A Taste for Violence

by Brett Halliday

  Brett Halliday

  A Taste for Violence

  1

  MIDNIGHT brought a faint coolness to Centerville, Kentucky. The afternoon and early evening had been suffocatingly hot, and even the whirring ceiling fan in Charles Roche’s study did little more than stir up the somnolent, heat-laden air.

  It was a pleasant, pine-paneled study, in a modern nine-room house set on a hillside overlooking the mining town. Windows on the south and west usually caught an evening breeze, though the inhabitants of the village below were sweltering. The location had been selected for that reason, just a little to the north and some fifty-odd feet above the old Roche mansion, built in 1897, where Charles was born and reared.

  John Roche, Charles’ father, built the nine-room house for him while the young man was away at war, and at a time when building materials were practically impossible to get, and when men were demanding fantastic sums for their labor. Thus, the house had cost a great deal of money. But nothing, so John Roche had said, was too good or too costly for his eldest son. He knew that Charles and his bride wouldn’t want to move into the gloomy old mansion where he lived alone. Young married folks needed a home of their own.

  At least, that’s what John Roche was fond of saying.

  So, the old tyrant built the house just up the slope, within easy earshot of his own, and there the young couple had lived since Charles returned from North Africa in 1945.

  From the study window, Charles could look down past the dark hulk of his father’s house to the palely glimmering lights of the village at midnight. A macadam road twisted downward through lush mountain shrubbery to join the wide, paved highway below.

  Tonight, Charles Roche was working on some accounts spread out on his desk, but was unable to concentrate upon them. Frequently he arose from his chair, walked to the window and looked out, his ears attuned for the sound of an automobile laboring up the slope in second gear. But there was no such sound.

  A few minutes past midnight, he impatiently pushed the papers aside and lit a cigarette. Tossing the match into an overflowing ash tray beside him, he went again to the window and stood staring at the dark and silent road.

  Presently he compressed his lips, took a final drag on his cigarette, walked slowly back to the desk and picked up a newspaper. It was a week-old copy of the Miami Herald, and there was a front-page story captioned MICHAEL SHAYNE SCORES AGAIN, by-lined by Timothy Rourke, relating an incredible tale of murder and counterfeit rubies. He sighed deeply and settled back to reread the story for perhaps the twentieth time.

  Charles Roche was tall and blond, with warm blue eyes and a stubborn jaw. His high forehead was plastered now with small ringlets of damp hair. His fingers were long and sensitive, and they gripped the paper tightly as he read. He wore a white shirt, open at the throat, the sleeves rolled above his elbows. He looked less than his thirty years, but there were lines of worry in his mobile face, and his lips twitched nervously. He finished the story, studied the photograph of the Miami detective for a long time, then sat staring moodily into space.

  Laying the paper aside with Michael Shayne’s picture looking up at him quizzically, he drew a pad of notepaper before him. It was engraved at the top, Charles Roche, Mountaincrest Drive, Centerville, Kentucky.

  He unscrewed the cap from a fountain pen, hesitated momentarily, his eyes turning toward the window. No sound disturbed the stillness. No glow of headlights shone through the darkness. The warmth in his eyes was gone, his mouth grim, as he began to write:

  Mr. Michael Shayne,

  c/o Timothy Rourke,

  The Miami Herald,

  Miami, Florida.

  Dear Mr. Shayne:

  I don’t expect you to remember me, but I met you once in Miami, about five years ago. I have just finished reading about one of your recent cases…

  Roche stopped suddenly, his pen poised, and listened. The sound of a laboring automobile came faintly through the open window to the left of the desk. The sound came closer, then faded as the driver shifted into high gear. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head slightly. That would be Tom Grer and his wife turning off Mountaincrest Drive to their home a quarter of a mile down the slope.

  Turning back to the letter, he reread what he had written, and his upper lip curled derisively. It sounded sophomoric. He crumpled the sheet of paper and started again:

  Dear Michael Shayne:

  I need your help desperately. I’m afraid I’m going to be murdered, and I don’t know where to turn. I’ve been reading about you in the Miami Herald and I wonder if you would be interested in a case this far from your home base. I don’t want to put my suspicions down on paper, because…

  He paused, frowning. Why didn’t he put his suspicions down on paper? How could he expect a man like Shayne to be interested in the plight of a man who didn’t dare confide in him? By God, the letter sounded like the yapping of a kid afraid of the dark. The thing should be calm and factual, not melodramatic. He crumpled up the second sheet of paper and started in again:

  Dear Sir:

  I hope you will remember having met me at a party in Miami about five years ago. I have been married a little over three years, and my wife…

  Charles Roche sat back and stared with only faintly disguised horror at the four lines of his third attempt. Good God in heaven! What had he been about to say? That Elsa was…? No. He couldn’t. Not even to a private detective who might save his life. It was too monstrous, too utterly tenuous. It wasn’t the right sort of approach to Shayne.

  He frowned, recalling vaguely some of the tales he had heard about the red-headed detective. Shayne was reputed to refuse any sort of domestic cases. He was a violent man, and violence appealed to him. Also money. From somewhere in his memory Roche recalled a phrase which had been quoted as coming from Shayne: “Murder is my business.”

  That was the angle, he decided calmly. Violence, and the promise of money. He had it now. He started a fresh letter:

  Dear Mr. Shayne:

  I enclose my personal check for $5,000.00 as a retainer if you are in a position to come here immediately. Three men have been killed in Centerville in the past ten days, and I am slated to be the fourth, unless you can prevent it. I do not trust the people close to me, and the entire police force is stupid, brutal, and corrupt.

  If you find it possible to come at once, I suggest you take a room at the Moderne Hotel, Route 90 coming in from the south. It’s cool there, and outside the city limits.

  Telephone me at my home, Centerville 340, immediately upon your arrival, and speak to no one except me. Do not leave a message with your name with anyone else who may answer the phone, but keep on trying at intervals. Do not attempt to communicate with me in any other way.

  I met you five years ago at a party at Patrick Elder’s home in Miami Shores. You were drinking cognac, and I mixed some of it with my champagne at your suggestion. Perhaps you recall the incident. I have been following your career in the newspapers with interest ever since.

  I hope to God you will come at once.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Charles Roche signed his name firmly, then reread what he had written. It seemed all right. It was the best he could think of. He had been trying for days to write this letter, but hadn’t been able to devise a way of phrasing it.

  From a drawer he took out a checkbook and made out the check to Michael Shayne, tore it from the book, folded it inside the letter and placed it in an envelope. He addressed it in care of Timothy Rourke, then wrote “Urgent” and “Personal” in the lefthand corner, underscoring the words. He put an airmail and special delivery stamp on after sealing it. There was a mail plane that stopped at the Centerville airport at three o’clock. The letter should be in
Miami by early morning if he drove to the airport now and deposited it in the box there.

  He heard a car laboring up the slope in second gear. He listened acutely, feeling his pulse quicken, then hastily gathered up the crumpled beginnings of the first letters. There was a fireplace in the study, closed off for the summer by an ornamental, tin cover. He hurried across to it, the overflowing ashtray in one hand, set it down to remove the cover, dumped the cigarette butts in, followed by the sheets of paper, and set fire to them. While they burned, he went back and replaced his checkbook in the desk drawer.

  Glancing out the window, he saw twin headlights slowly coming up the slope beyond his father’s house. It sounded like Seth Gerald’s Cadillac coupe. Elsa had gone to the Country Club dance with Joe and Maisie Warren. Seth was probably there, too, and it would be natural for him to offer to drive Elsa home, thus saving Joe an extra two-mile trip and a steep climb. Seth had done it before.

  Charles didn’t mind, but he felt it was unwise for Seth to be seen at the dance. Not at a time like this, when the miners and their families had been hungry for weeks, and while there were rumors of strike-breakers being brought in. It was going to be touch-and-go for the next few days. Even such a routine as the general manager of the Roche Mines attending the Country Club dance and drinking champagne, while the miners’ wives went without food, might burst Centerville wide open. It didn’t matter so much what Elsa did. The miners forgave her, because she was a woman and a foreigner, a Bostonian. It was all right, Charles supposed, for her to go dancing, but under the existing circumstances, he had no desire to attend such occasions.

  The fire had died down. He went back to the fireplace to replace the cover. Then, suddenly, the sound of the automobile stopped.

  Snapping off the light as he went, Charles returned quickly to the window. The car had stopped down below the old Roche mansion. The night was clear and moonlit. If it had taken the sharp turn below, he could have seen the headlights and heard the heavier laboring of the motor up the steep, twisting road.

  Could he have been mistaken? Could it have been someone turning off at the intersection a quarter of a mile down the hill? He didn’t think so. He was positive it had been much closer when it stopped. Yet, he hadn’t listened too carefully, in his eagerness to burn the crumpled letters. He had taken it for granted that Seth Gerald was bringing Elsa home.

  He sighed and looked at his watch. It was only a few minutes before one o’clock. His fingers tightened on the envelope in his hand, and he put it in his hip pocket. Turning on the study light, he walked slowly around the room. Saturday night dances at the club stopped at midnight on the dot. He didn’t mind Elsa having a good time, but she knew very well he was worried when she didn’t return home promptly. He couldn’t expect her to sit around the house day and night and be bored during these times when urgent business required all his attention. Elsa had complained bitterly, and he had to admit the truth of her contention. She was young and beautiful and…

  The ominous stillness of the night irritated him. It was as though a tremendous, unseen force lurked in the narrow gorge between the two mountainsides, as he stopped, in his pacing, to stare out the window again. A force that was gathering strength, tensing itself, waiting. Not an evil force, but a malignant one. Leaning forward with both hands on the window sill, he thought the two words over carefully. Evil had to do with morals, a thing that might be offset by supplying the good things of life. It was an emotion that might be dealt with. But malignancy was a thing alive and growing and destructive, boring into the vitals, killing, bringing violence and death to the sleepy mountain village. Hadn’t the whole world had enough of killing? He didn’t see why the miners…

  Vague movement in the moonlit path caught his eye, the footpath leading between his father’s house and his. A figure walked slowly, moonlight glinting on the rhinestones in her hair and the silver sequins of her evening gown.

  He could see more clearly as she came nearer. It was Elsa, picking her way carefully on highheeled dancing slippers, swaying a little, catching now and then at the low undergrowth.

  Charles drew back from the window and leaned against the wall. He didn’t want her to think he was spying on her, but he listened for the sound of a motor starting up on the macadam road. When he didn’t hear anything, he grimly decided that her escort had swung around the circle below his father’s house, leaving his car headed down the slope before cutting the ignition and stopping to let her out. That way, he could later release the clutch and roll down silently.

  Turning out the study light, he walked through the hall and into the huge and beautifully appointed living room. John Roche had designed this room especially to set off Elsa’s dark beauty. Pale rose-and-gold stippled ceilings merged into deep aquamarine walls, complimented by the enormous jade and rose Oriental rug on the floor. Soft lights from two table lamps were too dim for reading, but Charles sank into a chair and picked up an open book which he had been reading a few hours previously. He switched on a stronger light in the lamp. The book was “A Study of History” and he had worked his way almost half through the bulky volume. He lit a cigarette and stared at the words without seeing them.

  He heard his wife come up the steps and cross the porch. He kept his eyes upon the book until the knob turned and the door was opened.

  Turning in simulated surprise, he blinked as she swayed on the threshold. He could never look at Elsa without blinking at the perfection of her beauty. She was small and slender and vitally alive. Her upper lip was sensuously short, her skin dark, and gray-green eyes seemed always molten with passion beneath her long dark lashes and perfect brows.

  She was drunk. She knew she was drunk, and gloried in the fact. Her voice was somewhat thick when she said airily, “Hi, stick-in-the-mud. Get all your work documented and filed?”

  Charles didn’t get up. He closed the book with his finger marking the page and said gravely, “Yes. I finished. It’s late, Elsa.” He hadn’t meant to say it. She hated anything that sounded in the least like a reprimand. She giggled and lurched into a chair near the door. “What of it? I’ve been having fun.”

  “Who brought you home?”

  “People.” She waved her right hand on which a diamond and emerald dinner ring gleamed.

  “I didn’t hear a car drive up.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him and let her dark head sink against the back of the chair. “You never hear anything that goes on.”

  Charles got up wearily. He wanted to shout that he wished to God she wouldn’t lie to him… that he wanted to know what was going on behind his back. Instead, he asked casually, “Was Seth at the dance?”

  “Oh, sure. Seth… and lots of people. It was fun.” She sat up, her arms extended along the chair arms and looked pensively at the toe of one frail dancing slipper she was wiggling.

  “I’m glad it was fun,” he said heavily. He laid the book on the table and went to the hall closet to get his hat. Elsa was still studying the toe of her slipper when he came back. “Now that you’re home all right, I have to go out.” He didn’t want to reprove her, but it was there, in the tone of his voice.

  She glanced up sharply. “Out? At this time of night?”

  “To look for Brand,” he told her. His hand touched the letter in his hip pocket.

  “George Brand!” A shadow of fear was in her eyes, her face tense. “Don’t be ridiculous, Charles.”

  “What’s ridiculous about it?” He was irritable now.

  “Please don’t.” There was real fear in her eyes. She was sitting forward, red-nailed fingers tightly gripping the upholstered chair arms. “Not… tonight. Please, Charles.”

  He looked at her, puzzled, then said, “I believe you do actually care, Elsa… a little.”

  “Of course I care,” she cried drunkenly. “How can you be so cruel,” but she didn’t move to go to him.

  He went to her chair and looked down into her lovely face. “There’s nothing to fear,” he reassured her. “Brand
is a sensible man, even if he is leading the strikers against us. He’s not a hot-blooded Communist like some of the other labor agitators we’ve had here and in Harlan. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t talk with him at one o’clock in the morning.”

  “Maybe not.” She sank back wearily. “I’ll have a little drink and wait up for you. You’re so brave and kind, Charles.”

  Charles reached for her hands and drew her up from the chair, close to him. The smell of liquor on her breath repelled him. He kissed her swiftly, put her aside, and went out the door to his car.

  2

  CHARLES turned on the headlights and released the emergency brake. His car rolled forward, and he kept his foot on the brake to ease it down the slope. The beams from the lights tunnelled through the green tangle of foliage in a sweeping arc that carried him past the big house below. He noted that the open double garage was empty as he glided past.

  That wasn’t strange. The house was usually dark, the garage empty, at this time of night. Jimmy lived alone in the big house, now that John Roche was dead, with only a couple of Negro servants who occupied rooms in the rear and retired early. Jimmy seldom came home before daylight. He was either drunk in the village, or he might be drunk at the Cornell woman’s house.

  There wasn’t anything to be done about Jimmy. Charles knew, for he had tried to reason with him. He was five years younger, a slender bundle of bitter frustration and angry nerves; an alcoholic who declared there was nothing to do in Centerville but fool around with females or fish, and the fishing didn’t interest him. He was determined to go to hell in his own way. He scorned the mining village because he was bound to it by the terms of John Roche’s will, and he despised the mines which provided the money he threw around so carelessly.

  When Charles thought of Jimmy he had an uncomfortable sense of inadequacy. At first he had felt guilty, but after three years of trying to reason with him he no longer censured himself for his younger brother’s predicament, but he still groped for some solution. He knew Jimmy hated him. Knew that he had taught himself to blame his elder brother for the terms of the will which required them both to stay in the Kentucky mountains near the mines where men slaved and sweltered and risked their lives every day beneath the earth’s surface. Even in death, John Roche’s unreasoning pride and unrelenting drive held them here. It was natural that their father had selected him, Charles, to be groomed to take his place as head of the Roche Mining Industries. He was much stronger physically, more serious-minded and more capable of succeeding his father.