Clay Hand

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

“I heard. I thought I might be mistaken. I remember how long… I remember her in school… I asked my wife about that, too. Then I was more mixed up.”

  And this was the man, Phil thought, who spoke so lucidly in his tavern, of superstition and of the opiate the discovery of one hoax might be upon a crowd.

  “Does it always seem so important to you to know what your customers are talking about when they are drinking?” Handy asked.

  “I have ears. I like to listen, if it’s interesting.”

  “Why was this interesting, Mr. Freebach?”

  “When a man describes a beautiful woman—it is interesting.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Freebach. If the jury has no questions, you are excused.”

  He called Henry Clauson.

  Handy announced that there would be a fifteen-minute recess after the testimony of the witness, and asked for patience and quiet. It was an unnecessary request. As Clauson reached the table, Phil could hear the breathing of the deputy next to him. The old magician raised his hand as though it were a warning. “I will not take the customary oath,” he said. “I give you my solemn promise to tell the truth.”

  In a few seconds the townspeople realized that he had deviated from the procedure, and there was grumbling.

  Handy silenced it. “He is within his rights. Please sit down, Mr. Clauson. Will you tell us the circumstances under which you met the deceased?”

  “My daughter met him among the hills about five weeks ago. She invited him to call. Or perhaps it was that he asked to call. He was a well-traveled man, and we had many things to talk about.” He chose his words carefully, and made some effort to speak more loudly than was his custom, Phil thought. He looked above the people as he spoke.

  “Just what did you talk about, Mr. Clauson?”

  “What does one man talk to another about of a quiet evening and a drink? We spoke of the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, and two revolutions in Latin America which Mr. Coffee had witnessed. We spoke of Polish mines and African diamonds, and of the new state of Israel. We spoke of people and money and bread. We spoke of scriptures and detective stories.” He looked at the coroner then. “There was nothing sinister in our conversations, even in Mr. Freebach’s tavern, Friday night.”

  “Suppose you tell us what was said there, then.”

  “I drank more that night than I am accustomed to drinking,” Clauson said simply. “I think my young friend did, too. The discussion was rather a flight of fancy. Mr. Freebach told you that Mr. Coffee was trying to persuade me that my daughter was the most beautiful person in the world. Obviously, my daughter is not, although she is many things to me. It is not a kind thing to her for me to tell now; but there have been, and will be, greater unkindnesses done her than one by her father. So to illustrate, I will tell you a story told me by Mr. Coffee that evening.

  “He told me of an Irish legend about an ugly old lady who sat by a village well. Within sight of her, an old man was telling a child about the beautiful woman he had once courted in Spain. She had refused his true love, and accepted instead the marriage offer of a prince without honor even among his own people. But on her wedding day, she disappeared. The child asked, naturally, what had become of her. The story teller pointed to the old one sitting by the well. ‘The good people caught her up and brought her to my own village, setting her down where you see her, as ugly as she is today.’ ‘That old witch?’ the child said. ‘She’s enchanted,’ the old man explained. ‘If I were to propose marriage again to her this minute, it would break the enchantment, and you would see how beautiful she really is.’ The child demanded that he do it. ‘Oh no. If she were that beautiful again, do you think she’d give a bundle of bones like myself a second look?’”

  Clauson folded his hands. “Forgive me if this has taken up your time, but that is the kind of talk there was between Richard Coffee and me.”

  “Ha! Glory to God,” Mrs. O’Grady said aloud, and although Handy slapped the desk, he was not frowning. Either Clauson was an absolutely guileless man, Phil thought, or he was touched with genius. He had taken the only possible entry to the hearts of these people, giving them back one of their own stories.

  “You are a magician by trade, Mr. Clauson?” Handy said with some irony.

  “I was in my youth. Now I manufacture pieces for hands more nimble than my own.”

  “Did the deceased ever speak to you of his reasons for being in Winston?”

  “No, he did not, although it seemed to me he was looking for something, something he could find only here. There were times I thought all he was seeking was peace of mind, for there were times he seemed on fire. Hearing Father Joyce’s testimony this morning, I was more convinced of that than ever.”

  “Was there anything he said or did, Friday night, that would lead you to think he intended to take his own life?”

  “Nothing.”

  “When you were asked to leave McNamara’s, Friday night, Mr. Clauson, you knew the reason?”

  The old man looked down at his hands. “I knew it.”

  “Why didn’t you try to stop it?”

  “I have learned long ago, Mr. Coroner, you do not put out a fire with spit.”

  The witness was excused then, and the inquest adjourned for fifteen minutes.

  Chapter 15

  THE TEMPER OF THE people now was milder than at any time since Phil had been in Winston. How often it had changed that day, he thought. As he stood on the porch with Randy Nichols, he could hear bits of their comment as little groups of them huddled together against the wind.

  “Funny,” Nichols said, “they’re all pretending to be thinking this out. And all they’re doing is trying to justify a change in their feelings.”

  “Are we doing any differently, Randy?”

  “Of course not, though we think we are. I hope that either the sheriff or the coroner is. But I doubt it. There is nothing so rare as a thinking man—unless it’s a thinking woman. I wonder if there isn’t one here.”

  “Do you make anything out of the inquest yet?”

  The older man pulled at his cigar. “My guess is that it’s two stories, one he was intending to write and one he was living. It’s a tossup which one he died of.”

  Phil threw away a half-smoked cigaret and went indoors. The only people in the room at the moment were Mrs. O’Grady and Margaret Coffee. Margaret was standing beside the widow and they were talking easily, Mrs. O’Grady’s teeth showing in a smile. She saw him then and motioned to him to join them. “Philip! I’ve asked Mrs. Coffee to stay with me while she’s in Winston. Will you bring her things up?”

  There was no trace in Margaret’s face of her knowledge of the widow’s early and fierce antagonism. “I want to stay where Dick did,” she said serenely.

  “I’ll be glad to let you have his room,” Phil said, “the one where the wind lay down beside him at night.”

  For a moment there was real hatred for him in her eyes. His own eyes fell away from hers. The impulse to hurt her seemed to grow stronger, and his control over it weaker.

  The widow watched them, grinning. “Well, will you bring her up or no?”

  “Of course.”

  The jurors filed back into the room, one of the men wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. They had been served refreshments. Presently the witnesses returned, and the sheriff, the coroner and the clerk took their places. Margaret sat down beside Mrs. O’Grady, and the girl, Anna, came in and sat at her cane side, the stick clattering to the floor and the widow cursing at her clumsiness. Phil moved back to the hall where Nichols stood.

  “Pals, huh?” the reporter said.

  “Bosom.”

  “Hmmm. What you can’t pull into the dance, playing the tarantella!”

  Handy checked his watch and looked up. “Mrs. Norman Glasgow, please.”

  The tall, gawky woman made a painfully self-conscious journey to the coroner’s table. She wore a brown tailored suit and a white blouse open at the throat, accentuating the leng
th of her neck and face. Many times, Phil thought, the children must have called her “horse face.” He found himself pulling desperately for her. Even her father had said before all of them that she was not beautiful. But seeing her eyes move from one hostile face to the other of the jurors, and flash across the witnesses then to meet his own for a long second, he sensed a deep beauty in the woman. He would not have needed to be drunk to take Dick’s side in that extraordinary discussion. He waited to hear her voice, and hoped that in some way his eyes conveyed to her his wish to give her courage.

  “Mrs. Glasgow, will you please tell us the circumstances when you met the deceased?”

  “I often graze my goats among the hills,” she said. Her voice had all the color her face lacked, Phil thought, low, a little tremulous now, but richer as she gained confidence. “It was five weeks ago. I don’t remember the day, except that it was windy. But most days are, in Winston. He called out to me, and I waited where I was until he came. He said that he’d been watching me for several days. He wondered what I thought about day in, day out. We talked. I’ve forgotten what about. The clouds, perhaps. They hang very low up there, and sometimes we talked about them. I told him of my father and he asked if he might visit us.”

  “You met him several times after that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did your husband know of these meetings?”

  “Perhaps he did. I did not tell him. I saw no reason to.”

  “Your husband is away a good part of the time?”

  “Yes. He is home only two or three times a week.”

  “Did anything…” Handy himself groped for a word… “improper happen between you and the deceased?”

  “Nothing.” She looked at him directly as she said the word. “You would be surprised, Mr. Handy, how often the word ‘love’ occurs in very ordinary conversations.”

  “Maybe I would,” Handy said, but without sarcasm.

  Phil looked at Glasgow. He was sulky now, as though he resented the possibility of anyone being interested in this plain wife of his.

  “You know the talk that’s been going around,” the coroner said.

  “I know the talk there has been about my father and me since we came to live here. I know that it was said that I would never get a husband, and after I had married, that I would never keep him. Yes, I know the talk that’s been going round very well.”

  “It’s unfortunate,” Handy said, “that talk doesn’t come out in the open except at a time like this. But the truth is, Mrs. Glasgow, all we can be concerned about here, now, is the talk about you and Coffee. Do you know how it started?”

  “I can only tell you the people who saw us,” she said, “the boy who hides in the hills for purposes of his own. It was he who found Dick…” She said the name very softly. “The man who died two weeks ago, Mr. Laughlin, saw us. He stopped and talked with us a couple of times, and the girl with Mrs. O’Grady.”

  All eyes turned to Anna Whelan, and she looked about the room like a trapped animal. “She sent me. She made me do it,” Anna cried out.

  Mrs. O’Grady’s cane caught her across the leg. “Simpleton,” the old lady hissed at her. “What are you frightened of? Nobody’s touching you.”

  A sickening realization of the old woman’s jealousy came to Phil. He had sensed it before, but now the whole impact of it hit him. Dick had realized it and been revolted by it. He had mentioned it, writing, and hated himself for the revulsion…. “…because I know she is a very lonely woman, and loneliness makes desperate wooers of us.”

  Handy was banging for quiet, and Phil saw the sheriff pick up Dick’s notes from the table and thumb through them, following the same line of thought he had.

  “Did the deceased talk to you about what he was doing in Winston, Mrs. Glasgow?”

  “We did not talk of it,” she said, and Phil wondered if that was not an evasion of the truth.

  If the thought occurred to Handy, he did not pursue it. “Did you ever go with Mr. Coffee to that abandoned entry to the Number Three mine?”

  “Yes. We had seen Mr. Laughlin about there, and we went over to it.”

  “Did you enter the mine?”

  “No. But I watched while Mr. Coffee did. He was gone about half an hour. When he returned he told me he thought there was gas in it. He said that it was probably fugitive from the blasting at another point. I know that he talked to Laughlin that night, and the old man promised to report it.”

  “But Laughlin didn’t work in the mines, Mrs. Glasgow. Why didn’t Coffee report it directly to those in authority?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could it have been that it would have spoiled a rendezvous spot for you if he had?”

  Her fierce “No!” was lost in the medley of shocked exclamations.

  “I’ll clear the room if this keeps up,” Handy shouted. Looking back to Rebecca Glasgow, he asked: “When did you last see the deceased?”

  “Saturday afternoon between three and four. I saw him passing the house.”

  “Did you speak with him?”

  “No.”

  “Had you quarreled?”

  “No.”

  “Or was it that your husband was home?”

  The old magician got to his feet. “Mr. Handy, you have not treated the other witnesses…”

  His son-in-law reached across the vacant chair between them and pulled him back to his seat. “You old fool. She can take care of herself.”

  When quiet was restored, Handy asked: “Do you know why he did not stop, Mrs. Glasgow?”

  “Because I asked him not to come any more.” The words came with difficulty.

  “Why?”

  She did not answer, and Handy prompted: “Were you in love with him?”

  “I liked him very much,” she admitted.

  “You knew he was married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you spend last Saturday evening, Mrs. Glasgow?”

  “Working with my father in the house, except for the few minutes I went out to attend the animals.”

  “How long were you gone?”

  “Twenty minutes, perhaps.”

  “That’s a lot of attention. Where were they?”

  “They had wandered a ways from the house. Not as far as the cliff,” she added without being asked. “I herded them in and watered them.”

  “In the dark?”

  “It was about six-thirty. I had a flashlight.”

  “Did you hear or see anything unusual?”

  “Nothing. All I heard was the train whistle.”

  “Questions?” Handy asked the jury.

  A woman juror raised her hand. She smiled as she put the question: “Are you in love with your husband, Mrs. Glasgow?”

  “Are you with yours?” the witness snapped back at her.

  Again the murmur in the room which Handy had to quiet. It was a good question, Phil thought, seeing the indignant fluster of the juror. How rarely these people spoke of love, having spent its first sweet fortune. The question had come from the movie house or the pages of a magazine.

  The coroner did not press for an answer, and Rebecca Glasgow was excused. She returned to her seat, and moved it back for her husband to pass, for he was called next. He trod on the old man’s foot in his haste. It was Clauson who apologized after him, unacknowledged.

  “You work for the Cleveland and Mobile Railway. Is that right, Mr. Glasgow?” Handy began.

  “I do.”

  “How long have you worked for them?”

  “Two and a half years. Since I got out of the army.”

  “Were you acquainted with the deceased?”

  “I met him a couple of times.”

  “When was the last time you saw him, Mr. Glasgow?”

  Glasgow looked at him, half squinting as though in greater effort to understand the simple question. It was only to heighten attention to his answer, Phil decided, hearing it. It was an almost verbatim repetition of his wife’s answer. “Between three
and four last Saturday afternoon when he passed the house.”

  “Did you or your wife comment on him at the time?”

  “I told her to go on out after him if she wanted to.”

  “You knew of their relationship then?” Handy asked.

  “I knew, your honor.” There was more sarcasm than respect in his voice. Whelan had used that address, your honor, too, Phil thought.

  “Were you jealous?”

  “No. Why should I be jealous? You just heard—Coffee was in love with his wife. Rebecca knew it. What was I going to get worked up over?”

  He nodded toward his wife in speaking. Phil glanced at her. Her eyes were closed, her head down.

  “Then you talked about Coffee with her?”

  “There was talk of nothing else in the house between her and the old man. Lord, how he would of liked a man like him in the house, somebody smart like him and her, and not a lousy working man.”

  Glasgow’s venom spilled over into the onlookers. It was several seconds before Handy restored quiet. Through it all, the magician and his daughter sat like two gray animals determined not to be flushed into a hasty flight.

  “Will you tell us, please, where you were from four o’clock last Saturday, Mr. Glasgow?”

  “At four o’clock I sat down to my supper. Quarter to five I clocked in at the yards. By six I was on my way to Cleveland.”

  “Is there someone who saw you leave Winston?”

  “I signaled the engineer myself. There was nobody in the cab, if that’s what you’re asking. We picked a couple of fellows up in Rockland, but that was near ten o’clock. If it’s an alibi you’re looking for I can’t give anything more than I just told you.”

  The jurors had no questions. Weariness was beginning to overtake them. The men had sprawled their legs, and the women’s hair was straggling from beneath their hats, unheeded. Handy rubbed his face down with his handkerchief. He consulted with the sheriff, and Fields shook his head. He did not want adjournment without one more witness. Handy straightened up wearily.

  “Miss Anna Whelan.”

  Anna was startled by the call. She moved forward only when Mrs. O’Grady gave her a shove. At the coroner’s desk she plucked at her nails until bidden to sit down.