The Dark Farewell (4 page)
Flynn walked briskly, lost in thought, and eventually he reached the boarding house. He let himself
inside the airless house with the key Amy had given him and went quietly upstairs.
It was still uncomfortably warm in the room above the breezeway, a hot, still night. The crickets
chirped merrily and in the distance a dog was howling. Flynn undressed and stretched out on the cotton bedcover. He closed his eyes.
He heard the clickity-clack of the train wheels again, miles and miles of it, and soon he drifted into dreamless sleep, leaving images behind like smoke from a train: bloodied miners, white-sheeted klansmen, and a slim dark man in the rich costume of a doomed aristocrat.
20
Chapter Three
Thursday Flynn woke to the sound of voices.
He opened his eyes and blinked at the glare of bright sunlight on wallpaper. It took him a few seconds to place himself, to remember that he was in Herrin, in his old room at Gus and Amy’s.
He winced, remembering the things Julian Devereux had said during his show at the Opera House the
evening before.
David, Gus says you must not waste time on regret. He is happy that you are here. Your presence will
make a difference in the days to come.
Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to punch that wiseacre in his wide, smirking mouth.
But he had to give Devereux credit. He was good at reading people, good at ferreting out the truths people tried to hide even from themselves. In that sense he was like a smart investigative reporter, but he used his skill for making fools of others rather than educating them with the truth.
Flynn rose and went to the window, gazing down. He could see the breezeway below and the striped
awning of the old swing as it rocked gently. Someone was sitting in the swing: he could see a flannel-clad bent knee and the flash of smooth brown arm as the swing moved in and out of sunlight. A radio played noisily through the kitchen window.
Flynn went next door and had a quick bath using three pots of water, two hot and one cold. The day
was already hot and by the time he’d shaved and dressed he was nearly as sweaty as when he began, but he smelled more civilized.
At breakfast it was Flynn, Mrs. Hoyt and Joan.
Joan was talking about the murders in Jackson County, although she broke off when Flynn entered the
dining room.
“Publishers make things up to sell more papers, isn’t that true, Mr. Flynn?” Mrs. Hoyt inquired.
Flynn shook his napkin out and said, “Respectable publishers don’t.”
Mrs. Hoyt’s expression indicated she believed the respectable publisher to be right up there with the dodo bird.
Joan, keeping her voice down as though afraid of being overheard, said, “The papers say that the
bodies of the women were prepared as though for Egyptian burial. Do you suppose that means they were wrapped like mummies?”
Josh Lanyon
According to Flynn’s pal in the AP the women had been left naked, their bodies crudely carved up,
their internals organs wrapped in linen bandages and left in mason jars like the hearts, lungs and kidneys of ancient pharaohs had been placed in canopic vases for burial. Of course that could be a rumor, and even if it wasn’t, Flynn wasn’t about to share it with the ladies over breakfast.
Mrs. Hoyt said in shocked tones, “
Joan
.”
Joan turned scarlet and explained, “I enjoy murder mysteries.”
Mrs. Hoyt was shaking her head at her unnatural offspring. Flynn smiled at Joan. She blushed more.
“I suppose you’ve covered a few murder cases in your time, Mr. Flynn?” That was Mrs. Hoyt again.
“A few.” To Joan, he said apologetically, “They’re mostly sad, sordid affairs. Not like the things you read in books. Most murderers aren’t that smart. If they get away with it, it’s more luck than anything.”
“That’s what Julian says.”
“Julian?”
“Mr. Devereux. I suggested that perhaps he could use his talents to help the police like they say Mr.
Edgar Cayce has done.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said that the spirits didn’t like to get involved in such sad, sordid affairs. Those were his exact words. That the spirits came to us to teach us about how to live better lives so that we can safely reach the blessed hereafter.”
“Did he?” Flynn said dryly.
Amy came out of the kitchen with a great platter of pancakes. She had always been a wonderful cook,
although she employed a woman to help her now. It had interested and surprised Flynn, the relationship between Amy and Gus. Gus had been a New York intellectual and radical. Amy was…the salt of the earth.
Not the kind of woman anyone would have pegged for Gus. Maybe it was true about opposites attracting.
Amy and Gus had seemed as happy as two people could be with each other. Not that Flynn was an expert on such things.
“Did you have a nice time last night?” Amy asked Flynn, forking a stack onto his plate.
Flynn nodded. “It was educational. I caught part of young Julian’s show at the Opera House.”
“Oh my.”
Joan caught her breath and said, “I want to see Julian’s show. Mama doesn’t approve of spiritualists.”
“You’re not missing anything.” Catching their expressions, Flynn qualified, “I guess I’m not much for spiritualism myself.”
Amy said quietly, “There’s talk that he foretold the death of a member of the audience.”
“No.” Reluctantly Flynn added, “It seemed like he might have foretold the death of a woman’s
husband.” He shrugged as the ladies gasped.
“It’s the devil’s work,” Mrs. Hoyt exclaimed.
22
The Dark Farewell
“But what if it’s true?” Joan asked.
“There are things we’re not meant to know.”
Flynn devoted his attention to his pancakes. He wondered why Joan wasn’t married and starting a
family of her own. But the war had probably put paid to a lot of women’s hopes for that. Over a hundred thousand dead American soldiers meant a hundred thousand fewer husbands and sweethearts.
“Where
is
The Magnificent Belloc?” he asked abruptly.
“Julian doesn’t eat breakfast. He can’t the morning after a performance.”
Joan seemed to know an awful lot about Julian, given he and gramps couldn’t have been staying at the boarding house long. If she was sweet on Julian, that really was a shame.
Flynn raised polite eyebrows, and she continued, “Mr. Devereux rarely rises before noon. And Dr.
Pearson is always away by this time of the morning.”
“That’s because he’s the only doctor in this county who knows his business,” Mrs. Hoyt said briskly.
“I don’t hold with those boys fresh out of the university. I don’t like a doctor younger than me.”
“Now, Mrs. Hoyt,” Amy said briskly, “that young Dr. Anson in Carbondale is very pleasant and very
knowledgeable.”
Mrs. Hoyt was unswayed, and Flynn went back to eating his pancakes and trying not to listen to them.
He had a lot planned for the day. He wanted to hurry and finish this story; he could no longer remember why he thought traveling to Illinois was a good idea. Murders and mystics…
When breakfast was over, Flynn nodded goodbye to the ladies and walked out to the breezeway to
have a smoke.
Most of the houses in town were single story, designed with a front porch where people could sit on
their swings in warm weather, fan themselves and say unkind things about their neighbors in relative comfort. The boarding house swing was at the west end of the breezeway making it a shady and fairly
pleasant place to sit in the hot afternoon. Cream-pink roses wound up the walls of the arbor.
Julian Devereux sat idle in the swing. He looked up at Flynn’s approach and offered that sly smile.
“Good morning.”
Flynn nodded curtly. He leaned against the wall and lit his cigarette, studying the younger man with a level eye.
“Did you enjoy the show last night?”
“Not particularly.”
Julian chuckled. “Why not? I heard I was very good.”
Flynn said evenly, “You want to know what I thought? I thought—think—you’re a two-bit four-
flusher in fancy dress. You winkle out people’s deepest, most treasured feelings and you use that
knowledge to take advantage of them.”
23
Josh Lanyon
“No, I don’t,” Julian said calmly. “I give them hope. And reassurance.”
“Hope and reassurance? Is that what you were feeding that woman last night when you hinted her
husband was dead?”
Julian’s smile faded. He stared out at the street where two women were strolling along with shopping bags. “I don’t remember that.”
“I bet everyone else does.”
Julian raised a negligent shoulder. Flynn puffed on his cigarette and eyed the younger man’s sharp
profile.
“I notice you don’t deny it’s all a bunch of hocus-pocus.”
Julian’s dark, wide gaze turned his way again. He said mockingly, “Deny it to a smart big-city
reporter like
you,
David?”
“Why did you tell that woman her husband was dead?”
“I told you I don’t remember that.” He sounded mildly irritated.
“That’s convenient. How long have you been in this racket?”
Julian smiled with sudden disarming sweetness. “Oh, I come by my trade honestly. I was, as they say, born in a trunk. The only offspring of Count Amadeus and Zaliki the Seer. In fact…” his voice dropped for apparent dramatic effect, “…my mother foresaw my father’s death during her final performance.”
Flynn’s smile was sardonic. “The Astral Plane by Louisiana way?”
Julian cocked his head inquiringly. “I’d think with the things you must have seen in the war you’d
want to believe there was something more, something better waiting for us.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
Julian continued to stare at him with an intensity that made Flynn uncomfortable.
“What was that book in your luggage?” he asked unexpectedly.
“You saw it,” Flynn said shortly.
“I saw you turn white.”
“I don’t like people going through my things.”
“You don’t like people.” Julian was smiling again. “You’d rather write about them, turn them into
characters like in a book, than have to deal with flesh and blood.”
Flynn dropped his cigarette on the walkway and ground it with his heel. “You better stick to
fortunetelling and leave the psychoanalyzing to the experts.”
Julian’s laugh was suggestive. “I’ll tell
your
fortune if you like, David.”
It irked Flynn the way the pansy kept saying his name,
David
, with that certain knowing intimacy. He had no right to take that tone. He didn’t let his irritation show as he replied, “I thought spiritualists didn’t predict the future.”
“I’ll make an exception in your case.”
24
The Dark Farewell
“Thanks. I’ll work it out for myself.”
Julian said quite seriously, “All right. But don’t take too long, will you?”
Flynn gave a dismissing laugh and walked away. He was annoyed with himself for going out to the
breezeway in the first place. He’d had a pretty good idea Julian was sitting out there, but as much as he disliked the other man, he’d headed straight out there after breakfast. It was peculiar. He understood part of the uneasy draw. He and Julian did have one thing in common, but that only made it worse. Julian was the kind of twilight lover that embarrassed men like Flynn. It was only when he saw sissies and pansies like Julian that he felt ashamed of what he was.
The Hoyt mother and daughter were back in the parlor when Flynn grabbed his coat and hat and left
for the soft drink parlor and pool hall. With Amy’s permission he borrowed Gus’s Model T and drove into the center of town rather than walking in the bright shimmering heat.
Milo’s place looked exactly like it was: a rundown old pool hall. Flynn walked down a narrow
hallway dividing a small office from a storeroom. A scrawny, squint-eyed man sat in the office, watching the back entrance. A well-chewed cigar was clamped between his teeth and a double-barreled shotgun lay on the big desk in front of him.
Beyond the office was another room with two card tables and a door on each end leading to the front.
The right door led to a couple of beat-out pool tables set off from the bar by a five-foot curtain divider.
Two men lackadaisically knocked colored balls around with pool cues and cursed each other amiably. The left door opened on the front of the soft drink parlor. The tall wooden bar was scuffed and battered but someone had made it their business to keep it and the tall stools before it well-polished and gleaming.
The bartender was a Hungarian named Earl. He asked what soft drink Flynn wanted, and Flynn
ordered a Dr. Pepper. The Dr. Pepper turned out to be half a soft drink bottle full of fine Canadian whisky.
He drank it and ate salty Georgia peanuts while he talked to the natives. For a bloodthirsty lot they were surprisingly good-natured and frank.
“People around here are sick and tired of Williamson County being called Bloody Williamson,” said a
man the others referred to as Monty. “We’re sick of being called murdering hillbillies by newspapers all over the country.”
“Twenty-one men dead, two trials, and not one conviction,” Flynn pointed out.
“That should tell you something right there.”
It did, but apparently not the same thing it told the gentlemen of Herrin.
“I tell you what I feel bad about,” said a man with a long scar down the side of his face. “I feel bad that W.J. Lester didn’t get what his boys got.”
The other men gave him warning looks, but he ignored them. “Hell, this is the strongest union area in the entire country, but Ole King Coal thinks to hell with that and he brings in a bunch of scabs, mine-