The Talmage Powell Crime Megapack

by Talmage Powell

  Over at the next table Bayliss laughed heartily at something Loudermilk said, and the minute of fantasy was gone. Howard sat alone.

  The pay phone on the wall at the end of the counter broke in on Bayliss’s laugh like a sudden scream. The sloppy waitress shuffled back to the phone and unhooked it. “Yeah?”

  Then she turned, holding the receiver. “For you, Sheriff.”

  Loudermilk uncoiled his hawkish six feet and strode to the phone.

  Bayliss and Suggs continued talking. But they broke off when Loudermilk gasped, “Maddy vanDeventer! Where?”

  The Sheriff listened a moment. Then he snapped, “I’ll be right out!”

  He turned from the phone, his face colorless. “Maddy vanDeventer’s dead!”

  Nobody else in the diner said anything for a long moment. Then Suggs croaked, “Where? How? By the devil, there ain’t never been a sweeter, more considerate, nicer girl born than Maddy vanDeventer, even if she is rich. She just can’t be…”

  “She was found a few minutes ago,” Sheriff Loudermilk said. “She slipped and fell off her cliff.” Howard knew that this simple explanation was sufficient to make the occurrence clear to every inhabitant of Pine Needle. Near Maddy’s home, the vanDeventer mansion, there was a wild cliff with jagged rocks at its base. Maddy enjoyed taking long walks on top of the cliff in the cool of the evening. Apparently she had taken one walk too many.

  Loudermilk, Suggs, and Bayliss rushed out. Howard sat staring at the bright hot day outside.

  The waitress said something to him. She was so excited she was scratching the rolls of flesh along her ribs. He looked at her and said. “Huh?”

  “I said I’m closin’ up. I want to get out there.”

  “Yeah,” Howard said. “I guess I better be getting back to business myself.”

  He had his undertaking parlor aired, swept, and dusted when Sheriff Loudermilk brought the girl’s body in.

  She was so young and beautiful. And then Howard, laying her out on the slab, touched the back of her head where the blood was clotted and the bone crushed, and she wasn’t beautiful at all.

  Simply pathetic.

  She had been wearing jodhpurs, flat-heeled oxfords, and an open-throated nylon blouse when she had gone down the cliff. The ripped and torn clothing was no problem. The bruises and scratches also presented no great difficulties. The head, however, was going to be a really tough job.

  Face drawn, Sheriff Loudermilk wiped his forehead with a blue bandanna. “She wasn’t missed until this morning. Her daddy knew she was out and thought he heard her come in last night—but it was a servant walking around upstairs. She always sleeps until ten or eleven o’clock, so the poor old man thought she was safe in her own home until a couple boys came to tell him what they’d found at the bottom of the cliff. They were on a berry-picking trip.”

  “Where is Mr. vanDeventer now?” Howard asked.

  “He’s coming down here,” Loudermilk said. He gave the body a brief glance. “I reckon it’s a clear case of accidental death. She didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  The bell attached to the front door tinkled.

  “I’ll bet that’s her daddy now,” Loudermilk finished. The Sheriff trailed Howard as the undertaker went from the rear of the building to the entrance. The caller was vanDeventer.

  The old man usually presented a rather dashing appearance, for all his years. He was slender and in good health. His white hair fell in snowy, glistening waves across his head. His blue eyes were sharp and clear, his lean, tanned face firm.

  But now Howard was shocked at vanDeventer’s appearance. He seemed to be a bag of dried sticks from a quaking aspen. His face was blotched with spots of color the hue of a sick liver.

  “Please sit down, Mr. vanDeventer,” Howard said, pulling a chair from the wall.

  The old man sank into the chair and leaned his head on one elbow. Loudermilk hovered in the background as Howard came around and sat down beside the old man.

  The girl’s father pulled himself together. “I came to discuss…”

  “I understand,” Howard said.

  The old man looked around the office, sat in thought, then said at last, “Perhaps a bigger establishment would be better. Perhaps an Atlanta mortician…”

  Howard looked directly at vanDeventer and suddenly there was steel in Howard’s eyes.

  He spoke quietly but firmly. “Mr. vanDeventer, I am the only man alive to whom you can entrust this precious duty. I admit that Atlanta offers bigger establishments, but I offer you—and Maddy—much more. They would lay her away with the precision of a machine. I shall do so with the skill of an artist.”

  He rose and stood over the old man, his face kind but unyielding. “Two generations of Aldens have buried all the departed of this county, Mr. vanDeventer. The Aldens as well as the vanDeventers are of this land, this soil.”

  “You almost convince me, young man.”

  “I need only to point out the facts, sir. Consider me first as a craftsman. I grew up in this business, sir. I know all the old ways, the fine ways. I take no short cuts to streamline my effects. I am the most capable mortician in this whole state of Georgia.

  “Next, consider me as a man. I knew Maddy—her generosity, her beauty, her graciousness. I can impart to her a full measure of her divine naturalness. I shall approach my task, sir, with the deepest sense of duty.

  “Add to all this the deep knowledge I have of what you, sir, would want. When this land has become ancient, her memory will still remain a landmark. Is that not your true desire, Mr. vanDeventer?”

  “You read my heart, young man.”

  “I would suggest, sir, a crypt of the purest marble from our own Georgia earth. If I may be permitted, I would deem it an honor to go to the quarries myself and personally choose every stone, supervise every inch of its cutting.”

  “You would do that, young man?”

  “Humbly,” Howard said.

  “Then spare no expense,” the old man said, rising.

  “As high as twenty thousand, sir?”

  “As high as fifty thousand. The years left me are few, and of what use is my money now?”

  The chauffeur was waiting outside to help the old man into one of the vanDeventer cars. Howard stood at the window and watched them drive away.

  Behind Howard, Sheriff Loudermilk said, “We’ll get the inquest over quick, so’s you can get on with it, Howard. Just a formality, that’s all. Ain’t no doubt she died accidental, purely accidental.” Loudermilk went out. Howard spent the rest of the day seeing to preliminaries, such as pricing caskets in Atlanta and comparing them with prices quoted over the phone from Montgomery.

  When he drove down Main Street at dusk he sensed a change that had come over Pine Needle. Sidewalk loungers waved to him, and he knew they were talking about him as he drove on.

  When he got home, Clara met him with a kiss. Her smile was bright and warm.

  She had cooked his favorite dinner, porterhouse steak with mushrooms. He hadn’t eaten a dinner like that in a long while now. It did more than warm his stomach. It told him their credit at the butcher and at the grocery was once more A+.

  “Howard,” she ventured, “do you think we might have a weekend in Atlanta sometime? After the vanDeventer funeral, I mean?”

  “I don’t see why not,” he said expansively.

  Right after dinner the phone rang. The caller was Bayliss, who owned the dry goods store and was Pine Needle’s leading merchant.

  “Say, Howie old man, think you’ll be free for a few days after the vanDeventer funeral?”

  “I might be.”

  “Sure hope so. Me and the boys got to have you on that fishing trip. Wouldn’t be a real trip without you, son.”

  “I’d like to go,” Howard said simply, really meaning it. He wasn’t going to permit himself any resentment. Yesterday he had been nothing; today he was a leading citizen. The profit on fifty thousand in a pauperized village like Pine Needle made a lot of diff
erence. That was all right with Howard. He was glad it did.

  “Me and Loudermilk was talking a few minutes ago,” Bayliss said. “You know, this town needs enterprising young blood on our town council. We can chin about it on the trip. And I reckon I’ll see you in the diner tomorrow?”

  “Sure, a man’s got to have a spot of coffee to keep him going.”

  “That’s right,” Bayliss laughed heartily. “Specially a real live wire. Loudermilk told me—and the whole town’s talking—what a real spunky job of selling you did on the poor old man. Real salesmanship, boy!” Salesmanship, Howard thought after he had hung up. He stood by the phone and a faint shudder passed over him. But he controlled it quickly.

  Selling the old man hadn’t been so tough. He hadn’t figured for a moment it would be.

  The really tough part of the job had been that moment last night when Maddy realized it was he who was shoving her over the cliff.

  JURY OF ONE

  Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1959.

  I knew right away that the district attorney wanted this Mrs. Clevenger on the jury.

  Pretending to listen to my lawyer question a prospective male juror, the D. A. studied Mrs. Clevenger, sized her up out of the corner of his eye.

  There was a dryness in my throat, a fluttering in my stomach—I was on trial for my life. Murder was a capital crime in this state, and they didn’t use anything merciful and clean like a gas chamber. They made you take that last long walk and sit down in a chair wired for death.

  It was a nice spring day. The tall windows of the vaulted courtroom were open, letting in a soft, lazy breeze. Speaking quietly and without hurry, the lawyers had been going about the business of picking a jury for a day and a half. The fat, bald judge looked sleepy, as if his thoughts were of trout streams. The whole thing so far had been casual, almost informal. I wondered, considering the difference this day and half had made inside of me, if l was going to be able to sit through the whole trial without screaming and making a break for one of the windows.

  To get my mind off myself, I swiveled my head enough to take a new look at Mrs. Clevenger. She was well into middle age; her armor of girdles and corsets reminded me of a concrete pillbox. Her clothing, jewels, and the mink neckpiece draped carelessly over the arm of her chair all added up to a big dollar sign.

  I looked at the heavy, blunt outlines of her face which even the services of an expensive cosmetician had failed to soften. You didn’t have to know her; just looking at her would tell you she was rich, arrogant, selfish, merciless. Nothing, quite obviously, mattered to Mrs. Clevenger, except Mrs. Clevenger. And as she cast a passing glance in my direction, her eyes were beady and cold. There was no doubt about her being the kind of person who would have her way, no matter what.

  I didn’t like the way she glanced at me, but the D. A. did. He was the sort who could impress women easing past their prime. He had a tall, rangy, athletic build, a rugged face, sandy hair worn in a crew cut. He’d spotted Mrs. Clevenger already as the key juror, the one he would turn those open, warm, brown eyes on, the one he’d address his quiet, reasonable remarks to—if she were chosen. Win her, and he would have the jury. Win her, and the rest of the jury might as well try to move a mountain.

  My lawyer finished his examination of the male juror. “He’s acceptable to us, Your Honor,” he said.

  The judge stifled a yawn, nodded, plunked indolently with his gavel, and told the juror to step down.

  Mrs. Clevenger was the next one to be up for examination. Mentally, I squirmed to the edge of my seat.

  My lawyer came to the defense counsel table. His name was Cyril Abbott. His given name fitted him very well, perfectly. He was lanky, had a thin face which made his nose look like a big afterthought, carelessly stuck between drooping lips and narrow eyes. A gray thatch of unruly hair completed the rube picture. But if you looked closely into his eyes, you saw he was a tough old fox with wisdom garnered from countless legal battles.

  As he shuffled some papers, Cyril Abbott said, “How you feeling, Taylor?”

  “Not so good,” I said.

  “Relax. Everything’s under control so far.”

  “It’s getting Clevenger on the jury that’s got me worried,” I said.

  * * * *

  I was more worried on that point than I was about the witness.

  The witness had been one of those fluke things. The killing had looked perfectly routine, just another job, though a little out of my usual line.

  It was the only time I’d taken on anything outside the Syndicate. I’d been with the Syndicate quite a number of years. I guess I’d grown to take the job for granted. I was never touched by the law. Few professionals are. We’re given an assignment, flown into a strange city. Our man is pointed out to us. We choose an immediate time and place. We perform our service and are whisked out of town.

  The Len Doty job had seemed simple. A scrawny, down-at-the-heels crook, he’d arrived here recently and taken up residence in a fourth rate hotel.

  I’d studied Doty’s movements for two days. A thin, harried, nervous man, he’d seemed to have a lot on his mind. He’d been under a strain, as if something big was imminent in his life.

  I was the imminent something, only he didn’t know it.

  I’d tried to approach this job with the same lack of feeling I had on Syndicate jobs. But here I’d been doing my own planning, and not enjoying the security you had when you were a cog in a huge machine.

  By the end of the two days, I knew I had to get the job done. I was feeling a growing nervousness. I didn’t go for solitude. I wanted to be back in the big town, having a drink with men I knew or stepping out with a particular woman who was gaga over my tall, dark ranginess.

  I’d kept the thought of fifteen grand—what Doty was worth dead—in the front of my mind. What could go wrong? It was the same as all the others, nothing to connect me with Doty. He’d die, and I’d disappear. The case would eventually slip into the local police department’s unsolved file. There may be no perfect crimes, but the records are full of unsolved ones, and the record was good enough for me.

  I decided on the time and place. Both nights, late, Doty went from his flea-bag hotel to a greasy spoon far down on the corner for a snack before retiring.

  The block was long and dark, with an alley at its midpoint connecting the street with one that ran parallel to it. It’s always wise to choose an alley that’s open at both ends.

  The parallel street was a slum section artery, crowded with juke joints, penny arcades, hash houses. In short, the kind of street to swallow a man up.

  I knew the Syndicate big-shots had a rule of planning they tried never to break. Keep it simple.

  I kept it simple. The plan was to shoot Doty with a silenced gun in the alley, walk to a garbage can, ditch the unregistered, wiped-clean gun, continue to the crowded street of joints, mingle, catch a city bus to the downtown area. There, I’d return to the good hotel where I’d registered under an alias, take a cab to the airport, and return to the big city fifteen grand richer.

  Doty came from his hotel at the expected time. In the mouth of the alley, I listened to his footsteps on the dark street.

  When he came abreast of the alley, I said, “Doty.”

  He stopped.

  “Come here,” I said, “I want to talk to you.” I let him glimpse the gun.

  He began to shake. He looked around frantically.

  I pushed him twenty feet into the alley. He pleaded for his life.

  The sound of the gun was a balloon popping. Doty’s knees gave way, and he fell dead.

  At that moment, the witness had screamed, long and loud as only a frizzy-headed blonde, in cheap clothes and makeup, can scream. She and her boy friend had decided on the alley as a short cut from one of the amusement places on the parallel street to the tenement where she lived.

  Her boy friend was having none of it. He took off on the instant. The girl was right beh
ind him, but just the same she’d glimpsed my face.

  Two more balloons had popped in the alley, but in the darkness the shooting was bad. I’d missed her. Then I’d violated another Syndicate rule. I’d panicked—run straight out of the alley almost into the arms of a beat cop who’d heard the screams and was charging up for a look-see.

  The cop was no sitting duck. He was big and fast—and armed.

  I dropped the silenced pistol and held both my hands up as high as they’d go.

  The Syndicate of course had never heard of me. I’d put myself out on the limb. Still, I had dough to hire Cyril Abbott. First day he’d come to jail to see me, he’d asked how much the job had paid. I’d had sense enough to say ten grand. He’d taken the whole ten and told me not to worry.

  It was like telling me not to breathe. Maybe a lawyer as foxy as Abbott could cast some doubt on the blonde’s testimony. After all, the alley had been pretty dark. I’d faced the street glow only briefly. And everything had happened awfully fast.

  * * * *

  The big question—to me—was whether or not this overbearing old lady Clevenger qualified to sit on the jury.

  The D. A. buttered her up with those boyish, friendly brown eyes. “Your name please?”

  “Mrs. Clarissa Butterworth Clevenger.”

  “You’re an American citizen?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you have any moral or religious convictions against capital punishment which would disqualify you to sit on a jury in a capital case in this state?”

  “None whatever, young man.”

  I reached for a handkerchief to wipe my face. In my mind I reviewed what little I’d heard of Mrs. Clarissa Butterworth Clevenger. She had lived here twenty years, meeting and marrying one of the town’s leading citizens when he was on a Florida vacation. Abbott had mentioned that she’d been boldly, strikingly beautiful in those days, before time, luxury, and her inner self broadened the beam and altered the surface. Her husband had been fifteen years her senior. Three years ago he’d died in a private hospital after a long illness.