Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (34 page)

‘Not Benson, lady,’ Edge said evenly. ‘I know you didn’t kill the colonel.’

‘What?’ She shook her head and expressed surprise. ‘Somebody killed old Walter Benson?’

‘Lester Hardin or Gus Brady did that. Just because I happened to be out front of his house when they caught up with me. Beat me up to warn me I should mind my own 181

business instead of Shaver’s. I don’t think Benson was meant to die. The old timer just got hit too hard when he opened his front door at the wrong time.’

He accused as she came fully erect: ‘But you sure as hell meant to kill all the others, didn’t you? Before that carnage at the train station just now? Starting with the Childs kid and ending with Gus Brady?’

Once more she surveyed her immediate surroundings of a town she knew so well and yet seemed still to be disorientated for stretched seconds as she adopted an odd sentry-like stance between Jed Black’s corpse and Edge. Then she asked: ‘I expect it was Walter Benson who told you I had a son?’

Edge matched her even tone. ‘Benson and John Dickens were innocently interested in the history of Eternity. They told me about a twenty-year-old rumour.’

She was suddenly irritable. ‘Those interfering old busybodies! I’m glad the colonel’s dead. Dickens ought to be, too!’

Her voice had risen in volume by the same degree as her anger and she was clearly not aware of a series of scuttling noises that had started to reach along the empty curve of the street. Sounds that were not unlike some of those made earlier by the diminishing wind as the storm subsided when dawn was breaking.

Edge took out the makings as he said: ‘I guess you had to kill the Childs kid because he found out about your plan to free your son? How did he do that? Did you think you could confide in him because you and him were so close for a while?’

Another sneer marred her fading beauty as she vented an unladylike snort. ‘Billy Childs was a stupid love sick young man who was convinced I harboured the same degree of affection for him as he felt for me.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, I did tell him once that I was old enough to be his mother because I actually did have a son his age. He didn’t believe me, of course. Jedediah’s birth was totally hushed up around here. As was how I killed that disgusting cowhand who forced himself on me – took a pistol and shot the brute in the head while he slept!’

Edge began to roll a cigarette while he controlled an impulse to make an ironic comment about the ancient murder giving her a taste for killing.

‘My brother disposed of the animal’s body. And when I gave birth – a long way from here – Arthur took care of the adoption formalities. And made sure the baby was placed in a good home and was named Jedediah, just as I instructed.’

‘Did you ever see him again?’ Edge did not care one way or the other but he was anxious to encourage Olivia Colbert to continue talking freely. 182

She shook her head, sighed and gazed morosely at a scene a long way from this street in a Kansas town. ‘No, I never did, not until today. Though over the years I heard about him from time to time.’

Edge struck a match on the butt of his holstered Colt and lit the cigarette as the melancholy deepened in her eyes.

‘I was always able to twist poor Arthur around my little finger, you see. And I persuaded him to give me the details of how Jedediah was adopted by a wealthy Boston family called Black. And later, when I began to read about a young desperado named Jed Black getting into all kinds of trouble, I put two and two together. And Arthur was able to confirm I was right.’

Olivia Colbert’s voice took on the tone of a plea as she fixed Edge with a level gaze and said insistently: ‘The Black family fell upon hard times and Billy was forced to do whatever he could to support them, you see?’

‘Yeah, I can understand that,’ Edge lied. ‘Then later still you found out about how some prisoners were being transferred from a penitentiary in the east to one out west?

And one of the convicts was your son.’

She nodded absently, her mind still concerned with the story she had concocted to explain to herself why Jed Black had become an outlaw.

Edge went on: ‘I guess Arthur didn’t tell you that. More likely it was Clay Warner? A drifting bounty hunter like him would know about low life types, in and out of prison.’ He was finding it difficult to sustain the role of a sympathetic listener and immediately regretted the
low life
comment. But she chose to overlook it as she countered sardonically:

‘It seems that sometimes you can be as smart as you figure you are, mister! Quite a time back, when Clay Warner came through Eternity, he romanced me and in an unguarded moment after . . . ‘

She became wistful while she remained unaware of more scuffling sounds from up the street. ‘Well, I told him about my son. And when he came by again not so long ago, he told me how a young man named Jed Black was locked up in a New York City prison serving a life sentence.’

She grimaced. ‘Clay said Jed should have been hanged for all the things he was accused of doing. But some liberal-minded judge gave him a life term. Which, Clay said, was worse than being hanged.’

Edge said on a stream of tobacco smoke: ‘And he also told you about the transfer of a bunch of prisoners and how for a price he could fix it to break your son free, right?’

He had begun to be uneasy about the indistinct sounds he thought were being made by a considerable number of people advancing furtively toward where he and the woman 183

faced each other in the centre of the street. But he forced himself not to allow his attention to wander away from her and thought he maybe over-emphasised his attitude of being at ease while he smoked the cigarette.

‘Jed and the others,’ she replied. ‘But the rest of them never mattered a jot to me. I told Clay to go ahead and do what was necessary. Whatever the cost, I would pay for it. He saw to all the details. Him and Lee Baldwin, whose brother was in the same group of prisoners scheduled to be moved.’ Another change of mood affected her and Edge began to wonder if Olivia Colbert’s sanity had been affected by the violent events of the morning when she boasted: ‘Lee romanced me, too, you know, mister? I’ve always been able to attract gentlemen suitors.’

Edge quashed an impulse to rasp an insult and instead allowed: ‘I’m sure you have, lady. So you paid out the money and Warner or Baldwin saw to the bribes and the horses and the supplies that would be needed?’

‘That’s right. Clay Warner did the setting up in the east: fixed for the weapons to be hidden on the train so the guards could be over-powered. And that Shaver man was involved. Lee Baldwin had him arrange for the horses and supplies to be brought from Dodge City and hidden at the old cannery. Everything that Jed and the other men would require to get them down across the Mexican border or up into Canada or wherever they wanted to go.’

Edge abandoned caution as he said sardonically: ‘They did all that while all you had to do was take care of whatever killing was necessary to make sure the escape plan stayed a secret?’

Then he made his tone neutral, totally devoid of the feeling of revulsion he had for her, as he continued: ‘I’ve figured out that’s why you killed the others. But why did Billy Childs have to die, lady?’

She vented a laugh that started out soft and finished harsh: never held any humour and came close to being a kind of sob. ‘Poor Billy: he really was in love with me, you know? He just couldn’t keep away from the house if he thought there was even a chance of seeing me.’

The burning tobacco suddenly tasted foul to Edge and he arced the half-smoked cigarette to the side as the woman went on: ‘But it got to be such a bore for me after awhile. So I asked Arthur to tell him to stop bothering me. Pay the boy some money to go away if that was necessary.’

‘I heard about the pay off made outside the Second Chance Saloon.’

‘Yes, dear Arthur arranged for that. Had Lee and a couple of the other hands pay Billy two hundred and fifty dollars to stay away and stop being bothersome to me.’ Her coal 184

black eyes glittered with anger again and her classically beautiful face already marred by the ravaging effects of grief once more became ugly with a grimace of contempt as she hissed: ‘But Billy wanted more. It seemed he’d found himself a new love! Younger than me! And he planned to leave Eternity and take this girl with him. And the grasping young whippersnapper wanted even more of my money to finance his elopement plans, would you believe?’

She looked like she wanted to spit, but even in her present state of high emotion breeding enabled her to stem the impulse. ‘The gall of it! Thinking I would pay for him and the woman who had replaced me in his affections to start a new life together!’

She stared demandingly into Edge’s face and he confined the response he realised was expected to a sound of token agreement, which was all she needed to continue:

‘Well, I stopped him in his tracks, I can tell you! I never suspected I was strong enough to kill somebody with a single blow. But when a mother is striving to do her best for her only son, perhaps she’s granted a greater degree of strength than normal?’ This time Edge confined his response to a shrug that she found acceptable.

‘And with my mind so filled with worry about freeing young Jed . . . Well, Billy just chose the wrong time to start to tell me about his new lady-love: irrespective of the fact that I had tired of his attentions. So I hit him with the poker from the hearth. Just as he was about to tell me who she was. And either I summoned up a great deal of extra strength for whatever reason, or the boy had a skull like eggshell.’

She seemed suddenly very weary, as if reliving the killing of Billy Childs had drained her both physically and mentally.

Edge asked: ‘I figure it was Lee Baldwin who took the kid’s body out to the other side of town? Left him on the railroad track a long way from your spread for a train to chew him up so his cracked skull wouldn’t look suspicious? Or was it your brother who did that? Still taking care of you?’

She shook her head and shuddered. ‘No, poor, dear Arthur. He could never have brought himself to do such a ghastly thing. But he did so much else to protect me and see I had what I wanted to make my life just as happy and perfect as it could be.’ She shuffled disconsolately away from Edge and looked forlornly down at the bloody-faced corpse of the son in whom she had invested so much in a doomed attempt to complete her happiness.

‘Yes, it was Lee who removed Billy’s remains from the house.’

‘Yeah, I can understand, lady. Arthur wasn’t the violent type.’

‘He certainly was not,’ she agreed, wistful again.

‘So when you and him were in the saloon and heard Doc Childs talking with the New York detective, it was you who decided Ethan Shelby had to die. And you who killed him.’

185

A harsh expression came to her face again. ‘It seemed perfectly plain to me that the policeman from New York was telling a pack of lies to hide the true reason for being in Eternity.’

She shrugged. ‘But even if he hadn’t come to town because of the transfer of the prisoners, I couldn’t have a lawman any smarter than that oaf Ward Flynt checking into how Billy was killed.’

‘So you sent your brother on home in your buggy and you stayed in town to wait for a chance to kill Shelby. How was it you had a horse and a rifle to use, lady?’

Her faint smile hinted at triumph and Edge thought she might end her confession there: challenge him to work things out for himself. But she didn’t and with a note of deprecating scorn she said: ‘It was simply a matter of the way things were. Arthur went to the theatre straight from his office in town where he’d been working all afternoon. He’d ridden in on horseback after lunch. I drove the buggy to Eternity later. Arthur always had a Winchester in the bucket on his saddle. He was a fine marksman – when the target was game.’

‘So you shot down Ethan Shelby on purpose. And Doc Childs by accident because he happened to be walking alongside his friend from the east? Or did you kill the doc because you were worried about the way he was so convinced his son was murdered?’

‘It wasn’t an accident that I shot Charles Childs, mister.’ Olivia Colbert admitted tautly. ‘Anyone who did anything to threaten my plan to free Jed, I was ready to take care of in any way that was necessary.’

‘And you wanted me dead because I was the only one on the street close enough to have recognised you?’

‘There was a chance you would,’ she replied flatly.

‘You missed shooting me down out back of my place, but it was a whole lot easier for you to stab Arthur, wasn’t it, lady? I knew his killer had to be someone known to him. The way he allowed him – or her as it turned out – to get real close behind him and sink a knife into his heart.’

‘Arthur was in a state of panic,’ she said ruefully, and her dark eyes were clouded with grief for her brother rather than her son now. ‘I came to town, went to his office and found him in a blue funk. Which was something he had been building up to since the moment I gave Clay the go ahead for setting Jed free. He pleaded with me to give it all up. Said he felt he couldn’t sanction any more murders.’

She snorted once more. ‘My God, him sanction!’ A sigh and a shake of her head. ‘I pretended to comfort him, but I had to kill him. I knew that from when I left the house 186