York, his mood melancholy, hung up his hat on the coat tree by the door, then sat and waited at a desk cluttered with books, papers, and bottles, a spittoon on the floor nearby. On the walls, framed diplomas hung crookedly, and overseeing everything from a corner was a skeleton, referred to by Miller as Hippocrates, who, York gathered, was a famous Greek doctor and whose actual skeleton this likely wasn’t.
The doctor said, “Help me turn him over.”
Caleb went and did that, not all the way over, just enough to see that Doc’s diagnosis at the scene had been right: the postmortem bruising was along Cullen’s back, from his neck down through his legs and buttocks, confirming the victim had fallen on his back, which indicated he’d been killed elsewhere.
The doc covered Cullen’s body with a sheet but for the man’s head, propping it up with a folded towel to provide a better look at that large, ragged, nasty wound. He got some tools from a cabinet and began poking. York watched. A good ten minutes passed.
Doc, bloody medical tools in his hands, gave York a steady look. “As I thought — not enough skull fragments to put Humpty Dumpty back together. You got yourself a murder, all right.”
York nodded. “Keep it to yourself for now, Doc. Don’t want it gettin’ around till I’ve talked to some folks. Any idea when he died?”
“Whit Murphy saw him ride out around sunup. The old man had been dead at least two hours before I got to him. I’d say between six thirty and nine or so?”
Harris Mercantile was doing a good business, women in calico or gingham with bonnets, often with their young children, moving through the gloomy chamber with its high-shelved walls, navigating floors crammed with boxes, barrels, and crates. They would pause to riffle through the piled clothing on the facing counters or, short of that, go looking wide-eyed through the big mail-order catalogs.
At the cash register behind the counter at right, where he could also tend the coffee grinder and scales, was Newt Harris himself, the blond, heavyset proprietor in a dark bow tie and a light-colored vest. His jaw was bruised from where a blind man had hit him.
“Sheriff,” he said with a nod, dark blue eyes wary.
“Mr. Harris,” York said, returning the nod. “Might I have a word?”
“Certainly, if you can tolerate the occasional interruption.” His smile tried to be pleasant but came off forced. “These are business hours.”
“I’m workin’, too,” York said cheerfully. “I was wondering if you and George Cullen had patched things up. I know you been friends for years, and it’s too bad about that dustup between you two... and that it spilled over between your boy Lem and that friend of Mr. Cullen’s.”
Bristling, Harris said, “You should arrest that O’Malley galoot. Picking on a kid like Lem!”
Lem could have lifted a horse and tossed it down the street, but York let that pass.
“How about it?” York asked. “Where do things stand with you and George Cullen?”
Big shoulders shrugged. “Well, the same, I’d have to say. I haven’t spoken to him since that unpleasantness. If anybody’s owed an apology, it’s me, and, anyway, I have no use for that stubborn coot. Standing in the way of progress. He’s a fool!”
“If so,” York said, “he’s a dead one.”
Harris reared back a shade, his eyes so wide, there was white all around.
Quietly, so as not to be overheard, York briefly told the merchant what had happened — that apparently, what was meant to be written off as an accident had really been murder.
They paused while Harris took care of a customer, a mother buying some printed cotton for a dress for her young daughter.
By the time the bell over the door rang with the mother and child’s departure, Harris’s bluster had disappeared. His face was somber; his eyes were tearing up.
“You’ve shamed me, Sheriff, but I had it comin’. George Cullen was a longtime good friend, and whatever recent disagreements we may have had, I would never wish him any harm, much less... He was a fine, fine man. If... if you’ll excuse me...”
The merchant, digging a handkerchief from his pocket, turned his back to York. Muffled sniffling, followed by a nose-blowing honk, preceded a red-eyed Harris turning back to York.
“I... I appreciate you telling me, Sheriff. But why didn’t you come right out with it? Why ask me if I had mended fences with...? Oh. Oh.”
“Yes, Mr. Harris. You had a public altercation with the deceased the day before his murder. Comes down to that.”
Stiffly, he said, “I’m not the kind of man that kills another.”
“Nobody is till it happens. Where were you around sunup?”
His nod indicated the apartment above. “Upstairs with my wife and my two boys. Lem and Luke are working out back. You can talk to them. Lucille is at her prayer group at the church. You can talk to them all. But I’d appreciate you doing so discreetly. My family needn’t know that I’m a...”
“Suspect, no. They needn’t know that. Anyone not in your family who might back you up?”
Harris frowned. “You don’t trust me, Sheriff?”
York gave him an easy grin. “I trust myself and no one else when there’s a murder and no clear culprit.”
The merchant swallowed thickly. “Well... we opened at nine. We’ve had a nice steady flow of customers. I could probably make you a list, if need be. I know them all.”
“Why don’t you do that? I’ll send Deputy Tulley around to pick it up this afternoon.”
York tugged his hat in good-bye and left. That list wouldn’t be necessary, most likely, but he didn’t mind putting the man out one bit.
The Davis Apothecary, with its big jars of brightly colored liquid in the window, was perhaps a third the size of the Mercantile, though no less impressive with its elaborate dark-oaken cabinetry of wall-to-wall drawers and shelving, the latter displaying gold rim — labeled, glass-stoppered bottles of various sizes and colors — dark blue, amber, clear — as well as tins and jars.
The local druggist was something of a master of his craft, growing medicinal herbs out back, including sassafras and Virginia snakeroot. Those added to the distinctive spicy aroma in the air. Along a waist-high shelf were fine tools and trays used to make pills; on the counter at right, a brass pestle and mortar. Behind the counter was Clement Davis.
The skinny, bug-eyed, weak-jawed druggist wore a white apron over his vest with a bow tie, above which a prominent Adam’s apple bobbed as he said, “Good morning, Sheriff. Something I can help you with?”
No customers were on hand to slow the interview down, so York got right to it. He pushed his hat back on his head and, in a friendly but professional way, asked, “Just how ticked are you with George Cullen, Clem?”
The bluntness of that brought the druggist’s natural nervousness to the fore. York had always wondered how so timid a creature was able to summon a steady hand for the making of pills with their rigorous recipes.
“I, uh, well, I have no problem with Mr. Cullen,” Davis said, wiggling his fingers. “He has a right to his opinion, however much I might disagree with him.”
“You were part of that Citizens Committee group that confronted him last night.”
“Well, as a member of the committee, I, uh, certainly needed to be there... to represent the town’s interests and, uh, well, my own. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Nothing a’tall,” York agreed. “But there was pressure bein’ applied.”