McGavock was listening now, listening for Brother Cushman’s returning steps on the front porch. He asked: “What did Miss Leggett and Mrs. Dalton talk about when they visited you in your kitchen?”
Fear crept into her eyes. “Well, they talked some of Cushman, and how wonderful-good he was to ’em. About how they seen his picture in the paper and wrote him and finally got off the train with their furniture and all, as a surprise to him. And how they talked him into hirin’ them as housekeepers. Later, they talked of those telephone calls.”
“Telephone calls?”
“Yes, Mr. McGavock. Each of ’em got a telephone call while Cushman was out of the house. A voice over the phone told them to get out of town, and quick.”
“So they pulled out in the dead of night, leaving their possessions? I don’t believe it.”
They could hear a man walking up the driveway now. Cushman was returning from lodge. Mrs. Kirkland said quickly: “I didn’t believe it either, then. But I do now. Now, I know the whole story. I got one of them calls myself tonight.”
McGavock waited. Mrs. Kirkland said: “A voice spoke to me and told me to go back home, to my little cottage. It advised me to take a nice pleasure trip to Floridy, or someplace.”
“Threatened you?”
“Not me. Cushman. Said if I wasn’t out in twenty-four hours, Cushman would be shot like a dog, in the back.”
McGavock asked: “So you’re leaving?”
She smiled. “Not me, Mr. McGavock. I’m not afeared of sneaky voices that come to you on a telephone.”
The front door opened and Mr. Cushman Mapes, panting a bit from the uphill climb, pulled up in the hallway and greeted them. Mist still beaded the brim of his Stetson and glinted on his silvery goatee. He said enthusiastically: “Mr. McGavock, it’s a pleasure to renew our acquaintance, suh! Mrs. Kirkland, take the gentleman’s hat, ma’am.”
“I was just leaving,” McGavock said genially. “Thank you.”
McGavock slept soundly that night, with the fatigue that comes from utter frustration. He knew, as he dozed off, that he’d assembled just about all the facts but somehow he couldn’t dovetail them. He realized he was immersed in a vicious crime of some sort, he hadn’t been twice put in peril and Brantner murdered on a a passing whim, but further than that things simply couldn’t add up. He knew, too, that the answer was a simple one — if he could only see it. Next morning, contrary to his custom, he ate a light breakfast. He was waiting in the hotel lobby when he saw Sheriff Ira Finney pull up in a station wagon.
Powder Ridge was ten miles out of town, deep in the wild, wooded hills and during the skittering, jolting trip McGavock went over his sojourn in town for the sheriff, from the beginning, carefully and thoughtfully, leaving out no detail. Sheriff Ira was particularly interested in personalities. “I’ve known these folks all my life,” he kept repeating. Railroad Brantner had been poisoned, all right. Test showed barbiturate. No one remotely connected with the affair had bought any, not recently.
“Poison will keep,” McGavock declared. “Six, eight, ten years, till you need it.”
The ridgeroad forked in a clump of pine and the sheriff took the left-hand trail; after a quarter of a mile they turned down a log-road, arched with gum and hickory and flanked with scrub, forded a clear, mirrored branch and came out into a small hollow. Sheriff Ira said: “This is Francy Scoggins’ place.”
The cabin, sheathed crudely with scrap lumber siding, sat on a shelf of shale, sunless and mossy, half-obscured by overhanging foliage. A man in black covert trousers and blue denim shirt sat on the doorstep, knotting a trotline; he was gaunt and weathered and the motions of his gnarled fingers as the measured and knotted the line were deliberate and accurate. Behind him, through the half open door, McGavock could see a section of the cabin’s one room, earth floor, fireplace, bedstead. By the bedstead projected a corner of Miss Leggett’s trunk, and beyond, a corner of Mrs. Dalton’s sewing cabinet. The man arose courteously as they approached; Sheriff Ira said: “Howdy, Francy. Meet Mr. McGavock. He wants to ask your help.”
Cautiously, Mr. Scoggins shook hands.
“This is purely sociable, Mr. Scoggins,” McGavock said calmly. “I want you to know that, purely sociable.”
Mr. Scoggins nodded warily. “I shorely hope so. We’ll see.”
There was a little glint in the sawdust by the doorstep and as McGavock noticed it, Mr. Scoggins moved one brogan and covered it. Like a wisp of copper that might drop from tinsnips if one was, well, trimming down the copper worm to a still. McGavock averted his gaze and Mr. Francy Scoggins came close to winking.
McGavock said vaguely: “Live and let live. Now here’s what we want to know, Francy. Last May, Colonel Jimmy Mapes held a farm sale on Purtle Pike. He brought some stuff out from town and unloaded it at the same time. They tell me you bought a sewing cabinet and an old trunk. You bought it, it’s yours. Nobody’s trying to take it away from you. What was in that trunk?”
“Nothing. Hit was empty.”
“Nothing at all? Well, was there any name on it, or in it?”
“Jest a ole trunk. No name, or writin’. My ole woman uses hit to store her quilts.” Mr. Scoggins appeared genuinely regretful that he was unable to offer assistance. “Was you looking fer a name?”
“Any name in the sewing cabinet?”
“Doggone, no. No name nowheres, mister.”
McGavock looked hot and angry. He said: “Well, thanks.” As they started for the car, Mr. Scoggins stopped them. He seem embarrassed; he said: “Ary one of you two gentlemen know how to regulate a pair o’ eye-specs?” He made a funnel of his hands, called into the cabin: “Mama, bring out them eyeglasses.”
Mrs. Scoggins appeared and came toward them. Weathered and toothless, she seemed an exact replica of her husband but that she was dressed in a faded ankle-length floursack frock. In her hand she held an old-fashioned pair of shell-rimmed spectacles. Mr. Scoggins said: “Mrs. Scoggins, she’s weak-sighted. When I got that sewing cabinet home from the sale and we went through it an’ found these-here specs we was as happy as a judge at a fish-fry. But we never seen such specs. Can’t nobuddy see nothing outa ’em!”
McGavock held the glasses up to the sky. He shifted them back and forth, to catch the light. After a moment, he said: “I want to buy these, Francy. How about ten dollars?”
Mrs. Scoggins smiled happily. Mr. Scoggins said: “Hit’s a deal.”
For a long time, on the trip back home, McGavock remained silent. The break had come quickly, and had been so devastating that he could hardly grasp it. Sweat circled the back of his neck and his shirt cuffs felt tight and confining. At last he spoke. “Well, Ira. That does it. That will sew it up. That’s all we’ll need. The googs.”
“Googs?” Sheriff Ira looked confused.
“These spectacles.”
Sheriff Ira’s voice was laden with disbelief. “I know that lenses are ground by prescription. That if we can find the right optical house, out of thousands, we can find the owner. But bifocals are so common that I’d call it hopeless.”
McGavock said tranquilly: “These aren’t ordinary bifocals. I guess you didn’t take a good look at them. The segment — you know that’s the little part that’s inset in the big lens, isn’t down at the bottom where most segments are. Its up high in the lens, like a little window.”