Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (10 page)

‘Billy’s boyhood tantrums could be truly terrible. Sometimes it seemed like he was close to being off his head when he couldn’t have his own way. And if his father hadn’t been a doctor and able to treat him as a medical man as well as a parent in the early years

. . . Well, I’m not sure if Billy wouldn’t have ended up in some kind of institution.’

‘He could be that bad, uh?’

She nodded, then shook her head and showed a reflective expression as she conjured up recollections of specific incidents from many years ago. Then they reached the false fronted theatre and they reined in their horses.

‘Would you like to step inside? I can make us some coffee. And fix some toast if you’re hungry?’ She smiled invitingly.

Until now Edge had forgotten how the effects of a missed breakfast had caused him to abandon putting his newly purchased gelding to the test. ‘That sounds good.’

50

They hitched their horses and went up the steps where last night he could have killed a man - or been killed himself. She opened just one of the double doors and they entered a spacious foyer, its papered walls hung with framed playbills similar to the freshly printed one he had seen at the newspaper office earlier this morning. All of them were for past production staged at the theatre, some faded to sepia with age.

‘The auditorium is through there.’ Sue Ellen gestured toward the rear wall with a door to either side of the small ticket booth. ‘This is my office.’

She led the way through a doorway to the left, into a much smaller room where the walls were also decorated with ageing theatrical announcements. In pride of place behind a tidily kept desk was a bill that advertised an appearance by the English novelist Charles Dickens who had delivered a lecture at the Washington Memorial Theatre several years earlier. Sue Ellen lit the kindling on a ready laid fire in a pot bellied stove and gestured for Edge to sit in one of three chairs neatly arranged before the desk. Then she half disappeared into an alcove and re-emerged with a heat stained coffeepot and two shiny tin cups.

‘The Washington’s nothing like so grand as a big city opera house, but we consider it’s pretty good by country town standards,’ she said as she moved to the stove. ‘I’d guess you aren’t much of a drama lover, Edge?’

‘I guess I’ve never seen enough of it to have much of an opinion. Of the kind that’s acted out on a stage, anyway.’

‘But you’ve experienced plenty of your own in real life, isn’t that so?’

‘More than my fair share, I’d say.’

She eyed him with a faint smile. ‘Meaning no offence, but I’d say you’re the kind of man who does not take any of the fine arts very seriously, is that right?’

He tried to match the subtlety of her expression. ‘Way I’ve always figured it from what little I’ve seen, art seems to be a trick played by a bunch of people without any talent on a lot of other people who don’t have too much taste.’

She gave a resolute shake of her head and said in a chiding tone: ‘Some other time I’d like to take issue with you on that.’

He nodded. ‘Maybe, but right now you’re telling me about Billy Childs?’

She placed the coffeepot on the stove, the cups on the desk and sat in the chair behind it. Unfastened her heavy topcoat as the stove began to make its heat felt in the small room and he got his first view of a generously curved body unimpeded by bulky clothing. It did not lessen her appeal to him.

‘Billy was a very troubled young man for the final few weeks of his life, Edge.’ All traces of good humour had left her and there was a pensive sadness in her deep-set eyes. 51

‘Usually when he was interested in anything, he’d give his full attention to it. But suddenly he changed. He seemed to be pre-occupied all the time. And he didn’t do any more than go through the motions of whatever he did. It was something a lot of people noticed. And not just those of us in the theatre group.’ She shook her head ruefully as she reflected on the recent past. ‘People he dealt with in his job at the telegraph office and other places started to comment on it. At first when anyone asked him what was wrong he said he was finding the play harder to do than usual. Then, when he got even more morose he claimed he wasn’t feeling well. But he never used that excuse with his father.’

‘What did people think about him being the way he was?’

‘Most of them were sympathetic. We all have worries from time to time. And get sick, too. But after making excuses for him for so long most people took to ignoring him if they could. And some got mad at him when his changes of mood affected them. And then he was likely to throw a tantrum, just as he did when he was a child. And one day he actually attacked Mr Hicks.’

‘Hicks is the railroad depot manager?’

She nodded, rose and went to the stove where the coffeepot was starting to steam.

‘Travis is the mildest mannered sort of gentleman. But the story is that he was really angry at something Billy did. Or maybe didn’t do. And Billy rounded on him and lashed out.’

‘Did Hicks say what the fight was about?’

‘I guess he could have said something to Ward Flynt. Even considered pressing charges, maybe. But if he did, it was never taken any further.’ She poured coffee into the cups, gave one to Edge, went back behind the desk and sat down with her own, the offer to make toast forgotten. ‘But poor Travis certainly had an ugly black eye for several days afterwards.’

‘Did Billy’s temper flare more than that once during the final weeks?’

‘Oh yes. From time to time he got really snappy with anybody who made mention of his inattention and how he got to be so grumpy so easily. He certainly tried my patience on more than one occasion. Until I gave up on him, just like everyone else. And so I simply ignored him as much as I was able to.’

Edge had begun to get impatient with the good-looking, primly dressed Sue Ellen Spencer. Had a nagging notion that she was wasting his time with little more than idle gossip: talking simply to extend the time she was with him. Maybe starting to set her cap at him in the way Warner had warned she was likely to do. Then she said something to dispel this notion. ‘But Billy wanted desperately to talk to me about something on that final night.’

52

Edge said: ‘Last night in the saloon Childs told Shelby that his boy was supposed to meet you early at the theatre. You told Childs that –

‘I don’t know anything more than I told the doc,’ she cut in ruefully. ‘That last morning I reached the house as Billy was leaving for the telegraph office. Usually I started work for the doc at ten, but I had some chores to catch up with from the day before and so I got there early. I could see that Billy was in a miserable mood again. He came out of the house looking like he’d just been given all the troubles of the world to worry about.’ She drank some coffee and expressed her own brand of depression as she sighed. ‘Like I’d learned it was the best thing to do, I intended to ignore him. But he stopped me at the yard gate and blurted out that he wanted to talk to me. Not there and then, though. That night we had a rehearsal scheduled here at the theatre for eight o’clock. And he asked if I could be here at six thirty and he’d he waiting. He had to talk to somebody he could trust and said I was the only person like that.’

‘Did he have a fight with his father that morning?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. When I went on into the house the doc was his usual self.’

Edge tried the coffee and found it was a whole lot weaker than he liked.

‘I told Billy that it was about time he explained to somebody what was troubling him and that if I was able to help, I’d be pleased to do what I could.’ Another shrug. ‘But he never showed up.’

Edge sat back in his chair.

Sue Ellen went on quickly: ‘I came to the theatre early like he’d asked me to and it was as empty as it is this morning. After I’d lit the stoves and lamps to get the place ready for the rehearsal I went to wait out at the front doorway. Billy was a half-hour late by then.’

‘And he never did show up?’

‘No. Though I did think I saw him.’

Edge leaned forward again.

‘Two men were riding up Main Street. I got just a brief glimpse of them. And only from behind at a distance of at least a hundred yards, I’d guess. But they were too far away for me to call out to them, anyway. Then they broke into a gallop. I couldn’t be really certain one of the riders was Billy so I never mentioned it to the doc. Or to Ward Flynt later.’

‘Were there other people on the street?’

‘A few, but I never took notice of who they were: because there was no reason to, of course. All Billy had done was broken our appointment. I put it down to just another one 53

of his ornery moods. Of course, he never did come to the rehearsal that night. Much later, the doc came to see me at home about Billy being missing. And the next morning I heard what happened to him. You know the details of that as well as I do.’

‘You saw enough of the two riders to be sure they were both men?’ Edge asked. She started to nod then showed doubt. ‘Now I come to think of it, that was no more than an assumption I made. They were too far away for me to see them clearly in the dark. And it was from the back. One of them could have been a woman, I guess.’

She shrugged and expressed scepticism. ‘Or both of them, even? I was looking out for Billy and just because one of them was his size and build . . . Anyway, none of the other people who were on the street and must have seen the riders told the marshal they thought one of them was Billy?’

Edge showed no sign that he registered the inflection in her voice that asked for reassurance she had made the right decision. He said: ‘They were riding up Main Street toward the bridge over the river, so heading west?’

‘Northwest if you want to split hairs. They were between Mr Curtis’s wagon repair yard and the coffee shop. Which is about as far as you can see from the theatre because of how the street bends.’

‘They started to gallop?’

She nodded. ‘So it seemed likely they were leaving town. Out over the bridge across the creek and on to the Wyoming Turnpike.’

Edge had heard from Roy Sims that the open trail beyond the plank bridge over the Eternity River came to an end a long way short of the territory for which it was named. Had been so named at the time when there had been so many high hopes for the future of the town. And when these hopes were dashed all that remained of the turnpike was what it had been for so many years before: a stretch of rough, little used trail between the bridge and the ranch owned by Olivia and Arthur Colbert.

‘Which is in the opposite direction from where his body was found on the railroad track.’

She grimaced and nodded.

Edge said: ‘The only reason for anyone to go out along the turnpike is to get to the Colbert spread, is that so?’

‘That’s the only place out there where anyone lives. There’s just open range between town and the Colbert place. But a couple of miles out of Eternity, about halfway between town and the ranch, is what’s left of the canning factory and slaughterhouse that they built all those years ago and never used.’ She shook her head pensively. ‘Quicker way to get there, though God knows why anyone would want to, is to follow the track bed the railroad 54

company laid for the spur line that never came to anything. The doc and I had to go out there one time a couple of years ago. A family of settlers heading west squatted in what used to be the bunkhouse for the construction workers. They were there just long enough for the wife to have her baby. The buildings are derelict.’

‘Uh-uh. Did you tell Flynt what you told the doc, Sue Ellen? About Billy breaking the appointment he made with you?’

She nodded glumly. ‘And I suppose I should have told him how I thought I may have seen Billy Childs and the other rider heading out of town in the wrong direction? But when nobody said anything . . . ‘ She suddenly regained her self-confidence. ‘Anyway, I’ve told you now. And in my opinion the marshal wouldn’t have tried too hard to find out if it really was Billy. Or who the other one was. He’s got it into his head that Billy killed himself, which I’m really sure he didn’t. Or that it was an accident, which I don’t believe either. Because he wouldn’t have gone out there to where he was found on his own. Nobody would, not at that time of night with the weather so bad as it was. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘What if he was sick, like he sometimes said he was?’

‘Sick in the head and didn’t know what he was doing, is that what you mean?’ She showed another unattractive grimace. ‘The doc said he wasn’t and as Billy’s father and a doctor, he ought to have known.’

‘I hear the boy wasn’t much of a drinker?’

She shook her head adamantly. ‘Definitely not: Billy used to drink a beer now and again, but he would never have gotten drunk enough to – ‘

‘No sweat, Sue Ellen.’ He rose, finished his weak coffee and placed the empty cup on the desk. Much obliged for the hospitality and the information.’

She made a bleak-eyed survey of their surroundings. ‘Such as it was on both counts?’

‘At least I know there’s one other person in Eternity who’s as sure as his pa was that Billy Childs was murdered.’

‘I wish you luck in trying to find anybody else, Edge. But I’m intrigued as to why you’d want to go to the trouble?’

‘I guess you could call it self-interest. The more I uncover about the killing of the boy, the better chance I’ll have of finding out who tried to kill me.’ He put on his hat and opened the office door.