by Zenith Brown
“Can you get home?”
He hardly recognised his voice.
She nodded, her eyes closed. “Stop him, Spig. Some way. Stop him. I don’t care how you do it, but we’ve got to.”
“I’ll stop him. You go on. I’ll wait till you get inside.”
“No, I’m all right. See if you can’t talk to him. He might sell them to us . . . I don’t know. There must be some way!”
He watched her run through the woods, up towards the garden, out of sight of the fishermen trolling close to the river bank. The red fog had turned to a cold white rage, still no warning light flickering through. He cut back into the trail into the Ashtons’ grounds, moving deliberately. No one seeing him cross the drive to the studio entrance would have known it wasn’t a casual visit unless they’d seen his face. He looked aside once, at Anita’s house, closed, her big car not in the drive, the blue car back in the garage. He went to the door at the foot of the stairs to the studio apartment, opened it and went up the stairs. He knocked, waited and knocked again, opened the door and stepped inside, and stood motionless.
In front of him on an easel facing the door was a canvas slashed to ribbons. He saw it not first but at the same time he saw the ruinous havoc of the rest of the room, the living-room, not the skylighted workroom that was on through the door to the left. The room was torn apart in a frenzy of rage, the matchstick curtain in tatters, chairs upended, lamps smashed on the floor, a shambles of rage, a cursing screaming rage like the one he’d seen at the Eden graves. But it was the slashed portrait his eyes were riveted on across the wreckage. The hair, the one eye that was left, the line of one cheek and one shoulder, the yellow and brown plaid shirt, the old blue jeans . . . they were all Molly’s. And over and above them, through the slashes, apart from any one feature or detail, there was a glowing lovely thing that was Molly herself. Slashed with a sadistic fury that froze O’Leary’s feet, a symbolic act of murder so real it clutched at his throat.
He went on in. “Dunning,” he said. He knew before he spoke that Dunning had gone. The studio was empty. It had an empty feel and an empty sound, the muted hollowness of a spent passion.
He stepped over a shattered crystal bowl. The yellow roses that had been in it were trampled, mud-stained from the water they were lying in. He stepped over cushions and a broken chair to the other end of the room to the studio door, and knocked on it.
“Dunning!”
The reverberation of his voice was all that came back to him. This was the studio room with the skylight. The slashed portrait of Molly was the only painting in the living-room. The rest of them would be in here. He put his hand on the knob and turned it. The door was locked, a Yale lock in the solid frame. He put his shoulder to the door. There was not a quiver to answer his thrust. He stepped back, looking around, and remembered an extension ladder Ashton had borrowed from him and never returned. It would be in the tool room under the studio at the end of the garage. If the studio windows were locked, too, he could break one of them in easier than he could break down the door. He started back across the room and stopped.
A car was coming. Anita possibly. He waited, listening for it to go on past the garage to the Ashton house. It stopped then, at the garage. He heard a door open and slam shut and steps, heavier than Anita’s, on the stairs. Then a knock . . . a determined knock. The living-room door opened.
For a moment as speechless for O’Leary as it was for the woman who stood there, her face mottling an angry red, the two of them were motionless. It was the second Mrs. Twohey who first recovered, but not to smile.
“Where is Arthur, Mr. O’Leary?” she demanded sharply.
Spig moved a step to relax. “I don’t know, Mrs. Twohey, where he is.”
Her jaws snapped together. “Yes, you do. He was here when you came. Lucy told me so. I met her on my way out. She asked me to hurry. She said you were blood-mad and she feared for Arthur. Where is he, Mr. O’Leary?”
“I don’t know,” Spig said quietly. “He wasn’t here when I came.”
“That’s a lie, Mr. O’Leary.”
The angry red faded slowly out of Mrs. Twohey’s face as she caught her breath suddenly, her eyes on the slashed canvas, riveted to it as Spig’s had been, but with a fantastic difference.
“You . . . did that!”
It was not a whisper but a hoarse gasp, incredulous at first, strengthening into a sudden shattering conviction that drained the last colour from her face.
“You did that! You . . . you’ve murdered Arthur! You have, I know it! You’ve murdered Arthur . . . and now . . . you’ll murder me!”
Mrs. Twohey clutched at her bosom and screamed. It was a ghastly scream. And God knows she means it, O’Leary thought with a shattering incredulity of his own as Mrs. Twohey seemed to dissolve, slipping down slowly in a dead faint, green hat and dyed hair among the trampled yellow roses and broken crystal shattered on the floor.
CHAPTER XXI
MRS. TWOHEY was prone among the trampled roses, a faint trickle of crimson where her hand had struck a piece of the shattered crystal. Spig O’Leary stood there letting his breath out slowly. Miss Fairlie’s comment on the blasted woman was the truth if ever truth was uttered. It’s surprising that Nathan retained what sanity he did.
The telephone was on the window ledge over behind the easel. He picked it up. Yerby was out.
“Get him by radio, will you? Tell him I’m at Dunning’s studio out at the Ashton place. Ask him to step on it.”
He pressed the bar down, released it and dialled Nat Twohey. As he waited for an answer, his eyes moved to the slashed canvas. Through one of the rents in it he saw the blood on Mrs. Twohey’s hand. He knew it was her hand and her blood, that a painted hand has no blood, but the illusion was so intense and so frightening that he snapped the bar down and dialled his own number, waiting, his throat tight. When Molly answered, casually herself, his relief made his voice grate harshly.
“Listen, Molly. He’s out of here. He’s gone berserk. Lock the doors and stay inside. Get Tip’s rifle. If he comes, let him have it. Legs, any place—just show him you mean business. I’ve got to stay here.”
A gasping sound made him turn. Mrs. Twohey was floundering to her feet. She looked ghastly, her face as green as her green print dress, her mouth opening and closing, as she gasped for air like a fish.
“You’re all right,” O’Leary said. “You just fainted. Yerby’s coming. You stay here. I’m going downstairs and wait.”
He let her get away from the door before he crossed the room. Her eyes fell on the roses and she saw the blood, mixed with the water and looking more than it was. The scene of the crime. Mrs. Twohey clutched her throat, backing away, as he went past her and down the stairs. It wasn’t surprising the old judge had retained his sanity; it was miraculous. O’Leary took another long deep breath, turning then as he heard a car coming through the woods. He saw the red disc on the bumper.
“You made it quick.”
“Yeah. I was just back there with Harlan talking to the surveyor. Your road’s trespassing on Miss Fairlie’s property.”
“Thanks.” Spig said dryly. “You tell Harlan I’ll be happy to build another road.” Having always been the beneficiary of Miss Fairlie’s eccentricities, it was a peculiar sensation suddenly becoming a victim. “Mrs. Twohey’s upstairs. Dunning’s living-room’s a wreck. She thinks I did it and murdered him while I was at it. She’ll show you the spot. She’s all yours—I’m going home.”
“Where’s Dunning?”
“No idea.” Spig moved back to where he could see the pier. “The boats are down there. Lucy’s got his car. He’s on foot. I told Molly to shoot if he came over to our place.”
Yerby glanced at the Ashton house. “Anita’s in town. At the courthouse. Looking for Judge Banks. You better see if Dunning’s at Eden.”
He took a long breath and crossed the drive to the studio door.
Spig was around the corner of the garage when he heard the shots. Ther
e were two, in quick succession. He dashed through the woods, slowing down at the edge of the field, everything quiet ahead of him, no sign of commotion. Somebody shooting crows, probably. Except for his own fears he wouldn’t have thought twice about a couple of stray shots in the middle of the day. He relaxed a little, moving on towards the kitchen door. It wasn’t locked, and Molly was in there, the ironing board down, pressing a dress of Molly A.’s. On the counter were two piles of clothes, hers and John Eden’s. Spig stopped, looking at them.
“Daddy said if we’d put the two kids on the four o’clock plane he’d meet them, and Anita can sue till hell breeds polar bears. We should have shipped them last night, he said.”
It was probably that that had upset her. He could see the sharp white line around her lips.
“It’ll be all right, sweetie,” he said gently.
“I’m sure it will. John Eden’s been by plane before. He’ll love it.”
She pulled the cord out of the iron and set it aside. “And your father wants you to call him. The Fuller brothers are in town. He can handle it but he needs the dope.”
“Okay. Then I’ve got to see if Dunning’s over at Eden.”
“I’m sure he’s not. Why don’t you let him alone?” Her voice was taut as she pushed the ironing board back into the wall. Spig watched her picking up the children’s clothes, the wooden-doll rigidity of her movements sobering his face.
“Molly . . . you didn’t fire those shots, did you?” he asked quietly.
“What shots? Listen—I’ve been busy trying to get the kids packed. I haven’t even finished our beds. You’re making a great big mountain without even a molehill to start with.”
“You didn’t see what he did to your portrait. It’s slashed to bits.”
“So what? It was his. If you’re going to call your father you’d better hurry.”
He listened to her go into Molly A.’s room and stop, standing still a long time. A slow dread was creeping around in the pit of his stomach. He looked at the clock. It was ten minutes to twelve. The call to his father would take him some time. He went out and stopped at the hyphen stairs.
“Molly. Buck Yerby’s going to be over.”
There was a long pause before she answered. “Okay.”
Yerby was there when he came downstairs. It was twenty-five minutes past twelve and they were out in the kitchen, Yerby with a roast beef sandwich and a bottle of beer, sitting in the dining nook, Molly across from him. She’d put on fresh lipstick, but she hadn’t been able to get rid of the taut lines and faint blue circles under her eyes. Spig saw Yerby looking at the torn white blouse on the table.
“—Pretty harrowing,” she was saying. “I’m still a wreck. But he’s probably all cooled off by now. And the studio’s Anita’s problem, isn’t it. If he’d gone to Eden he’d have come through here. It’s over a mile and a half by the road.”
“You didn’t tell him Miss Fairlie and the kids were away?”
“I’m sure I didn’t.” She avoided Spig’s eyes.
“We’d better check anyway,” Yerby said. “I want to find him before Mrs. Twohey raises any more hell. She’s got it all three ways. He’s disappeared because he’s dead. Spig killed him this morning and his body’s in the locked room. And Harland just now shot him to keep from being exposed as his brother George’s murderer. And Miss Fairlie doesn’t allow guns on Eden.”
It seemed irrelevant only for a moment.
“You tell me Tip’s got a rifle. Where is it?”
“In his locker.”
O’Leary put his glass down and started to get up.
“Let Buck get it . . . you clean up your dishes.” Molly spoke sharply. “I’m in a hurry. Right out by the stairs, Buck.”
Yerby went out into the hyphen. Spig watched Molly, his throat dry. He could only see the side of her face, but her knuckles were white where she was gripping the faucet, holding her breath, waiting. He heard Yerby open the locked door, take the gun out of the rack, examine it, put it back and close the door. Molly turned the faucet, releasing her breath slowly.
Yerby came back. “If you’re ready, let’s go, Spig. Mind if I use your phone first? I want to check in.”
“Go ahead.”
Spig heard him go into the old cottage and close the door.
“Molly.”
“What, darling?”
He turned and went abruptly towards the door into the hyphen
“Spig!” she whispered. “Stop it! Don’t!”
He went on quietly, and quietly opened the door of Tip’s locker. There was a rifle there, but it wasn’t Tip’s. It was Molly’s—stored in the attic the last time Spig had seen it. He stood there for a kind of small eternity, pushed the door to and went back into the kitchen. She was out on the porch.
“Molly.” He took her by the shoulders, trying to make her turn around to face him, but she stood rigidly, holding to the rail.
“Let me alone!” She broke away and ran down the steps. Spig heard Yerby open the cottage door. He went back in quickly. Yerby was standing by the pine taproom table, looking down at it. He lifted the bowl of nasturtiums aside and pulled the painted chair over from the desk.
“George Sudley was about my size,” he said. “If I was sitting here with my gun . . .” He sat down. “And I had a blanket around me . . .”
“For God’s sake,” Spig said, “we all know he was murdered.”
“I’m just trying,” Yerby said deliberately, “to find out how Dunning knew it.” He looked up at Spig. “They had a post box. In the fireplace there. Harlan told me. Sometimes he’d deliver or collect a letter for George. And Nat tells me his father left you a letter. Said he gave it to you when this Ashton business came up. Nat’s been thinking. He thinks maybe it wasn’t the Ashton business . . .”
“He wrote me a letter,” Spig said. “It’s sealed. I’m not to open it till Miss Fairlie’s ill, or dead, or David dies. Some kind of crisis at Eden.”
Buck Yerby’s eyes rested steadily on his. “The crisis is here. This is it.”
“What is?”
“Dunning. And the murder of George Sudley. And Mrs. Twohey. Someone told her this morning that Miss Fairlie sees red rabbits. The red rabbits set her off. She told me Dunning’s got all the evidence they need. To put Miss Fairlie away for good and all. That’s one of the reasons she’s trying to find him—and one of the reasons she thinks he’s been killed. It’s another reason I want him.”
The determined virgins, married and single, male and female, of this community may decide Miss Fairlie should be sent away when I am no longer here to prevent it. Open the letter.
Point Four of the old judge’s letter moved with sudden clarity through Spig O’Leary’s mind. And point Six.
With the rapidly changing scene in Devon unforeseeable situations may arise. Your own discretion will direct you.
He hadn’t moved. Nor had Yerby, his eyes, sombrely burning, fixed on him across the shadow of the blood deep in the fibre of the satin pine, signature indelible, the echo of the shot still reverberating, sound indelible, blood that flowed in a crimson gush from one man’s heart by another man’s hand.
“I know it’s time to open it,” Spig said. “I don’t want to. Not if there’s any other way.”
Yerby looked at him a long time. “Miss Fairlie’s our job. The rest are dead.”
“All right.”
He went over to the side of the fireplace, aware that several times in the less than forty-eight hours since he’d put the letter there the impulse to get it and open it had been in his mind, and he’d denied it because he loved the old judge and he loved Miss Fairlie. He put out his hand to the stone and turned back to Yerby.
“I thought you knew all about it.”
“I know who killed George Sudley. I don’t know why. My father said the judge knew and promised him he wouldn’t die without telling it. For Celia Fairlie’s sake.
Spig pressed the stone and put his hand down in the hollowed cavity. The
cold sweat broke out suddenly on his forehead as his fingernails scratched the solid rock.
He turned his head. “It’s gone, Buck.”
Yerby got to his feet, the blood draining out of his face, surging back into it. “You should have told me,” he said harshly. “A hell of a place to keep anything.”
“The judge said——”
“The judge forgot what men in love tell their girls. Harlan was engaged to Martha when George was killed. Martha Sudley’s one of the Dunning crowd.”
O’Leary pushed the stone back into place. As he did the phone rang. He stood there as Yerby answered it.
“Speaking.” He listened silently. “Okay. Tell His Honour I’ll be right in.” He jammed the phone down. “That damned woman . . . Get Nat, tell him to get over to my office if he comes on a stretcher. Then go find Dunning. I want him here, dead or alive, when I get back.”
Spig dialled the Twohey house. He heard the signal ring ten times, put the phone down and went out into the kitchen. “Molly!” He looked out the back door, then dashed up to the children’s room. She wasn’t there. The suitcases for John Eden and Molly A. were packed, out in the hall, ready for him to carry down. He went quickly down the stairs and outside. Across the circle he turned into the path to the bridge, went over it, the German shepherd and the crow on guard at the Eden end, and went up the bank. His heart jolted then as, suddenly, through the trees he caught a flash of Molly’s red-gold hair. She was over by the graves. Then for one almost sickening moment he saw Dunning’s blue denim figure and black face through the rusted iron palings, and breathed again as he saw it wasn’t Dunning but old David. And in Molly’s hand was Tip’s rifle, the sun glinting on the barrel. She was moving around apparently hunting something on the ground, and moved abruptly away then, towards the little Greek temple. But when he got up there she was hurrying through the arbour towards the house, nothing in her hand.
“Mis’ O’Leary said tell you she was goin’ to see if Miss Fairlie and the children was comin’. It’s gettin’ late, they promise to be back in time to get the little ones ready.”
