Town of Masks (19 page)

“That’s the idea. I presume he’s registered. If he’s not, so much the better.”

“Let me think it over,” Hannah said.

“Okay. But if you happen to be thinking of it out loud, Miss Blake, I wouldn’t mention my name. I wouldn’t use yours, even doing you the favor.”

Hannah nodded. Something inside of her was jumping. Not nerves. They had never been steadier; but something that sickened her and made her giddy with stimuli almost simultaneously as though the two responses were friction upon each other. “Do you think Annie is finished with her tea by now?”

Walker picked up the phone and gave his house extension. “Is Mrs. Tully ready, dear?”

“Ready and eager,” he said, putting down the phone.

“I have no delicacy in these things, Mr. Walker. What would you expect in return for your influence?”

Walker smiled and touched his fingers to her elbow, guiding her out of the office. “You’re quite charming, Miss Blake. Just remember me in paradise.”

Annie Tully wept softly half the way back to Campbell’s Cove. Hannah feared to offer a word of consolation, lest it start the weeping into a wail. The morning had been spoiled for her, conniving with a conniver. But the deed had to be done by whatever means so long as it was quick. The thought of the boy revolted her now. Serpentlike, he lay in wait for innocence and fouled it with his show of tenderness. He drew out to himself cupidity from the pure as surely as though he sucked it through the flesh.

She shuddered and glanced at Annie. Weeping as though she had that for which to weep. Finally, with short patience, she said, “It’s all over now. You’ll go to your brother’s, you’ll rest, and you’ll forget all about it.”

“I’ll forget or remember, small odds,” Annie said. “I’m wondering what’s happened to poor Mrs. Verlaine.”

“There was an autopsy,” Hannah said. “The funeral’s this afternoon.”

“And who laid her out?” Annie demanded, the tears turned off like a faucet.

“Hutchins.”

“And who chose her dress and told them how to fix her hair, who did all that?”

Well. This was small thanks for her mission, Hannah thought. “I presume Hutchins, and what difference? The memorial’s going to be brief. They may not even open the casket.”

“The heathens,” Annie said. “The bloody heathens. They’ll open it and take a look if I’ve anything to say on it. And I’ll say whether I have or no. She was a fine woman, and they won’t see her like for a while again. I’ll not stand idle while they bundle her off to the grave and put her down quick to be quick forgotten. She didn’t die in bed, you know.”

“I’ve nothing to do with the arrangements,” Hannah said. “I’ve had my fill of the sheriff, too.”

“He was doing no more than his duty,” Annie said flatly.

A fine turn, thought Hannah, the night’s affront forgot in the morning’s flattery. A cup of tea with his wife and the sheriff was forgiven his trespasses. The depth and logic of the Irish!

“If I hadn’t thought he was doing considerably more than his duty,” she said, “I should not have taken the time and trouble to come up and speak to him on your release.”

“Your heart was in the right place, Miss Blake, and I thank you deeply. But the sheriff has to find out what isn’t so before he can find out what is.”

Well, that was a small parcel of thanks! Commiseration on her misguided charity! Lead, kindly light. “I did it for Maria,” she said. “She was my friend.”

“She was friend to many,” Annie crooned, “and never a bit of sugar trailing on the spoon after her cup of kindness. She was charity beyond charity, for whenever you turned to thank her, she made out it was you done her the good turn. Charity is not puffed up, as the good book says.”

Hannah kept her eyes on the road, wondering if Annie were delivering her a sermon for the day. “I don’t think Mr. O’Gorman shares your appreciation for the sheriff, Annie.”

“And what has O’Gorman to do with it?”

What indeed, Hannah thought. “Isn’t he a friend of yours?”

“One thing has nothing to do with the other. I’d be grateful to you, would you set me down on Cherry Street, Miss Blake.”

“Isn’t the house impounded?”

“It is, but I’m permitted to get something. The sheriff’s instructing his deputies.”

They passed the town limits of Campbell’s Cove. Here and there along the way, a head turned after Annie. The townspeople were well aware of where she had spent the night. The woman had started to cry again, but she sat erect, and let the tears fall where they would, her only acknowledgment of them an occasional deep sniff, the slobbery sound of which grated on Hannah’s nerves. “For heaven’s sake, Annie, use your handkerchief,” she said when she could stand it no longer.

“And have them take me for showing it like the white flag? Never.”

Hannah drove up to the Verlaine house, no grinding gears, no hesitation. “I’ll wait if you won’t be long, Annie, and drive you down to your brother’s.”

“Thank you kindly, ma’am, but I don’t know where it is—what I’m hunting—and I wouldn’t detain you.”

So that was it, Hannah thought. The hunter and his hound. She watched Annie up the steps. Walker had reasoned, and reasoned rightly, that if the jewels were still in the house, no one was better equipped than Annie to trace them. And asking her for her help, he had more than righted himself with her.

Had the books been put back on the shelves, she wondered, or was that chore left to Annie? So many curious and idle had trammeled the lawn, her step on it should not seem extraordinary. Hannah Blake was not above idle curiosity. She left the car and walked boldly across to the hedges at the window. The living-room was almost in order, the books replaced. She could not see the red leather binding … opera …Lavalle … volume four … but if it weren’t among them, and if it was a dummy, she was sure Annie wouldn’t be there now. … Annie wouldn’t live there any more. …

“Hello, Miss Blake.”

In the instant before he spoke she had caught Matheson’s reflection in the window, just time enough to take the edge off her nervous response.

“Good morning, Matt—or is it afternoon, now?”

“Depending on your lunchtime,” he said, taking his watch from his pocket. “It’s ten minutes to one.”

She had not asked him the time. It was almost as though he were giving her time to compose herself. Having no need of it, she resented it. “I’ve just brought Annie down from the county jail.”

“I know,” he said. He pointed to the window she had been peering through. “Are you through there?”

“Quite. I’m not above curiosity, you see.”

“Few of us are. That’s why I’m here myself, you might say. I’m curious about the curious.”

“Have there been others?” Hannah murmured as he walked back to the car in stride with her.

“An occasional one. They walk round at a distance for the most part. Can we sit and talk for a while, Miss Blake?”

“If you like, Matt. I offered to wait for Annie and drive her to her brother’s.”

Matheson got into the front seat beside her. “She’s kind of broke up, is she, everything coming to an end for her all of a sudden?”

“Not altogether broken up. I got small thanks for my solicitude. She said the sheriff was doing his duty in holding her.”

“Well,” Matheson said, “she’s awful keen on seeing Mrs. Verlaine’s murderer turned up.”

“Who isn’t?” Hannah demanded.

Matheson pursed his lips. “The murderer. I’ve been going over in my mind all morning what could of happened that night. I get the feeling that just about everybody who was ever in that house has the notion that if he was given the chance, he could find the jewels in ten minutes.”

“Strange,” Hannah said. “I had that very feeling myself.”

“Mmm. That’s why you was interested in getting Annie out of trouble?”

“I don’t understand you, Matt.”

“Annie was arrested on account of the jewels. She was caught—in the sheriff’s way of figuring—with one of them. But if you think you could find the jewels, that means you don’t think that was why Mrs. Verlaine was killed at all. So naturally you’d try and help Annie.”

He had wrapped a lot of words around a small neat trap, Hannah realized. He had prompted her to the admission that she believed the jewels still in the house. That belief was not shared by all Maria’s friends at all. The whole tenor of the town meeting that night was predicated on the theft as the motive. Wilks, the morning before, had indicated his acceptance of it. She tried to ward off his next natural question.

“No, Matt. I want every co-operation on Campbell’s Cove Day from the Front Streeters. When I saw O’Gorman this morning, he repeated his bitterness against the sheriff. He said that they wouldn’t forget it if I could help Annie.”

“I see,” Matheson said. “What’s your notion on why she was killed?”

The one-track mind. He had not even heard her in his concentration on that question. “I don’t have any notion on it. And now that I think about it, the only reason I have for that feeling that I might be able to find the jewels is that I’ve always believed Annie’s story. I’m sure Mrs. Verlaine did give her the stickpin. That was quite like Maria.”

Matheson was making shapes in the dust on the dashboard with his finger. “In other words you’re saying now that you think she might of been killed on account of them, after all.”

“I have no opinion on the matter, and no right to an opinion.”

“Everybody’s got an opinion, and the right to keep it to themselves. She was sitting in the chair reading when somebody came to the door. Personally, I don’t think she ever got up from the chair. If she did, she went back to the same one she was sitting in—”

Oh, God,
Hannah thought,
how many times through this deadly ordeal?
And to have it come on so casually, when she was so sure of herself, so well recovered from the last, and then to be tipped again into the maelstrom of near fact.

“The book she was reading was right there beside her where she let it slide when the visitor came. It was somebody she wasn’t surprised to see, then. It could of been Annie, but it wasn’t. It could of been Sykes and maybe it was. It could of been two people, like Elizabeth Merritt and her boy friend, and maybe it was. It could of been you.”

“And maybe it was?” Hannah finished. “My fingerprints were on the mantel there, Matt, not far from the cord with which she was strangled.”

“And you had the run of her house if anyone had. You were kids together. Family friends.”

“I did not have the run of her house, Matt. We were not nearly so close as people thought. There were many things about Maria of which I did not approve—her lack of religion, in fact, her scorn of it—Andrew Sykes. I have no use for him.”

Matheson grunted. “And she had no use for this Keogh boy.”

“I haven’t so much regard for him either, except as a gardener.”

“Interesting. It turns out he hasn’t got a friend in the town except Elizabeth Merritt. I wonder why.”

“He has friends on Front Street,” Hannah said.

“And you’re trying to make friends there.”

“For my own purposes. One thing has nothing to do with the other.” Her voice cracked with intensity. She must not be persuaded into talk of Dennis.

“Of course,” he said easily. “They’re going to evacuate the town for you.”

“Not for me. For civil defense. You’ve been well informed on our progress.”

“I came up from Front Street myself a long time ago. You know, Miss Blake, I’m sorry you got that attitude. I thought maybe you were going to take over where Mrs. Verlaine left off. They need somebody uptown on their side.”

“You’re twisting everything I say out of shape, Matt. What’s the matter with you?”

He glanced at her. “It’s a twisting, torturous business I’m in, and maybe I get a little extra-warped from the competition.”

He was glum and bitter over the sheriff’s taking over, and aggravated, not mollified by the behavior of the town council that night.

“Don’t brood over it, Matt. In the end it’s going to hurt you, not the sheriff.”

“Not the sheriff,” he repeated, “and not the murderer.”

“Isn’t it too soon to say that? Walker has had a great deal of criminal experience.”

Matheson grunted. “He sure has. Did you see the county paper this morning?”

“No.”

“It’s in there plain as day why he stepped in here that morning. Yesterday the special grand jury investigating gambling in Odenah County was adjourned. And I’ll tell you something—” He tapped on the steering-wheel with his finger. “They adjourned without calling George Walker, county sheriff. Why? He was busy. And who’s going to say gambling is more important than murder?”

“Oh, my,” Hannah said.

“Sometime when you’re talking to Franklin Wilks and the rest of the big shots, you can tell ’em how important their vote of confidence was that night. But maybe they know it already.”

“Don’t be bitter, Matt.”

“I am bitter. I’m as bitter as gall.” He pulled himself up. “I won’t detain you, Miss Blake. You’ll be wanting to get ready for the funeral.”

H
ANNAH DRESSED SLOWLY, THE
ordeal of the funeral ahead of her. Downstairs, Sophie was singing at her work, her joy of finding Miss Blake well recovered irrepressible. The song of innocence, Hannah thought. Even at Sophie’s age, she had not had it. She seemed to remember a sense of guilt clouding every bright day of her life, petty guilt for petty sins, and yet always beyond her the vision of holy innocence. Had she been born a Catholic, Hannah thought, she might have known some joy, confession and the firm belief that one went forth from it with a scrubbed soul.

How high that morning to have fallen so low in the afternoon. She was prepared to grieve, surely, but for the living, not the dead.

The last heat of summer beat down upon the town as she drove through it. Farmers’ wives were marketing, their husbands standing on the curbs curling the sweat from their foreheads and marking every car that passed if its passengers were well-dressed, as a funeral car, and they exchanged, no doubt, all there was to tell of murder—here or in the Sunday paper supplement.

What a bounty of flowers, Hannah thought, approaching the parlor, the wreaths spilling out onto the lawn. Flowers were easier than tears. And a great deal prettier. She started as though she had heard those words. Maria might have said them, and for the instant, standing on the sidewalk, her car driven off by an attendant, she had an illusion of disembodiment—as though Maria Verlaine were there and she herself, in body, lying inside. The casket would be black marble, the bands steel, not the customary bronze. She moved into the parlor, speaking to no one until she was within view of the coffin. Gray, deep gray. She shuddered in relief at the break of the illusion. Her imagination—all in her mind. Someone took her arm and held it tight to bring a measure of comfort to her.