Tales for a Stormy Night (11 page)

“Maybe that’s why I didn’t bring him in,” Willets said.

Harris cocked his head and smiled his inquisitiveness. At 45 he was still boyish, and he had the manner of always seeming to want to understand fully the other man’s point of view. He would listen to it, weigh it, and change his tactics—but not his mind.

“Because,” the sheriff said, “I haven’t really gone outside their houses to look for a motive.”

The attorney drummed his fingers on the file. “Tell me the God’s truth, Andy, don’t you think it’s here?”

“Not all of it,” the sheriff said doggedly.

“But the heart of it?”

“The heart of it’s there,” he admitted.

“‘All of it’ to you means a confession. Some policemen might have got it. I don’t blame you for that.”

“Thanks,” Willets said dryly. “I take it, Mr. Harris, you feel the case is strong against him?”

“I don’t predict the outcome,” the attorney said, his patience strained. “I prosecute and I take the verdict in good grace. I believe the state has a strong case, yes.” He shrugged off his irritation. “Much hinges, I think, on whether Canby could feel secure from interruption while he did the job, and afterwards while he cleaned up.”

Willets nodded.

Harris fingered through the folder and brought out a paper. “Here. The girl hid in the pantry when he told her to leave. She went upstairs to bed when her father told her to. Now I say that if she came downstairs again, all Canby had to do was tell her to go up again. She’s the amenable type. Not bright, not stupid, just willing and obedient.”

That from his documentation, Willets thought. If ever Harris had seen the girl it was by accident. “Then you think she was an accessory?” Certainly most people did now, having seen or heard of her conduct at the funeral.

The attorney pursed his lips. “I wouldn’t pursue that right now. You haven’t turned up anything to prove it. But he could feel secure about being able to send her upstairs again before she saw anything. That’s what was important: that he could feel safe, secure. That’s how I’d use it. Put that together with the Lyons woman’s testimony and his own daughter’s. No jury will take his word that he was home with his grandson between 10 and 11.”

“Did he strip naked to do the job?” said Willets. “His clothes went through the lab.”

“Old work clothes.” The attorney looked him in the eyes. “There’s been cleaner jobs than this before and I’ll prove it. I don’t expect to go in with the perfect case. There’s no such thing.”

“Then all I have to do,” Willets said, “is get the warrant and bring him in.”

“That’s all. The rest is up to me.” The sheriff had reached the door when Harris called after him. “Andy…I’m not the s.o.b. you seem to think I am. It’s all in here.” He indicated the file. “You’ll see it yourself when you get to where you can have some perspective.”

Harris might very well be right, the sheriff thought as he walked through the county court building. He had to accept it. Either Harris was right and he had done his job as sheriff to the best of his ability and without prejudice, making the facts stand out from sentiments…or he had to accept something that logic would not sanction: Sue Thompson as the murderer of her own father. That this amenable girl, as Harris called her, who by the very imperturbability of her disposition had managed a life for herself in the house of her father—that she, soft and slovenly, could do a neat and terrible job of murder, he could not believe. But even granting that she could have done it, could someone as emotionally untried as she withstand the strain of guilt? He doubted it. Such a strain would crack her, he thought, much as an overripe plum bursts while yet hanging on the tree.

But the motive, Canby’s motive: it was there and it was not there, he thought. It was the thing which so far had restrained him from making the arrest—that, and his own stubborn refusal to be pressured by the followers of Mary Lyons.

The sheriff sat for some time at his desk, and then he telephoned Matt Thompson’s friend, Alvin Rhodes. The appointment made, he drove out to see the former superintendent of the state hospital for the insane.

Rhodes, as affable as Thompson had been dour, told of Matt Thompson’s visiting him the previous Wednesday, the day before his death. “We were not friends, Willets,” the older man said, “although his visit implies that we were. He was seeking advice on his daughter’s infatuation with a man three times her age.”

As Thompson had grown more sullen with the years, the sheriff thought, Rhodes had mellowed into affability upon retirement. Such advice was not sought of someone uncongenial to the seeker. “And did you advise him, Mr. Rhodes?”

“I advised him to do nothing about it. I recounted my experience with men of Canby’s age who were similarly afflicted. The closer they came to consummation, shall we say, the more they feared it. That’s why the May and December affairs are rare indeed. I advised him to keep close watch on the girl, to forestall an elopement, and leave the rest to nature. In truth, Willets, although I did not say it to him, I felt that if they were determined, he could not prevent it.”

“He cared so little for the girl,” Willets said, “I wonder why he interfered at all. Why not let her go and good riddance?”

Rhodes drew his white brows together while he phrased the words carefully. “Because as long as he kept her in the house, he could atone for having begot her, and in those terms for having caused his wife’s death.” Willets shook his head. Rhodes added then: “I told him frankly that if anyone in the family should be examined, it was he and not the girl.”

Willets felt the shock like a blow. “The girl?”

Rhodes nodded. “That’s why he came to me, to explore the possibility of confining her—temporarily. In his distorted mind he calculated the stigma of such proceedings to be sufficient to discourage Canby.”

And the threat of such proceedings, Willets thought, was sufficient to drive Canby to murder—as such threats against his own person were not. “I should think,” he said, preparing to depart, “you might have taken steps against Matt Thompson yourself.”

Rhodes rose with him. “I intended to,” he said coldly. “If you consult the state’s attorney, you will discover that I made an appointment with him for 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon. By then Thompson was dead. I shall give evidence when I am called upon.”

The sheriff returned to the courthouse and swore out the warrant before the county judge. At peace with his conscience at last, he drove again to the Murray house.

Betty Murray was staring out boldly at the watchers who had reconvened—as boldly as they were again staring in at her.

There would be a time now, Willets thought, when they could stare their fill and feel righteous in their prejudgment of the man. Only then would they be willing to judge the full story, only then would they be merciful, vindicating their vindictiveness. He ordered his deputies to clear the street. John Murray opened the door when the sheriff reached the steps.

“Better take Betty upstairs,” Willets said to her husband. He could see the others in the living room, Sue and Phil Ganby sitting at either ends of the couch, their hands touching as he came.

“The old man?” John whispered. Willets nodded and Murray called to his wife. Betty looked at him over her shoulder but did not move from the window.

“You too, Miss Thompson,” Willets said quietly. “You both better go upstairs with John.

Betty lifted her chin. “I shall stay,” she said. “This is my father’s house and I’ll stay where I want to in it.”

Nor did Sue Thompson make any move to rise. Willets strode across to Canby. “Get up,” he said. “I’m arresting you, Phil Canby, for the willful murder of Matt Thompson.”

“I don’t believe it,” Betty said from behind them, her voice high, tremulous. “If God’s own angel stood here now and said it, I still wouldn’t believe it.”

“Betty, Betty,” her husband soothed, murmuring something about good lawyers.

Canby’s eyes were cold and dark upon the sheriff. “What’s to become of her?” he said, with a slight indication of his head toward Sue.

“I don’t know,” Willets said. No one did, he thought, for she looked completely bemused, her eyes wide upon him as she tried to understand.

“You’re taking him away?” she said as Canby rose. Willets nodded.

“It won’t be for long,” John Murray said in hollow comfort, and more to his wife than to the girl.

“Don’t lie to her,” Canby said. “If they can arrest me for something I didn’t do, they can hang me for it.” He turned to Willets. “If you’re taking me, do it now.”

“You can get some things if you want.”

“I don’t want no things.”

Willets started to the door with him. Betty looked to her husband. He shook his head. She whirled around then on Sue Thompson. “Don’t you understand? They’re taking him to jail. Because of you, Sue Thompson!”

Canby stiffened at the door. “You leave her alone, Betty. Just leave her alone.”

“I won’t leave her alone and I won’t leave Sheriff Willets alone. What’s the matter with everyone? My father’s not a murderer.” Again she turned on Sue. “He’s not! He’s a good man. You’ve got to say it, too. We’ve got to shout it out at everybody, do you hear me?”

“Betty, leave her alone,” her father repeated.

“Then get her out of here,” John Murray said, his own fury rising with his helplessness. “She sits like a bloody cat and you don’t know what’s going on in her mind…”

The sheriff cut him off. “That’s enough, John. It’s no good.” He looked at the girl. Her face was puckered up almost like an infant’s about to cry. “You can go over home now, Miss Thompson. I’ll send a deputy in to help you.”

She did not answer. Instead she seemed convulsed with the effort to cry, although there was no sound to her apparent agony. Little choking noises came then. She made no move to cover her face and, as Willets watched, the face purpled in its distortion. All of them stared at her, themselves feeling straitened with the ache of tears they could not shed. Sue’s body quivered and her face crinkled up still more, like a baby’s.

Then the sound of crying came—a high, gurgling noise—and it carried with the very timbre and rasp of an infant’s. Willets felt Phil Canby clutch his arm and he felt terror icing its way up his own spine; he heard a sick, fainting moan from Betty Murray between the girl’s spasms, but he could not take his eyes from the sight. Nor could he move to help her. Sue hammered her clenched fists on her knees helplessly. Then she tried to get up, rocking from side to side. Finally she rolled over on the couch and, her backside in the air, pushed herself up as a very small child must. Her first steps were like a toddle when she turned and tried to balance herself. Then, catching up an ashstand which chanced to stand in her way, she ran headlong at Willets with it, the infantile screams tearing from her throat…

In time it would be told that Sue Thompson reverted to the infancy she coveted at least once before her attack on Willets, rising from sleep as a child on the night of her father’s quarrel with Canby, ripping off her night clothes when she could not manage the buttons, and in a rage with her father—when, perhaps, he berated her for nudity, immodesty, or some such thing a child’s mind cannot comprehend—attacking him with a child’s fury and a frenzied adult’s strength…using the weapon at hand, Phil Canby’s wrench.

Sheriff Willets could document much of it when the sad horror had been manifest before him: the crying Mrs. Lyons heard, even the cleaning up after murder, for he had watched Canby’s grandson clean off the tray of his highchair. And he could believe she had then gone upstairs to fall asleep again and waken in the morning as Sue Thompson, nineteen years old and the happy betrothed of Phil Canby.

1954

T
HESE WERE THE MOMENTS
when it felt good to be a farmer, Jeb thought. From where he stood at the pump he could see the clean straight rows of young com, unbroken in any direction he looked. A day’s work.

He had cleared the field of thistle and he felt as though he had driven out a thousand devils.

The cat was watching him from the back porch while he filled the tub and lathered himself with soap. She smoothed the fur on her breast. “Stepping out tonight, Cindy?” Jeb said. His own mind was filled with thoughts of Ellen and the music shop, and their evening together after the shop was closed. He whipped a handful of suds to the ground and the cat leaped into it. She bristled with disappointment and stiff-legged it back to the porch.

“That was a dirty trick, Cindy. I’ll give you the real stuff in a minute.”

“She’s had her milk,” his father said from the doorway. “Supper’s on the table and there’s company waiting.”

“I’ll be right in. How does the corn look, Dad?”

The old man looked down at the field. “It’ll be choked again in a week,” he said, turning back into the house.

Jeb emptied the tub and hung it up. He wondered if, twenty years from then, he would be like his father. He was the sixth generation of Sayers farming this stubborn New England soil, and he was still washing at an outdoor pump. No, he decided, he would not be like his father. The old man fought every improvement he tried to put into the place. He still distrusted electricity. Every time there was a thunder storm, the switch had to be thrown off before he would stay indoors. And he was not much worse than the majority of people in Tinton. Jeb tickled the cat’s ear as he went up the steps. “It’s a hell of a life, Cinderella. But we’ll bring them round yet.”

The company was Nathan Wilkinson, town moderator, deacon of the church, and publisher of the oldest weekly in the state. “I won’t keep you from your supper,” he said, shaking hands. “I’ve come to tell you I’m putting you up for elder in Tinton Church, Jeb.”

“Oh,” said Jeb, looking from Mr. Wilkinson who was examining the backs of his hands to his father.

“It’s a great honor, my boy,” the deacon continued. “There’s no more than half a dozen men received it at your age in the whole history of Tinton. Your father should be mightily pleased.”

“Oh, aye,” his father said without looking up.

Jeb moistened his lips before speaking, “I feel I must decline the honor, Mr. Wilkinson…Will you have a bite with us?”