Mr Tenneshaw retraced his path of earlier that day, driving out to the cemetery. Since it was night, the front gate was locked; but Tenneshaw drove round to the back gate, where the graveyard attendant sat reading in his shack, and honked his horn.
The graveyard attendant was a man named Smathers, short and stocky, seemingly with no neck at all. He had held his job at the graveyard for longer than anyone in the town but Mr Tenneshaw remembered. Mr Tenneshaw had been instrumental in getting Smathers his job, early in the fall of 1928. Smathers had been wanted for a certain crime in Illinois, and for that reason he was eternally indebted to the angular, lean undertaker of Reeseport.
At Mr Tenneshaw’s signal, Smathers came stomping out of his shack, swinging his searchlight.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr Tenneshaw.”
“Of course it’s me!” snapped the undertaker testily. “Who else would you expect to find visiting this place at half-past ten in the evening?”
Smathers chuckled. “You’re right, Mr Tenneshaw! You’re always right.”
He unlocked the gate and swung it open, allowing Mr Tenneshaw to drive his truck through and into the cemetery.
“Is it all taken care of?” Mr Tenneshaw asked.
“Hours ago,” Smathers said.
As the night watchman at the graveyard, Smathers went on duty at nine. He had thus had only an hour-and-a-half to perform his special duties for Mr Tenneshaw this evening. Mr Tenneshaw smiled. It was good to have a loyal employee like Smathers! he thought.
“Where is it?” Mr Tenneshaw asked.
“Back there in the icebox,” said the stocky graveyard attendant. He led the undertaker into the small watchman’s shack and through the main room into a back one, which served as a kitchen for the night watchman. There was a very small stove and a very large icebox.
“Open it,” Mr Tenneshaw commanded.
“Yes, sir.”
Smathers yanked hard on the icebox door-handle. The lid gave. Within, cradled comfortably on the ice, was an object wrapped in burlap and securely tied with thick hemp cloth.
“Let me see the face,” Mr Tenneshaw commanded.
“Yes, sir.”
Smathers peeled back the upper folds of the burlap. The serene and plump countenance of the late Thomas F. Underhill peered sightlessly forth.
“You’re always afraid I may do something wrong, aren’t you, sir?” Smathers asked anxiously. “But I always dig up the right one. I’m not as stupid as people think I am! I—”
“Hush,” Mr Tenneshaw said coldly. “Did you pack down the soil and leave it as it should be?”
“Of course.”
“Very well. Give me a hand with it, now.”
“Yes, sir.”
In silence the two of them lifted the burlap-clad figure of the late Thomas F. Underhill from the icebox and carried it through the darkness to Mr Tenneshaw’s truck. In the back of the truck was a box some six feet long which might have been a coffin. It was partially filled with ice. Gently Mr Tenneshaw and Smathers deposited their burden on the ice, and lowered the lid once again.
It was after eleven o’clock when Mr J. Michael Tenneshaw reached the town of Plattville, eleven miles from the Reeseport graveyard. In Plattville, Mr Tenneshaw operated another business under a slightly different name. He was known here as Mike Tenny. And, while the undertaker of Reeseport was a bleak and somewhat forbidding man, Mike Tenny ran a prosperous butcher shop in Plattville, and was the soul of friendliness.
His butcher shop was not quite in the heart of the small town. That way he avoided the zoning restrictions that made it impossible for anyone to reside in the commercial district of the town. Mike Tenny, when he was in Plattville, lived in a small and simple apartment on the floor above his butcher shop.
At eleven o’clock most of the residents of Plattville were long-since home, and most of them asleep. It was a town not given much to night-life. Mr Tenneshaw parked his truck in front of Mike Tenny’s butcher shop, and, after looking carefully in all directions, lowered the panel of the back of the track, lifted the body of Thomas F. Underhill from the ice, and dragged it into his store. Since Mr Underhill in life had weighed 216 pounds, it was no easy matter to do so.
Still, Mr Tenneshaw succeeded. Entering the store, he dragged the body into the back room, closed the door, firmly, and switched on the light. From the street it would seem that no activity was taking place in Mike Tenny’s butcher shop.
What followed was difficult and untidy work, but long years of practice had made Mr Tenneshaw’s hand skilful. With a deft flip he tossed the heavy corpse up on to the stained and bloody surface of his carving table. Taking a keen blade from a rack on the wall, he slit open Mr Thomas F. Underbill’s burlap wrappings and put them to one side, and then carefully undid his funeral vestments and laid them aside.
The late Mr Underhill had been pleasingly plump - and thanks to Mr Tenneshaw’s practice of preserving the dead on ice, there had been no deterioration of his body. Mr Tenneshaw carved swiftly and efficiently, prying the tender pale meat away from the body. He hummed a tuneless little jingle as he worked. Tomorrow the citizens of Plattville would once again have Mike Tenny’s “special cut of lamb”. It was a pale, tender, juicy meat, which tasted best when cooked rare, and the good folk of Plattville had not the faintest idea what they were actually eating. But they swore by their butcher, cheerful Mike Tenny, because his prices were reasonable and his meat was delicious.
Mike Tenny had one odd and inflexible rule: he sold only meat, never bones. At least, not with the “special cuts”. If you wanted soup-bones or ribs, you could have them with the beef, but not with the lamb.
There was a good reason for this. When Mr Tenneshaw finished his carving job on the late Thomas F. Underhill, he took good care that the skeleton was left intact. After he had placed the meat carefully in his big freezer vault, he painstakingly dressed the now-denuded skeleton in the funereal vestments once again, wrapped it in burlap, and carried it outside to place in his truck.
~ * ~
At eight the following morning the sign was posted in the front window of Mike Tenny’s store:
WE HAVE SPECIAL CUTS OF LAMB TODAY 45 CENTS A POUND
At eight-thirty the first customers arrived. Mr Tenneshaw was behind the counter, clad in his butcher’s clothes, and he smiled and bowed and made little quips as he measured out the meat, wrapped it, and rang up the sales.
“Nice to hear you have lamb in stock again, Mr Tenny,” the woman told him. “My family loves it so much, you know.”
“It isn’t easy to obtain. The supply isn’t as easily available as I’d like it to be.”
“That’s too bad. It’s so good with just a little dash of mint sauce!”
Mr Tenny laughed and packaged the meat. Within less than an hour, his supply of special cuts from the cadaver of Thomas F. Underhill was gone. At ten that morning, Mr Tenny’s assistant, a Plattville youth named Leverson, showed up to take over the store. Mr Tenny rarely stayed in Plattville past ten in the morning. Young Leverson handled the sales during the day as well as the purchasing of the more orthodox cuts, and he locked up the store each night at six. He knew nothing of the true nature of Mr Tenny’s “special cuts of lamb”. He was simply a young butcher’s assistant, who was allowed to run the store because the proprietor had business elsewhere every afternoon.
Mr Tenneshaw might have carried his double life on unobserved until, indeed, it was his own turn to become some other mortician’s client. But, unfortunately, an inquisitive young man spied on Mr Tenneshaw at work one night, with distressing results.
~ * ~
His name was Ronnie Rudbeck, he was seventeen, he lived in the quiet town of Plattville and he was as curious as a cat. One afternoon some three weeks after the funeral of Thomas F. Underhill, Ronnie Rudbeck spent the better part of an evening visiting the home of a Plattville girl named Maribeth Wheeler, who otherwise does not figure in this narrative.
It was a fine evening, lit by a full moon, and Ronnie Rudbeck was in a cheery mood as he left Maribeth’s house at half past eleven. He decided to walk the two miles to his own house, since at this hour the public transportation system in Plattville was highly irregular. His route happened to take him past the street on which was located the butcher shop of Mike Tenny.
As for Mr J. Michael Tenneshaw, this had been a long and busy and fruitful day for him. During the afternoon he had aided to his eternal sleep the mortal remains of yet another Reeseport citizen, one Gilbert Gosseyn by name. The late Mr Gosseyn had been carried off of over-exertion on the golf course at the age of fifty-three.
By the usual procedure Mr Tenneshaw had obtained the cadaver of the late Gilbert Gosseyn, and was in the process of bringing that cadaver into his butcher establishment at the moment Ronnie Rudbeck turned the corner into that street.
Mr Tenneshaw was too preoccupied with his task to notice the boy. Ronnie Rudbeck stopped short. He saw a tall, thin man whom he recognized as the butcher, engaged in the job of juggling a burlap-wrapped object into his store. To the boy’s utter amazement, the burlap wrapping parted slightly as a result of Mr Tenneshaw’s struggles with the heavy corpse.
A pale arm tumbled from the burlap shroud and dangled inches above the sidewalk.
Ronnie Rudbeck drew back into the shadows and watched in growing alarm as Mr Tenneshaw successfully manoeuvred the burlap-wrapped object into the store and closed the front door.
A body!
Murder!
A current of excitement throbbed in the boy’s heart. The butcher had no business dragging corpses about at this time of night. Ronnie grinned to himself. He felt no fear. He would investigate this strange incident. Perhaps, he thought, he might even distinguish himself heroically.
He tiptoed forward.
He nudged the door of the butcher shop. It creaked open. The boy leaped back, but no one came to investigate.
Reassured, the boy edged forward again, into the store. He saw the crack of light coming from beneath the closed door of the inner room. In there, he knew, was a man and a corpse. A murderer? He had to find out.
A full assortment of butcher’s tools hung over the counter in the outer room. Ronnie Rudbeck picked up a substantial cleaver. Thus armed, he tiptoed toward the closed door.
He placed one hand on the door.
He pushed.
The door opened.
The boy gasped. A moment later, Mr Tenneshaw looked up and gasped as well.
Ronnie Rudbeck saw a slab-jawed man of about fifty or sixty, dressed in a butcher’s outfit, bending over a bloody and dismembered corpse. Gore was spattered everywhere; a great revolting heap of intestines lay coiled like snakes at one side of the carving table. This was more than murder, the boy realized in a flash; it was some kind of ghoulish fiendishness!
As for Mr Tenneshaw, he saw in one mind-shattering glance that his long years of successful toil had ended now in damning exposure! He was caught in the act! A bulky, square-shouldered teenage boy stood in the doorway, armed with a gleaming cleaver.
“You killed him,” said the boy accusingly.
“Hardly. He died naturally. Too much golf, I’m afraid. I’m simply preparing him.”
“Preparing him for what?”
“For eating,” Mr Tenneshaw said.
He eyed the boy casually. But inside Mr Tenneshaw’s mind all was in turmoil. He had been discovered at last. All was ended. His dreadful secret was no longer his own. This blundering boy had ruined everything.
There was only one thing to do.
“Put down that cleaver,” Mr Tenneshaw said commandingly, “and tell me how much money you’ll want to keep quiet about this.”
~ * ~
The following morning, the sign was in Mike Tenny’s shop window once again:
WE HAVE SPECIAL CUTS OF LAMB TODAY 45 CENTS A POUND
But the first customer that morning was not one of the town’s housewives, but a member of the Plattville police, Brewster by name.
“Morning, Mr Tenny!”
“Good morning there, Officer Brewster. What’s on your mind today?”
The policeman shrugged. “Making a check-up, I’m afraid.”
“Oh?”
“It really isn’t worth bothering you about. But orders are orders. Boy named Ronald Rudbeck - you know him?”
Mr Tenneshaw remained calm. “I know the family. He a big kid with dark hair?”
“That’s the one.”
“He’s been here a couple of times, yeah. What about him?”
The policeman frowned. “Disappeared late last night. Last seen leaving the Wheeler house, a few blocks down the way, at half past eleven. He never got home last night. His parents are all het up about it.”
Mr Tenneshaw said, “So why come here about it? I haven’t seen him.”
“Just checking anyone who might have been up late in the neighbourhood. We figure the boy must have run away from home, or something.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised. These kids today—” Mr Tenneshaw began, leaving the sentence unfinished. “Is that all you wanted to ask me?”
“Just about.” The policeman grinned. “Oh, and the missus asked me to have you put aside a couple of pounds of the special lamb for her. She’ll be in around nine to pick it up.”
Mr Tenneshaw grinned. “Of course. Be glad to put a little away for Mrs Brewster.”
Although, he thought, there was a particularly large supply today. Much larger than usual.
“Hope you find the boy,” he said, as the policeman sauntered toward the shop door.
“He’ll turn up,” the policeman said with confidence.
Mr Tenneshaw nodded and went to the cupboard in back to wrap some of the meat for Mrs Brewster. He gave her nice choice cuts.
~ * ~
He smiled to himself.
He thought of the incident of the night before. How eager the boy had been for money; how avidly he had agreed to accept the cash Mr Tenneshaw offered. But Mr Tenneshaw was no fool. He knew that a blackmailer never settled for one payoff.
He remembered how surprised the boy had looked when the mild middle-aged man had lifted the cleaver and brought it whistling through the air toward its mark. Mr Tenneshaw sighed. He was tired. He had been working nearly half the night to carve all the meat from both the bodies.
Of course, it had left him with no time to dispose of the bones in his usual manner. There hadn’t been time for a trip back to the graveyard. But Mr Tenneshaw wouldn’t have liked the idea of putting Ronnie Rudbeck’s bones in the same coffin as Gilbert Gosseyn’s in any case.
So he had taken a chance, just this once. And it wasn’t such a big chance ...
The door opened. Mr Tenneshaw - as Mike Tenny - hustled forward, smiling broadly, rubbing his hands together. But instead of another of his favourite customers, there stood in the butcher shop doorway, looking very grim, the same policeman who had left a few moments before.
“Mike Tenny,” said Officer Brewster. It was not a greeting, or a question. It sounded more like a judgement, and a verdict.
“Yes ... yes,” Mr Tenneshaw said, looking around in bewilderment, wondering if anything could possibly have gone wrong.
The policeman held something white in his hand. “I just found a dog in your alley,” he said. “The mutt was chewing on this. He must have found it in your garbage.
“It’s a human bone!”
Mr Tenneshaw tried hard, but he felt his air of injured innocence vanishing rapidly. He had made one careless mistake at last. The undertaker, he realized grimly, had finally come to the end of his sideline.
<
~ * ~
JOEL LANE
The Long Shift
THERE WAS NEVER enough light. The railway cut through increasingly bare landscapes, bones poking through skin and tearing the white sky like paper, but Jim still felt trapped. The world was an open-
plan office. Bilingual signs told him this was another place where he didn’t belong. Despite the radiator close to his feet, he was shivering. No room booked. Only one thing gave him a sense of self, and that was carefully hidden between the clothes in his suitcase. He’d used a half-brick to dent and nick the blade so it wouldn’t come out clean.
The one thing that had kept him going. That had made him dry out, got him through the puppet-show of rehabilitation, the nights when only vision could keep you alive. Made him come back to the flat and clear out the rubbish, mop the floors, scrub the walls, fight the sense of being poisoned and lost. All the time, one thought: Baxter. No mourners. A cost-effective funeral. Let the gulls scream over Tyseley Dump like fading porn stars. Let the rats creep in the shadows. He had a reason to go on.
Psychomania: Killer Stories Page 15
