Читать книгу Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - H. Mel Malton - Страница 8

And every time the wind blows, she shatters.

–Shepherd’s Pie

The interior of the Schreier home was, as Aunt Susan would say, “roped off by Sears”. A spindly-legged hall table held a vase full of fake flowers whose buds matched the wallpaper. Above it hung a gilt mirror. Throw pillows and bowls of pot-pourri multiplied all over the place like Tribbles. There was God-stuff everywhere—embroidered Bible verses on the walls, stacks of tracts on every flat surface and an actual plaster Jesus bust, like a watchdog near the door. Francy’s pram stood out like a beat-up Chrysler in the middle of a china shop.

A stack of sticky-looking squares on a decorative plate held pride of place in the centre of the kitchen table, and there were pretty napkins set out, as if company were expected. A silver coffee pot and rose-patterned cups and saucers stood at the ready.

Carla rose as I entered the kitchen. She was wearing a crisp, blue, Barbara Billingsley dress, and she smiled in welcome.

“Oh, Pauline, what a nice surprise,” she said.

Francy was huddled at one end of the table, Beth in a snuggly-carrier against her chest. She held her coffee cup in both hands, as if the warmth of it were desperately important. She looked terrible.

Her skin, pale at the best of times, was almost blue-white, the scarred side of her face was livid, and she had been crying, lots. Her right eye was swollen almost shut and there was a cut on her cheek. I didn’t have to ask who had hurt her. She looked at me once, as I came in, and then went back to staring into her cup. Her glance scared me. It was totally devoid of emotion—she had looked through me, not at me. The lights were on, as they say, but nobody was home. I felt the back of my neck prickle.

“Francy,” I said, “good on you for getting out of there. You okay?”

“She won’t tell you,” Carla said, in a hushed, we’re-at-a-funeral voice that made me want to smack her. “She’s been like this ever since Eddie brought her in last night. She hasn’t said a word.”

“Oh, boy. She seen a doctor?”

“I tried to call one last night, but she went—well, she was quite upset. Pulled the phone cord right out of the wall.” Carla gestured to a telephone on the counter near the back kitchen door. The phone cord dangled. Exhibit A.

I walked around to the end of the table and crouched next to Francy’s chair. I put my hand on her arm, an experiment, and she didn’t flinch, so I put my arms around her thin shoulders and hugged, hard. I could feel her vibrating like a small, cold animal, but she didn’t make a sound.

“Is Beth okay?” I said. She nodded, still not looking at me.

Carla had poured me a cup of coffee and handed it to me, eagerly passing the plate of squares as she did so. Amazing, really, that kind of hostess training. Maybe it was so firmly ingrained in her psyche that she did it without thinking. I took a square, to be polite, and placed it on the delicate saucer next to my cup. What Carla Schreier would make of a tea party at my place, I didn’t like to think. Mugs sluiced hurriedly in the water bucket, wood shavings and leather scraps swept from the guest chair, a bowl of pistachios plunked in the middle of the table, if you were lucky. Goat milk from a jar.

“Do you know what happened, Carla?” I said. “Was Eddie involved? When did he bring her over here?”

“I sent Eddie next door around six last evening to return a book Francy had given him,” Carla said. “He didn’t want to go. I insisted.” What did that have to do with it? Carla was waiting for me to ask, so I did.

“Why didn’t he want to go?”

“Well, the book, Pauline. I mean. I don’t know if you’ve read it—you probably have—but I didn’t think it was appropriate for a sixteen-year-old boy to read. Not at all. When I saw the cover I almost had a heart attack.”

“What was it? That thing by Madonna?”

“Madonna? Oh, no, nothing like that. I don’t have a problem with Catholics, although I don’t hold with their practices. No, this was a book called Lady’s Lover, or something. I’ve heard that it’s absolutely disgusting, and I didn’t want my son reading it.”

“Lady’s Lover? You mean Lady Chatterley’s Lover? By D.H. Lawrence?” I said.

“Yes, that’s the one.”

I fought the urge to giggle and let my eyes flicker over to Francy to see if she got the joke, but she had not looked up. She wasn’t even listening. Too bad. I would have given anything to see some light in those clouded eyes.

“Lady Chatterley’s not really that bad, Carla. It was written a long time ago. People’s perceptions have changed since then.”

“Smut is smut. I must say that I didn’t appreciate Francy giving Eddie that kind of thing to read. He’s young for his age. And she must have warned him that I wouldn’t like it, because he hid it under his mattress. I found it when I was cleaning his room.”

I wanted to ask her how often she turned her son’s mattress in the course of cleaning house, but I smiled instead.

“So, you found the book and asked Eddie to return it.”

“She’s loaned him books in the past, you know. I didn’t mind that. We don’t have a lot of books in the house, and I’m glad that he likes to read, but I feel they went behind my back, here.” She darted a swallow-like, but resentful glance at Francy, and then back at me, waiting for my agreement.

I pictured Detective Becker on the porch of the Travers’s place, wondering where I had got to. I didn’t have much time, and this was neither the time nor the place to be getting into a heavy literary discussion, so I steered Carla back on track.

“And he went over there at six, you say.”

“Yes. Well, he can tell you himself,” she said. “EDDIE!” Her call was sudden and shrill, and I must have jumped about a foot in the air. Francy jumped too, and spilled her coffee. Beth began to whimper.

Eddie appeared almost immediately, and I guessed that he had been standing in the hallway, just out of sight. Carla looked pleased and surprised that he had come so soon. Perhaps her son normally made sure he was well out of earshot.

“Yes, Ma?” He cleared his throat and stood on one foot, then the other.

“Tell Miss Deacon what you told me about last night, sweetheart.”

I didn’t bother correcting my name to “Ms.” this time.

Eddie stood to attention, like a kid auditioning for a part in a play.

“I took the bush path, eh? To the back door? Mr. Travers doesn’t like me being over there when he’s not home, and he wasn’t because his truck was gone, but I didn’t know that until later. If I’d went the road way, I wouldn’t have even knocked. Francy, Mrs. Travers, I mean, said it was okay though. So I gave her the book back and then we had some tea and talked in the kitchen for a while.”

“Tell her what you talked about, Eddie,” Carla said.

“It doesn’t matter what we talked about, Ma. Just stuff, okay?”

“It pays to be truthful.” He glared at her and continued.

“Then Mr. Travers’s truck pulled in and I said I had to go. Don’t get me wrong. He likes me, eh? But, well, he has rules about stuff.”

“What kind of rules, Eddie?” I said.

“Like never being alone with Mrs. Travers. Never touch his dog. Always ask him first before using his tools. You know.”

“Yeah, Eddie. I know.”

“Anyway, he came in before I got out, and I knew he would be mad. He was kinda drunk, and when he saw me he went for me like he was going to kill me. He hit me in the stomach and I fell down, but I didn’t fight back or anything.”

Carla was nodding her head and emitting little peeps of approval, as if she were following along in the script in her head. I wondered how many times she had made him rehearse.

“Did he say anything?” I said.

“No, he was just sort of growling. Crazy. Then he went for Mrs. Travers and started hitting her. I was real scared, eh, so I grabbed a wrench that was sitting there and sort of hit him over the head with it.”

“That was brave, Eddie,” I said. He looked uncomfortable.

“Mrs. Travers said it was stupid. She said when he woke up he would kill me and her both. So we grabbed the baby and got out of there. That’s all really, except when we got in, Ma tried to call the cops or an ambulance or something and Francy ripped the phone out of the wall.”

“Why did she do that, do you think?” I said.

“I don’t know. I was in the bathroom and I heard a yell and when I came out there was Ma standing there with the phone cord in her hand, looking at Francy like she was crazy. Francy was crying. It was awful.”

“Sounds like it. What time did you and Francy get here?”

“They came in about eight o'clock,” Carla said. “I was so worried. Samson’s away at a farming conference and I had to feed the stock all by myself. I don’t like being alone in the house at night, and I’d told Eddie to come right home after dropping off the book.”

“And what did you do after Francy pulled the phone out?”

Carla frowned, trying to remember. “I guess I served up dinner and tried to get things back to normal. Then I made up a bed for Francy in the guest room.”

“Weren’t you afraid that John would come over here?”

“John Travers would never dare come over here,” Carla said. “Samson saw to that.”

“They didn’t get along?”

Eddie laughed. “That’s an understatement,” he said.

“Eddie,” Carla said, a note of warning in her voice. Then she smiled at me. “My husband and Mr. Travers had a disagreement a long time ago,” she said. “They don’t speak to each other, and they both respect each other’s property lines. That’s all. John knew better than to set foot in this house.” Her mouth was set in a prim, pink line. She looked like an illustration for a story about the good girl who gets propositioned.

“Besides,” Eddie added, with a wry grin, “he was dead drunk.”

“So, you just all went to bed,” I said. It made a weird kind of sense. “What about now? Your phone’s still out of order. Haven’t you tried to get it fixed?”

“Samson will see to it,” Carla said. “He’s coming back today.”

“And is this little coffee party in honour of his return?” I said.

Carla looked hurt, and I immediately wanted to take it back. She had gone to all this trouble, her eyes said. The least I could do was to be polite about it. I didn’t doubt that having a near-catatonic Francy in her house was not something that she would have chosen. Especially if Francy had been ripping the place apart. People like the Schreiers prefer things to be predictable.

“I know you’re worried about your friend,” she said, apologetically, as if it were she who had been rude and not me. “I thought she just needed things to be normal for a while, that’s all. We were waiting for the police to get here.”

“Why are you so sure the police are coming?” I said.

“Well, John Travers will probably wake up with a nasty bump on his head and sin in his heart,” she said. She stood up straight and clenched her little fists. “He won’t come alone, but he’ll come all right, trying to blame Eddie for what happened. Eddie’s a good boy, but he did hit John Travers on the head. He’ll have to tell his side of the story to the police, and policemen never say no to a cup of coffee, do they?”

It was a rhetorical question, and to fill the gap, I took a bite out of the pastry Carla had offered me. It was incredibly sweet.

“Why are you here?” Carla asked, while my mouth was full. “If you’ve come looking for Francy, well, you can see that she’s in no shape to go herb-gathering.” Her sarcasm surprised me. I wouldn’t have though she’d had it in her.

I swallowed the sticky mass and cleared my throat.

“I came over here because I wanted to ask Francy what happened last night before the police did. I wanted to give her some support when they told her that John was dead.” I stressed the last word and waited for a reaction.

Carla and Eddie gasped in unison.

Francy looked up. Her eyes cleared, and she began to laugh. It was just a chuckle at first, but it got louder and louder until she was howling, tears streaming down her cheeks. We all watched her, fascinated and horrified.

“Do something!” Carla said. I couldn’t move. Then Eddie strode to the end of the table, lifted Francy’s chin very gently with one hand and slapped her hard across the face.

“Jesus Christ, Eddie!” I yelled, going for him, but it had worked. Francy fell into his arms, sobbing.

“I can’t allow blasphemy in my house, Pauline,” Carla said, softly.

“I apologize,” I said. “Violence of any kind makes me angry.”

“Well, there’s no need to swear,” Carla said. “Eddie, you never, never hit a girl. You know that.”

“You did say to do something, Ma,” Eddie said.

“The police will be here soon,” I said. “Francy, I’m glad they didn’t see your reaction to the news, honey, but you’ve got to pull it together a bit, because they’re going to want to ask you some questions. You too, Eddie. What you told me just doesn’t tally with what we found next door.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie said.

“Broken beer bottles, lots of them. Blood all over the place. You may have conked John over the head with a wrench, but I don’t think that’s what killed him. Someone shot him at point-blank range in the chest and dumped his body at the landfill site. Know anything about that?”

Both Eddie and Francy froze. Francy was definitely coming back to life. Her face wasn’t empty anymore and a bit of colour had worked its way into her cheeks. Beth was quiet, amazingly, considering everything that had gone on in the past few minutes. Francy looked puzzled, and she turned her head to look at Eddie. She still hadn’t spoken.

Eddie had gone very pale and was staring at me, his lower lip trembling.

“I didn’t shoot him, honest. I just hit him on the head because he was hurting Francy. Is he really dead?”

“Very, Eddie.”

“Ma?” He was panicking. “Ma, you said all I had to do was tell the police I hit him on the head. You said it was going to be okay. They’ll think I shot him. They’ll put me in jail.”

Carla moved in and held him, pulling his head into her bosom and stroking his hair.

“They won’t put you in jail, sweetheart. All you have to do is tell what happened, the way you told Pauline. Somebody else killed him. Not you.” She sat him down at the table like a small child, took both his hands in hers and started to pray out loud.

“Dear Jesus, help us through this difficult time, Jesus, help the police to find the truth, Jesus, protect my boy from harm, Jesus…” in a gentle, soothing wave of sound which embarrassed me so much I had to leave the room.

I went to the front door to wait for the police.

As I stared out at the quiet road, I felt a touch on my elbow.

“Polly, get me out of here,” Francy said. “Hide me.”