Sheriff Ira looked astonished. “Freaks?”’
“Not freaks,” McGavock answered. “But not common, either. It’s all we need.”
The car pulled up by courtsquare. McGavock said: “Keep this under your hat. And don’t get out of touch with me.”
He walked three blocks down Main, to the telegraph office, and sent a wire.
Colonel Jimmy Mapes and his pretty brunette wife were ensconced in wicker chairs, waiting for McGavock in the dingy lobby of the hotel when he returned from lunch. He’d just polished off eight biscuits, mashed potatoes and giblet gravy, and a platter of fried chicken. Progress in the case, combined with the afterglow of fine food, made him feel topnotch. He tried to keep the glint of self-satisfaction from his eye as he approached. The Colonel and Mrs. Mapes were dressed to an inch of their lives, the Colonel in flashy tan gabardine, his wife in crisp white linen. McGavock sensed from their gravity that this was to be a highly significant conference. Mrs. Mapes smiled stiffly.
He said, “Hi!” and joined them.
The lobby was deserted. Outside, through the grimy window, a farmer drove his team of mules along the unpaved street; inside, there was the smell of cooking, and new paint. A finger of sunlight stretched across the fibre matted floor, across Mrs. Mapes’ perky high-heeled sandals, across the highly perforated toes of Colonel Mapes’ large sport shoes. McGavock asked innocently: “Waiting for somebody?”
“We were waiting for you,” Mrs. Mapes said solemnly.
Colonel Jimmy nodded ponderously. “Waiting for you, suh.” He paused. “We’d like to make you this proposition. Are you ready?”
McGavock said, “Shoot.”
“We’d like to retain you, that is we’d like a sort of option on your future services. If Mrs. Mapes should die, or if I should pass away, or both, we’d like you to come to town and investigate.”
McGavock looked solicitous. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
“Not too well,” Mrs. Mapes said grimly. “If you know what I mean.”
McGavock said curtly: “I don’t.” He gazed into their tense faces. “Yesterday everything was a big joke, and I was all wrong. Now you want to hire a detective.”
“We’ve been thinking,” Colonel Jimmy said. “Here are the facts. My brother Cushman has money, there is no need to gloss over that. If he should marry, that money would go to his wife. Say every housekeeper he employs is murdered. This is just a theory, you understand. Say they’re eliminated before he gets a chance to wed them. You get the idea? To keep outsiders out of the family.”
McGavock thought this over for a moment. “Who?”
“I’m not naming any names,” Colonel Jimmy declared, “—but Littleton Tennant is Cushman’s cousin. He’d fit the picture.”
“If something should happen to Cushman,” Mrs. Mapes said carefully. “If he should die, or if an out-of-town detective could get him falsely convicted of murder, that would release his money, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” McGavock agreed.
“There you are,” Colonel Jimmy remarked. He clapped his big palms together. “There you are. We’d be next. We’re next in line. We block Littleton Tennant’s chance of inheritance!”
McGavock shook his head. “I wouldn’t worry on those grounds. This business isn’t that involved. It’s as simple as catching a mouse in a trap.” He changed the subject. “How did Cushman and Mrs. Kirkland get together?”
“She’s his nextdoor neighbor,” Colonel Jimmy explained. “They’ve been casual speaking acquaintances all their lives, I guess. Years ago Mrs. Kirkland’s husband worked for Cushman before he died. Then, when Cushman began paying Mrs. Kirkland little favors, people talked. He is president of the local flower club and he generally gives Mrs. Kirkland first prize. Mrs. Mapes, here, raises lovely peonies but she always refrains from showing them.”
“I don’t see how anyone raises flowers in this red clay,” McGavock declared interestedly.
“That’s the way Littleton Tennant feels about it,” Mrs. Mapes put in. “He used to be quite a gardener but he’s given it up. You should hear him talk about it!”
“You’re fortunate in living out by the swamp,” McGavock said. “The earth’s rich there.”
Mrs. Mapes nodded. “It’s a pleasure to work with!”
“Flowers, flowers, flowers!” Colonel Jimmy stirred good-humoredly on the wicker settee. “I don’t know a tulip from a parsnip. Shall we be getting along, honey?”
As they left, McGavock asked: “Did Mrs. Dalton bring a trunk when she came?”
Colonel Jimmy considered. “No, I believe not. As I got the story from Cushman, she just brought suitcases. Miss Leggett brought the trunk.”
After they’d left him, McGavock sat alone in the lobby, thinking about his telegram, wondering if they would rush him an answer as he’d requested. Finally, he arose and went out into the town. On a backstreet, in a down-and-out neighborhood, he found the place for which he’d been searching. A weathered sign above an arched wagon gate said:
He went inside and asked to see the company records.
The answer to his wire came while he was eating supper. He phoned his client, and the sheriff, and asked them to meet him at Cushman Mapes’ big brick-and-stucco house at eight sharp. As he replaced the receiver he realized that it was all over now, all over but for a few odds and ends. It had all been before him so plainly and simply from the beginning, yet everywhere he’d missed the point and taken the wrong turning. The truth had been staring him in the face, screaming at him, but he missed it.
All that was finished now. He phoned Cushman and made an appointment to take another look at that portrait, at eight o’clock.
Chapter Four
To Gag a Corpse
It was late twilight when McGavock took the wooded lane at the base of Oak Hill and came out upon Mrs. Kirkland’s tiny clapboard cottage. Above him was the shadowed hulk of Cushman Mapes’ home, indistinct among the trees. Beyond the cottage, to his left, open fields, gleaming softly in the starlight, ascended to the nearby hills. A whippoorwill called listlessly and the air was oppressively hot and heavy.
The cottage sat alone, and dark, luminous and vague in the purple dusk. McGavock opened the low gate, passed a garden, and a hen house, and took the flagstone walk to the backporch. There was a cedar bucket and dipper on the washbench by the door, onions in braids, and gourds, hung from the porch rafters overhead. He peered through the slot in the dimity curtain, could see nothing, and knocked. There was no response.
After a moment, he unlocked the door with a dimestore skeleton key, stepped into the kitchen and flipped on his flashlight.
The room was primitive, but neat. His flash swept across the bare floor to the cracker jar and butter plate on the table, to the battered corner cupboard by the sink, lingered on the glistening rows of canned fruits and jellies. He was wondering what could get into a woman to make her move from a comfortable little place like this to a hollow, dank ratnest like Cushman Mapes’ old mansion, when the shot came.
It came with a bullwhip crack, vicious and sudden, blasting its way into the room through a tiny hole in the south window, exploding the green glass butter plate by McGavock’s elbow to screaming dust and shards. McGavock cut off his torch, cursed, and dropped to his haunches.
He laid his gun beside him on the floor and waited.