The cabin was at the edge of town, as Mr. Tennant had said, just beyond the trestle. A small, trim four-room building with a field-stone chimney. Moonlight dusted its barked cedar logs to dove gray and an ancient trumpetvine, lush and tropical, arched the small dog-run porch. The building had been re-chinked, and re-roofed, and new porchboards had been laid, but it lay in a hollow hedged in by sumach and saplings, cozy enough but a little too fetid for McGavock’s taste. Sagging telephone wires ran to it through branches of surrounding trees, and marsh ferns grew beside the doorstep.
A small brunette answered McGavock’s knock and invited him in. She was dressed in a navy flannel skirt, and white blouse, and wore flat-soled hide sandals. To the naked eye she was as sweet as a stick of peppermint candy but there was something about her that warned McGavock that he was in for trouble. She placed McGavock on a studio couch, seated herself across from him, and said: “I’m Cindy Mapes, the Colonel’s wife. The Colonel’s out in town somewhere. You’re Mr. McGavock, the gentleman Mr. Tennant just mentioned over the phone. Can I do anything for you?”
The room wasn’t too unpleasant, if you went in for pioneer effects. There was a big stone fireplace with a squirrel rifle above it, a kerosene lamp, painted with violets and roses, with an electric bulb, and bright rag rugs on the sanded floor. The furniture was antique, but rough: hickory rockers and ladderback chairs, and their kith and kin. McGavock imagined that Colonel Mapes had picked up most of the stuff at farm sales in his capacity of auctioneer. There were no baby photographs.
Mrs. Mapes, McGavock judged, was maybe thirty-two. She folded her arms decorously and waited. In the closeness of the hot autumn night she seemed all powder and perfume and starch. After an interval, she smiled. “Well,” she said in a husky voice. “You made a long trip, all the way from Memphis, for nothing at all, didn’t you?”
McGavock rested his back against the chair; he was tired and, surprisingly, the hard slats were comfortable. He cocked his eyebrow, said: “How so, Mrs. Mapes?”
“Coming here on Littleton Tennant’s hallucination. He’s a dear boy, and we love him, but if it isn’t one thing with him it’s another. He’s great fun to be around but he’s, well, trying on the nerves.”
“He’s educational. Did you know that Landru, the French bluebeard, had two hundred and eighty-three gals in love with him?”
Mrs. Mapes looked annoyed. “No, and I’m not interested. The whole thing’s preposterous—!”
“What about these housekeepers? Where were they from, and what were their names?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean you won’t tell?”
“I mean nobody knows but Cushman. Especially us. The Colonel and his brother aren’t too intimate, friendly, but not intimate. I’ve never been inside Cushman’s house. The first one I just saw from a distance. A lovely little white-haired woman, picking flowers in Cushman’s garden. The second, I just know from her general effects. The third is Mrs. Kirkland, a local woman. I know her, of course.”
“Mrs. Kirkland rich?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say so. She’s a bit of a recluse and no one knows too much about her. Not rich, but comfortably well off, I should imagine.”
“You say you just knew the second one by her personal effects. What in the world do you mean by that?”
“By her bric-a-brac. Sewing cabinet, vases, a few chairs and so on. You know, small furniture. I was on hand when my husband auctioned it off.”
McGavock blinked. “For goodness sakes! Let’s take this a little slower. You say Cushman turned over this stuff to your husband to sell? Did Cushman hold title to it?”
“It’s nothing to get excited about.” Mrs. Mapes spoke primly. “Here is the situation. Cushman is secretly very sensitive on the subject of his housekeepers leaving him. People began to think he was hard to get long with. The stuff was unpleasant to him, and, too, Mrs. Kirkland didn’t like to see it around, so he lumped it all together and had my husband dispose of it. It had been around for years and he was pretty certain it would never be reclaimed. Personally, I think the idea was a very sensible one.”
“Who bought this stuff?”
“Small furniture and bric-a-brac is generally sold in lots. My husband can tell you, I believe he keeps records.”
McGavock shook his head, and got to his feet. “This is a wonderful town,” he said affably, “—and full of wonderful people. Just one thing more. What was your husband’s reaction, and yours, when Brother Cushman came out of his cocoon, after the last three years, and brought Mrs. Kirkland into his bachelor household. Did it seem like old times?”
At the door, she said: “To tell the truth, we were greatly relieved. It should completely disprove Littleton Tennant’s wild nightmares. Mrs. Kirkland is a well-known, local woman. There’ll be no nonsense about a mysterious disappearance here. If she leaves, she’ll simply pack up and go home.”
McGavock put on his hat, pressed it carefully to his head with the flat of his hand. He said: “We hope.”
It was a quarter to twelve when McGavock passed through the deserted business section and turned down Front. The buildings here were decrepit almost beyond description, two story structures for the most part, rickety and long neglected by their owners. There was no paving here, only a red clay road, and in the faint moonlight walking was precarious. In the murky illumination, along the row of sordid shop windows, McGavock made out the lettering, ACME BARBERSHOP, and sensed rather than saw the black entrance of a stairway beside it. He mounted creaking steps and came out into a dank, empty hall. A feeble, fly-specked bulb showed him lettering on a blistered door paneclass="underline" THE CLOVER-LEAF RESTAURANT. He twisted the old brass doorknob and entered.
The room was small. In years gone by, it had once been an office. A milking lantern was set on a short counter and McGavock could see a half dozen homemade tables, covered with oilcloth, and beyond, high arched windows, once elaborate in magnificent molding, now like huge black mirrors in battered frames. The stained walls were covered with ancient farm sale bills and employment circulars from Northern factories. A greasy fat man in a dirty apron came through a door at the rear; he gave McGavock a long, hostile stare, and came grudgingly forward. He said: “We’uns is jest fixin’ to close.”
McGavock said: “Two pig sandwiches, light on the hot sauce but heavy on the slaw, and two bottles of home brew.”
“You mean beer,” the counterman said helpfully. “Hit’s agin the law fer the laity to make hit’s own brew sinst prohibition was takened off.” He sounded sadly nostalgic. “Anythin’ else?”
“Yes,” McGavock said pleasantly. “I’m the man that Railroad Brantner was taking potshots at earlier in the evening. Tell him he’s in a tight spot, but I can fix it up for him.”
The counterman froze. At last he said: “I don’t rarely see him to talk to him to his face, but I’ll put the word around.” He left the room and came back shortly with the food and a pitcher of beer. Instantly, he left McGavock alone.
The beer was lukewarm but high voltage and the pork, as he’d expected, was perfect. He’d half finished his sandwiches when the kitchen door opened and a man in overalls, with pale yellow hair, entered the room and pulled out a chair beside him. He said hastily: “I’m unarmed.”
Railroad Brantner was a type very familiar to McGavock. The habitual smalltown criminal. Vicious, puffy-faced, sly. Now, he was plenty scared. He said: “Mr. McGavock, I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt you, in that alley. I was jest a-tryin’ to prank you, to make a little noise and run you outa town.”