Trial by Fury

by Craig Rice

  At last he rose and regarded the monster in the mirror with loathing.

  “A good thing you didn’t run into a photographer,” he told it. He could imagine the caption. “Malone the Merman.”

  He stripped to the skin and commenced an involved bathing process in the tiny washbowl. The clean water on his skin improved his spirits. By the time he began hunting for clean shirts and socks, he felt almost normal.

  By the time he finished tying his shoelaces he was singing a highly improvised version of “Oh, what a time I had with Minnie the mermaid—down at the bottom of the sea—”

  Helene had decided to show the world how she felt by wearing a dress that was almost flame-colored, a light, bright color of an unnamable shade. If there was such a thing as “pale red,” Malone decided, that would be it. He stood in the lobby admiring it as she came down the stairs. It was a filmy little thing, without enough decoration to put in your right eye, not a dinner dress and not a daytime dress, but something in between and indefinable, exactly the right dress to wear in Jackson, Wisconsin, on a summer evening. Her hair was sleek and smooth on her head, and coiled on the back of her neck like freshly pulled taffy. Her lips were painted a red just the barest shade darker than the dress.

  He hoped that they were being noticed as he led her into the dining room of the General Andrew Jackson House.

  “Malone, it’s funny he didn’t leave a note,” she said as she sat down at one of the tables.

  “Who?” He was looking at the menu.

  “Jake. Of course.”

  Malone said, “Maybe he’d forgotten you knew how to read. Pay attention to your dinner.”

  The General Andrew Jackson House offered a choice of roast beef, roast pork, pork chops, and liver and bacon. Malone muttered something about people who came to the country in hopes of finding good food, and worried through the meal with the help of beer brought at ten-minute intervals from the bar.

  Jerry Luckstone was waiting for them in the lobby by the time they had finished.

  “I got the order to open up the grave,” he said in a low voice. “But you’ve got to come along.” He looked anxious. “I don’t know what’s going to happen if you’re wrong.”

  “I’m never wrong,” Malone said matter-or-factly. He glanced at Helene, pictured her left alone in the hotel to think about Jake. “You don’t mind if she joins us, do you?”

  Jerry Luckstone glanced at him, understood what Malone meant, and said, “No, of course not. Come along, my car’s outside.”

  Helene ran upstairs to get a wrap. While she was gone Jerry Luckstone fidgeted for a minute, looking at Malone out of the corner of one eye.

  “I’m not going to ask any questions,” he said at last, “I’m just assuming that you know what you’re doing.”

  Malone sighed. “I do. I’m going to find your murderer for you. And not,” he added, “for the sake of justice. I just want to make sure Jake doesn’t have a murder rap hanging over him when we find him.” He emphasized the “when.”

  Jerry Luckstone frowned. “There hasn’t been any word about him, not from anywhere.”

  “I know it,” Malone said. He heard Helene’s heels on the stairs. “We’ll talk about that later.”

  The sun had gone down, and the twilight had begun to create strange little purple caves under the elm trees by the time they reached the Jackson Riverside Cemetery, an over-landscaped patch of ground on the outskirts of town. Jerry Luckstone parked his sedan halfway up one of the drives, and they walked on up a short rise. It was very shadowy and very still.

  There was a small group waiting for them: Charlie Hausen and several of his assistants, Sheriff Kling and his deputy, Joe Ryan, and the cemetery’s caretaker, a cheerful, toothless individual who turned out to be Buttonholes’ brother.

  Sheriff Kling scowled by way of greeting. “Have you any idea of what you expect to find?”

  “I think so,” Jerry Luckstone said confidently. His brow was deeply furrowed.

  The sheriff shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it’s your funeral.” He grinned broadly. “Or vice versa.”

  Charlie Hausen blew his nose loudly, and tucked a large blue handkerchief into his back pants pocket. “All right, boys,” he said briskly. “Dig.”

  Malone yawned and looked away, to inspect a small, neat granite headstone just above the field of operations:

  HAROLD MCGOWAN

  b 1869d 1937

  Jerry Luckstone was looking at it too. He touched the little lawyer on the arm.

  “Malone, there’s something wrong. 1937 was only four years ago. Presumably Ellen McGowan started her embezzlement on her father’s death. But”—he paused, figured a minute—“if she started appropriating money six years ago—”

  “That discrepancy in dates,” Malone said shortly, “is what convinced me I was right.” He refused to say anything more, but stood looking critically at the polished granite stone. It was refined, all right, but entirely too small and too plain for his taste. He preferred something really nice, with angels and sheltering wings and doves.

  The old marble stone near it was more to his liking, showing a decorative pair of clasped hands and a drooping rose, the latter beginning to disappear under the wear and tear of the elements. He stooped down to examine the inscription.

  LUCIUS MCGOWAN

  b Jackson Wis 1840

  d Jackson Wis 1887

  R. I. P.

  Next to it was another, similar one. This one did have a dove carved just under its arch. Malone admired it for a moment.

  WATCHFUL MCGOWAN

  b Elmira N Y 1841

  d Jackson Wis 1870

  Fond wife of Lucius, loving

  mother of Harold M

  Harold was evidently a motherless child, Malone reflected. Not even a stepmother, as far as he could see. There was no stone indicating that Lucius McGowan had taken a second wife. In fact—he counted rapidly on his fingers— Ellen McGowan’s father had been left an orphan at the age of eighteen.

  Helene had found another, older stone, and was trying to make out its well-worn inscription in the gathering dusk. Malone knelt beside her and lighted a match.

  AILANTHUS MCGOWAN

  b Burlington Vt 1817

  d Antietam 1862

  There were some words, almost entirely obliterated, having to do with honor and glory.

  A change in the sounds just back of him made him wheel around. A great pile of sod had been accumulated by the driveway, and Charlie Hausen’s assistants were beginning to hoist the coffin out of its grave.

  “Lift ’er out, boys,” Charlie Hausen said. A moment later he added, “I told you those plated coffins wouldn’t ever rust,” with professional pride.

  “There’s something in there, though, all right,” one of the assistants said, puffing. “It’s not so heavy, but I can tell.”

  Jerry Luckstone frowned and looked anxiously at Malone.

  “Open it up,” the little lawyer said hoarsely.

  There was a hideous, wrenching sound as the lid of the coffin was pried open. Helene put her hands over her ears and looked away.

  For just a moment, Malone didn’t dare look. He heard Charlie’s assistant say triumphantly, “There, I told you so. Told you it wasn’t empty.”

  He opened his eyes. There was a skeleton inside the coffin.

  Charlie Hausen and Sheriff Kling had turned accusingly to the young district attorney. “Well, Jerry,” the sheriff began in an ominously quiet tone.

  “Just a minute,” Malone said. He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice, but it bubbled up in spite of himself. “Just a minute.” He looked thoughtfully into the open coffin. “In the first place, that body was never embalmed.”

  “That’s right,” Charlie Hausen said slowly. After a moment he said, “Well, it isn’t my fault. He was shipped here from California and we never opened it up. Held the services in Ellie McGowan’s house, with the coffin closed.” He blew his nose again. “Just the same though, he’s
there.”

  “Oh no he isn’t,” Malone said very quietly. “That isn’t Ellen McGowan’s father. Because, whoever it is, that’s the skeleton of a woman!”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dr. Spain confirmed Malone’s pronouncement. “Darned funny business,” he said, “but I remember a case up near Two Rivers where a man and his wife were—”

  Malone never heard the rest of the story. He’d had another thought. There was something Henry Peveley had said to him that night in the Hermitage Tavern—!

  He announced his theory to Jerry Luckstone, who promptly sent for the high-school physiology teacher to come to Hausen’s Undertaking Parlor.

  The physiology teacher identified the skeleton as the one that had been stolen from the high school four years before. He knew it by the initials Arthur Wilks had carved on the right clavicle, back in ’28.

  Jerry Luckstone sat down heavily on one of Charlie Hausen’s folding chairs, waited till Dr. Spain and the high-school teacher had gone, and said helplessly to Malone, “But why? Why would anyone steal a skeleton from the high school, and bury it in Harold McGowan’s grave?”

  Malone wondered if it was etiquette to light a cigar in a small-town undertaking parlor. He decided that it was. “Why?” he repeated. “Because Ellen McGowan was afraid some question might arise sometime in the future, and there might be a disinterment. She didn’t know that anyone could tell the body had never been embalmed, and she didn’t remember that a female skeleton looked any different from a male one. All she knew was that there was a skeleton in the high-school building.”

  “You mean,” Sheriff Kling said stupidly, “you mean she put it there?”

  Malone looked at the sheriff and then at Jerry Luckstone. “He isn’t very bright, is he?”

  “Well God damn it,” the sheriff said, his neck reddening, “why didn’t she put her own pa’s body in his grave, since he was dead?”

  Everybody looked expectantly at Malone.

  “Because,” the little lawyer said, looking at his cigar, “she couldn’t get it out from under the concrete floor in her basement.” He added wearily, “I suspect we’d better get Ellen McGowan’s brother in and talk to him.”

  He refused to make any more explanations in the meantime. However, he did agree with Jerry Luckstone that the basement floor in the McGowan house had better be investigated, and at once.

  For a long hour he sat with Helene, Jerry Luckstone, the sheriff, and Charlie Hausen in the old New England parlor of the house where Ellen McGowan had lived since her birth, forty-six years before. The sound of pickaxes rang from the cellar below, and occasional voices of workmen.

  No one said very much. The deputy sheriff had driven out to Luke McGowan’s farm to get him. By some miracle the reporters had not discovered yet that anything was going on. For this little while, there was peace.

  However, it was an uneasy peace. Helene sat turning over the pages of a woman’s magazine, without looking at them, her dress like a spot of flame in the shadowy room. Sheriff Kling and Charlie Hausen sat talking in low tones about the proper procedure to follow in case Malone was right about what lay under the concrete floor of Ellen McGowan’s basement. Jerry Luckstone was silent, looking at Malone out of the corner of one eye, with almost a kind of superstitious awe. And Malone just sat and worried.

  Once the lawyer rose, went to the telephone, and called Dr. Spain. He wanted to know the exact state of Harold McGowan’s health before he presumably went to California.

  “Bad heart,” the doctor said. “Very bad heart. Might have gone like—that, anytime.” Malone could visualize him snapping his fingers. “Or he might have lived for twenty years.” He went on to cite two cases he knew of that had lived for twenty years, before Malone could stop him.

  Shortly before the deputy arrived with Luke McGowan, the young district attorney could hold back his questions no longer.

  “She didn’t murder him, did she?”

  “No,” Malone said. “No, she didn’t murder him.” That was all he would say.

  A few minutes later Joe Ryan came back with the awkward, gangling, sunburned man Malone recognized as Luke McGowan.

  Evidently the deputy had told him nothing. The big farmer stood still for a moment in the middle of the floor, listening to the unmistakable sounds from the basement below, turning white under his tan.

  “You aren’t” —he began, and stopped. “You can’t—” He shut his lips firmly, as though he’d resolved not to say another word.

  “Now look here, Luke,” Sheriff Kling began in an officious tone.

  Malone held up his hand. “Just a minute, Mr. Kling.” He paused and looked around the room. “If we go through a procedure of questioning Mr. McGowan here, it’s going to take us all night. There aren’t any questions we need answered anyway. At least there aren’t any I don’t know the answers to. So I’m just going to tell you what did happen, and Mr. McGowan can tell you if I make any mistakes.”

  “He’s right, Marv,” Jerry Luckstone said.

  Charlie Hausen nodded briefly.

  Malone paused to mop his brow and look around him uncomfortably. This was the first room he’d been in where he was sure he shouldn’t light a cigar.

  “Ellen McGowan’s father had a bad heart,” he began slowly. “He knew it because he’d seen Doc Spain. The chances are his daughter knew it too; they were pretty close.”

  He paused again, glancing quickly at Luke McGowan. The farmer’s face was impassive.

  “Maybe he planned to go to California for his health. Maybe he didn’t. I don’t know. I just know these two things.

  He was short about twenty thousand dollars in his accounts. Before anything could be done about it, he dropped dead.”

  There was an uneasy little stir in the room.

  “You’re guessing,” Sheriff Kling said.

  “Sure I’m guessing,” the lawyer told him. “If you can make a better guess, go to it.” There seemed to be a different tone to the sound of the pickaxes from the floor below. “I was guessing when I told Jerry here to have that grave opened up, too.”

  He looked to see what effect this pronouncement would have on Luke McGowan. The big man was frowning in a dazed way, looking from one to another in the room.

  “He dropped dead,” Malone repeated tersely. “Doc Spain just told me it might have happened at any time. If the news of his death had been made public, his accounts would have had to be balanced. The shortage would have appeared, and everybody in the world would have said he’d embezzled county funds to play the market. Everybody except Ellen McGowan.”

  Malone turned slightly so that he couldn’t see Luke McGowan’s face any more.

  “She was a proud woman,” he said. He took a cigar out of his pocket, looked at it lovingly, and put it back again. “And she worshiped her father. There must have been some pretty terrible hours while she decided what to do. Finally she went for her brother Luke, and they buried their father’s body in the basement, and a few days later Luke laid a concrete floor over it.”

  The sound of pickaxes had ceased now and there was another sound, a strange, rasping one.

  “Ellen McGowan got away with the fiction of his having gone out to California,” Malone said. “And in the time he was supposed to be there, she appropriated—let’s not say embezzled—enough money from the Farmers’ Bank to wipe out the shortage in his accounts. Then—knowing she couldn’t keep up the fiction indefinitely—she announced his death, out in California. Still, there was the danger that even if she arranged to have an empty coffin sent from California, and saw to its burial here, someone sometime might begin asking questions and investigating. She remembered the skeleton in the high-school anatomy class—” Malone wheeled around like a top to face Luke McGowan. “Did she steal it from the high school or did you?”

  “I did,” Luke McGowan said almost automatically.

  There was a moment of absolutely dead silence in the room.

  “There you are,”
the little lawyer said, mopping his brow. He looked accusingly at Luke. “And if you hadn’t blabbed the whole story to Cora Belle Fromm one night when you were full of gin, she’d be alive today.”

  Luke McGowan dropped his eyes. “I didn’t know anything would happen to her if I told her. I didn’t mean her no harm.”

  “If,” Malone began, and stopped suddenly. It was as though a blinding flash had suddenly gone off in his brain. Cora Belle had learned the story. The Farmers’ Bank belonged to Senator Peveley. Cora Belle had done the Senator a “great service” for which he’d made a will leaving her half his estate. The Senator had gone around being angry for a week. He’d had a book of the school-fund records in his office the day of his death. He’d come over to the courthouse in a rage, and he’d been killed by someone who knew he was going to be there.

  “What is it?” Jerry Luckstone asked anxiously.

  “Nothing,” Malone lied. Someone knew he was going to be there, and hid in the broom closet at the top of the little staircase, waiting for him.

  But there was more to it than that. There was something else. And he didn’t know what it was.

  There were heavy footsteps on the cellar stairs. A voice said, “I guess you better come down here.”

  Malone turned to Helene. “Don’t you dare go down those stairs. You wait right here.”

  He led Jerry Luckstone, Sheriff Kling, and Charlie Hausen through the door to the stairs. Luke McGowan looked toward the door and shook his head, the deputy sheriff stayed behind, watching him.

  A few minutes later Malone returned, wiping great beads of perspiration from his brow. His face was very white.

  “Well, I was right,” he said.

  The other three men came into the room close behind him.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Charlie Hausen said, shaking his head admiringly.

  Sheriff Kling scratched behind one ear. “Then I guess the Senator found out about it and she killed him, and she must of blew up the bank to get rid of those records, and then Cora Belle—”