Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

Once again Mark watched and listened in the background and considered what he saw and heard. He saw a huge man in his middle forties, with shrewd blue eyes and the easy smile of a joiner. He saw that there were no fraternal buttons on Beacham’s coat, but he knew Beacham would have them; they’d be tucked away in the box with his pearl studs and worn only to conventions and rotary luncheons. He knew Beacham would give his children too much spending money and confess to crying at sad movies. Elderly widows and victims of infantile paralysis would always send his hand into his pocket, and if what came out was only a small fraction of what they and their kind had innocently put there some time before, nobody cared. Beacham would probably fleece a lamb while it was still damp, if he didn’t know the lamb personally.

  It was no cooler in the freight shed but it was dim and quiet. A sickly smell of chicken feathers filled the stale air. Perley sat on an upturned crate and indicated two others.

  “Sit,” he said. “This is Mark East, a friend of mine. He’s a private investigator from New York. He’s up here for a vacation. Well—.” He looked hopefully at Mark, who returned a blank gaze. “Well, it’s like this. Pansy says the only thing I can break is china, so I won’t try to soften this up. Mr. Beacham, Miss Cassidy has gone off somewhere.”

  Beacham looked incredulous. “Cassie? What are you talking about? She’s got no place to go.”

  Perley told him. Beacham listened as if he were hearing a lecture in a foreign language, and the story had to be told all over again. When it was finished the second time he made no comment. He slumped on the crate and stared at his shoes.

  “We searched all night,” Perley said. “Mr. East and I and some of my boys. We had a bright moon. As near as we can find out she never left the church grounds. At least nobody saw her. No reason to doubt the word of any of those people, either. All town people and the Mountain House crowd. All people you know. I figured she might have walked downtown for soda mints or something—that supper was a lulu—but I’ve got a fellow directing traffic at Main and Mountain Road these days, and he says he didn’t see her. She’d have to pass him no matter where she went. . . . Of course he could have skinned off for a beer, but he’ll never admit that.”

  Beacham raised strained eyes. “I don’t get it. I don’t get it. She’s got no place to go. Joey—Joey ought to know.” He dragged out the name of his small, freckled daughter with boastful confidence. “They’re never far apart, those two. What does Joey say?”

  Perley hesitated, and Mark stepped into the break. “Joey,” he said, “was avoiding Miss Cassidy last night. No quarrel, just a small matter of dietary indiscretion. I think you ought to see Joey as soon as possible, Mr. Beacham. I talked to her at five o’clock this morning and she told me she was a Spartan boy. But I think the fox is winning.”

  Beacham looked bewildered. “I will, I will. But I can’t get this thing straight! Cassie! It’s crazy. It doesn’t make sense.” The shrewd look returned to his eyes. He looked at Mark. “What do you think?”

  “I can’t think anything yet. I didn’t know Miss Cassidy. I didn’t even see her at the church supper, but that’s not strange. They tell me she was self-effacing, and, added to that, she was in pretty flamboyant company. It’s easy for a woman like that to be—invisible.”

  “I guess you mean she was with Kirby, Sheffield, and the Pecks,” Beacham said quickly. “No, you wouldn’t notice her then. . . . She couldn’t be lying somewhere—hurt?”

  “That’s been considered. Wilcox and I covered the roads and the grounds. Also the cemetery. If your family and friends hadn’t insisted it was out of character, I’d say she walked out because she wanted to.”

  “No,” Beacham said. “No. She didn’t have any place to go. . . . Did she cash any checks, take any luggage?”

  “No checks. We woke the bank up to ask. And no luggage, according to your daughter. What about that ring? Was it worth much?”

  “What ring? Oh, the sapphire. Sure it is. We wouldn’t give her anything but the best. What about it?”

  “Good way to raise cash,” Mark said mildly.

  Beacham flushed. “She wouldn’t sell that if she was starving. Even Joey put her nickels in for that. No.”

  Perley spoke thoughtfully, rubbing his unshaven chin. “I keep thinking about that ring,” he said. “Expensive jewelry is always a temptation, even to honest people. I keep wondering if maybe she did stroll downtown, and if maybe somebody got a look at it and—. You know there’s that army camp up the line at Baldwin. My man on traffic duty says some of their fellows were skylarking in town last night. Nothing against the army, you understand,” he added hastily. “But I was only wondering. Would she talk to strangers?”

  “Yes. She was like that. If a boy came along and told her he was homesick. . . . Yes.” He turned his head and looked through the open door; the sun-bleached platform lay beyond, the grimy tracks, the row of listless trees, and then the hills going up, up into the hot blue August sky. His look traveled far beyond that. When he turned back his eyes were smoldering.

  “You,” he said to Mark. “East. I want you to get busy with Wilcox! I can’t have this! Name your fee. Anything you want.” He dragged out a checkbook.

  “On vacation,” Mark said, suddenly laconic.

  Beacham stared. “What are you holding out for?”

  Mark returned the stare. “Nothing. You can’t believe that, can you?”

  Perley stirred uneasily. “Now, now.”

  Beacham made an impatient gesture. “I’ve rubbed you the wrong way, I guess. I didn’t take time to size you up, and that’s a mistake I don’t often make. You’re one of those fellows that won’t take orders. I’m sorry. But—I’m upset. I don’t know what to think or what to do. I don’t even know why anything like this should happen to me.” He shook his head like a dog coming out of water. “I’ll ask you again. Will you find Miss Cassidy for me and bring her back? I want her—want her bad.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t want the case. I’ll lend Wilcox a hand, but that’s all I can promise.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a softie about missing persons. Nine times out of ten they’re missing because they want it that way. They’re happy that way. Why should I come along and smoke the poor devils out like rats, all for a few dollars? They hate your guts for it and you can’t blame them. And the people who hire you for the job wind up hating you too, because you nearly always turn up something in their own lives that isn’t very pretty. Thanks for asking me, but you see how it is.”

  “I don’t like the way you talk. Are you trying to tell me Cassie went away because we—mistreated her?”

  “Not at all. Although I haven’t been impressed by any signs of genuine concern, except on the part of your two daughters. They were upset all right, and I was and am sorry for them. But your friends only looked worried, and not enough, and even you talk more about what’s happened to you than about what’s happened to Miss Cassidy.”

  “You’re wrong! I’m half crazy! I haven’t had time to think!”

  Mark smiled gently. “It’ll work itself out,” he said. “Just let it ride along. You see I think Miss Cassidy knows what she’s doing. Still,” and he smiled again, “if anything changes my mind I’ll come in with you.”

  Perley saw the thunder in Beacham’s face and spoke hastily. “Why don’t we leave it that way? I’ll do everything in my power, and Mr. East here will keep his eye on me.” He stood up. “We brought your car down with us, it’s parked outside. I think those little girls will be glad to see you.”

  Beacham knew when he was dismissed. He went out to his car and they watched him drive off. He was pale under his tan, but he was also scowling. Perley looked worried.

  “If that’s an elopement,” he observed, “I’m glad I got married the hard way. But did you have to bite him like that, Mark? He’s a prominent man, you know.”

  “He acts prominent. Sure I had to bite. He can’t cast me as a bloodhound in his little domestic drama.�
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  “Honest, do you think that’s all it is?” Perley’s voice held both relief and disbelief. “Tell me why, go on and tell me why.”

  “Did you see any of his good, kind pals down here this morning? Did any of them even offer to come? If they thought it was a legitimate disappearance they’d have been here at the crack of dawn, breaking the news and holding his hand. They didn’t even search. Nope. I think he had some trouble with the lady and she walked out. And now he’s trying to impress her by hiring a private detective. Or maybe he tried to hire me because there I was, sitting on a chicken coop. Nope again. You fool around with the usual routine, Perley, and he’ll call you up tonight and tell you she’s back.” Then he added, “If he doesn’t, we’ll begin to take everybody apart.”

  “Poor chap,” Perley said doubtfully. “He looked terrible.”

  Mark squinted at the sky. “Does Bittner still run the busses from here to Crestwood?”

  “Sure. Other side of the platform, around the corner. Why do you want to know?”

  “I thought I’d pay a social call on Bessy and Beulah. Why didn’t those two turn up at the Covered Dish last night?”

  “Wrong church. They’re funny that way. Listen, why don’t I ride over that way with you? That is if you don’t mind. I thought I might go on up the line to the camp and check on the boys who had leave last night. I got to do something.” He slapped his dripping shirt and exhibited a wet hand. “I’m sweating like a pig and I didn’t have any breakfast.”

  “Breakfast,” Mark repeated thoughtfully. “That reminds me of something. On just such a morning Lizzie Borden served a breakfast of hot mutton soup.”

  “Who?”

  “Lizzie Borden. Fall River girl. Gave her mother forty whacks.”

  “Oh, that one. Whatever happened to her?”

  “Nothing. That’s the point. Nothing. Come on over to the bus.”

  Perley began to look uneasy again. “I’m like Beacham,” he admitted. “I don’t like the way you talk. You sure you haven’t got something up your sleeve?”

  “Not a thing. Look, Perley. How did we clean up that bloody mess last winter?”

  “I dunno. Fancy detective work I guess.”

  “Nothing fancy about it. We didn’t know where we were, so we sat tight until we did. Then we talked to everybody who’d stand still long enough to answer. If we heard that somebody broke the habit of a lifetime and went to bed at nine instead of ten, we found out why. And always we talked and listened. Well, we’re in the first stage of that now. We’ll do nothing. But if Miss Cassidy is still missing after three days and Beacham is honestly worried and comes after us again—why then we’ll start ’em rolling. . . . Here we are. Upsy daisy.”

  They climbed aboard the odorous yellow bus that carried pigs and people with Christian impartiality. It was known as Bittner’s Folly, but not to Bittner. There were seven Follies, each with a bright red slogan painted on its battered side: SAME TIME SAME STATION. The slogan was Bittner’s challenge to the branch line railroad.

  Years before, Bittner had walked in front of an incoming train to show his contempt for the schedule, and lost both legs. In retaliation he collected a fleet of opposition busses and trucks. Bittner’s busses went everywhere the trains went, neck to neck, hugging the tracks. They were fleas on the cast-iron hide of rapid transit. Once, an engineer, young and new to the line, tried to shake one off. He stopped his train in the middle of the country, climbed down from his cab, and, strolling to a nearby field, picked himself a buttercup. This was supposed to confound the bus. Bittner’s driver got six to his one and beat him to the start.

  Bittner undercut the train rates, carried weddings and funerals free, and transported all livestock that would fit in the aisles. He could afford it; he was rich. He lived an abundant life in a fearful wheel chair, in a tidy little house next door to the station in Crestwood. The house was honeycombed with ramps and had an unobstructed view of the branch line railway and the parallel state road. He spent his days sailing up and down the ramps and wielding his powerful binoculars at the windows. People said he could read the date on a nickel in a driver’s pocket.

  Mark had never met Bittner, but he had often coveted the binoculars. He was thinking of them when he boarded the bus. It was Folly Number Three.

  They had hardly found places when a two-coach train on a nearby track gave a warning cough. The bus shuddered and plunged forward. They were off. Mark clung to a seat that had too recently been occupied by a very young child whose other weakness was chewing gum. There was no conversation.

  Five miles later, at Crestwood, he crawled out and waved a limp farewell to Perley. The tiny red brick station was as picturesque as he remembered it, covered now with vines instead of snow. The once bare bushes bloomed and the summer dust lay thick on paths where he had once walked arm in arm with murder. This time there was no icy wind, no wailing in the trees. But he felt that winter wind again, and he shivered and looked down at the gooseflesh on his bare, sunburned arm. “I need sleep, or something,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong. It’s coming back here that does it.”

  Amos Partridge was on the station platform, struggling with the mailbag and hurling his obligatory imprecations at the departing bus.

  Mark waved. “See you later,” he shouted, and hoped he sounded cheerful. He started up the lane of little houses.

  Bees droned and gardens sent out waves of perfume. He turned gratefully in at Beulah Pond’s gate and wasn’t surprised when she burst through the door before the gate clicked. The old grapevine still worked; Ella May, the hawk-eyed spouse of the legless Bittner, had seen him come and telephoned ahead.

  Bessy Petty beamed over Beulah’s thin shoulder. She’d dropped in to pick beetles, she said. They chirped, screamed, scolded, and kissed. In five minutes he was sitting under a peach tree in the back garden, with a Tom Collins in his hand because lemon juice is so good for you early in the day.

  “Do you want sunstroke?” shrilled Beulah. “What are you doing without a hat? What are you doing here anyway? We didn’t expect you until next week.”

  He didn’t have a hat because he’d left Perley’s in a hurry, and he was coming next week as promised. This was a dividend call, in reverse. When they didn’t mention Miss Cassidy he knew they hadn’t heard, so he told them. They were suitably distressed and delighted.

  “That good woman!” Beulah said happily. “But I’m not surprised. Why do people go to church suppers anyway?”

  “To get a lot for fifty cents,” Bessy said soberly. “Poor Miss Cassidy. She had the look of death in her eye last week in the five-and-ten.”

  “She had a sty,” Beulah said. “Go on, Mark. What do you want to know? You didn’t come over here in all this heat to tell us something we’d have found out for ourselves in an hour.”

  He admitted that. “I’m not working on the case,” he said. “I’m not even sure it is a case. I sort of think it’s what we call a voluntary disappearance. But I’m curious. What do you know about these people? How long have they been coming to Bear River? Who hates who, who loves, if any and at all? And don’t censor anything for me, not that I think you will. I’m interested in Beacham, Cassidy, Peck, Kirby, Sheffield, Sutton, and Rayner.”

  Beulah launched herself like a ship, but with lemon juice. The Beacham history was clean to the point of sterility. Widower, rich, oil. No women that anybody ever heard of, but that didn’t mean anything because he was a New Yorker, and everybody knows what you can get away with in New York. Some people said they wondered about Miss Cassidy, but she, Beulah, didn’t. “I can tell,” she said richly.

  Joey, she said, was nice; Roberta was nice too, but mopish. In love with Nick Sutton. The Beachams and Miss Cassidy had been coming to the Mountain House for five years. Nick Sutton was new this year. He was an orphan; nursemaid dropped him when he was a baby and hurt his spine. His grandfather was with him, an old gentleman who sat in the sun all day and never went anywhere. He had a valet. Rough boys
called Nick “The Little Lame Prince.” He was forever fighting them, or trying to.

  “Miss Cassidy got any relatives?”

  “Sure you don’t mean survivors?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I know you, Mark,” Beulah said. “I know you’ve made up your mind that Miss Cassidy is dead, and that’s why you didn’t want the case. Right?”

  “Wrong. My mind is definitely not made up to anything. What about relatives?”

  “She hasn’t any. I got to know her pretty well, coming up here every summer as she did. She was a good creature.”

  “I don’t think that was a sty,” Bessy said unexpectedly.

  They ignored her, but she was used to that. Nevertheless the scar on her cheek reddened with embarrassment. She touched it gingerly, remembering too well how she had come by it. They could kill everybody in the state this time, she said to herself, and she wouldn’t lift a finger. Not a single one. The gutters could run blood and she wouldn’t care. But the old habit of cozy interference was still strong. She stared into the bottom of her empty glass.

  “Mr. Spangler has a terrible sign in his window,” she said softly.

  “Not any more,” Mark said. “I made him take it out. Get on with the record, Beulah. Peck, Kirby, Sheffield, Rayner.”

  There wasn’t much to tell about them, Beulah said. They drank a lot but didn’t do anything awful. Not Miss Rayner, of course; the others. Miss Sheffield. But it’s no sin to knock down the traffic light. Cora Sheffield bred horses in Kentucky, but she wanted Mr. Kirby. She was sixty if she was a day, and he was over seventy, and one night one of the maids saw him without his hair. He’d carried on so she had to take another job in Baldwin, but that didn’t stop her talking. Cora Sheffield and Mr. Kirby had been coming to the Mountain House for two summers. The Pecks were old timers like the Beachams. Rich, oil, and nothing you could put your finger on. Miss Rayner was new, like the Suttons.

  “Miss Rayner got shot last night,” Mark said.

  Bessy fell back in her chair. So it was going to be like that again, was it? Well, the gutters could run. But she sat forward again.