McGavock was speechless.
Tennant said: “Cushman killed them all right. The trick is to find the bodies. Medieval scientists divided the world into four elements, water, air, fire, and earth. That covers a pretty big field of disposal.”
McGavock said: “Colonel Mapes thinks there’s a fifth element of disposaclass="underline" bus tickets.”
“Nonsense!” Tennant shook his head. “We’ll find Miss Leggett and Mrs. Dalton right here in town. Dead!”
At the door, Mr. Tennant had a farewell injunction. “Murderers are smart, but very vain. John Paul Forster, the brutal bludgeoner, considered himself quite a personage. While in the fortress prison at Lichtenau, he polished his chains until they shone like sterling silver.”
McGavock put on his hat. “Executed—?”
“Died in prison.”
McGavock said: “Oh.”
A deputy at the sheriff’s office told McGavock that he was mighty glad to see him. That Sheriff Ira had been searching for him. “He’s been a-lookin’ for you more ways than a skunk kin go into a henhouse fer eggs. He’s at Hottman’s Hardware Store, in the back room,” the deputy said. “If you hain’t busy, would you drop in on him, he wonders.”
The backroom of Hottman’s Hardware Store was the local embalming shop and a small group was assembled when McGavock arrived. It was a large, gloomy storeroom, smelling of machine oil and leather. A little knot of citizens, including Sheriff Ira, stood about a table on which lay the body of Railroad Brantner. His overalls, shoes, shirt, and billfold lay in neat piles on a packingbox. There was no wound on the body; Brantner’s face, beneath its coarse topping of yellow hair, seemed relaxed and peaceful.
“Alcoholism,” Sheriff Ira Finney explained. “Drink finally got him. Some kids found him about a hour ago, with his fruit jar, under the loading platform of the cotton compress, out on South Jackson Street.” He pointed to the pocketbook. “And he was carrying fifty dollars in cash.”
McGavock said: “Sheriff, may I see you a minute, alone? In the office? I want to make a phone call—”
Alone in the little office, Sheriff Ira looked inquiringly at McGavock, seated himself on a canebottomed chair. McGavock picked up the telephone and asked for the Owl Drugstore. “Mr. Marshall?” he asked. “This is Mr. McGavock. Did you make that analysis on my turkish towel yet? Swell. Barbiturate, eh? No, I’ll tell the sheriff myself. He’s right here with me.”
Slowly, he replaced the receiver. “We’ve got a real killer on our hands, Sheriff,” he said. “Order a test and you’ll find Brantner was doped with poison, whiskey loaded with barbiturate. An attempt was made on me with the same stuff last night.”
The slender young sheriff listened silently. McGavock said: “Someone hired Brantner to shoot me on my arrival in town. He, or she, hired him by writing him a disguised note. This note promised fifty dollars to come. It was written through a piece of screen, was therefore conspicuous to mail at a country post-office. It was one of a series of notes to Brantner. He wondered how they were sent and finally figured out the answer. They were mailed late at night, in the mailbox before the post office. His curiosity and greed got the best of him. Last night he waited on the chance that the person should show up again. The person did.”
Sheriff Ira made no comment.
“The employer showed up, Brantner accosted him, and the employer handed him the envelope containing the payoff money. There was no doubt a note enclosed to lure Brantner into just such a situation. Brantner was given his fifty dollars, a pat on the back, and a bottle of doped whiskey. That’s all, brother.”
Sheriff Ira asked carefully: “Why should anyone want to have you killed, why should—?”
“We’ll find out. To tell you the truth I haven’t the slightest idea to date. But I’ll bet we’ll know by tomorrow night. This case is a heller, and I’m not kidding! Do you know a hillman named Francy Scoggins, out on Powder Ridge?” Sheriff Ira nodded.
McGavock asked: “Can you drive me out to his place tomorrow morning? Say about ten o’clock?”
Sheriff Ira nodded again.
McGavock said to himself: I’d better be right. This baby is one tough sheriff.
Chapter Three
Near-Sighted Mrs. Scoggins
The moon had climbed behind a reef of clouds and the big brick and stucco house was vague and black beneath the wet trees of Oak Hill that night when McGavock returned to Cushman Mapes’. There was a time for everything and this, he decided, would be a good time to take a look at the famous portrait which had apparently started all this business. The huge old house was dark but for a weak yellow light which beat against the rose bushes by the kitchen window. The luminous hands on his wristwatch said nine-twenty. His footsteps sounded hollow and bodiless as he crossed the rotting floorboards of the porch and rang the bell. Mrs. Kirkland, with a lamp in her hand, answered; she said: “W’y, it’s Mr. McGavock! Mr. Cushman isn’t at home. He’s at lodge tonight. I’m dreadful sorry—”
“I’d like to take a gander at that portrait,” McGavock declared politely. “It won’t take a moment. You know, the picture that started all this—”
She smiled. He stepped into the cavernous hall and she led him into a great, dank parlor. She set her lamp on a marbletopped table. There were electric lights in this house but evidently they weren’t much used. McGavock stared about him. It was a creepy house, and this was a creepy room. Here, too, as in the music room, there were gilt chairs, their red plush blotched and moth-eaten. On the mantel was a row of conch shells and a vase of cattails. Yellow varnished inside shutters were closed and latched over the windows, catching the light of the lamp, cutting out all thought and image of the world beyond. The portrait hung in an alcove, above a rickety, red plush loveseat. McGavock approached it, took out his flashlight to increase the light, and examined it.
To McGavock’s eyes, it was rather childishly done. He could well see how the newspapers had called it a “primitive.” Cushman Mapes, looking like a millionaire landowner, the cream of old Dixie, dressed in a white linen suit and shoestring tie was standing in the foreground, feeding a spindly-legged racehorse; in the background was an imaginary super-elegant old-style Southern mansion, pillars and all, big enough to house the Confederate army. Down in the corner was the artist’s signature in fancy curlicue letters, M. Dubois. Everything was flat, and out of proportion, and lifeless — but somehow there was an air of luxury and magnificence about it. McGavock asked incredulously: “You say this fellow Dubois is an art teacher?”
“Taught in the public schools, up to the sixth grade,” Mrs. Kirkland announced proudly. “Could paint a masterpiece, they tell me, as quick as I could mix up a batch of biscuit dough!”
“We’re gifted in different ways,” McGavock said kindly. “Don’t let it get you down.”
There was an interval in which neither of them spoke. Silence filled the ancient mansion and McGavock, in his mind’s eye, could visualize the tiers of empty rooms, upstairs and downstairs, the long, dark halls musty with Victorian memories. Mrs. Kirkland, frail and withered and bright-eyed, seemed almost spectral in the encircling shadows. Her eyes stared rigidly into his.
Finally, she spoke: “Mr. McGavock, I knowed ’em, both of ’em. That Miss Leggett from Little Rock, and that Mrs. Dalton from Mississippi.”
He blinked.
“My little cottage is just down the hill, beyond the hedge,” she said softly. “Both of ’em, each in her turn, seen me in my kitchen and come in and talked to me. Miss Leggett was a chubby little woman about my age but Mrs. Dalton was skinny and old and half blind. Later, after they left, Cushman give me Mrs. Dalton’s suitcase, with some of her clothes. He kept ’em a year and she didn’t come back so he gave them to me. Mrs. Dalton was skinny, like I am, but taller. I didn’t have no trouble in cutting them down to fit. I didn’t like the idea, but Cushman talked me into it.” She hesitated. “I got money of my own, I wasn’t starving, but they wasn’t no real sense in throwin’ them away.”