Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  It was washday in Bear River and every backyard boasted of some woman’s industry. There was something decent and cheering in the flapping lines of sheets and shirts. Something enviable too. He watched with pleasure as a woman eased a laden basket through her kitchen door and let the screen close gently against her comfortable bottom. She set her basket on the brick walk and soaked it with a garden hose. The water gushed and foamed through the wicker sides. He restrained an impulse to throw himself at her feet and drove on.

  Pansy was up to her elbows in suds when he walked into her kitchen, howling for a bath. She was full of apologies. It might be hot and then again it mightn’t. If he didn’t mind waiting she could put some kettles on. He didn’t care if it was hot or cold. He only wanted to be wet, immediately and all over.

  She was full of questions as she laid out the lumpy bath towels and straightened the damp mat. How were they taking it up there? Perley hadn’t had time to tell her a thing. He’d gone out at sunup. How were those poor children and their father?

  “But there,” she said, whisking at a dead fly, “you don’t have to tell me that. I know. They’re broken-hearted, I know.”

  He said she was probably right. “Could you give me some breakfast, Pansy? In about fifteen minutes? I’m starving.”

  Breakfast! She was out of the room before she had finished the word. He heard her talking to herself all the way downstairs. Breakfast! Sending a man out in all this heat without a couple of eggs. Even death was no excuse for that. Even murder. What’s the use of having a million dollars if you haven’t got a heart to go with it!

  He ran the water into the tub and forgot to look at the rust. Pansy’s emphasis on hearts had started him thinking. There was no doubt about Joey’s; it was broken all right. But he wouldn’t bet on the state of Beacham’s and Roberta’s. When Cassie was first reported missing Beacham had been genuinely upset, but there was no indication that he thought it was a tragedy. He’d acted like a man whose wife had justifiably threatened to leave him if he didn’t stop what he was doing, and he hadn’t stopped and she’d gone. Now that he knew she was dead he was sullen and quarrelsome, but there was no apparent damage to his heart. That might be his own particular style of grieving. Everybody had one.

  He considered Roberta. She’d run a fine emotional gamut in the last few days. She’d been tender with Miss Rayner over the arrow business and decidedly snappish over the drive with Nick; she’d been angry and almost hysterical about the destruction of Joey’s clothes. Cassie’s disappearance had frightened her, but it was a childish fright, and she had shown less poise than Joey. Then she had suddenly changed.

  He remembered how she had looked when he described Cassie’s dead body. She’d insisted on details and listened with a calm and almost clinical detachment. Then she had gone to bed, brushing Cora Sheffield aside, and she had slept. Joey hadn’t slept, he knew that, but Roberta had. And now she was off with Nick, pampering old man Sutton and ignoring her own family. Eighteen years old, the never-give-yourself-away generation.

  He reached for the soap, lost it, and grinned because that reminded him of something. Lost. That’s what they used to call his generation. Lost. Running away like rapids, somebody had said. All right, he told himself, run. He pulled out the plug and reached for a towel. He knew what he was going to do next. He was going over to Crestwood and talk to Bessy and Beulah. Their generation was called the Age of Innocence and what they didn’t know you could put in your eye.

  He ate his breakfast to the gurgling accompaniment of two rinsings and a bluing and went on his way.

  Beulah was cutting sweetpeas, not because she wanted them, but because there were too many. Bessy sat under the peach tree, knitting a pink afghan for somebody’s baby, she didn’t know whose.

  “We always have a great many in the fall,” she said. “And now here you are, bringing death again.”

  He declined refreshment on the grounds of three prevailing fried eggs and at once asked Beulah to name her favorite suspect. He knew she had one and he also knew he could eliminate her choice with perfect safety. She never failed him that way. He expected her to say George, who was Sutton’s valet, simply because George was the one person he hadn’t interviewed, but she fooled him.

  “Franny Peck,” she said promptly.

  He laughed because she was leering. “Why?” he managed to ask.

  “I feel it. You know how I am when I feel things, Mark. She was walking around in that cemetery until dark, wasn’t she? Is that normal?”

  “Beulah! She was with her husband and two other people.”

  “In cahoots.”

  “And they left the place before anything happened. That’s practically proved. I don’t know why I bother with you.” He waited for her to toss her head and she did. “Have you got a down on Franny?”

  “I don’t like kitten women. . . . What do you make of Cora Sheffield?”

  “That’s no kitten woman. I like Cora.”

  “All right, but watch her. She’s man crazy, and Beacham’s a handsome devil with a lot of money. Why couldn’t she throw Miss Cassidy down a well to clear the deck?”

  “Just to save my sanity, I’ll admit it’s temperamentally possible. But we’re pretty sure Cora left the party at eight-thirty, while all six arrows were hitting legitimate targets. And, for the record, Miss Cassidy didn’t die because she was thrown down the well. She never reached the water. She bled to death.”

  “We know,” Bessy said. “Ella May told us. Head down and with her hat on.” She carefully folded the afghan. “I wonder what she thought about?”

  He watched her plump hands patting the pink wool into shape, and felt a little sick. He’d been thinking of Cassie as he’d first seen her, still and dead, even mercifully dead; and now, because of Bessy’s words, he saw another picture. He tried to blot it out, but it stayed. He closed his eyes to the bright sunlight. What had she been thinking about? What were the thoughts that flooded her tortured mind before they slowly ebbed? He hoped it hadn’t been long.

  “I—,” his voice wavered and he cleared his throat furiously, “I wonder if a woman could have done that? I’ve been thinking it had to be a man.”

  Beulah was watching him. “Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “You’ll find out. Go on home, Bessy. You bore me stiff.”

  Bessy rose obediently and trotted off. “I have something to do anyway,” she said, “so I don’t consider this a dismissal.”

  “She’s not all there,” Beulah said. “Of course she’s my oldest and dearest friend, but sometimes I think the wrong people get killed. . . . Mark, can’t you find out who that poor soul was talking to between those times? I mean between the time she was seen at the target and the time you think it happened?”

  “We don’t know when it happened. I’ve interviewed the hotel people who were there, and they say they didn’t see her after the Briggs affair. Perley’s talking to the others now. We may even find that she left the grounds and was killed miles away. Brought back later. Amos is looking into that. Some farmer may have seen something, or some kid parked by the road, but I’m not counting on it. The mind that planned this won’t give itself away. It’s vicious and depraved and it wears a false face. We’ll trap him, and rip it off.”

  She didn’t say anything and he went on. “Beulah, do something for me, will you?”

  “Money?”

  “No! Take me down to Bittner’s. I want to talk to him and I don’t think he’ll let me in without a convoy.”

  She looked startled. “Why Bittner? He hasn’t been out of a wheel chair for years.”

  “He has a pair of binoculars and he uses them day and night.”

  “Oh.” She stood up and shook out her skirts. “Leave it to me to get you in. Come on.”

  Mark was right about his welcome. Ella May stood firmly between her spouse and intrusion.

  “He says you can’t come in,” she said with enjoyment. “He says he wants to wake up alive tomorrow. He says whenever you c
ome around here somebody gets killed. He says this time it ain’t going to be him. He says,” she curled her thin lips, “he says you said Folly Number Three had a bad smell. The driver heard you, so don’t deny it. He says if you want to know something that really smells—”

  “Ella May!” Beulah seized her neighbor by one sharp elbow and lowered her voice. “Did you hear what the doctor found?” She paused, and let this sink in. The light changed in Ella May’s small eyes.

  “What?” she whispered. Mark edged closer to the door.

  “Oh, go on back to the kitchen,” Ella May said. “The old fool won’t bite you!”

  He left them with their heads together. The doctor’s report hadn’t come in, but Beulah had a fine, confusing vocabulary.

  Bittner sat at his kitchen window, his binoculars trained on two small boys sitting in a ditch beside the road. They were sitting because they were tired, but Bittner had another interpretation. He looked like an overturned beetle.

  “This is what I get for leaving the front of the house,” he said when Mark entered. “Is my wife lying in a pool of blood by the door?” His pale eyes raked his caller from head to foot. “Sit down. I was only fooling. Sit closer. You’re too far away.”

  Mark moved his chair forward an inch and opened fire with the first thing that came into his head. “Did you see Peck anywhere around here last night?”

  Bittner’s eyes lighted up like Ella May’s. “Who says he was here?”

  “He does, but I need proof. If you won’t tell me I’ll take you to court.”

  Bittner had been to court many times and each time it had cost him money. “Of course I’ll tell you. You’re a very spirited young fellow and I like that. . . . When does he say he was around?”

  Mark told him.

  “Well, he was. He went into Partridge’s, but he only stayed a few minutes. You didn’t ask me this but I’ll tell you anyway—he was alone, too. When he came and when he left. All alone.”

  “Thanks.” He gave Bittner a gratified look. “Did you happen to see anybody else?”

  “Plenty of people. Trains full, busses full, some on foot. I didn’t see the Cassidy woman, if that’s what you’re driving at. I didn’t see her and I don’t know her.”

  Mark asked his next question carefully. “If you had known her, Mr. Bittner, and she had been on one of the busses or one of the trains, would you have seen her?”

  Bittner patted the binoculars. “Government’s been trying to get these away from me. Wants to buy them. Yes, I’d have seen her.”

  Mark started to describe her clothing, and Bittner stopped him with a fat white hand. “Save your breath, my dear boy. Ella May told me what she was wearing. And I tell you she didn’t pass this way up to midnight. The last bus went through then and I went to bed. And you can forget about the trains. Last train from Bear River went through at eight, and she was alive then. Ella May says so. . . . Here, take these glasses and tell me what those boys are doing out there.”

  Mark took them. “Sitting,” he said. He handled the binoculars lovingly. “Do you ever rent these to responsible people?”

  “I don’t know any.” Bittner gave one wheel of his chair a quick spin which brought his bloated face too close. “Do you know anything that hasn’t been—brought out?”

  Mark tried not to recoil. “No,” he said evenly.

  “Too bad. I hoped, I hoped there might be a little something. You know what I mean. A little something that the papers wouldn’t print. I thought you’d tell me.”

  “I haven’t anything to tell.” Then to his horror he heard himself adding, “I mean I haven’t anything yet.”

  Bittner sighed, and drummed on the arm of his chair.

  “I’m a shut-in,” he said huskily. “I have to depend on my wife for everything. It’s hard. I haven’t talked to a man for years, except drivers. I’d give almost anything for a good man-to-man talk.” He gave his guest an oblique look.

  “There’s Partridge next door,” Mark said. He tried not to look at those fat, drumming fingers. He wanted to crack down on them with a board.

  Bittner ignored Partridge. He put out a hand and touched Mark’s knee. “You’ll come in and tell me things from time to time, won’t you? You can trust me. No matter what you hear, you can trust me. You don’t know how hard it is, depending on a woman. They don’t—hear things.”

  Mark moved easily out of reach. “I hear a good bit,” he said diffidently. He knew then that he was going to bargain with this monstrosity, but on his own terms. Bittner’s house stood on the direct traffic route to Baldwin. Every conveyance to and from Bear River to Baldwin passed the windows. And Baldwin was important. That was where the branch line trains and the busses met the Montreal-New York Express.

  If he couldn’t get the binoculars for himself he could at least inveigle Bittner into using them for him. And he’d wash out his mouth with soap when he got home. He walked over to the window.

  “That wasn’t a very cordial message you sent to the door when I came,” he said.

  Bittner showed his bad teeth. “I told Ella May that to make her happy. She’s jealous.” He gurgled. “I was going to call you back if you went away. . . . What are you looking at? Here, give me back those glasses!”

  Mark handed them over. “I wasn’t looking at anything. I was thinking. You know, maybe you can do me a favor. A big one. And in return I promise to keep you posted on—things.”

  The chair rolled over to the window with inhuman eagerness. “What can I do? A poor old fellow like me. What can I do?”

  “You can watch the road traffic as you never watched it before. Watch it as if your own life depended on it.” He thought this was a good touch, and it was. It had results beyond his wildest hopes. Bittner backed away.

  “Not my life,” he boasted without confidence.

  “Yours, mine, everybody’s.” He didn’t believe this, but if a little exaggeration could put a yard or so between him and his new friend then more of the same would be even better. “We’re all targets now,” he added.

  “Get re-enforcements! That’s what you need. Re-enforcements!”

  “Now now. We’re not ready for that yet. For a day or so I think we can handle this ourselves.” He gently stressed the word we.

  Bittner’s vanity fought its way to the surface and announced its return with a smirk. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe we can. But you’ll have to confide in me. You mustn’t hold anything back.”

  “I won’t. Now this is what I want you to do. You know all the regulars who travel back and forth by bus, don’t you?”

  “Do I! I even know the ones who walk on the dark side of the road and think nobody sees ’em. I could tell you things if you were a true friend.”

  “Don’t,” Mark said hastily. “I mean not now. You can save all the little tidbits for the next time I call.” On the phone, he said under his breath. “This is what I want you to check on.” He pointed north, toward Baldwin. “Every traveler from Crestwood or Bear River to Baldwin must pass along this road. Right?”

  “Right. Everybody knows that. But there’s nothing in Baldwin. I don’t know why people go.”

  “Sure you do. The train terminal. The big works. The link with the outside world. All the Mountain House guests, no matter where they came from, had to go to Baldwin first, then transfer to the branch line. They’ll do the same thing when they leave. I want you to keep a list of all Mountain House people who travel to Baldwin, from today on. That goes for employees too.”

  “Why? I want to know why.”

  “Listen. Suppose somebody up at the hotel wanted to get to Montreal or New York without calling attention to that fact. Suppose he wanted to go in a hurry, without luggage. How could he do it? Well, he could stroll into the station at Bear River, no hat, everyday clothes, pockets full of money, and hop the branch line train or a bus. He could tell everybody in sight that he was going up the line to look at a likely hound or a promising stream. He might even carry fishing tackle. C
atch on?”

  Bittner’s eyes paid tribute. “You could be my own brother,” he said. “Think somebody’s going to run away?”

  “If and when I begin to get warm, I think somebody may try it. And Baldwin is the only way out. The only quick way. So you see why I want the road covered. When somebody takes a sudden and casual jaunt north, I want to know about it. I can’t do anything at my end, short of forbidding people to leave the grounds, and I’ve no authority for that. And I don’t want to ask the Bear River ticket agent to keep tabs. He has too much to do already and he’d probably go hog wild and turn in some honest farm hand out to get drunk. Also, he may not be discreet. You,” he paused, “are.”

  Bittner acknowledged this with a lowering of eyelids. They were lashless.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Automobiles too?”

  “Those too. It’s a thin possibility, not many people have the gas, but I want it covered. You know all the ordinary riders, the regulars. Don’t bother with them. Forget all about the women who go to mama’s every Thursday afternoon and the men who ride up to Lodge meetings every week. I want the unusual passenger, the one who’s going to Baldwin for the first, or even the second, time. What’s the time-table on the Express?”

  Bittner spat the words like venom. “Summer schedule: Montreal to New York. Stops at Baldwin at ten a.m. and seven p.m. New York to Montreal stops at six a.m. and nine p.m. Fixed it that way for the swells at the army camp. Generals. They ask the generals what time they want the trains to run and then they run ’em that way.”

  “But you’re up and around at those hours, aren’t you? You’ll be able to watch the road?”

  A warm glow suffused Bittner’s features and he lowered his head like a coy child. “I may not be up but I’m always around. I don’t go to bed. I do this.” He brought one hand down on a lever and the chair instantly flattened into a bed. “Like it?”

  “It’s—amazing.”

  Bittner struck the lever again, petulantly. “It is. You’ve no idea. . . . Now what do I do when I want to get in touch with you?”