Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (6 page)

‘Maybe I ought to, while it’s all still fresh in your mind?’

‘Fresh or not, what I have to say will be the same. The woman you’ve got locked in here ain’t the one that was with the feller who killed Quaid. And the way we found them doing what comes naturally out in the woods, I don’t reckon Munro had another lady friend along when – ‘

‘You tell him, mister!’ Hannah Foster encouraged bitterly.

‘I’m much obliged to you, Edge,’ Munro said with less enthusiasm. ‘But the way the rest were so hell-bent on making an easy arrest I reckon that what you have to say won’t make too much difference.’

The scowling lawman waited impatiently for the prisoner to finish then sighed again and rubbed his temple like there was a dull ache in his head as he told Edge: ‘Better if we took care of it tomorrow maybe? It’s been quite a day, what with one thing and another. And I need to bed down just as soon as I make out the arrest report - while the details are still fresh in
my
mind?’

Edge finished making the cigarette and answered: ‘No sweat, marshal. I’ll be out at the McGowan place until morning. Then I’ll stop by here, make the deposition and go about the business that brought me to these parts in the first place.’

‘That sounds fine to me. Night to you.’

Edge lit the cigarette as he rose from his chair and raised a hand in farewell as he went to the door, pulled it open and paused when Munro called:

‘If me and Hannah get lynched before morning, I’d like you to know I appreciate what you tried to do for us, mister.’

Hooper’s square featured face formed into a grimace as he looked set to snarl a caustic response to the man in the cell.

Edge spoke first. ‘You know the people around here better than me, marshal. But there’s a first time for everything, uh?’

Hooper took out his pipe and tobacco poke as he defended firmly: ‘This ain’t that kind of town because the people here ain’t that kind. Arnie O’Brian just got carried away for a moment or two, that’s all.’

Edge stepped out of the office and closed the door on the indignantly glaring lawman. He unhitched his horse from the rail alongside that of Hooper and swung up into the saddle. Wheeled the animal and headed back down First Street toward where the track angled off on the right toward the McGowan farm. He did not feel at ease for he was troubled by conflicting thoughts. Thoughts that spanned the time from when he first accepted the invitation to attend the wedding through to when he agreed to ride with the posse then found Munro and Hannah Foster in the timber and brought them back to Brogan Falls. Was every decision he had taken a wrong one? Surely there was a good reason for him to be at the wedding - to show gratitude for how well he had been looked after by the McGowan family throughout the summer? And maybe he joined the posse for the same reason: as a more substantial way to express his appreciation than simply showing up to see Julia get married? But the killing was none of his business: that was entirely the province of the family and the town’s lawman. And the fact that he was the only witness to the shooting prepared to claim the couple locked up in the jail were innocent . . . Hell, Munro and the woman were old enough and had been around long enough to look after themselves. And if this time they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be the first people to pay the price for somebody else’s crime.

He pinched out the cigarette and tossed away the butt as he rode up to the McGowan house that was at the front of five hundred acres of well kept crop fields behind a yard at the end of the track from First Street. It was an ugly, two story ramshackle mess of a place that had started out as a one room shack then was added to after McGowan took himself a wife, had a daughter and the family prospered modestly over the years. Built mostly of timber with a little fieldstone by McGowan himself, it was a comfortable enough home. Lacking in the style people with finer taste and more money would have enjoyed: but, more importantly from Edge’s point of view as a houseguest, McGowan, his wife and daughter were hospitable hosts and easy-going company. And Martha was a plain but generous cook who made up for what she lacked in imagination at the stove with the quantity of the food she piled on a working man’s plate.

While he attended to his gelding in the stable at one side of the unpainted picket fenced yard, Edge saw no strange animal among the familiar horses in the stalls. In particular the piebald that had briefly been hitched to the rear of the McGowan buggy outside the church – that had surely been ridden into town by the worse for drink grandfather? But he put to the back of his mind the doubts he had about the killing of Wendell Quaid. And forgot about Robert McGowan who, if he was still in Brogan Falls, was seemingly not staying at the farm.

He crossed the yard to the front of the house where just one window showed a chink of light from behind the tightly drawn drapes: to the left of the door, which was the parlour. To the right was the grandly named dining room where the family always ate meals. But if there had been supper in this house tonight, it was surely eaten long ago or picked at and thrown out. And as he pushed open the door of the spartanly furnished hallway he was immediately aware of the absence of any appetising aromas coming from the kitchen behind the dining room: heard voices from beyond the parlour door. They were not loud, but were harsh toned in argument, as if frayed tempers were being held in check with difficulty. Elliot McGowan for sure, he recognised as he relished the warmth of the house and only now realised just how cold it had gotten to be outside. And Martha or Julia: perhaps both, or a woman from town who . . . He paused for just a moment then chided himself for eavesdropping and started along the hallway as the warmth of the house recalled other luxuries he was used to in this place. Right then the prospect of satisfying his hunger took priority over the comfortable bed he knew awaited him upstairs and he decided to take a look in the kitchen: to check that if, despite the circumstances, Martha had thought to leave him out some cold food.

Then the parlour door was jerked open with a controlled force that was as angry as the voices had been. But instead of rage the weather-beaten face of McGowan expressed anguish. He was startled to see Edge in the house and took a moment to recover: during the pause ran a gnarled hand through his thick mop of black hair and seemed unsure of how to greet him. Then blurted:

‘I’m sure sorry, Edge. I . . . We didn’t hear a horse in the yard. Or the door open.’

He shrugged. ‘Too wrapped up in family business. You being back: does that mean all of you are? Gene Hooper and the rest?’

While the man blinked his small green eyes, clenched and unclenched his work scarred hands, sought to adjust to this unexpected situation and struggled to empty his mind of what had occupied him and the women a few moments before, his wife continued to sit at the table where she most often attended to her needlework. Martha was tall, fifty or so with dark eyes in a bronzed, deeply lined face framed by stringy brown hair streaked with silver grey. She may have been pretty in her prime but in the years since then life had not been kind to her physically and when he first saw her at the start of summer Edge had guessed she was no more than a shadow of her former self. Tonight her always-gaunt face was more drawn than usual and even her never powerful frame looked somehow shrivelled by grief. Julia rose from the chair across the table from her mother in the stove heated room, came up behind her father and demanded softly but insistently: ‘Did you find the men who murdered Wendell, Edge? Did you kill them or did – ‘ She broke off, on the verge of another attack of the weeping that had mottled her face with patches of red and purple. The twentyeight years old Julia had hazel eyes, short brown hair framing angular features and a body that was flat at the chest and narrow at the waist. And in her present bereaved state there was no trace of the underplayed sexual attractiveness Edge had often registered during the summer.

Both daughter and mother were dressed in appropriate black.

‘The marshal has a man and woman locked up in the jailhouse,’ Edge told her. Martha voiced the surprise expressed on all their faces: ‘A man and a
woman
?’

‘Thank God for that at least.’ Julia returned unsteadily to her chair, sank slowly on to it, clasped her hands tightly together and stared down at them where they rested on the table. Her new wedding ring gleamed in the soft light of the overhead lamp. ‘I don’t care who or what they are. Just so long as they pay for what they did to Wendell.’

Her mother reached out to clasp her daughter’s wrists and squeezed them in a futile comforting gesture.

McGowan said in low, apprehensive tones: ‘It sounds to me like you ain’t fully convinced Gene has got the right people locked in the town jail, Edge?’

‘Tomorrow I have to make a deposition and that’s what I plan to put down on paper, feller.’ Edge looked beyond the man toward his daughter but Julia seemed to have withdrawn to a place deep within her mind from which outside sounds were barred. Not so her mother, who released her grip on Julia’s wrists, shook her head and pursed her lips into a hushing shape. Then she changed the subject before her husband could demand an explanation that would surely cause her daughter more grief: ‘I’m real sorry, Mr Edge. But I didn’t prepare any food tonight. Because none of us was hungry: isn’t that so, Elliot?’

McGowan shot a quizzical glance at his wife and recognised her signal. Then he nodded vigorously, swallowed hard and regained control of his emotions before he said: ‘I’m glad you and the others were able to do the best you all could. I’ll go see Hooper tomorrow. Yeah, you got to be hungry; riding out in the kind of cold weather like it’s been today. I guess you can understand why we weren’t up to eating supper tonight? But the wife will be pleased to get some food for you.’

‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ Edge said as Martha made to rise from the table. ‘If you’ll let me loose in your kitchen, I’ll fix myself something and try not to make too much mess while I’m doing it?’

He tested a brief smile that drew no similar response and felt suddenly awkward. Regretted that he had not given Hooper the deposition tonight and ridden out of town: by now been in night camp and cooking something over a fire. Just as hungry, a lot colder and with no feather bed in prospect. But at least spared the embarrassment of being unable to handle a situation where a family’s grief was not helped by the intrusive presence of an outsider.

‘Please feel free to do that, Mr Edge. Help yourself to whatever you want.’ Martha’s dark, red rimmed eyes were fixed upon her husband, clearly afraid he would insist that she look after their guest who was no longer a hired hand.

‘I’m much obliged to you,’ was all the morose McGowan said as Edge turned to leave the family to its trouble and saw the farmer shake his head, suddenly tight lipped about what had happened today.

He closed the parlour door softly and Edge headed for the kitchen. Here lit one of the lamps on the shelf above the range and set about making himself a cold supper without need to hunt for utensils and ingredients: because he had often prepared himself a pre-dawn breakfast in this kitchen during happier times. He fixed bread, cheese, pickles and a thick slice of roast pork and washed it down with cold water because the fire had gone out in the grate. And the McGowans did not keep hard liquor in the house.

While he ate the frugal meal he was aware of unhurried movement and hushed voices close by. Knew the two women had gone upstairs to bed when he heard them call goodnight to the man left below in the parlour. And soon there was just the occasional creak of a second story floorboard until the women finished their preparations and got into bed. Next a period of near utter silence broken now and then by the call of a distant owl in the timber of the valley sides. Until slow footfalls and the clink of glass on glass sounded in the hallway, the door was pushed open and Elliot McGowan stepped into the kitchen, a bottle of whiskey in one big hand and two shot glasses in the other. Dressed in what he had worn for the wedding, minus suit jacket and necktie, he seemed unaffected by the cold of the unheated room in which Edge had kept on his sheepskin coat.

‘You’ll take a drink with me?’ The solidly built farmer approached the centrally placed table, carefully sat and set down the bottle and glasses across from Edge.

‘I never knew you kept – ‘

‘Always just for medicinal purposes,’ McGowan cut in dully. ‘But how I’m feeling so sick at heart tonight, I reckon I can claim I’m not breaking that rule. No offence intended, but I know for sure that you never needed any medical excuse to take a drink every now and then down in Earl’s grocery during the summer. So you’ll join me now?’

‘Way things are, I can’t say it’ll be a pleasure, feller. But it sure won’t need any forcing down.’

‘Fine.’ He opened the bottle, filled both glasses to the brim and pushed one toward Edge, put down the cork and peered at it like it fascinated him. ‘It’s been a bad day for the McGowan family and no mistake.’

Edge nodded and continued to eat, excluded from his mind another futile wishful thought about being at a night camp far away from this grief-stricken house. Then, after a few stretched seconds, he picked up the glass to toast grimly: ‘Here’s to better days.’ He discovered the absence of a label did not mean the bottle held low-grade liquor: as a medicine or whatever else, it was fine sipping bourbon.