Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 1, May 1967 (UK)

For Love by Elijah Ellis

The man who catches “fishes in other men’s ditches” should be cognizant of the dangers that lurk therein.

The two men entered the sheriff’s private office separately, Levi Eldridge first, then a couple of minutes later, Frank Latham. Both moved with the stiff-legged wariness of dogs approaching a possible enemy and not sure whether to fight or run.

Sheriff Ed Carson didn’t speak. He gestured Eldridge and Latham into chairs, one at each corner of his desk. Then, as the men squirmed and scowled at each other, the sheriff riffled through a stack of papers before him on the battered desk. The tense silence lengthened into an ominous threat.

I was sitting back in a corner of the little office, a cramped cubbyhole that opened off the sheriff’s main office on the ground floor of the courthouse. There were a lot of places I’d rather have been than in that stuffy office.

For one thing, it was the hottest afternoon of the summer, and the windowless office made a very efficient oven. More important, one of those men, Eldridge or Latham, was quite possibly a murderer.

Finally Levi Eldridge burst out, “Alright. Carson. Let’s get on with it, whatever it is you want.”

“You were so eager to have me drive clear into town here, in the middle of the day. So what gives?” Frank Latham rasped.

“I’m a busy man...” Eldridge started.

“Yeah. Busy with that shyster lawyer of yours tryin’ to steal the property my wife left,” Latham broke in bitterly.

Eldridge lunged to his feet. “What do you mean, your wife? You dirty killer!”

“Take it easy, boys,” Sheriff Carson said quietly. His mild blue gaze moved from one man to the other, then back to Eldridge. “Sit down, Levi.”

Growling, Eldridge sat down. “We’re waiting for Henry Turner to get here,” Carson went on. “He’s comin’ over from the jail now.”

Eldridge and Latham stirred uneasily. Latham took out a soiled handkerchief and mopped his red, sweaty face.

“Yeah, Latham, you got cause to sweat,” Eldridge muttered.

Carson repeated crisply, “Take it easy.” Then he gestured toward me. “You both know Mr. Gates, the county attorney.”

The two men favoured me with black looks and curt nods. They knew me alright. At one time or another, I’d prosecuted both of them; Eldridge for involuntary manslaughter in a bloody car smash-up, and Latham for attempted robbery. I hadn’t managed to convict either one, but that didn’t make them like me any better.

Now the door opened and a short, compactly built man in his early twenties came hesitantly into the already crowded office. “Jailer said you wanted to see me.”

“That’s right, Henry,” the sheriff said. “Why don’t you sit down there beside Mr. Gates? Fine.”

Henry Turner sat down near me, ducked his blond head, then stared steadily at the floor. His large, calloused hands clenched tightly together in his lap.

“Alright,” Sheriff Carson said. He nibbled thoughtfully at the lower fringe of his pepper-and-salt moustache. “Reason I asked you boys to come in this afternoon, Mr. Gates and I want to try again to wrap this thing up. One way or another.”

“Oh, for hell’s sake,” Latham said disgustedly. “Right there sits the killer. Levi Eldridge. If Henry would just go ahead and identify him.”

“Why don’t you give it up?” Eldridge broke in. “You shot Garnet, and everybody in Pokochobee County knows it.”

“Shut up, the both of you,” Carson said, raising his voice for the first time.

Henry Turner cleared his throat hesitantly. “Uh, Mr. Carson, I don’t know what you want with me. I can’t tell you any more than I already have — honest.” He chewed his lips, then added in a rush. “I’d just as soon not be around those fellers, Sheriff. I... I’m scairt and that’s the truth.”

Carson was kindly, “That’s alright, son. You just rest easy. You’re safe here. Now, let’s talk about this murder.”

I tried to get comfortable. I lit a cigarette I didn’t want, from the butt of the last one that I hadn’t wanted either. It was just plain miserably hot in the crowded little office.

Not at all like the day — just day before yesterday, it was, though it seemed much longer — when Garnet Eldridge had been shot four times in the head and body, in the front room of her farm home.

That day, Monday, had been cloudy and unseasonably chilly. Rain had fallen off and on during the morning and early afternoon. Garnet was supposedly alone at the farm, Eldridge having, supposedly, driven into Monroe to get a load of groceries and have a few beers. He had an alibi of sorts, but not nearly good enough to rule him out.

Frank Latham had spent part of the morning at a local attorney’s office, trying to figure out what his rights were, in the tangled mess caused by the triangle of himself, and Levi and Garnet Eldridge. He’d told us that he had spent the rest of the day out at the ragtail little farm he’d taken, out west of Monroe, and a good twenty miles from the much more prosperous Eldridge farm. But he couldn’t prove it, to his sorrow.

Either man could be the killer. Both had motives for wanting Garnet out of the way. As far as we knew, no one else did.

And there had been a witness who actually saw the killer hurrying out of the Eldridge house, just after the shots were fired — Henry Turner. But there was a very crucial gap in Henry’s testimony, and until now, the sheriff and I had been unable to close that gap.

We had hardly any physical evidence, and it was all too clear that unless we somehow got a confession out of the killer, he was going to get away with it. All he had to do was sit tight and keep his nerve.

That was the reason for this meeting of the suspects in the sheriff’s office. We had a card or two palmed, ready to play at the right moment. And maybe, just maybe, he’d crack. I was something less than hopeful, but we’d soon see.

As the sheriff talked on, rambling around without really saying anything, I thought about the dead woman, Garnet Eldridge. Or, to be legally precise, Garnet Latham.

If ever a murder victim had asked for it, Garnet had. From what I’d gathered from people who knew her, she had been a likeable, good-natured woman not overly endowed with brains. I’d never met her, though I had seen her a few times around town.

She was reasonably pretty, more than well-built, and from the gossip I’d heard, had the morals of an oversexed alley cat. Naturally enough, the women of the county didn’t care for her. Just as naturally, the men did.

Some seven or eight years ago, Garnet had decided to try marriage. She settled on Frank Latham. He was a wild, hard-drinking kid then, who had inherited a fairly good farm from his dead parents, and was doing his best to drink up whatever profits the farm brought in.

A few months after the marriage, which had evidently been something less than ideal, Frank and some of his cronies had tried a stickup in the county. They had fumbled the whole business. That was when I met him.

I didn’t send him to prison, but not long after the trial Frank disappeared, leaving Garnet in possession of the farm. Her story was that he just packed a bag and took off, telling her where she could go, and take the farm with her.

So a couple of years went by; then four, and five. By then Garnet had run through the eligible, and not so eligible, males of the county. The farm was in her name now, and with the help of a succession of “hired hands”, she’d built it up into one of the most valuable properties in the country.

Levi Eldridge was the last “hand”. He was a hard-working man, who must have had other not-so-obvious attributes as well. In any case, slightly over a year ago, he and Garnet were married, but she had neglected to divorce Latham beforehand. Since she hadn’t heard a word from him in the intervening years, she thought he must be dead, if she thought at all.

This second marriage seemingly worked out fairly well. Eldridge had evidently been happy enough. People on neighbouring farms had said that his big interest was in the fertile farm that Garnet had cheerfully signed over to him.

And so it stood until last week. Then Frank Latham came back from whatever limbo he’d been in during the last seven years, and things began to pop. Latham wasn’t interested in Garnet too much, but he was very interested in getting back the now valuable farm. He hired a lawyer, and Eldridge hired a lawyer.

Both sides had a reasonable case. It was the kind of thing that could drag on for years, with no certainty it would ever be settled.

Garnet was the key. Legally, she was still Latham’s wife, since she had not taken the trouble to have him declared legally dead. On the other side, Latham had obviously deserted her. It all boiled down to which man Garnet really wanted. But Garnet couldn’t make up her mind.

Latham swore that she had told him she would return to him. Just as emphatically, Eldridge swore she had said she meant to stay with him.

As became obvious during our investigation, it was a toss-up. One minute Garnet leaned one way, the next minute the other. The days dragged on, with Latham and Eldridge applying all the pressure they could.

But still Garnet couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take a definite stand, and it cost her life. Someone got tired of waiting.

About the middle of the afternoon on Monday, Henry Turner was coming along the country lane that passed the Eldridge place. He was, he said, about a hundred yards or so from the big white house when he heard shots. He stopped and stared toward the house, where he saw a tall, wiry, dark-haired man run out, leap off the veranda, and run into the nearby woods. A moment later Henry heard a car start and drive away, although he couldn’t see the car.

Fine; only both Latham and Eldridge were tall, wiry, dark-haired men. At a distance, it would be easy to mistake one for the other, unquestionably. Henry, who knew both men, could not tell which man it was, if it was either of them. And he refused even to make a guess.

In any case, after the killer had gone, Henry ran across the field between the lane and the house. He rushed inside. Garnet was sprawled on the living-room floor, on her back. There was blood all over her. She was dead.

There was a phone there, but the wire had been cut at the point where it emerged from the house. So Henry Turner, who had been fishing down at the river a mile below the Eldridge place, dropped his fishing rod and his creel, and took off out of the house and across the fields to the neighbouring farm where he worked as a hired hand. From there he called the sheriff.

And, as Henry had stammered to us when we got out there, that was all he knew about it, which was not quite enough.

At the murder scene, the sheriff and his deputies, and myself, found nothing much to do us any good. The weapon was lying in a mud puddle near the front steps — a .22 pistol, wiped clean of prints. There were thousands just like it in the county, and no way to find out who owned it, short of a miracle. But no miracle occurred.

There were plenty of footprints in the muddy yard and in the nearby grove of trees. But the rain-sodden ground was too soft for clear prints. We found a place around a bend in the lane beyond the trees where a car had been parked, but the tyre tracks were only meaningless depressions in the gooey mud.

Back at the house, we found nothing of any positive value. There were plenty of fingerprints all over the place, of course. Garnet’s, Eldridge’s, a few of Latham’s — but he had been there two or three times during the week he had been back in the county. Even Eldridge grudingly admitted that.

So there we were. We had prime suspects, even a more or less eyewitness. And we had nothing. Unless...

“That’s how it stands, boys,” Carson was saying. He leaned back in his swivel chair and sighed. “Neither one of you has an alibi worth a hoot, so why don’t one of you just up and confess? Put an end to all this. How do you expect to live with it, knowin’ you killed that harmless woman, shot her down in cold blood, and her no more’n thirty years old? Lordy, I wouldn’t want that on my...”

“Stop it,” Frank Latham said angrily. “Eldridge killed her. it’s plain as the nose on your ugly face.”

Sweat was pouring down Eldridge’s face in torrents. He said through clenched teeth, “Latham, I’m going to get you. You may weasel out of this mess, but from now on you better keep a close watch over your shoulder. One of these days...”

The two men stared at each other in rage just short of the exploding point. I hoped Ed Carson had his gun handy.

He slapped his hand down sharply on the desk top. “Stop that kind of talk.” Relaxing a little, he smiled toward Henry Turner. “Anyway, if the killer would just let go and confess, young Henry there could go home.”

Turner managed a weak laugh. “Sure would like that.”

Since the murder, Turner had been at the jail, bunking in one of the cells. We felt, and he had agreed, it would be a lot safer for him there, than out on a lonely farm where he would be fair game for the killer, if the killer should get worried about Henry’s testimony.

The sheriff raised his arms, yawned widely. “It’s sure hot. Be a good day to be down yonder on the river bank, fishin’ and drinkin’ ice-cold beer. Eh, Henry?”

“Yes, sir.”

“By the way, how’d you do Monday?” Carson asked.

“Oh, who cares?” Latham rapped out. “If you’re going to sit here babbling about fishing...”

“Stay put, Frank,” the sheriff said calmly. “Hate to have to bend the barrel of my gun over your head.”

Latham subsided, muttering. Eldridge snickered.

Carson went back to Henry Turner. “How’d you do?”

The farmhand scratched his blond head puzzledly. “Why, I didn’t catch nothin’ at all, Sheriff. Too gusty and all. And the rain was...”

“Sho’. Fact, it wasn’t at all a day to go fishin’, now was it?” Carson said idly. He yawned again.

“Reckon not,” Turner said. “I just didn’t have nothin’ else to do.”

My muscles were slowly tensing.

“Uh huh,” the sheriff was saying. “Besides, it was right good that you did go. Gave you a chance to see the killer runnin’ out of the Eldridge house. Too bad you wasn’t just a little closer, so’s you could tell for sure which of these fellers it was.”

Turner was shuffling his feet restlessly. “Now, I done told you all, over and over, I couldn’t see who...”

“No, you sure couldn’t, Henry,” I said suddenly. He jumped, swung his head toward me. I went on, “Because there wasn’t anyone there, was there?”

“Wha... what?”

This was the moment we’d been waiting for, after giving him lots of time to relax, to get used to the idea that he was perfectly safe and free of suspicion.

Now the sheriff dropped his casual air. He leaned forward over his desk, and shouted, “Why did you kill her, Henry? Why? You been havin’ an affair with her — that it?”

Turner’s face turned a muddy yellow under the sunburn. He shook his head violently, started to get up, but I threw my arm across his chest, holding him in the chair. He stammered, “I didn’t! I... I...”

“Yes, you... you,” I snarled into his face. “You took your little pop-gun over there that afternoon when you knew she’d be alone, and you shot her, and shot her, and she fell down with blood spurting — and you stood over her and shot her again!”

“Come on, Henry,” the sheriff yelled. “Give it up. You hung yourself when you gave us that cock-and-bull story about goin’ fishing. A country boy like you, tryin’ to make us think you’d be dumb enough to go fishin’ on a day like Monday was. Lordy boy.”

Henry slumped down in the chair. “No, no. Listen, it was—” His eyes went desperately from the stunned Latham to the equally stunned Eldridge. “—It was him, Levi Eldridge. I seen him.”

“The hell you did,” I cried. I grasped his beefy shoulder, shook him roughly. “You said you ran into that house and saw Mrs. Eldridge dead. You — what did you do then?”

“I dropped my fishin’ stuff like I told you. I run to the phone, but it was dead.”

Carson growled, “How’d you know it was dead?”

“Huh? Why, I tried it, but I couldn’t get no answer. He, Eldridge, had cut the line, so Garnet couldn’t have no chance of callin’ for help.”

“Oh, you called her Garnet, did you?” I said, shaking him again. “Knew her pretty well, didn’t you?”

He said through chattering teeth, “Why... why, sure I knew her. ’Course. Ever’body knew her.”

“But not as well as you,” I said. “You tried to phone, that your lying story?”

“Sure I did, but...”

The sheriff said, “Ah.” He sat back in his chair. “If you picked up that phone, Henry, how come you didn’t leave fingerprints on it? There were lots of other prints but none of yours. Henry. Not one of yours.”

“You didn’t pick it up, because you knew it was dead,” I said. “Because you cut the wire outside the house, just before you went in and murdered...”

“Alright, alright — stop!” Turner suddenly screamed. “I did it. I killed her. I didn’t want to — I loved her. She told me she was through with me, wasn’t goin’ to see me no more. We used to meet down at an old cabin, by the river, almost every day.”

He leaned his head on his trembling hands, sobbing brokenly. For a moment that was the only sound.

“What happened?” I asked softly.

Turner’s voice was muffled behind his hands. “I don’t know. It started when Latham came back. Anyway, Garnet all of a sudden told me she wouldn’t see me no more.”

“So you killed her,” Carson said.

“I had to,” Turner said. He raised his tear-stained face. “Don’t you see? I had to. I loved her.”

“Oh, he loved her!” Latham said. He sounded sick.

Eldridge shook his head slowly. “You want that blasted farm, Frank? You can have it, and welcome.”

Latham didn’t answer.

At a signal from the sheriff, I rose, opened the door and beckoned to a deputy who stood waiting in the outer office. A few minutes later, Carson and I were alone.

“Rough,” Carson said.

“Well, it was the only way. We had to have his confession.” I lit a cigarette, looked at it sourly, then ground it out in the ashtray on the desk.

“Garnet had one lover too many,” Carson said.

“One too many,” I agreed. “One who really wanted her, and not her money... Come’on. I’ll buy the coffee.”