by Basil Copper
I decided that maybe the rate was worth it. I carried my bag into the bedroom, put down the key on the bedside table and took off my raincoat. I found some wooden pegs in the hall and hung it up. I smoked a cigarette while I ran the bath. It was around nine by now. Then I sat in the bath and sang to myself and forgot about the night and the rain and the job.
It wasn’t yet ten, the rain had stopped and I was just finishing my second Scotch on the rocks. I annihilated the steak and salad, finished off with apple-pie, whipped cream and black coffee. I decided I liked it at Mr Grunwohl’s Motel. I left the waiter enough money for his car-fare home and went over to the bar for a package of cigarettes.
‘Which way’s Mudville?’ I asked the bar-tender as I came away. He grinned and pointed down beyond the chain of lights which showed through the window. ‘About a mile and a half,’ he said. ‘You can’t miss it. It’s the only high-life we got around here.’
I thanked him and went on out. I walked back past Grunwohl’s office, got my raincoat from my cabin, put it on and drove back out of the lot. The bar-tender hadn’t exaggerated. After a few minutes on a tolerably smooth tarmac road I saw the lights of the main street.
There was a white board set at an angle to the road. I stopped the car to read it. It said in bold black letters; MUDVILLE. Population: 6,000. And underneath it: THE FRIENDLIEST TOWN IN THE WORLD. Whoever thought that up had a good sense of humour. Then I re-started the motor and drove on. It looked like the sort of town that went with Carmen Benson’s face. But it was bigger than I thought. And I was wrong in one respect. There were two main streets, with cross alleys connecting them. Nobody moved on the sidewalks as I went through. It was Johnstown again on a smaller scale. I got through the place in about a minute flat which gives an idea of its size.
Even so there was a cinema and two biggish hotels. I figured I’d seen enough. I didn’t want to spoil the place for next day. When I got out of town I came to a crossroads and reversed. When the lights of the town came up again, I tried the other street, just for the hell of it. It may or may not have been a good thing but it was certainly my style.
I was sneaking quietly along minding my own business when I spotted something that made me put the brake on. I stopped the Buick, turned around again and came back. A familiar black shape was parked about fifty yards up a road called Cherry Drive. There were large bungalows set back behind tall hedges and groves of dwarf trees. No lights showed in the houses. I stopped the car at the end of the road and walked up. No reason really, except that I’m naturally curious. The Bugatti was parked with its wheels up on the low sidewalk, opposite a thick hedge. It was one of those new, re-built jobs that are all the rage now. There were no houses for two hundred yards in either direction.
That was unusual in itself. Unless the driver had gone to one of the bungalows opposite. But another blank hedge faced the road on that side and the nearest house entrances were farther down. I went round to the front of the Bugatti. There couldn’t be two like it in the same neighbourhood. I felt the front of the radiator. Heat was still coming out of the grille. When I walked back along the nearside I saw the figure sitting in it. I was about to speak when I felt the old familiar sensation begin round about the base of my spine.
The driver was sitting jammed up against the door, his body unnaturally hunched. I got the door open quickly and a large, wet bundle fell against me. Something metallic and hooked tinkled down on the sidewalk. It was smeared and clotted with a substance that looked red even in the distant light of the street lamps.
Mr Nelson Holgren, if he was the licence holder named on the windscreen, hadn’t died peacefully. Something had torn and hacked away the top of his skull. His silver hair was overlaid with carmine gouts and gashes and bone gleamed whitely. Scarlet ran out of his nose and mouth and caked on the front of his raincoat. His hands were spread out like claws on the steering wheel. He came out very slowly and gracefully from the Bugatti and hit the dirt.
Chapter 3
A Case for Sheriff Clark
I looked up and down the road. The scratching went away from my spine. Nothing moved except the shadows of the trees on the wet shine of the road. I couldn’t lift the corpse back into the car without making a mess. But I carefully picked up the metal gadget, holding the end of it with the skirt of my raincoat. I wrapped it in my handkerchief. I intended to be away for only a short time but it might rain again any minute and it wouldn’t do the finger-prints any good. If there were any.
Then I hot-footed it back to the main road. I had to get some law in pretty quickly before someone came along. And the person or persons who disliked Mr Holgren so much couldn’t be far away. I turned around and drove quickly back into the more brightly lit part of town. I could see faint flecks of rain beginning to star the windscreen as I drove. I stopped at the first lit drug-store I came to. The small bald man behind the counter looked at me curiously. In the corner a group of youngsters in jeans and T-shirts gyrated round a shrieking jukebox.
He jerked his thumb vaguely out of the window. ‘Go down two blocks the way you’re facing. Tom Clark’s office is in the square.’
I thanked him and went out. When I got to the place he said it was raining quite a spat; I was glad I’d kept the pick on the seat by my side. The square was quite a big one. It was lit by a cluster of white-globed lamps atop a fountain. The water was still going, even at this time of night. An oblong panel of light spelt out Sheriff’s Office on one side.
I stopped opposite a carefully tended strip of lawn and went up a concrete path carrying my bundle. There was a round lamp of frosted glass over the front porch which cast a white radiance over the entrance steps. I went up the short flight. I went on in down a dim hall floored with linoleum speckled to look like black marble. The place was clean and well kept. The air smelt of warm soap and lysol.
There was a row of brown mahogany doors on one side of the corridor. A typewriter sounded from behind one of them. The third door on the right was the Sheriff’s office. A thin sliver of light spilled from under it. I knocked once and walked in. It was a big office. A large man in a khaki shirt and well-pressed pants sat under an oak-cased wall clock and tickled the typewriter. I wasn’t interested in him. Sheriff Clark sat behind an oak railing at a six by four desk that looked like it had some use, and fooled with some papers.
He was fairly tall, rangily built and had a tanned face that looked like you could trust it. He was smartly turned out as town sheriffs go in this neck of the woods. He wore a khaki shirt with a khaki tie to match under a shiny leather windcheater. It was unzipped nearly to the waist and his tin star gleamed dully on his shirt-front. It was the only distinctive thing about him; the rest of his appearance was neutral from his grey eyes to his pale brown pants and dark tan shoes. The butt of a revolver showed from a worn leather holster hooked over a Neanderthal hat-stand on one side of the room. He didn’t look up as I came through the door.
‘I’d be obliged if you’d shut it behind you,’ he said mildly, turning over a sheet of paper. ‘Kinda draughty this time of year.’
He reached out with one foot, hooked an old caneback chair, slid it across the railing and hefted it up to me.
‘Rest up a little. I’ll be right with you.’
I picked up the chair, set it down and lowered myself on to it. The man in the corner kept pounding the typewriter, an old-fashioned, round-bellied stove hissed to itself in a prim manner and the wall clock ticked on. I sat and studied a calendar advertising farm tractors, that was two years out of date. Clark finished fussing with the waste paper, pushed his chair back and took an old briar pipe out of his pocket. He studied me carefully as he filled it from an oilskin pouch.
‘I can do something for you?’
I leaned over and pushed my licence across his desk. He flicked it with his finger and examined it warily. He closed his eyes and then pushed it back to me.
‘We don’t have any trouble in this town, Mr Faraday.’
‘You got som
e now,’ I told him. He went on filling his pipe. ‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning that this isn’t quite the friendly place you thought it was,’ I said. ‘Guy in a car up the street. Someone re-arranged his skull with an ice-pick.’
I put down my handkerchief on the desk in front of him and opened it up. The typing in my rear stopped abruptly. Clark paused in tamping his pipe with his thumb but otherwise my information seemed about as exciting to him like I had told him I didn’t like coffee creams after dinner. Clark looked at the ice-pick as though he expected the killer’s name to be stencilled on it.
‘Know who the party was?’ he said quietly.
‘I’m a stranger here myself,’ I said. ‘Name on the wind-screen licence holder was Nelson Holgren if that means anything to you.’
Clark slowly lit his pipe with a match he struck on the corner of the desk. He screwed up his face like he was in pain as he drew on the stem.
‘Could,’ he said, ‘but I’ll ask the questions if you don’t mind.’
‘Suit yourself,’ I said. ‘I just thought you might be interested.’
He got up and went over to the hat-stand. He started buckling on the holster.
‘Guess we’ll go have a look-see,’ he said. ‘Stand by the office, Macklehenny.’ He adjusted the buckle of his belt and reached in the drawer of his desk. He re-wrapped the pick and put it away.
‘What’s your business here, Mr Faraday? Or are you just passing through?’
‘I came up about the Benson girl,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘It figures. Guess we’ll be seeing a lot of one another.’
He threw a bunch of keys at the back of his deputy. He didn’t turn but a beefy hand stretched over his shoulder and plucked them out of the air. Then the typing resumed. We went out of the office and along the corridor.
‘You got a car?’ he said. I nodded.
‘Then we’ll take your heap,’ he said. ‘I have to justify my expenses if I cross the road for a soda. And the Town Council mightn’t figure murder was important enough.’
We got in the Buick and I turned around in the square and headed back the way I came.
‘Cherry Drive,’ I said.
He grunted. His pipe made a small glow, lighting his face in the darkness of the car. The rain had started again and I switched on the wipers. I got to the Cherry Drive turning and stopped. I set the handbrake and we got out. Sheriff Clark turned up the collar of his windcheater and zipped it. He had a flashlight in one hand; I noticed his right rested on the butt of the gun. We walked lightly and easily round the turning, our footsteps covered by the thin sound of falling rain. The road was empty. I looked at my watch. I had been away precisely twelve minutes. Long enough for someone though.
The Sheriff looked at me hard.
‘You sure you got the right road …’ he began.
‘It was here,’ I said.
We walked on until I was opposite the spot where I judged the Bugatti had been stationed. The Sheriff left me and went over the ground with his flashlight. The sound of falling rain made a melancholy noise on the leaves of the trees in the darkness. He finished up and grunted again. Then his revolver was suddenly out and at my belly.
‘You carry a gun, Mr Faraday?’
He put the torch on my face. His hand came and expertly relieved me of the Smith-Wesson. I buttoned up my raincoat and we walked back to the end of the road. He kept right behind me.
‘We’ll go talk this over at the office,’ he said.
‘I don’t blame you,’ I said without bitterness.
We got in the Buick and I drove back.
Sheriff Clark sat forward in his chair and put down the phone. ‘You’d better run this pick into Johnstown first thing in the morning, Macklehenny,’ he said. ‘The lab’s usually open by eight.’
I heard the deputy sigh behind me and then he started pounding the typewriter again. He hit it like he had a rock in each fist. The clock on the wall behind me said a little after midnight.
‘I’d like my gun back if you don’t mind,’ I said for the third time in the last hour. Clark fingered the drawer where he’d placed it.
‘You’re not in the clear yet, Mr Faraday.’
‘We’ve been through all that,’ I said.
‘All the same we had a nice quiet town here until you hit it,’ he said.
‘Have some sense,’ I told him. ‘If I wanted to beat somebody’s brains out would I leave him by the side of the road, drive here to report it and bring in the murder weapon as well? Sounds likely, doesn’t it?’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ said Macklehenny, in a muffled voice. It was the first time he had spoken. ‘You get on with your reports, Charlie,’ said Clark without heat. ‘I’ll do the thinking around here.’
He grinned suddenly. ‘All right, Mr Faraday, I guess I was a little hard on you. I saw what was left of the bloodstains on the sidewalk before the rain washed them away. And there were tyre-marks leading off down Cherry Drive. Wouldn’t have been no good following, because it’s a through road which joins a main highway about a quarter of a mile on. I got a call out. We just got to sit tight until we find the car — or the corpse.’
‘But you do know Holgren?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Description fits someone I know. You planning to stay in town long?’
‘Several days,’ I said. ‘I got my own problems. Benson girl was my assignment until I got side-tracked.’
He drew on his pipe, reached in the drawer and came up with my gun. He slid it across and I put it back in the holster under my armpit.
‘You might start with the parents,’ he said. ‘Nice people. But I don’t think you’ll turn up much we haven’t covered.’
‘That’s what I’m paid for,’ I said. ‘You want me to keep in touch with you?’
He smiled again. ‘We’ll keep in touch with you. Where you staying?’
I told him. He wrote it down on a pad. I got up to leave.
‘Just one more thing,’ he said. ‘Keep this under your hat. No sense in stirring up the town unless we have to. We had enough problems before you blew in.’
‘You act like he got himself killed just to impress me,’ I said mildly.
Sheriff Clark shrugged. ‘I had one disappearance to look out for when you showed up through that door,’ he said. ‘Now I got two.’
Macklehenny cleared his throat like he was going to say something. Sheriff Clark turned to look over my shoulder. Apparently Macklehenny thought twice about it. The typing started again. It was so loud I thought the machine was going to fall apart. Clark walked me down the corridor.
‘You don’t think the two things are connected?’ I said. ‘The Benson girl and Holgren?’
He shot me a long look. ‘I hope to Christ not,’ he said. He gave me a hard, dry hand to shake.
‘I’m drifting around town tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’ll look in then.’
I went down the steps and into my car. It seemed like about two weeks since I left L.A. The rain had stopped and I didn’t need the wipers.
I drove back to the motel. It was just after one when I sneaked into the parking lot. A few lights still burned in the bar and I could hear the clink of glasses as the barman washed up. There was only one car in the lot and that went away as I came along.
The rest of the place was in darkness. I drove in, lowered the door behind me and went on in to bed. I had a pretty good night, all things considered.
Chapter 4
The Seed Business
Next morning I drove back over to Mudville. As mornings go it wasn’t up to much. The rain had been replaced by a needle-sharp wind. The gaunt pines and firs on the rocky outcrops of the surrounding hills were etched clear against the greyness of the sky and a solitary bird wheeled and dived above the tree-tops. I parked my car in the square near Clark’s Office.
I pulled up the collar of my raincoat and walked a few blocks back to the drugstore I’d stopped at the night before. The town was a little more
animated than it had been then. The same bald-headed man lounged behind the drugstore counter; it even looked like the same crowd round the juke-box. I bought a book of matches from a stand next the counter. While he got the change I asked him for the Benson place.
‘Maple Street. They got a store,’ he said. His eyes were alive with curiosity. ‘You a friend of theirs?’
‘I didn’t say,’ I said.
That didn’t faze him. ‘You walking?’ he said. ‘It’s quite a step. The other end of town, the main street running parallel with this. They’re in the seed business.’
I thanked him and left. When I got outside there was the honking of a horn behind me. A big blue and white car with a spotlight mounted in a bracket on the windscreen upright was parked outside the drugstore. It had a police sticker on the door panel. The side window was wound down and Sheriff Clark’s head was sticking out of it. I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was design or accident. Our meeting I mean, not his head.
‘Nothing useable on that pick,’ he said gloomily. ‘Macklehenny just phoned in. Thanks for bringing it, though. Makes a nice paperweight.’
He started the engine and looked at me. ‘Going somewhere?’
‘Benson’s,’ I said.
I got in beside him. He tooled the car out cautiously into the traffic. He flipped a switch on the dashboard and a small red light went on and off. I figured it tied up with the red dome-light on the roof of the car. Whatever it was, the traffic gave way to him.
‘Keeping tabs on me?’ I asked.
He grinned. ‘You got a suspicious mind, Mr Faraday. Just trying to be helpful.’