The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  He watched the sway of her hips beneath her skirt as she moved to the wood stove and poured coffee into a tin cup. She set the cup in front of him, then sat down across from him at the table.

  "Gotta be a rough life here for a woman alone," Luther remarked.

  "Oh, I'm not alone." Her glance slid to an open doorway.

  Luther didn't understand at first. Then he stood up, walked over, and peered into the room. A small child was sleeping in a wooden crib.

  "That's Samuel," Sharleen said, when Luther had sat down again at the table.

  "Will's son," he said with a forced smile.

  "The precious thing he left me," Sharleen said. "I got Samuel. And I got Frank Ames."

  Luther took a deep breath. "Sharleen, is Ames…? I mean, are you and him…?"

  She appeared surprised, touching the side of her neck lightly in a way he remembered she'd done long ago when she was embarrassed. "Oh, no! It's nothing like that, Luther."

  "Maybe not to you, but what about to him?"

  She seemed to think on the question. "I don't believe so, and a woman oughta know. I think it's just he's a kind man and he runs the bank and's in a position to help out now and again. I know I'm not the only one he's helped."

  Luther raised his eyebrows. "Runs the bank, does he?"

  "Surely does. You remember he worked there before leaving to fight. Well, old man Scopes retired and sold his interest to Frank. There's partners and a board, but Frank's president and makes the decisions."

  "I'll talk to him," Luther said, and took a sip of coffee.

  " 'bout what?"

  "Getting a loan to run some irrigation to the fields, turn the soil, and put in some good seed for spring planting. That horse I got out there ain't worth much, but he surely can pull a plow."

  He couldn't read the expression on Sharleen's face.

  "Luther…"

  "Remember," he said, "I was raised here on this land. It ain't that I see it as mine, but you and Samuel are family, and nothing can change that." He gave her a reassuring smile. "With what happened to Will and all… I mean, I feel duty bound to help."

  She studied his face, then nodded, stood up, and poured him some more hot coffee. "It ain't as if we don't need it," she said.

  "You done all right," Luther said.

  "The Lord knows I tried." She lowered her head, almost as if she were going to pray, but she began to cry quietly.

  Luther got up, strode around the table, and hugged her to him until her back stopped heaving and she wiped her nose and was calm.

  He caressed her cheek with the backs of his knuckles and she turned her face away. He walked back to his chair and sat down.

  "Coffee was something we could never get enough of during the war," he told her. "Towards the end, we'd make it outta most anything we could grind between two stones." He shook his head glumly. "There was lots of things we couldn't get enough of."

  "I just bet there was," Sharleen said.

  Luther went to see Frank Ames the next morning at the Oak River Bank. Ames was a small man with a jutting chin and bushy dark mustache. He looked startled to see Luther, then stood up behind his desk and shook hands with him. That he'd stood up surprised Luther, as Sharleen had said Ames lost a leg to the Yanks.

  "I'm real glad to see you made it back here safe and sound," Luther said.

  Ames smiled. Though his angular face hadn't changed much, his gray eyes were a lot older than when he and Luther had competed in the county games five years ago. "Safe, maybe. But I'm not exactly sound, Luther. Lost a leg."

  "Wouldn't guess it."

  "Got a wood one, foot and all," Ames said, and limped out from behind the desk. "Don't have to work my boot off and on it, anyway. Silver lining." He motioned for Luther to sit in a nearby chair, then went back to sit behind the desk. He ducked his head and looked strangely at Luther. "I heard you were dead, killed at Chickamauga."

  Luther raised his eyebrows in surprise, then smiled. "Don't look that way, does it?"

  "Nope. Don't have to touch you to know you're real and still among the living."

  "War was hell," Luther said.

  Ames nodded. "Damned Sherman." He made a pink steeple with the fingers of both hands. "This visit about business, Luther?"

  "It is. I understand you been helping my sister-in-law Sharleen. We appreciate that, but now that I'm back, I want to do my duty to her. After all, she's my brother's widow. Family's all that's left after this war, and for lots of folks not even that."

  "It was a shame about Will. He was a good boy."

  "He was that."

  "His widow deserves better than what she's got," Ames said. "What do you have in mind, Luther?"

  "A loan for a decent plow my horse can pull, for some irrigation work, a new barn and chicken coop, a well that ain't run dry, and good seed come the spring."

  "That's a lot," Ames said.

  "Sharleen needs a lot."

  "Gettysburg was hell worse than Sherman," Ames said. "Made a lot of Southern widows."

  "Northern ones, too."

  Ames nodded. "Carpetbaggers are gonna come in here from the North, change this country. Oak River is gonna grow. Guess Sharleen's farm can grow with it."

  "You'll help, then?"

  "I'll loan you the money, Luther. The work's up to you."

  "And I'm up to it," Luther said.

  "Just figure out what you need."

  Luther drew a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. "I got it right here."

  * * *

  Oak River grew just as Frank Ames had predicted. And Sharleen's farm prospered. Luther worked hard and became a substitute father for young Samuel, and stayed in the old barn while he built a new one. By late fall the farm had new or repaired outbuildings, but the harvest was meager.

  Winter was cold and with more than the usual snow, but Luther kept at his work. Before spring planting, he located water with a divining rod fashioned from a forked branch from a peach tree, a talent that had always been his, and with help from town dug a new well. The spring planting produced a rich harvest that late summer and fall, and Luther and Sharleen began to repay Frank Ames's bank.

  At the beginning of their second winter together Luther and Sharleen were married. By that time, nobody was much surprised, and the wedding was a joyful event. The farm became known to the townspeople as the Faver Place.

  Both Luther and Sharleen continued to work hard, and when Samuel got old enough he took to farm work. Besides farming, Luther gained a reputation with his dowsing, and the carpetbaggers moving into Oak River paid him handsomely to locate water with his divining rod so they'd not waste time and money digging dry wells.

  Frank Ames was soon paid off, and with profits no longer going toward the loan, Luther and Sharleen began to grow rich by Oak River's standards. They replaced the log farmhouse with a fine two-story frame home with a green marble fireplace and a wide front porch.

  At the turn of the century Luther had lived longer than he imagined was possible, almost to sixty. But he was healthy and saw more good years ahead for him and for Sharleen.

  Samuel had become a tall, handsome man who looked more like Luther than Will, and moved with his young bride to Joplin where they managed a dry goods emporium. One day he appeared at the farm with a fancy carriage pulled by two fine horses, and in his wife's arms was Luther's grandson.

  Will's grandson.

  "We named him Will!" Samuel said proudly. Then he asked how they liked the carriage and said, "I seen 'em with motors in Kansas City. Nothin' else pullin' 'em!"

  "Horseless carriages?" Sharleen asked in amazement. Though graying and thicker through the middle, she was still a beautiful woman, and her eyes widened with the enthusiasm of a youthfulness that would always be hers. The past lived with her and in her.

  "So they're called," Samuel told his mother. "I'm gonna talk to a man about a dealership. The carriages might be horseless, but they ain't without profit." He grinned at Luther. "And Dad taught me
the value of plannin' ahead."

  That evening, sitting before the warm blaze in his marble fireplace, Luther Faver considered that he was one of the luckiest men alive.

  The next morning his illness introduced itself, and it never left him. His stomach was never right, and he lost weight until his elbows and knees made sharp angles. Then his hair began to fall out.

  Doc Newsner in town didn't know what to make of it. He tried different medications on Luther and bled him with leeches. Nothing seemed to help.

  Only Sharleen could comfort him. She stayed awake through the night with him at times, holding his hand while the pain wracked him and caused him to moan and draw up his knees. The nights were the worst time. She would place a folded damp cloth on his forehead and croon softly to him. But the pain persisted.

  When Sharleen suddenly came down ill, Doc Newsner figured maybe it was something in the well water.

  It wasn't, though. Two days later she died from a burst appendix.

  Luther was too ill to attend the funeral. He lay bedridden and alone in the big farmhouse on the Faver Place. Samuel was coming in from Joplin to take him back there to die. Nobody had any illusions about that. They would travel by train to Joplin so Luther could pass while among family.

  The night before Samuel was to arrive, Frank Ames paid Luther a visit.

  Ames hadn't aged well. He was bent at the waist, walking with the aid of a walnut cane, and his face was deeply lined. His mustache had become gray and scraggly above bloodless lips. As he limped into the bedroom, Luther thought Ames probably wouldn't live much longer than he would.

  "Some whiskey in the kitchen," Luther offered.

  "Can't drink the stuff anymore," Ames said. His voice had become older than he was, hoarse and so soft you had to listen hard to whatever he was saying.

  Luther weakly waved an arm toward the easy chair alongside the bed, and Ames settled into it with a long sigh, his wooden leg extended straight out in front of him.

  "Sharleen was buried well," he told Luther. "She was a good woman."

  "Always," Luther said. "I hope I did right by her."

  Ames drew a briar pipe from his pocket and gave his wooden leg a sharp rap with it. "We came a long ways from Gettysburg," he said, and began packing the pipe's bowl with tobacco from a leather pouch.

  "War's a long time ago now," Luther agreed.

  "To some it is." Ames struck a wooden match to flame with his thumbnail and held fire to tobacco. He puffed until he got the pipe burning well, then he shook out the match and put the blackened remains of it in the vest pocket of his banker's suit. The room filled with the acrid-sweet scent of the smoldering tobacco leaf.

  "Long time ago for everyone," Luther told him. "Time buries everything."

  "Sometimes it takes a while, though," Frank Ames said. He reached into the pocket where he'd slipped the burnt match, withdrew an object and laid it on the nightstand alongside the bed where Luther could see it.

  Luther raised his head and peered to the side at the glittering object.

  "I shined it up for you," Ames said.

  "What is it?"

  "A locket. Silver. Pretty old now. There's a lock of Sharleen's hair in it."

  Something dark and immortal stirred in Luther.

  "Your brother Will wore it for good luck in the war: Had it on him when he died."

  "Did they send his personal effects to Sharleen?"

  "Nope." Ames settled back in his chair and spoke around the pipe stem clamped in his teeth. "I was with Longstreet's troops at Gettysburg, camped near Cemetery Ridge and waiting for morning and the hell it'd bring, when we spotted a couple of Yanks headed for picket duty. The moonlight made them good targets, and some artillery pieces opened fire on them. Killed one of them. The other made it to cover in a peach orchard. I was one of three men sent to capture that lone picket so he wouldn't give information to the Yanks. We didn't know another patrol was sent from Heth's First Corps to capture him. You were in that patrol." The burning pipe tobacco made a soft whispering sound in the quiet room. "I was in the peach orchard and saw what happened that night, Luther. I saw you shoot your brother."

  Luther's heart seemed to shrivel. He was having even more difficulty than usual breathing. Possession of the locket was proof of Ames's story. Proof that he was in the peach orchard that night and proof enough of murder. Luther knew that he'd come close to being hanged long ago.

  "Why didn't you tell someone?" he heard his own rasping voice ask. "Why didn't you tell Sharleen what happened?"

  "I never told her nor anyone else because I knew she needed you," Ames said. "And Samuel needed a father. Me with my missing leg, there was no way in hell I could help her enough, no way I could farm crops and build and be a father to a son not my own. But I loved Sharleen and wanted to do something for her. I couldn't bear to sit and watch her live such a hard life and fall ill and die, or bend beneath her load and become an old woman before her time. You were the answer, Luther. The solution to the problem you created."

  "I killed Will so I could have Sharleen," Luther said feebly. There were tears in his eyes. He hadn't cried in decades, not even when Sharleen died.

  "That was easy to figure," Ames said. "You always loved her, and you were always jealous of your brother."

  "I was a good husband to Sharleen," Luther said. "A good provider, and a good father to her son. Maybe I made it up to her, in a way. Maybe I made amends for what I did."

  Ames drew on his pipe and exhaled a cloud of smoke. "I don't think so. I don't think that was enough."

  "At least she never found out."

  "I didn't say that, Luther."

  Luther couldn't lift his head, but he craned his neck painfully so he could see Ames. He didn't like what he saw in Ames's face.

  "I told her 'bout a year ago," Ames said. "Showed her the locket."

  Luther felt himself go cold from the inside. "She never said anything to me."

  "She decided to poison you instead."

  Now Luther did manage to raise his head. "Wha…?" The back of his head sank back into his sweat-soaked pillow.

  "She's been feeding you arsenic, Luther. Exacting her revenge little by little for what you did to her young husband. Exacting justice. Nothing you can do about it now. It's too late to fix the damage that's been done to you or reverse the process. The poison'll soon have its way."

  Luther struggled to speak but could only croak weakly and gasp.

  "I thought you oughta know," Ames said, bracing himself with his cane and standing up from his chair with difficulty. "Maybe because I'm a banker and I believe there needs to be an accounting. It's only right. You haven't got much longer and things oughta be settled."

  Ames made to leave, then paused and turned. "We were on the losing side, Luther, but you thought you won your own personal war. It took a long time, but you lost just like the rest of us."

  Ames limped toward the door. His cane clattered like dry bones as he clumped down the stairs.

  Then there was complete silence.

  Luther lay with ghosts in the darkening room.

  Jan Burke

  The Abbey Ghosts

  JAN BURKE'S second story in this year's collection is every bit as good as her first, "The Man in the Civil Suit," but in a very different vein. "The Abbey Ghosts" is more in line with her historical novels, and equally gripping. It was first published in the January 2001 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which bore a 2000 copyright. We're glad to have it, regardless of which year they call it.

  The Abbey Ghosts

  Jan Burke

  I did not meet the Eighth Earl of Rolingbroke until he was twelve years old. I was in some measure compensated for the lack of our acquaintance during those first dozen years of his life, not only by the deep friendship my stepbrother and I formed over the years we did have together, but also by occasionally being allowed to spend time with him after his death.

  His death had come unexpectedly and before he attained his th
irtieth year. That first evening after his funeral I sat before the fire in The Abbey library, weary and yet certain that my grief for him would not allow me to sleep. Not many hours earlier my late stepbrother had been laid to rest in the family crypt. Lucien's body was placed next to that of his wife— who had died five years before, shortly after giving birth to Charles, their only child.

  Lucien's orphaned son was much on my mind. Candle in hand, I had looked in on Charles just before ten o'clock that night. The day's events had been exhausting for him as well, and he slept, though his young face seemed sad even in repose. He stirred, perhaps because of the light, so I extinguished it. I waited, but he did not waken, and I crept silently away in the darkness, softly shutting his door before relighting the candle. I returned to the library.