George Banner had bred and raised.
“Didn’t you worry about where your husband might be, Nora?” the chief had asked.
“I’d no doubt as to where he’d be, Chief Hurley,” Nora said. “He’d be walking home, or trying to, anyway. And I knew that when he did get home there’d be a beating for me. I hoped that the rain would help sober him up. He was drunk even before he set off for the hotel. He’d been buying liquor and keeping it hid in the barn. He was more violent that night than he’d ever been. It was only because he was so smashed and couldn’t catch me that I escaped a beating earlier. And because he couldn’t beat me he tore up the kitchen and killed my little dog.”
When that piece of news filtered through to us I felt truly sick.
“Killed her little dog! Oh, Earl! That was the last gift that Charlie gave her, for her birthday, but months before he died. That sweet little white poodle she called Persha.” And for Nora it would have been so much more than the death of her little white dog. Motive? A whole pile of motives was going to have to be sifted through.