“I’ve a nasty feeling,” Earl said, looking grim, “that we’re not going to like the outcome.”
The chief, stopping by, had told us that some high-ranking detectives were coming to take the case out of his hands. “They’ll be talking to you,” he said. “Just tell them everything the way you told it to me.” I felt cold inside, for Nora. Monday morning Inspector Hardman and Sergeant Wilshire arrived.
And Monday morning it was that Reggie Crossland came from his farm into town. After a visit and lunch with his parents he came into our shop to stock up on groceries, heading then for the farm. Earl had a great many questions about the farm that Reggie was stocking, at present, with sheep.
“First rate place for sheep, Earl,” Reggie said. “Oh, yeah, I’ll have some dairy cattle by and by; I’ve some fine lowland pasture. Then I won’t have to pay this price for a piece of cheese that some folks are charging. I’ve but two milking cows as it is.”
“Sheep farming, dairy farming! You all alone! You could lose your shirt. You’d a lot of good ideas when you worked here as a lad; always thought you’d come up with something smart.”
“Smartest lad you ever had, Earl. I’m glad to see you took my advice and put wheels on those bins.” There was the same roguish grin, the devilish twinkle in the blue eyes. But the red curls now had a considerable sprinkle of grey. Tough muscled he was now, and lean, brown as a nut, too. But there was a hardness also that I had never thought to see in Reggie’s eyes.
“Smart-assed you mean,” Earl chided. “But yes, best worker I ever had. Not that we aren’t pleased with Ron. He’s a dam good lad. Now, if you’d said beef cattle—”
And as I attended to customers at the post office I heard them at it just like old times. And then Earl was saying: “You’ll find out what a pound of cheese costs before you’re much older. But there’s something you’ve not got on that farm that you’re going to need.”
“What’s that?”
“A wife. I’m hoping you’ve someone in mind, or are you thinking your ma’ll go out there to cook for you?”
“Ma? Heck, no. She’s got more than enough to do. Give me time, Earl. After all, I’m not long back.”
“How much time d’you need? You’re middle-aged as it is.”
Reggie made a deprecatory noise. “Just coming into my prime.”
They went on talking, selecting and packing items into several boxes. There’ll be no difficulty about the wife, I thought. Already female eyes were turning Reggie’s way. There was an air of maturity about him now that made him even more attractive than the youthful Reggie had been. That morning was the first time Reggie had heard of how Harry Bagley had died. He and Earl turned to that topic.
“That’s the night I drove out to my farm. I’d intended coming in then for the groceries but never did get the time. Knew I’d have to come in again anyway. I don’t have the phone, or TV. I do have a radio in the truck, but didn’t hear any mention on the news. Friday night, yeah, that’s the night I ran out of gas in that storm, would you believe it! I’d had a million things to attend to. Knew right well I was low on gas and then clean forgot. Ma had wanted me to stay over, but I’d my two cows needing milking, pigs to feed, hens to shut up so the foxes wouldn’t get ’em. And I’d my two dogs closed up in the house.”
About an hour after Reggie left the shop, word came that George Banner had been taken to the hospital following a stroke Friday night. The gloom thickened. In my post office cubbyhole I sat thinking about George. Polly came downstairs, putting her head around my door. “I’ve put yours and Earl’s tea ready upstairs,” she said. “I’ll buzz if anyone needs the post office or if the shop gets busy.” We’ve a code: one buzz for Earl, two for me or Polly. But Monday is usually our quietest day.
I could see that Polly had been crying, and I remembered that years ago she and George had walked out together. Polly never had said why they split up but I had suspected, well, it was rather more than a suspicion, that George had been in love with Nora. For Nora, it had been only a tentative attraction before she’d gone to care for Mrs. Fitzmaurice. After that there had been Charlie. Polly hadn’t been able to continue the association. Strong Polly is, with her own ideas of what’s right. They’d stayed good friends. I’d long felt that Polly should have made herself more available socially. She tends not to get noticed, so fine a person. She and some good man are missing out. I put up another prayer for Polly.
Earl and I sat upstairs with our tea. “As Polly says,” Earl murmured, a bit shakily, “three times it is.”
“George isn’t — Doc Entwistle says his vital signs are good, that he’ll come out of it. Who else would have held up as George has?”
“The way things are I can’t see—” Earl’s voice trailed off into a deep sigh. “You know, she could have gone up Meadow Lane, since it runs out of the hotel parking lot, while Harry and the horse went up Main Street. They’d have come face to face at the vacant lot. And if Nora did have the gun like Beamer says, well, from there she could have gone home with the horse and not a soul would see her. Hardman’s going to think that.”
The chief was talking to Polly when we went downstairs. I thought he seemed, well, different. I couldn’t have said why. For a bachelor he keeps himself looking neat.
“Just passing, Emma, Earl.” He made to leave. “Oh, my pipe tobacco, Polly.”
“Chiefs upset?” Earl asked, looking at Polly after the door had closed. “He say anything new?”
“He’s not on the murder case, you know.” Polly went back to the weighing of sugar into five pound bags. “Dropped in for his pipe tobacco like you saw. Upset, like the rest of us.”
I was relieved that Polly, no longer tearful, was her brisk self again. Worth her weight in gold; we would have had a hard time without her.
Inspector Hardman came to visit us that afternoon. A goodlooking man, in a cold sort of way. Not unpleasant, but his very direct questions demanded clear answers. The chief had briefed him, of course. We watched after he left the shop, saw him drive the short distance up Main Street and turn right onto North Road, going out to the Fitzmaurice farm. Our hearts were lead weighted. He’d not be long finding out the truth of whatever it was that Nora had done.
Rory O’Brien told of seeing the gun as late as Friday morning on its rack above the chest in the Fitzmaurice farmhouse living room. Now it had vanished. Rory recalled the days when he’d seen Charlie Fitzmaurice teaching Nora to use it. “With Harry,” Rory said, “it was different. He was scared of firearms. Only thing he’d have been likely to do with it was to sneak it off and sell it.”
As the days passed, Beamer’s story gained in credibility. A long week we endured, but finally arrived at Friday. And then a third bombshell hit. Inspector Hardman had come into the shop to verify with us some of the things that Nora had told him. He was about to leave when the shop doorbell tinkled and in breezed Bill Worseley. Every Friday Bill comes in for a mountain of groceries. The Worseleys are Reggie Crossland’s nearest neighbors in the Rocky Mountain area, even though they are miles apart. Annie, Bill’s wife, comes into town but once a year. She makes a day of it, visiting her cousin Maude a few streets to the north of us.
Bill, a boisterous sort of guy, but goodnatured for all that, can be heard all over any room without anybody even trying to listen. “I’ll leave you Annie’s list, Earl,” he bellowed. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours or so. I’ve to run out to the lumber mill for some two-by-fours. Some paint and wallpaper I’m to get as well. Annie’s telling me I have to do the upstairs rooms over. I never have seen anything like the work she can dredge up for me.”