by Zenith Brown
Yerby stopped at the door. He was silent for a moment. “Only one of ’em made it, Spig. Lucy. Maybe it’s fair. She was out for kicks, Charlie was out for dough. It was him rigged poor old Ramey. Harlan knows it now. And Lucy’s going to have a long, long time to think. I guess we all lie for our kids, Spig. Like Tip’s rifle with Molly’s initials on the stock. And Anita . . . she said to tell you you can have the place, in trust for Molly A. Lucy’s father’s coming down. He’s never married again—maybe they can get together on the kid now. And Harlan’s taking his For Sale sign down. He’s blaming himself for the Death Strip. So your damned highway’s safe—if it was worth all this. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
They went back and up the four steps. Spig took the letters out of the knapsack. The one Miss Fairlie had given Tip was a single sheet with a brief note on it.
“My dear Tip—My will is at Judge Twohey’s office. I am leaving Eden to your parents in trust for you at their death. If I am ill, if it isn’t too much to ask, I would be happy if your parents would move to Eden and let me stay here. I’d like the house completely opened and renovated. There is a trust for each of the other children, and for Eden and my care. I love you very much. Thank you for coming into my life.—Sincerely, Celia Fairlie.”
Spig handed it to Yerby and picked up the old judge’s letter. It was written with the same pen that spluttered, the same heartbeat pulsating in the fine uneven strokes.
“Dear Spig,” it began. He stopped as the door opened and Dr. Parker came in.
“It looks pretty hopeful. Not too much paralysis. She’ll need care.”
“We’ll see she gets it, sir.”
Yerby gave him back Miss Fairlie’s letter, dropping his hand for an instant on his shoulder. “I’ll be back. Give me your flash. Come on, Sam. You won’t need your bag.” At the door he looked back. “You’ve got matches, haven’t you?” he asked. He closed the door carefully.
Spig put the judge’s letter down. He took out the canvas he’d stuck in the knapsack and went over to the fireplace. It burned easily, with very little ash. He went back to the letter.
“Dear Spig—Call Buck Yerby at once when you have cause to read this. Take him to Eden with you. His father was with me the day Ammon Fairlie, Celia’s father, shot and killed George Sudley. Tell Nat and Harlan. I’m afraid they always thought it was I who killed him.
“Ammon Fairlie was a stern and passionate man. He found the post box and a letter telling Celia that George would fall in the river as a ruse to meet her at the cottage, to decide what to do about the baby she was carrying. Ammon let her meet him, and shot him down while she fought to save him. David called me. I got the blood on my overcoat dragging Celia from his body. None of us knew she and George had been secretly married. She’d returned from an ostensible visit to tell her father, who was violently opposed to that or any marriage for her, found him seriously ill with his strained heart and decided to wait until he was well to tell him. David was the only one they told. Yerby and I assumed Ammon Fairlie was avenging his daughter’s dishonour. Harlan, I believe, made the same assumption on my behalf—knowing his brother was conducting a clandestine affair with Celia, George was handsome and gay, and we assumed the worst.
“It was to avoid exposing Celia’s presumed dishonour that Yerby and I concocted the story of the accident and allowed Ammon to return to Eden. We counted on his love for his daughter. A month later in a frenzy of rage at her condition and her grief he threw her down the stairs and brought on a premature birth. It was the morning of the snow. David was bedridden with an injured back. He sent the boy down as I’ve told you. The boy thought Celia was mad. When David got it out of him and crawled down to Eden he found Celia with her dead baby. She said. ‘My father shot and killed my husband. Now he’s killed my baby. I’ve shot and killed him, David. He’s in his bedroom. The gun’s beside him.’ She collapsed then. He got her out of that terrible house where she’d been those days and nights, without heat or light or food, a creaking house of death, with Ammon’s old Gordon setter howling, scratching at his master’s door. It was in her delirium David learned the story of the baby’s birth and death. He didn’t dare call a doctor, but he couldn’t have got one through that snow even if he had dared to send. He buried the baby, and piled pine branches up to look like the grave I saw when I finally came. He put the gun back on Ammon Fairlie’s rack over the mantel.
“I have before me a transcript of the testimony at both inquests. Perhaps it is because I know the truth, or it may be that forty years of experience with witnesses has given me insight . . . but the testimony we gave, and that is solely my responsibility, not David’s, is so palpably false that it amazes me anyone ever credited it as they did.
“It describes Fairlie as a very large man. It’s humanly impossible for a tiny creature like Celia to have got him into the house out of the snow, to be there with his dead body until David came. It’s humanly impossible that this tiny creature and a small man with a crippled back could have moved Fairlie’s body through the snow to the graveyard. If they had buried him, they would have done it near the house. With the weather of that winter it is fantastic to believe that they could have thawed the ground deep enough to bury so large a man. It is fantastic, too, to believe that a man who knew guns as George Sudley did would blast out his own heart in that way. My kindness immortalised in Gus’s classic sermon is equally dubious.
“It is because all of this seems such a transparent fiction to me now that I have a strong feeling that, at some time, someone hearing the story of George and Celia from the tongues that have never stilled will decide to investigate the mystery of Eden. An objective eye is all that is needed. It is that possibility that I have in actuality had in mind in both my letters to you. Beyond that: unless David has found the opportunity he never had, because of Celia’s almost constant presence in Eden and its grounds through all the years, you will find Ammon Fairlie’s remains where he died . . . where his daughter raised his own gun and shot him as he sat on his bed to change his snow-wet shoes and David managed to move him and cover him with a quilt for the long sleep. Your son will inherit Eden, through you and Molly, at Celia’s death, and if David is gone by then, there will be no one to tell you the truth of the strange tenant you will find.
“Monstrously culpable we may have been. The responsibility is solely mine. As I come to the end of this journey and start the infinite journey to the Court of Last Appeal, my love for Celia my only defence, my prayer is for your long life and happiness at Eden—for the happiness and saving grace your children have brought to her. So may God in His wisdom be with you and in His mercy with me and all mankind. Sincerely, Nathan Twohey.”
Spig was still there when Yerby came back. He roused himself, handed Yerby the letter and went across the room, folding back the carved shutters, opening the window and the green slatted blinds, and stood looking out along the silver path of the moon on the river. He stood there a long time before he heard Buck Yerby move and heard a match strike. When he turned, black flakes of carbon were fluttering softly up the chimney.
“You tell Nat,” Yerby said quietly. “I’ll tell Harlan. I never knew they thought it was the judge. I’d have told them.” He went to the door. “We’re going to open the outside door in the hyphen and get Pete Greenway and Anita’s father and Mrs. Twohey out here. Especially Mrs. Twohey. Nobody’s going to say Dunning was murdered if I can help it. You better lock this.”
He went down into the hyphen. Spig closed the door and turned the key in the old lock Then he went out into the hall. Molly came from Miss Fairlie’s room, her face lighted.
“She’s asleep, but she can speak a little,” she said softly. “I’m so glad . . . so glad.” She came into his arms. He held her tightly a moment, the Sea King’s daughter, cool and crystalline, all his.
“David was here. He’s gone to stay with Kitsy and John Eden. He said to tell you Miss Fairlie came before he could move the chairs and things. What did he mean?”<
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“I’ll tell you later.” Dunning could wait. “Where’s Tip? I’ve got a letter that’s his to read.”
“He’s in the dining-room. Finishing Miss Fairlie’s report on the rabbit.”
O’Leary moved back, looking at her cautiously. “Not . . . the red rabbit?”
“Certainly.” Molly laughed. “Darling, if you’d just read the things your children give you . . . It was Tippy’s Conservation Magazine two months ago. The dyed rabbit project—to trace where they go, how far . . . you know. Like banding birds. Good heavens, you didn’t think they were all crazy, did you . . . Mrs. Twohey?”
“Which reminds me,” said O’Leary. “She’s coming.” He glanced out at the picket gate. “We don’t happen to have a bushel basket of rotten pears right handy, do we, Mrs. O’Leary?”
THE END
