Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 31, No. 1 — January, 1948)

Anna Maria Zwanziger, the passionate poisoner, was quite a gal, and McGavock was determined to follow her deadly trail — but the fact that she was executed in Bamberg, Germany, back in 1811, didn’t make things any easier.

Chapter One

McGavock was walking down South Elm when a man came out of an alley across the street, carrying a gun and a billfold. He was dressed in stiff new overalls and his hair was shaggy and flaxen in the arclight which filtered through the dusty magnolias; before McGavock could speak, he’d thrust the pocketbook into his shirt and vanished in the shrubbery behind courtsquare. Along the cracked sidewalk the dingy smalltown shops were blank and lifeless, closed for the night.

McGavock cursed softly. In town scarcely fifteen minutes and already he was watching the tail-end of a stick-up — with his gun in his Gladstone at the hotel. He crossed the street, hard-heeled and angry, turned on his pencil flash, and entered the alleymouth.

The alley was narrow and filthy, flanked solidly on either side by moldy shopdoors. As he advanced, the beam of his flash swept the rubbish and the rutted clay. After about a hundred yards he came to a little court, a dead-end. Moonlight penetrated here, silvery and nebulous, dusting the alley and the small shed which blocked it. The shed was a small blacksmith shop with a sloping sheet iron roof and a decrepit door. The door was chained. He called: “Citizen, are you hurt?”

There was no answer.

Suddenly the whole picture came back to him. And he didn’t like it. He grasped the eaves of the shed and swung himself up onto the low roof.

The man in overalls had tucked the billfold in his shirt. A real stick-up man extracts the money, gets rid of the leather, and quick. The yellow haired man had saved it — because it was his own! The entire business was phony. A trap and a smart one.

A hot September breeze came down from the surrounding hills, sere and oppressive, and the metal of the roof was warm to McGavock’s palms. For five long minutes he waited, searching the shadowed court below him; he heard no sound nor saw any movement. He inched his way to the rear of the roof, detached his penknife from his watch chain, and tossed it outward into the court. There was a tinkle as it struck a window.

Instantly, hell broke loose in the alley. Four crashing shots, hand-running, pounded the still, hot air.

McGavock dropped to the ground, found himself in a vacant lot, and came out again on Elm, a half block away. He waited in the darkened doorway of a grain and feed store. After a little, the overalled figure of the yellowhaired man appeared from the alleymouth and sauntered down the sidewalk toward Main Street. McGavock followed.

On the east side of courtsquare, just before Main bisected Elm, a huge hackberry made a canopy of dense shadow over the sidewalk. The man seemed to vanish at this point. Warily, McGavock investigated. There was no passageway under the tree, only a small ramshackle shop with crooked, gaping clapboards and mossgrown shingles. A placard in the grimy, curtained window said:

Without breaking his pace, he continued on to Main, made a loop of the courthouse, and returned to his original course along South Elm. When the overalled man had staged his act, he’d given McGavock a good look at him. That meant they’d expected to kill him. This business was for keeps. He didn’t like any part of it. It had started off with that nutty zwanziger stuff, and now this.

He was still trembling with anger when he reached the home of his client.

The little cottage of white-painted brick sat at the end of the street, just as the hotel clerk had described. Beyond it, in the moonlight, was a silvery, rolling field and in the near distance against the blue night sky rose the black, wild hills. A block of orange light from the uncurtained parlor window fell across the cement porch, diffused itself in a porchbox of scraggly zinnias, and showed up the goodluck mule-shoe set in the cement steps. To McGavock, a student of homes and people, it seemed respectable, pleasant, and problematically prosperous. It didn’t seem the sort of home whose owner would bring a detective all the way from Memphis on a whim. He knocked on the door, and waited.

The man who answered was younger than McGavock had anticipated, possibly thirty-five, and dressed in baggy flannels. His face was long-jawed and aristocratic and the irises of his blue eyes seemed embedded in wrinkled pouches of wet chamois. McGavock asked: “Mr. Tennant?”

The man nodded. McGavock said: “I’m Luther McGavock, from the Atherton Browne Agency. Did you send us this wire?” He made vague gestures of searching his pockets; the telegram, as he well knew, was back in Memphis on file. Mr. Tennant said: “You mean about the zwanziger?”

“That’s the baby,” McGavock said coldly. “Send best employee immediately. Believe things critical. Am convinced we have zwanziger in town. Signed, Littleton Tennant.”

Tennant said gravely: “Come in, sir.”

They went down a short hall and turned into a door at the rear. Tennant smiled modestly. “My playroom, sir, a sort of rumpus room. I live alone. Excuse it, please.”

The room was small and crowded, tucked under the roof at the corner of the cottage; the ceiling sloped, following the roof-line, and everywhere there were books — stacked on the floor like pancakes, walling the room in from shelves on all sides. A green shaded student’s lamp threw a disc of white light on a brokendown easy chair, leaving the upper reaches swimming in vague shadow. There were old books in a dozen kinds of leather, and new books in bright wrappers, all bookmarked with matchsticks, or merchants’ bills, or paper clips. McGavock asked sternly: “Isn’t this hoarding? What if they should spoil on you!”

Mr. Tennant wasn’t amused. He smiled stiffly in polite response and cleared books from a bench by the wall. McGavock pivoted the gooseneck on the lampshade out of his eyes and sat down in the easy chair. He was a small man, wiry and tough, with tired, sharp lips. He was generally disliked on sight by strangers. He’d spent a lifetime in the business and had his own personal methods of getting results. He didn’t like to be pushed around, and he didn’t like fol-de-rol. He asked tightly: “What’s. a zwanziger?”

Mr. Tennant looked mildly surprised at McGavock’s ignorance. “The German Brinvilliers,” he said helpfully. “Executed Bamberg, September 17, 1811. Remember?” He paused. “Full name, Anna Maria Zwanziger.”

“Of course,” McGavock declared jocularly. “Now that you mention it. How memories get away from you! It was a beautiful autumn afternoon and along about a quarter to three a man came through the crowd selling pretzels on a stick—” He changed the subject. “Who knew I was coming?”

“Only a few of my friends and relatives. They didn’t know why I sent for you, of course—”

“Know a mean-looking fellow with high cheekbones and yellow hair? Wears overalls and carries a black billfold and a long-barrelled .38.”

“About the gun and billfold, I couldn’t say. The rest sounds like an unsavory native known as Railroad Brantner. If he’s back in town you can find him at the Cloverleaf. That’s a pig-joint down on Front Street, over the Acme Barbershop. Why—?”

“I’m going to ask you why,” McGavock retorted. “Why and what. Why did you bring me here, and what do you want me to do?”

For the first time, Mr. Tennant showed signs of nervousness. He seemed embarrassed. He leaned back against the wall, so that his face was in shadow, and said: “This is going to be difficult, but I’ll try to get it over with. To make matters worse, I’m talking about a cousin and I have little to go on but logic and suspicion.”

“And a long-barrelled .38. Let’s hear it.”

“I’ll try to put it briefly. There’s a man in town named Cushman Mapes—”

“Not T. J. Mapes, the well-known auctioneer and baby photographer?”

“No, indeed. Colonel Jimmy is his brother. They’re as different as day and night. Jimmy scrapes along the best he can in that remodeled little cabin out by the trestle, and Cushman resides in that elaborate brick-and-stucco mansion just out of town on Oak Hill. Colonel Jimmy likes people, Cushman doesn’t. Cushman is middle-aged, not wealthy but fairly prosperous. He’s considered extremely rich, however, by local standards. No one seemed to wonder about his money, no one but me. Then I got to thinking about his peculiar housekeeper trouble.”

“Housekeeper trouble? You mean he can’t get housekeepers?”

“I mean he gets them, in a rather strange way, but can’t hold on to them. They come from out of town, stay a few days at the most, and then leave. No one knows where they come from, no one sees them depart. They all appear to be fairly prosperous in their own right. The first came six years ago, stayed three days. The second showed up three years later; she stayed thirty-six hours. Just recently he’s taken on a third, a local widow with a small income. That’s why I called you.”

“You mean Cousin Cushman is murdering and robbing his servants? That’s a new one!”

“Not so new at that. And perhaps they weren’t his housekeepers. Perhaps, actually, they were his wives!”

McGavock was thunderstruck.

“Poisoners are creepy people to have in the same town with you,” Tennant said quietly. He fumbled around, produced a small brown book, weather-stained and old. “Harper and Brothers, 82 Cliff Street, 1846,” he read. “Narratives of Remarkable Criminal Trials.” He turned the crisp pages with the affection of a bibliophile. “Let me read you about a poisoner. Anna Maria Zwanziger... Mixing and giving poison became her constant occupation, she practiced it in jest and earnest... with a real passion for the poison itself, without reference to the object for which it was given... She grew to love it... That’s what happens when a poisoner gets started. She had a rather impressive score, — too. Sixteen known victims.”

“You mean your Cousin Cushman is a male Zwanziger?”

“I don’t know. Even Landru had to start in a small way, no doubt. Before it was over, he’d attracted two hundred and eighty-three women, by official count. Guillotined February 25, 1922.”

“Is that so?” McGavock asked with interest. “I mean about the number of dames, not the guillotine-ending—?” He got to his feet. “Well, I’ll take a look around tomorrow, and see what’s what. And don’t talk this over with anyone. From here on in, give me an even break.”

Outside, in the starlight, McGavock cleared his throat. “Watch yourself. And don’t go down any dark alleys.”

“I won’t,” Mr. Tennant replied amiably. “Goodnight.”

The courthouse, in a grove of sparse magnolias in courtsquare, was of yellow brick, cheap and garish and harsh in the glare of the lonesome arclight; a frugal building, in a shabby town, in an impoverished county. A single light shone from a window at the rear of the ground floor. McGavock mounted the pink cement steps, his hand on the gaspipe railing, and strode down the echoing hall. The smell of sweat emanated from the plaster walls, the smell of whiskey and cut-rate cigars. He opened a door marked OFFICE OF THE SHERIFF, Ogden F. Finney, and entered.

The walls were immaculate in new yellow paint and the brown linoleum was scrubbed and gleaming. There was a new filing cabinet in the corner and a row of kitchen chairs just inside the door, by the window. A young man sat behind the desk taking apart and assembling a doorlock, instructing himself. He was tow-headed and slender, dressed in a quiet tropic weight gray suit, and his eyes, as he lifted them to McGavock’s entry, were penetrating and thoughtful. McGavock with disbelief in his voice, asked: “Sheriff Finney?”

The slender young man nodded. McGavock introduced himself and pulled up a chair. He laid out his credentials. Sheriff Finney glanced at them, went back to his tumblers and bolts. McGavock said: “Sheriff Finney, about an hour ago a man who I’ve since identified as one Railroad Brantner lured me into an alley and took four shots at me. I’d never seen him before but he tried to give me the works.”

Sheriff Finney laid down a tiny screwdriver. He laid it down very thoughtfully, very carefully. His pale eyes met McGavock’s. He said: “Thank you, sir. I’ll take care of it.” The way he said it froze the blood in McGavock’s veins.

After a moment, Sheriff Finney explained. “My father, the sheriff, died in office. I’ve been appointed to fill his unexpired term. I’m trying to do the job the way he’d like it done.” He smiled mildly. “I’m trying to discourage law-breaking.”

McGavock gave him a long, hard stare. He said respectfully: “Well, son, you’d discourage me, if I was a law-breaker.” He paused, asked: “Will you trust me, Sheriff?”

“Yes.” He said it quietly, carelessly, without reservation. Sheriff Finney formed steel-spring judgments.

Painstakingly, and in detail, McGavock brought him up to date on the case. Sheriff Finney made no comment, he seemed hardly to listen. At last, McGavock asked: “What do you know about this Cushman Mapes?”

“Not too much.” Sheriff Finney frowned slightly. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve known him as a man who stayed pretty close to home. I don’t imagine he’d ever had any publicity at all if it hadn’t been for that picture.”

“Publicity? What picture?”

“About six years or so ago he went to Nashville and had a portrait of himself painted by a retired art teacher. It cost him seventy-five dollars, I hear. He’s always fancied himself as an old-style Southern gentleman, and told the painter just how he wanted it done. It was fixed up to suit him, linen suit and shoestring tie and all, standing before an imaginary white-pillared old-style mansion, feeding a racehorse. All made up out of his head. The painting itself was godawful and childish but some newspaper caught scent of it and published a reproduction of it. Called it an American primitive. Then other papers bagan to carry it—”

“And then he got letters from women? Letters of proposal?”

“Possibly. There’s no way now of our ever finding out.”

McGavock arose and picked up his hat. “There’s something pretty devilish going on in this sleepy little town, Sheriff. Will you do me a favor?”

“Yes, Luther.” Sheriff Finney nodded almost imperceptibly. “Anything in reason, of course.”

“First, keep this under your hat. Second, pick up Railroad Brantner. Right now.”

“I intend to, Luther.”

“Wait a minute. I want it done a certain way. Pick him up with yourself and at least two deputies. Search him. You’ll find a long-barrelled .38 on him. Pass it around among you, so each of you boys has a look at it, and then hand it back to him—”

“Hand it back?”

“That’s right. Hand it back and say, ‘There you are, Railroad, you’re armed. If anything happens to you, it’s all fair and square. You’re armed.’ Then laugh and walk away.”

At the door, McGavock said: “Goodnight, Ogden.”

Sheriff Finney said: “Ogden was my father. I’m Ira.” He smiled. “Goodnight, Luther.”

The cabin was at the edge of town, as Mr. Tennant had said, just beyond the trestle. A small, trim four-room building with a field-stone chimney. Moonlight dusted its barked cedar logs to dove gray and an ancient trumpetvine, lush and tropical, arched the small dog-run porch. The building had been re-chinked, and re-roofed, and new porchboards had been laid, but it lay in a hollow hedged in by sumach and saplings, cozy enough but a little too fetid for McGavock’s taste. Sagging telephone wires ran to it through branches of surrounding trees, and marsh ferns grew beside the doorstep.

A small brunette answered McGavock’s knock and invited him in. She was dressed in a navy flannel skirt, and white blouse, and wore flat-soled hide sandals. To the naked eye she was as sweet as a stick of peppermint candy but there was something about her that warned McGavock that he was in for trouble. She placed McGavock on a studio couch, seated herself across from him, and said: “I’m Cindy Mapes, the Colonel’s wife. The Colonel’s out in town somewhere. You’re Mr. McGavock, the gentleman Mr. Tennant just mentioned over the phone. Can I do anything for you?”

The room wasn’t too unpleasant, if you went in for pioneer effects. There was a big stone fireplace with a squirrel rifle above it, a kerosene lamp, painted with violets and roses, with an electric bulb, and bright rag rugs on the sanded floor. The furniture was antique, but rough: hickory rockers and ladderback chairs, and their kith and kin. McGavock imagined that Colonel Mapes had picked up most of the stuff at farm sales in his capacity of auctioneer. There were no baby photographs.

Mrs. Mapes, McGavock judged, was maybe thirty-two. She folded her arms decorously and waited. In the closeness of the hot autumn night she seemed all powder and perfume and starch. After an interval, she smiled. “Well,” she said in a husky voice. “You made a long trip, all the way from Memphis, for nothing at all, didn’t you?”

McGavock rested his back against the chair; he was tired and, surprisingly, the hard slats were comfortable. He cocked his eyebrow, said: “How so, Mrs. Mapes?”

“Coming here on Littleton Tennant’s hallucination. He’s a dear boy, and we love him, but if it isn’t one thing with him it’s another. He’s great fun to be around but he’s, well, trying on the nerves.”

“He’s educational. Did you know that Landru, the French bluebeard, had two hundred and eighty-three gals in love with him?”

Mrs. Mapes looked annoyed. “No, and I’m not interested. The whole thing’s preposterous—!”

“What about these housekeepers? Where were they from, and what were their names?”

“I don’t know.”

“You mean you won’t tell?”

“I mean nobody knows but Cushman. Especially us. The Colonel and his brother aren’t too intimate, friendly, but not intimate. I’ve never been inside Cushman’s house. The first one I just saw from a distance. A lovely little white-haired woman, picking flowers in Cushman’s garden. The second, I just know from her general effects. The third is Mrs. Kirkland, a local woman. I know her, of course.”

“Mrs. Kirkland rich?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say so. She’s a bit of a recluse and no one knows too much about her. Not rich, but comfortably well off, I should imagine.”

“You say you just knew the second one by her personal effects. What in the world do you mean by that?”

“By her bric-a-brac. Sewing cabinet, vases, a few chairs and so on. You know, small furniture. I was on hand when my husband auctioned it off.”

McGavock blinked. “For goodness sakes! Let’s take this a little slower. You say Cushman turned over this stuff to your husband to sell? Did Cushman hold title to it?”

“It’s nothing to get excited about.” Mrs. Mapes spoke primly. “Here is the situation. Cushman is secretly very sensitive on the subject of his housekeepers leaving him. People began to think he was hard to get long with. The stuff was unpleasant to him, and, too, Mrs. Kirkland didn’t like to see it around, so he lumped it all together and had my husband dispose of it. It had been around for years and he was pretty certain it would never be reclaimed. Personally, I think the idea was a very sensible one.”

“Who bought this stuff?”

“Small furniture and bric-a-brac is generally sold in lots. My husband can tell you, I believe he keeps records.”

McGavock shook his head, and got to his feet. “This is a wonderful town,” he said affably, “—and full of wonderful people. Just one thing more. What was your husband’s reaction, and yours, when Brother Cushman came out of his cocoon, after the last three years, and brought Mrs. Kirkland into his bachelor household. Did it seem like old times?”

At the door, she said: “To tell the truth, we were greatly relieved. It should completely disprove Littleton Tennant’s wild nightmares. Mrs. Kirkland is a well-known, local woman. There’ll be no nonsense about a mysterious disappearance here. If she leaves, she’ll simply pack up and go home.”

McGavock put on his hat, pressed it carefully to his head with the flat of his hand. He said: “We hope.”

It was a quarter to twelve when McGavock passed through the deserted business section and turned down Front. The buildings here were decrepit almost beyond description, two story structures for the most part, rickety and long neglected by their owners. There was no paving here, only a red clay road, and in the faint moonlight walking was precarious. In the murky illumination, along the row of sordid shop windows, McGavock made out the lettering, ACME BARBERSHOP, and sensed rather than saw the black entrance of a stairway beside it. He mounted creaking steps and came out into a dank, empty hall. A feeble, fly-specked bulb showed him lettering on a blistered door panel: THE CLOVER-LEAF RESTAURANT. He twisted the old brass doorknob and entered.

The room was small. In years gone by, it had once been an office. A milking lantern was set on a short counter and McGavock could see a half dozen homemade tables, covered with oilcloth, and beyond, high arched windows, once elaborate in magnificent molding, now like huge black mirrors in battered frames. The stained walls were covered with ancient farm sale bills and employment circulars from Northern factories. A greasy fat man in a dirty apron came through a door at the rear; he gave McGavock a long, hostile stare, and came grudgingly forward. He said: “We’uns is jest fixin’ to close.”

McGavock said: “Two pig sandwiches, light on the hot sauce but heavy on the slaw, and two bottles of home brew.”

“You mean beer,” the counterman said helpfully. “Hit’s agin the law fer the laity to make hit’s own brew sinst prohibition was takened off.” He sounded sadly nostalgic. “Anythin’ else?”

“Yes,” McGavock said pleasantly. “I’m the man that Railroad Brantner was taking potshots at earlier in the evening. Tell him he’s in a tight spot, but I can fix it up for him.”

The counterman froze. At last he said: “I don’t rarely see him to talk to him to his face, but I’ll put the word around.” He left the room and came back shortly with the food and a pitcher of beer. Instantly, he left McGavock alone.

The beer was lukewarm but high voltage and the pork, as he’d expected, was perfect. He’d half finished his sandwiches when the kitchen door opened and a man in overalls, with pale yellow hair, entered the room and pulled out a chair beside him. He said hastily: “I’m unarmed.”

Railroad Brantner was a type very familiar to McGavock. The habitual smalltown criminal. Vicious, puffy-faced, sly. Now, he was plenty scared. He said: “Mr. McGavock, I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt you, in that alley. I was jest a-tryin’ to prank you, to make a little noise and run you outa town.”

McGavock said softly: “I ought to break a chair over your head. Right now.”

Brantner said: “This is my town, Mr. McGavock. I come an’ go, but I like it. I was borned and raised here. Now, unless you fix it up, I’m a-goin’ to have to leave. The law’s got some kinda plan up hit’s sleeve to knock me off. They been actin’ mighty, mighty funny. They searched me, give me back my gun and said fer me to remember I was armed should anything happen to me. That ain’t no way fer the law to act!”

McGavock looked bored. Leisurely he finished his sandwich, and the beer. “Who hired you?”

Brantner took an envelope from the bib of his overalls. “I don’t know much more about it than you do. Ever’ day, fer the last few days I been gittin’ a five dollar bill in the mail. Not a word o’ writin’ along with it. Somehow I got to a-lookin’ forward to it. Well, this morning they was a ten dollar bill an’ a letter.”

McGavock drew out a sheet of paper and unfolded it. It said: “Man named McGavock due on eleven-ten tonight. Give him the works. Fifty dollars in mail tomorrow.”

The words were printed, in neat symmetrical letters, and each individual letter was composed of broken lines and dots. “He’s printed it in pencil over a screen, like a door screen,” McGavock decided. “He’s one smart baby. He’s made it impossible for any handwriting expert in the world to analyze the pressure of his strokes.”

“That’s all,” the overalled man said grimly. “I figgered his credit was all right with me so I follered you from the train to the hotel, an’ from the hotel to the alley — where we had our mixup. That’s all.”

McGavock pushed back his chair, laid change on the table. “If you hear from him again — which will be a miracle — look me up.”

Brantner began to fawn. “I will, Mr. McGavock. You kin trust me, Mr. McGavock. An’ tell that crazy sheriff I’m a-helpin’ you out!”

The lobby of the hotel was dark but for the minuscule bedside lamp which burned bluely on the big, yellow varnished desk. It was as squalid a joint as McGavock had ever stayed at, and you run into some weird hostelries, he reflected, touring small southern towns. He wove his way through wicker, mail-order furniture, across the fibre rug. To the left of the newelpost was an old zinc water-cooler, a shelf of chipped water pitchers and barrel-shaped tumblers. He filled a pitcher, picked up a tumbler, in the self-serve style of the establishment, and climbed the stairs. He was angry and confused and out on his feet with weariness.

His room was at the front of the hall, to the right of the stairwell. It was shaped like an orange crate stood up on its end, about eight feet square and twelve feet high; the walls were papered with a pattern of brown bamboo shoots and green parrots. The September heat came in waves through the open window, from the metal and tarpaper roofs across the street, from the dark street below.

He placed the pitcher of ice-water on the table, took his revolver from his Gladstone and thrust it under his pillow. He then stripped, slipped on a terrycloth robe, gathered up his pajamas under his arm, took soap and towels, and stepped out into the hall.

The bathroom was at the end of the corridor. He bolted the door, turned on the water and climbed into the claw-footed tub. The water was as cool as spring-water and after his bath he felt better. He reviewed the case three times carefully in his mind and all he could boil it down to was that someone wanted him out of the picture and had tried to kill him. Railroad Brantner had lied. That letter hand said — “give him the works” — and that was exactly what Brantner had tried to do.

Back in his room, he reached for the pitcher and tumbler — and then he noticed something. The water in the pitcher was half gone. Someone had swigged half of his ice-water while he was bathing.

He locked his door and put a chair under the knob. He went to the towel-rack, took down a large turkish towel and stuffed it into the pitcher. When it had absorbed the remaining water, he hung it wet and dripping on the rack with its fellows.

For a long moment he stood in the center of the room, rubbing the stubble on his chin. Finally, he climbed into bed.

He’d just had his second escape from death, and a close one it was. The water was poisoned, of course, and half of it had been removed to increase the poison’s potency.

Sleep came hard. He kept thinking about Landru and his girl friends.

Chapter Two Water, Air, Earth, and Fire

The courthouse clock, striking nine against his hotel window, awoke McGavock to a gray morning of sullen clouds and clean, cool mist. He caught a quick breakfast at a corner lunchroom and left his towel with an elderly druggist on a backstreet who promised to make a solution and analysis. There was the promise of rain in the air and Main Street was deserted but for a few stragglers, hillmen in from the uplands and house-wives, in print dresses and carrying woven baskets, bent on their day’s marketing. It was the kind of a day he liked; the colors were deep and soft and pleasant in the moist air, sidewalks shone like slate and the trees along the curb were beaded and dripping. He turned from Main onto Center and went out Center to Oak Lane.

Oak Lane circled Oak Hill and Cushman Mapes’ big brick-and-stucco mansion was the first residence out of town.

He could see it through the tree boles, a huge cumbersome hulk on the hillside, with its gables and latticed trelliswork. Stucco was peeling from its face and rambler roses climbed the gingerbread scrollwork of the front porch, making a curtain between the occupants and the street. The grass in the yard was uncut; the place looked completely abandoned.

A little spray of rain rattled like buckshot through the dry oak leaves and splattered against the floorboards of the broad porch as McGavock yanked the T-shaped brass doorpull. He heard the sound of footsteps from within, echoing in a cavernous hall, and the door opened. To his surprise his summons was answered by two persons, not one, and they stood in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder. He realized instantly that he was being confronted by the entire household, by Mr. Cushman Mapes, himself, and by his housekeeper, Mrs. Kirkland.

Cushman Mapes was in his middle-sixties, slender and pale. He wore a black suit and Congress gaiters. His hair and eyebrows and imperial were snow white. A man doesn’t wear a little goatee like that, McGavock reflected, without spending a good many hours before the mirror trimming it. He seemed actually relieved at the sight of McGavock; he said calmly: “Mr. McGavock, suh? The gentleman from Memphis? Step inside, please, we’d like a little talk with you.”

Mrs. Kirkland smiled. First at McGavock, and then at Cushman Mapes. She was a drab little woman with tousled gray hair; her bright little eyes were cheerful and inquiring and her splotched hands were hard calloused from years of work. She said shyly: “Oh, Cushman. There’s no need—”

McGavock said: “The next time I come to town, I’ll wear a disguise and bring a pair of clippers, good strong ones for telephone wires.”

McGavock followed them into a bare, dim hall, past big panelled doors with china knobs, parlor, library, dining room, into a small music room.

If this was a sample of the rest of the mansion, McGavock didn’t wonder that Cushman Mapes had difficulty in retaining female assistance. Light filtered grayly through the rosebushes which tangled the big bow window. A vase of wax flowers sat on an ancient piano. There were a few red plush chairs, mildewed and decrepit, a battered fireplace, and a Victorian rolltop desk. The place reeked with long imprisoned staleness and the green carpet on the floor was literally rotting to tatters and shreds. When everyone was uncomfortably seated, Cushman Mapes fiddled a moment with his goatee, said: “For some time there have been unpleasant rumors circulating about me. I understand you’ve come to town to prove, or disprove them. Right, suh?”

“Right, suh.” McGavock nodded.

Mrs. Kirkland’s dry, wrinkled face creased in a complacent smile. She said: “I’ve heard those rumors, too, but I’ve got horse sense. I’ve always said it was a cryin’ shame the way respectable folks scare themselves with crazy gossip.”

Cushman Mapes leaned slightly forward and the chair springs creaked rustily. “At this time particularly, I’d like these vaporings exposed. I’d like the blackguard who has been slandering me identified. Mrs. Kirkland finds herself in an embarrassing situation among her friends. Everyone warning her, everyone whispering stories to her. Fortunately, she’s a woman with a mind of her own! We’ll be glad to co-operate, suh!”

“Fine!” McGavock exclaimed. “We’ll start off by prying into your past. Where did these gals come from?”

“Miss Leggett, the first, came from Little Rock, no street address, and Mrs. Dalton from Corinth, Mississippi. That’s all I know, that’s all I had time to find out. Once, through, well, curiosity I tried to trace Mrs. Dalton. With no results.”

“They came and went, zippo, like that, eh?”

Cushman Mapes flushed. “Like that, suh. I’m not too hard to get along with. And I provide an excellent table.”

Mrs. Kirkland put in a genial word. “He takes it too much to himself. I think they just got homesick. Some girls away from home get homesick, they say.”

“I think they were scared of something,” Cushman Mapes said quietly. “Each of them, Miss Leggett and Mrs. Dalton, just packed a few things in their pocketbooks and pulled out during the night.”

“And left their furniture?”

“A few small things, yes.”

“How did you happen to bring in out-of-towners?”

Mr. Cushman Mapes cleared his throat. “It’s a long story, and I’m not sure it would interest you. However, about six or so years ago I had a painting of myself published in various newspapers. The news stories gave the idea that I was landed and very wealthy. I got a flood of letters, from women seeking marriage, and from women seeking employment. Foolishly, to while away the tedium of a bachelor, I answered some of these letters. Miss Leggett wrote me, rather ardently, from a general delivery address in Little Rock, and later, Mrs. Dalton likewise from Corinth. There was nothing unusual about this, many of my correspondents used general delivery addresses.”

“They didn’t take anything, when they left?”

“Of course not.”

Mrs. Kirkland walked to the desk and lifted its rolltop. The pigeonholes were literally jammed with yellowing letters. McGavock sauntered over and leafed casually through them. These were the real thing, all right. Good old nutty crackpot letters. From female admirers all over the country, to Mr. Cushman Mapes. Begging letters, letters of proposal, letters asking for employment. Mrs. Kirkland said primly: “I’m goin’ through ’em myself. I’m as far as that second pigeon-hole, yonder. It’s company for me when I ain’t busy. I swear an’ declare, I’m gettin’ to feel like I knowed all them sweet-natured ladies!”

Suddenly, McGavock asked: “What’s this thing?”

From under a batch of envelopes he drew forth what he first thought to be a fisherman’s float. An egg-shaped ball of balsa wood with a spindle running through it. The balsa center was about as large as a good sized hen egg, and the spindle, which struck out about three inches on each side, was a rod of tough hickory. He began to wonder. Attached to each end of the spindle was a rawhide bootlace. He raised his eyebrows.

“A fishing bobber,” Mrs. Kirkland explained. “I found it out in the woodshed the other day.”

“I can’t figure how it got here,” Cushman Mapes remarked. “Neither myself nor Mrs. Kirkland fish.”

McGavock thrust it in his breast pocket. He’d never seen anything like it, had no idea what it was, but something told him to hang on to it. The light in the room had for some time been growing dimmer and he realized that soft, velvety rain was beating against the windows. The walnut wainscotting melted into shadow, and the piano and chairs and desk. The figures before him, too, blended into the dusk, little more than white hands and faces. He picked up his hat and they showed him to the door.

On the front porch, Mr. Cushman Mapes said: “I’ll be deeply indebted to you, suh, if you can clear this business up.” He paused. “This means more to me than my friends and relatives know. I’m going to ask you to keep this confidential — Mrs. Kirkland has almost consented to be my wife!”

Mrs. Kirkland said coyly: “If I don’t take a trip to Floridy first! I got a little travel folder in the mail yestiddy and I’d sure relish a trip to the beautiful scenery it tells all about!”

McGavock said: “Well, let me know before you leave,” turned up his coat collar, and walked down the porchsteps, out into the drizzle.

He made a special effort not to look back over his shoulder.

McGavock made three visits to the auctioneer and photographer shop of Colonel Jimmy Mapes, and each time the proprietor was out. The Colonel, McGavock learned on inquiry in town, was an in-and-outer, a man of great activity but little business; There was a wooden washbench before the shop, under the tree by the curb, and McGavock at last settled down to wait. The rain had ceased but black clouds still hung heavy and curdled over the roof of the courthouse; the leaves of the magnolias on the square rattled and clattered in the breeze. About a quarter to four McGavock heard hoofbeats and glanced up the red clay road which was Elm Street.

A man and horse came down South Elm. The horse was moving in a sweet rhythm which had once been called, in days long gone, “a nodding fox trot” — now it was called a “running walk.” He knew he was watching the gentlest riding beast in the world, a Tennessee Walking Horse. It came up to the hitching rail, neck curved, keeping time to the rhythm of its hoofbeats by a clicking of its teeth. It was a moving and beautiful sight. The rider swung to the ground, tied his mount, and came forward.

He was a portly man, about forty, plump cheeked and black haired, dressed in fine blue gabardine. He wore a broad brimmed black hat and his eyes were squinted and bleary with a nearsighted vagueness about them. McGavock introduced himself. Colonel Jimmy stared at him noncommittally, said: “Oh, yes. I’ve been hearing about you. Come in and have a drink.”

There was an undertone of unfriendliness in the Colonel’s voice. McGavock realized that it was put there intentionally, and deliberately half displayed, half obscured. The shop door was unlocked and as they entered McGavock said, off hand: “Don’t you ever lock up?”

“Never. Night or day. Countryfolks like to duck in off of the street when they’re in town and use it as a sort of public waitingroom.”

They passed through a small parlor, with an imitation leather couch and several shabby chairs. McGavock said: “I was tailing a guy named Railroad Brantner down Elm last night, and he turned in here.”

Colonel Jimmy Mapes took it under advisement; after a moment he said: “I’ll have to speak to him about it. I can’t have Railroad sleeping in here at night, he’s disreputable.”

Colonel Mapes’ private office was little more than a cubbyhole. It contained a golden oak desk, a filing cabinet stacked with dog-eared ledgers, and a calendar on the wall depicting a moose in a forest. A fancy shotgun stood in the corner and bridles and riding crops hung from nails on the door. Cracks branched the old plaster and the floor was bare and dirty. McGavock seated himself on a broken-down corsetback chair and Colonel Jimmy produced a bottle of red whiskey and two glasses.

“I wish to make my position very clear,” Colonel Jimmy Mapes said at last. “If your client, young Tennant, wasn’t a well-known local eccentric I’d consider his action in bringing you to town to be extremely precarious to himself. There are courts for slander, you know, suh. As I was just telling my brother Cushman—”

“You just came from there?”

“Yes. We love each other dearly but we’ve never been, well, too close socially. But in times like this, the Mapes stick together. He seems to welcome an investigation, however I wanted to make my position clear to him and to offer any help that I might—”

“But he’s the one that has the money, isn’t he?”

“I consider that remark offensive, suh.” Colonel Jimmy’s face lit up to apoplectic red and his jowls shook with suppressed rage.

McGavock felt better. He changed the subject. “Your wife was telling me that after the two housekeepers, Miss Leggett and Mrs. Dalton, departed, Brother Cushman turned their personal effects, and small furniture, over to you and you peddled it. I want to know who owns that stuff now.”

Colonel Jimmy Mapes said: “I was only the agent. It was all perfectly regular. Cushman gave me the commission and I actuated it. He’d kept the stuff around until he was tired looking at it and then turned it over to me to dispose of. Cushman had taken out a very small insurance policy on the stuff, to protect it as time went by, and I considered the policy as title to the goods. It proved legally that he owned the stuff, you see. You can’t insure chattels or anything else if they don’t belong to you. Therefore an insurance policy is proof of ownership.”

McGavock laughed. “That’s what the courts call self service. Baloney. Ownership of a house, or car, is easier to establish, that I grant you, but a policy isn’t a deed — and you know it as well as I do.”

“It vindicates me,” Colonel Mapes said carefully, “in case there is trouble. I just thought I’d make the point.”

“And puts the blame on Brother Cushman, whom you love dearly. Well, who bought this stuff, and what was it?”

“Now let’s see.” Colonel Jimmy frowned and took down a ledger. “That was last May, just after Mrs. Kirkland came to work for Cushman. I took it out to a farm sale I was having on Purtle Pike, and pushed it with the farm goods.” He leafed through the pages. “Here we are. I made it up into three lots. A bedstead, a set of dining room chairs, a trunk and a sewing cabinet.”

“Do housekeepers hereabouts bring their own bedsteads? Who bought the trunk and sewing cabinet?”

“The bedstead, chairs, and sewing cabinet belonged, as I understand, to Mrs. Dalton. She’d shipped her furniture without saying anything about it. It came a day after she’d left. Cushman had no alternative but to take it in and keep it until called for. It was never called for, of course. Who bought the trunk and sewing cabinet? Here we are. A hillman out beyond Shellbark Chapel, on Powder Ridge. A man named Francy Scoggins.” He closed the book and made a little gesture to show that the interview was closed. “Glad to be of help, suh. I guess that fixes you up, eh?”

McGavock nodded and arose. As he picked up his hat, he asked intimately: “What’s your theory on this? You must have given it a good deal of thought yourself. I like to know just how you figure—?”

Colonel Jimmy Mapes looked completely frustrated. Honesty seemed to creep into his voice. He said: “You’re damned right I’ve given it a bit of thought. I’ve poked around a bit and asked a few questions, too. But I didn’t get far. There’s a long-haul Jackson bus that comes through here at three in the morning. Cushman says they left at night, so I figure they caught that bus. By the time I got interested the trail was too cold, five years for Miss Leggett and two for Mrs. Dalton.”

“Nothing at all, then?”

“Nothing at all. Except distress for Cushman. He’s my only brother and my wife and I feel sorry for him living alone, a bachelor, in that big old house. We’re glad now that Mrs. Kirkland has come. Things’ll be a little more cheerful around there now.”

McGavock nodded absently. He waved goodbye with a waggle of his hand and went out onto the street. He wanted to make a report to his client. And he wanted to ask his client a question.

Mr. Littleton Tennant, dressed singlet, dirty ducks, and tennis shoes was in the side yard of his little whitepainted brick cottage, setting mole traps. His long, patrician face was pale and scholarly in the fading light and McGavock noticed with interest that he seemed quite capable with his hands. His pensive eyes lit up genially at the sight of McGavock and he asked: “Any news?”

“Plenty,” McGavock said wryly, “Let’s go inside.”

Seated once more in the turbulent, book-filled study McGavock relaxed beneath the gooseneck lamp, in the easy chair.

After a moment he drew out from his pocket the balsawood gadget. “Take a look at this,” he said. “What do you make of it?”

Tennant took it from his fingers. “A balsa center, about the size and shape of an egg, a hickory spindle through it. It looks like a fisherman’s float.”

“It does, in a way,” McGavock said mildly. “But for those rawhide shoe laces tied to the spindle-ends. And why a tough hickory spindle, why not a light balsa spindle?”

Suddenly Tennant’s jaw dropped. “Now I recognize it, McGavock!”

He reached into a stack of books, brought out a big green volume. “Our Police Protectors,” he said. “Augustin Costello. Published by the author, New York, 1885. Here we are, page 422. Take a look at this.” The picture was titled A Burglar’s Outfit, and showed the various tools contained in an old-fashioned cracksman’s kit. Tennant’s finger pointed to an object exactly like that which lay on the table before him.

The object was Number One in the kit. It was marked Gag.

“A gag,” Tennant said. “An old-style gag. The history of gags is very interesting, by the way. Every housebreaker always carried a gag such as that. Charlie Peace, the English portico thief, always had one with him, for instance. In the eighteenth century, a hundred years before Peace, gags were this same shape, and generally made of ivory. Where did you get it?”

“Mrs. Kirkland found it in the woodshed.”

Tennant thought this over. “This complicates matters, doesn’t it? Pretty obviously someone was planning to break into Cushman Mapes’ home. You get the significance, don’t you?” He waited a moment. “No one but a stranger would dare to use a gag. If your next door neighbor robs you, and gags you, to keep you from yelling, then when the gag’s removed you promptly identify him to the police. Can you figure it out?”

McGavock turned his gaze from the ugly looking object before him. “No,” he said slowly. “But your reasoning’s wrong someplace. There’s no stranger involved in this.” After a moment, he told his client about the two housekeepers, and the furniture which had been sold.

Tennant pondered. “You’ve really been learning things, haven’t you!” McGavock could almost hear the wheels clicking in his head. “Well, bless my heart. Now we’re getting someplace. If this doesn’t prove my theory about Cushman, it certainly partially confirms the crime pattern. Landru stole furniture and clothes from his victims. And you know about Dumollard, don’t you?”

“I can’t say I do. But I’m always glad to learn.”

“Dumollard, like Landru and Cushman, murdered women for what money he could salvage, and for their personal effects. This is almost unbelievable but it’s the gospel truth: when he was arrested they found one thousand two hundred and fifty articles of feminine attire in his dwelling. No one knows how many he killed, they could only pin nine actual murders on him. Executed Lyons, January 20,1862.”

McGavock was speechless.

Tennant said: “Cushman killed them all right. The trick is to find the bodies. Medieval scientists divided the world into four elements, water, air, fire, and earth. That covers a pretty big field of disposal.”

McGavock said: “Colonel Mapes thinks there’s a fifth element of disposal: bus tickets.”

“Nonsense!” Tennant shook his head. “We’ll find Miss Leggett and Mrs. Dalton right here in town. Dead!”

At the door, Mr. Tennant had a farewell injunction. “Murderers are smart, but very vain. John Paul Forster, the brutal bludgeoner, considered himself quite a personage. While in the fortress prison at Lichtenau, he polished his chains until they shone like sterling silver.”

McGavock put on his hat. “Executed—?”

“Died in prison.”

McGavock said: “Oh.”

A deputy at the sheriff’s office told McGavock that he was mighty glad to see him. That Sheriff Ira had been searching for him. “He’s been a-lookin’ for you more ways than a skunk kin go into a henhouse fer eggs. He’s at Hottman’s Hardware Store, in the back room,” the deputy said. “If you hain’t busy, would you drop in on him, he wonders.”

The backroom of Hottman’s Hardware Store was the local embalming shop and a small group was assembled when McGavock arrived. It was a large, gloomy storeroom, smelling of machine oil and leather. A little knot of citizens, including Sheriff Ira, stood about a table on which lay the body of Railroad Brantner. His overalls, shoes, shirt, and billfold lay in neat piles on a packingbox. There was no wound on the body; Brantner’s face, beneath its coarse topping of yellow hair, seemed relaxed and peaceful.

“Alcoholism,” Sheriff Ira Finney explained. “Drink finally got him. Some kids found him about a hour ago, with his fruit jar, under the loading platform of the cotton compress, out on South Jackson Street.” He pointed to the pocketbook. “And he was carrying fifty dollars in cash.”

McGavock said: “Sheriff, may I see you a minute, alone? In the office? I want to make a phone call—”

Alone in the little office, Sheriff Ira looked inquiringly at McGavock, seated himself on a canebottomed chair. McGavock picked up the telephone and asked for the Owl Drugstore. “Mr. Marshall?” he asked. “This is Mr. McGavock. Did you make that analysis on my turkish towel yet? Swell. Barbiturate, eh? No, I’ll tell the sheriff myself. He’s right here with me.”

Slowly, he replaced the receiver. “We’ve got a real killer on our hands, Sheriff,” he said. “Order a test and you’ll find Brantner was doped with poison, whiskey loaded with barbiturate. An attempt was made on me with the same stuff last night.”

The slender young sheriff listened silently. McGavock said: “Someone hired Brantner to shoot me on my arrival in town. He, or she, hired him by writing him a disguised note. This note promised fifty dollars to come. It was written through a piece of screen, was therefore conspicuous to mail at a country post-office. It was one of a series of notes to Brantner. He wondered how they were sent and finally figured out the answer. They were mailed late at night, in the mailbox before the post office. His curiosity and greed got the best of him. Last night he waited on the chance that the person should show up again. The person did.”

Sheriff Ira made no comment.

“The employer showed up, Brantner accosted him, and the employer handed him the envelope containing the payoff money. There was no doubt a note enclosed to lure Brantner into just such a situation. Brantner was given his fifty dollars, a pat on the back, and a bottle of doped whiskey. That’s all, brother.”

Sheriff Ira asked carefully: “Why should anyone want to have you killed, why should—?”

“We’ll find out. To tell you the truth I haven’t the slightest idea to date. But I’ll bet we’ll know by tomorrow night. This case is a heller, and I’m not kidding! Do you know a hillman named Francy Scoggins, out on Powder Ridge?” Sheriff Ira nodded.

McGavock asked: “Can you drive me out to his place tomorrow morning? Say about ten o’clock?”

Sheriff Ira nodded again.

McGavock said to himself: I’d better be right. This baby is one tough sheriff.

Chapter Three Near-Sighted Mrs. Scoggins

The moon had climbed behind a reef of clouds and the big brick and stucco house was vague and black beneath the wet trees of Oak Hill that night when McGavock returned to Cushman Mapes’. There was a time for everything and this, he decided, would be a good time to take a look at the famous portrait which had apparently started all this business. The huge old house was dark but for a weak yellow light which beat against the rose bushes by the kitchen window. The luminous hands on his wristwatch said nine-twenty. His footsteps sounded hollow and bodiless as he crossed the rotting floorboards of the porch and rang the bell. Mrs. Kirkland, with a lamp in her hand, answered; she said: “W’y, it’s Mr. McGavock! Mr. Cushman isn’t at home. He’s at lodge tonight. I’m dreadful sorry—”

“I’d like to take a gander at that portrait,” McGavock declared politely. “It won’t take a moment. You know, the picture that started all this—”

She smiled. He stepped into the cavernous hall and she led him into a great, dank parlor. She set her lamp on a marbletopped table. There were electric lights in this house but evidently they weren’t much used. McGavock stared about him. It was a creepy house, and this was a creepy room. Here, too, as in the music room, there were gilt chairs, their red plush blotched and moth-eaten. On the mantel was a row of conch shells and a vase of cattails. Yellow varnished inside shutters were closed and latched over the windows, catching the light of the lamp, cutting out all thought and image of the world beyond. The portrait hung in an alcove, above a rickety, red plush loveseat. McGavock approached it, took out his flashlight to increase the light, and examined it.

To McGavock’s eyes, it was rather childishly done. He could well see how the newspapers had called it a “primitive.” Cushman Mapes, looking like a millionaire landowner, the cream of old Dixie, dressed in a white linen suit and shoestring tie was standing in the foreground, feeding a spindly-legged racehorse; in the background was an imaginary super-elegant old-style Southern mansion, pillars and all, big enough to house the Confederate army. Down in the corner was the artist’s signature in fancy curlicue letters, M. Dubois. Everything was flat, and out of proportion, and lifeless — but somehow there was an air of luxury and magnificence about it. McGavock asked incredulously: “You say this fellow Dubois is an art teacher?”

“Taught in the public schools, up to the sixth grade,” Mrs. Kirkland announced proudly. “Could paint a masterpiece, they tell me, as quick as I could mix up a batch of biscuit dough!”

“We’re gifted in different ways,” McGavock said kindly. “Don’t let it get you down.”

There was an interval in which neither of them spoke. Silence filled the ancient mansion and McGavock, in his mind’s eye, could visualize the tiers of empty rooms, upstairs and downstairs, the long, dark halls musty with Victorian memories. Mrs. Kirkland, frail and withered and bright-eyed, seemed almost spectral in the encircling shadows. Her eyes stared rigidly into his.

Finally, she spoke: “Mr. McGavock, I knowed ’em, both of ’em. That Miss Leggett from Little Rock, and that Mrs. Dalton from Mississippi.”

He blinked.

“My little cottage is just down the hill, beyond the hedge,” she said softly. “Both of ’em, each in her turn, seen me in my kitchen and come in and talked to me. Miss Leggett was a chubby little woman about my age but Mrs. Dalton was skinny and old and half blind. Later, after they left, Cushman give me Mrs. Dalton’s suitcase, with some of her clothes. He kept ’em a year and she didn’t come back so he gave them to me. Mrs. Dalton was skinny, like I am, but taller. I didn’t have no trouble in cutting them down to fit. I didn’t like the idea, but Cushman talked me into it.” She hesitated. “I got money of my own, I wasn’t starving, but they wasn’t no real sense in throwin’ them away.”

McGavock was listening now, listening for Brother Cushman’s returning steps on the front porch. He asked: “What did Miss Leggett and Mrs. Dalton talk about when they visited you in your kitchen?”

Fear crept into her eyes. “Well, they talked some of Cushman, and how wonderful-good he was to ’em. About how they seen his picture in the paper and wrote him and finally got off the train with their furniture and all, as a surprise to him. And how they talked him into hirin’ them as housekeepers. Later, they talked of those telephone calls.”

“Telephone calls?”

“Yes, Mr. McGavock. Each of ’em got a telephone call while Cushman was out of the house. A voice over the phone told them to get out of town, and quick.”

“So they pulled out in the dead of night, leaving their possessions? I don’t believe it.”

They could hear a man walking up the driveway now. Cushman was returning from lodge. Mrs. Kirkland said quickly: “I didn’t believe it either, then. But I do now. Now, I know the whole story. I got one of them calls myself tonight.”

McGavock waited. Mrs. Kirkland said: “A voice spoke to me and told me to go back home, to my little cottage. It advised me to take a nice pleasure trip to Floridy, or someplace.”

“Threatened you?”

“Not me. Cushman. Said if I wasn’t out in twenty-four hours, Cushman would be shot like a dog, in the back.”

McGavock asked: “So you’re leaving?”

She smiled. “Not me, Mr. McGavock. I’m not afeared of sneaky voices that come to you on a telephone.”

The front door opened and Mr. Cushman Mapes, panting a bit from the uphill climb, pulled up in the hallway and greeted them. Mist still beaded the brim of his Stetson and glinted on his silvery goatee. He said enthusiastically: “Mr. McGavock, it’s a pleasure to renew our acquaintance, suh! Mrs. Kirkland, take the gentleman’s hat, ma’am.”

“I was just leaving,” McGavock said genially. “Thank you.”

McGavock slept soundly that night, with the fatigue that comes from utter frustration. He knew, as he dozed off, that he’d assembled just about all the facts but somehow he couldn’t dovetail them. He realized he was immersed in a vicious crime of some sort, he hadn’t been twice put in peril and Brantner murdered on a a passing whim, but further than that things simply couldn’t add up. He knew, too, that the answer was a simple one — if he could only see it. Next morning, contrary to his custom, he ate a light breakfast. He was waiting in the hotel lobby when he saw Sheriff Ira Finney pull up in a station wagon.

Powder Ridge was ten miles out of town, deep in the wild, wooded hills and during the skittering, jolting trip McGavock went over his sojourn in town for the sheriff, from the beginning, carefully and thoughtfully, leaving out no detail. Sheriff Ira was particularly interested in personalities. “I’ve known these folks all my life,” he kept repeating. Railroad Brantner had been poisoned, all right. Test showed barbiturate. No one remotely connected with the affair had bought any, not recently.

“Poison will keep,” McGavock declared. “Six, eight, ten years, till you need it.”

The ridgeroad forked in a clump of pine and the sheriff took the left-hand trail; after a quarter of a mile they turned down a log-road, arched with gum and hickory and flanked with scrub, forded a clear, mirrored branch and came out into a small hollow. Sheriff Ira said: “This is Francy Scoggins’ place.”

The cabin, sheathed crudely with scrap lumber siding, sat on a shelf of shale, sunless and mossy, half-obscured by overhanging foliage. A man in black covert trousers and blue denim shirt sat on the doorstep, knotting a trotline; he was gaunt and weathered and the motions of his gnarled fingers as the measured and knotted the line were deliberate and accurate. Behind him, through the half open door, McGavock could see a section of the cabin’s one room, earth floor, fireplace, bedstead. By the bedstead projected a corner of Miss Leggett’s trunk, and beyond, a corner of Mrs. Dalton’s sewing cabinet. The man arose courteously as they approached; Sheriff Ira said: “Howdy, Francy. Meet Mr. McGavock. He wants to ask your help.”

Cautiously, Mr. Scoggins shook hands.

“This is purely sociable, Mr. Scoggins,” McGavock said calmly. “I want you to know that, purely sociable.”

Mr. Scoggins nodded warily. “I shorely hope so. We’ll see.”

There was a little glint in the sawdust by the doorstep and as McGavock noticed it, Mr. Scoggins moved one brogan and covered it. Like a wisp of copper that might drop from tinsnips if one was, well, trimming down the copper worm to a still. McGavock averted his gaze and Mr. Francy Scoggins came close to winking.

McGavock said vaguely: “Live and let live. Now here’s what we want to know, Francy. Last May, Colonel Jimmy Mapes held a farm sale on Purtle Pike. He brought some stuff out from town and unloaded it at the same time. They tell me you bought a sewing cabinet and an old trunk. You bought it, it’s yours. Nobody’s trying to take it away from you. What was in that trunk?”

“Nothing. Hit was empty.”

“Nothing at all? Well, was there any name on it, or in it?”

“Jest a ole trunk. No name, or writin’. My ole woman uses hit to store her quilts.” Mr. Scoggins appeared genuinely regretful that he was unable to offer assistance. “Was you looking fer a name?”

“Any name in the sewing cabinet?”

“Doggone, no. No name nowheres, mister.”

McGavock looked hot and angry. He said: “Well, thanks.” As they started for the car, Mr. Scoggins stopped them. He seem embarrassed; he said: “Ary one of you two gentlemen know how to regulate a pair o’ eye-specs?” He made a funnel of his hands, called into the cabin: “Mama, bring out them eyeglasses.”

Mrs. Scoggins appeared and came toward them. Weathered and toothless, she seemed an exact replica of her husband but that she was dressed in a faded ankle-length floursack frock. In her hand she held an old-fashioned pair of shell-rimmed spectacles. Mr. Scoggins said: “Mrs. Scoggins, she’s weak-sighted. When I got that sewing cabinet home from the sale and we went through it an’ found these-here specs we was as happy as a judge at a fish-fry. But we never seen such specs. Can’t nobuddy see nothing outa ’em!”

McGavock held the glasses up to the sky. He shifted them back and forth, to catch the light. After a moment, he said: “I want to buy these, Francy. How about ten dollars?”

Mrs. Scoggins smiled happily. Mr. Scoggins said: “Hit’s a deal.”

For a long time, on the trip back home, McGavock remained silent. The break had come quickly, and had been so devastating that he could hardly grasp it. Sweat circled the back of his neck and his shirt cuffs felt tight and confining. At last he spoke. “Well, Ira. That does it. That will sew it up. That’s all we’ll need. The googs.”

“Googs?” Sheriff Ira looked confused.

“These spectacles.”

Sheriff Ira’s voice was laden with disbelief. “I know that lenses are ground by prescription. That if we can find the right optical house, out of thousands, we can find the owner. But bifocals are so common that I’d call it hopeless.”

McGavock said tranquilly: “These aren’t ordinary bifocals. I guess you didn’t take a good look at them. The segment — you know that’s the little part that’s inset in the big lens, isn’t down at the bottom where most segments are. Its up high in the lens, like a little window.”

Sheriff Ira looked astonished. “Freaks?”’

“Not freaks,” McGavock answered. “But not common, either. It’s all we need.”

The car pulled up by courtsquare. McGavock said: “Keep this under your hat. And don’t get out of touch with me.”

He walked three blocks down Main, to the telegraph office, and sent a wire.

Colonel Jimmy Mapes and his pretty brunette wife were ensconced in wicker chairs, waiting for McGavock in the dingy lobby of the hotel when he returned from lunch. He’d just polished off eight biscuits, mashed potatoes and giblet gravy, and a platter of fried chicken. Progress in the case, combined with the afterglow of fine food, made him feel topnotch. He tried to keep the glint of self-satisfaction from his eye as he approached. The Colonel and Mrs. Mapes were dressed to an inch of their lives, the Colonel in flashy tan gabardine, his wife in crisp white linen. McGavock sensed from their gravity that this was to be a highly significant conference. Mrs. Mapes smiled stiffly.

He said, “Hi!” and joined them.

The lobby was deserted. Outside, through the grimy window, a farmer drove his team of mules along the unpaved street; inside, there was the smell of cooking, and new paint. A finger of sunlight stretched across the fibre matted floor, across Mrs. Mapes’ perky high-heeled sandals, across the highly perforated toes of Colonel Mapes’ large sport shoes. McGavock asked innocently: “Waiting for somebody?”

“We were waiting for you,” Mrs. Mapes said solemnly.

Colonel Jimmy nodded ponderously. “Waiting for you, suh.” He paused. “We’d like to make you this proposition. Are you ready?”

McGavock said, “Shoot.”

“We’d like to retain you, that is we’d like a sort of option on your future services. If Mrs. Mapes should die, or if I should pass away, or both, we’d like you to come to town and investigate.”

McGavock looked solicitous. “Aren’t you feeling well?”

“Not too well,” Mrs. Mapes said grimly. “If you know what I mean.”

McGavock said curtly: “I don’t.” He gazed into their tense faces. “Yesterday everything was a big joke, and I was all wrong. Now you want to hire a detective.”

“We’ve been thinking,” Colonel Jimmy said. “Here are the facts. My brother Cushman has money, there is no need to gloss over that. If he should marry, that money would go to his wife. Say every housekeeper he employs is murdered. This is just a theory, you understand. Say they’re eliminated before he gets a chance to wed them. You get the idea? To keep outsiders out of the family.”

McGavock thought this over for a moment. “Who?”

“I’m not naming any names,” Colonel Jimmy declared, “—but Littleton Tennant is Cushman’s cousin. He’d fit the picture.”

“If something should happen to Cushman,” Mrs. Mapes said carefully. “If he should die, or if an out-of-town detective could get him falsely convicted of murder, that would release his money, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” McGavock agreed.

“There you are,” Colonel Jimmy remarked. He clapped his big palms together. “There you are. We’d be next. We’re next in line. We block Littleton Tennant’s chance of inheritance!”

McGavock shook his head. “I wouldn’t worry on those grounds. This business isn’t that involved. It’s as simple as catching a mouse in a trap.” He changed the subject. “How did Cushman and Mrs. Kirkland get together?”

“She’s his nextdoor neighbor,” Colonel Jimmy explained. “They’ve been casual speaking acquaintances all their lives, I guess. Years ago Mrs. Kirkland’s husband worked for Cushman before he died. Then, when Cushman began paying Mrs. Kirkland little favors, people talked. He is president of the local flower club and he generally gives Mrs. Kirkland first prize. Mrs. Mapes, here, raises lovely peonies but she always refrains from showing them.”

“I don’t see how anyone raises flowers in this red clay,” McGavock declared interestedly.

“That’s the way Littleton Tennant feels about it,” Mrs. Mapes put in. “He used to be quite a gardener but he’s given it up. You should hear him talk about it!”

“You’re fortunate in living out by the swamp,” McGavock said. “The earth’s rich there.”

Mrs. Mapes nodded. “It’s a pleasure to work with!”

“Flowers, flowers, flowers!” Colonel Jimmy stirred good-humoredly on the wicker settee. “I don’t know a tulip from a parsnip. Shall we be getting along, honey?”

As they left, McGavock asked: “Did Mrs. Dalton bring a trunk when she came?”

Colonel Jimmy considered. “No, I believe not. As I got the story from Cushman, she just brought suitcases. Miss Leggett brought the trunk.”

After they’d left him, McGavock sat alone in the lobby, thinking about his telegram, wondering if they would rush him an answer as he’d requested. Finally, he arose and went out into the town. On a backstreet, in a down-and-out neighborhood, he found the place for which he’d been searching. A weathered sign above an arched wagon gate said:

He went inside and asked to see the company records.

The answer to his wire came while he was eating supper. He phoned his client, and the sheriff, and asked them to meet him at Cushman Mapes’ big brick-and-stucco house at eight sharp. As he replaced the receiver he realized that it was all over now, all over but for a few odds and ends. It had all been before him so plainly and simply from the beginning, yet everywhere he’d missed the point and taken the wrong turning. The truth had been staring him in the face, screaming at him, but he missed it.

All that was finished now. He phoned Cushman and made an appointment to take another look at that portrait, at eight o’clock.

Chapter Four To Gag a Corpse

It was late twilight when McGavock took the wooded lane at the base of Oak Hill and came out upon Mrs. Kirkland’s tiny clapboard cottage. Above him was the shadowed hulk of Cushman Mapes’ home, indistinct among the trees. Beyond the cottage, to his left, open fields, gleaming softly in the starlight, ascended to the nearby hills. A whippoorwill called listlessly and the air was oppressively hot and heavy.

The cottage sat alone, and dark, luminous and vague in the purple dusk. McGavock opened the low gate, passed a garden, and a hen house, and took the flagstone walk to the backporch. There was a cedar bucket and dipper on the washbench by the door, onions in braids, and gourds, hung from the porch rafters overhead. He peered through the slot in the dimity curtain, could see nothing, and knocked. There was no response.

After a moment, he unlocked the door with a dimestore skeleton key, stepped into the kitchen and flipped on his flashlight.

The room was primitive, but neat. His flash swept across the bare floor to the cracker jar and butter plate on the table, to the battered corner cupboard by the sink, lingered on the glistening rows of canned fruits and jellies. He was wondering what could get into a woman to make her move from a comfortable little place like this to a hollow, dank ratnest like Cushman Mapes’ old mansion, when the shot came.

It came with a bullwhip crack, vicious and sudden, blasting its way into the room through a tiny hole in the south window, exploding the green glass butter plate by McGavock’s elbow to screaming dust and shards. McGavock cut off his torch, cursed, and dropped to his haunches.

He laid his gun beside him on the floor and waited.

A rifle shot, fired from the hillside, and all things considered it was damn good shooting. He figured it unlikely that the marksman would follow it up in person, yet he played it safe.

He’d waited possibly six minutes when he heard footsteps on the flagstone walk outside, and on the porch, and the door opened.

Littleton Tennant’s scrawny form stood in the doorway, with the oblong of the pale blue night behind him. His hands were empty and he peered into the dark interior.

In a surprisingly powerful voice, Tennant called out: “Anybody here? Anybody hurt?”

“Come in,” McGavock spat. “And close the door. What in the hell are you doing here?” He got to his feet. “You live across town.”

Not across town, Tennant explained, but yonder, just over the fields. He’d been on his way to his appointment at Cushman’s when he’d seen a rifle flash in a clump of holly on the hillside, and had heard a window or something break. “I thought Mrs. Kirkland had dropped in for a moment, and someone had shot her.”

He paused. “And now I’ll ask you a question. What are you doing here?” He closed the door.

McGavock flicked on his flash once more, shielded it with his handkerchief. He didn’t answer. He said: “Let’s get this over with,” and went into the bedroom.

Client Tennant followed.

There were but two rooms in the cottage and Mrs. Kirkland’s bedroom was scarcely eight feet square. In all his life, McGavock had never seen such jumble and clutter. Most of the space was taken up by a huge old walnut four-poster bed and around its sides were chairs, a claw-and-ball table, a dresser, and a cumbersome oak wardrobe. Crayon enlargements, in gilt oval frames, of Mrs. Kirkland’s ancestors hung from the pine walls and pin cushions and doilies and antimacassars littered every square inch of space.

Tennant said: “I think I know now why the late Mr. Kirkland folded up his tent, and passed on. He felt crowded.”

Wordlessly, McGavock began a search. He examined multiple drawers, looked under the mattress, under doilies and antimacassars. At last he found them, Mrs. Kirkland’s private papers. He knew she must have some; she was the kind of careful old gal that stuck things away. They were in the false bottom of a mohair footstool, the deed to the cottage, a small insurance policy on Mrs. Kirkland’s life, a recipe for goosegrease ointment, and a flat manila envelope.

McGavock opened the envelope. “Well,” McGavock said with a grin. “A dossier on good old Cushman.” Tied with a red ribbon were a half dozen mildly amorous letters signed by Cushman, a clipping of the news item showing the Cushman portrait and giving a flowery picture of Mr. Cushman Mapes’ luxurious background, and a brief note dated six years previously, Nashville postmarked. The letter said simply, Dear Mrs. Kirkland: Everything is going remarkably well here. I’ve cashed in the bonds and should be home soon. I see no reason why James should be given any intimation that I have temporarily on hand a fairly generous fund of cash. In closing, I would like to say again, as I’ve indicated before, that my deep esteem for you, Mrs. Kirkland, at times borders very nearly on marital affection. Very truly yours, Cushman Mapes.

On the back of the sheet was a row of pencilled notes, in what McGavock took to be Mrs. Kirkland’s own handwriting:

Little Tennant said quietly: “She’s been planning on marrying Cousin Cushman herself. For at least six years. I’d never have guessed it!”

McGavock returned the papers to the footstool and looked at his watch. “They’re waiting for us. In the big house, on the hill.”

They were indeed. The atmosphere was predatory and hushed, engulfing McGavock and his client, as they followed Mrs. Kirkland into Cushman Mapes’ great, dank parlor. Three kerosene lamps were going tonight and in the harsh glare the streaked, drab walls seemed shabbier than ever, and the gilt-and-plush chairs more funereal. Cushman Mapes, his little white goatee outthrust, his eyes sparkling hostilely, sat with Mrs. Jimmy Mapes, his sister-in-law, beneath his portrait on the mildewed loveseat. Colonel Jimmy, himself, stood talking, spluttering, to Sheriff Ira Finney. McGavock had rather expected the auctioneer and his pretty young wife to be on hand. Sheriff Ira said docilely: “Let’s finish this up, and get out, Luther. I don’t think we’re much welcome here.”

Littleton Tennant nodded pleasantly to his relatives, but they ignored him pointedly.

There was a long, tense moment of silence. Finally McGavock spoke. He said: “You bet we’ll finish this in a hurry, Sheriff. Arrest Cushman Mapes for murder.”

Mrs. Kirkland gasped. “Not Cushman! You’re making a terrible mistake!”

“And Mrs. Kirkland, too,” McGavock continued. “This was a partnership in murder, Sheriff Ira.”

Colonel Jimmy and his wife boggled. Client Tennant said ponderously: “History affords some extremely interesting joint crimes. One Joseph Antonini and his wife, early in the last century, murdered an English girl named Blankenfield in an inn near Augsburg. When the victim screamed a young brother-in-law named Carl covered up by running through the halls yelling that his father was beating him! I recall, too, another case where—”

But no one was paying any attention to him.

Colonel Jimmy Mapes finally regained his power of speech. “Explain yourself Mr. McGavock.”

“I intend to.” McGavock’s face was bleak and pale. “Three times since I’ve hit town Brother Cushman has tried to kill me, too, and I’d like to express myself. First, I want to say that of all the cases I’ve ever worked on, this turns out to be one of the meanest and most vicious.”

Sheriff Ira said: “So he and Mrs. Kirkland worked together, and killed the two housekeepers? Where are their bodies, Luther?”

“There weren’t any housekeepers, Sheriff Ira.” McGavock spoke slowly, softly. “That was the trick.”

Colonel Jimmy Mapes looked bewildered. “I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. You weren’t supposed to understand.” McGavock grinned mirthlessly. “They killed Marie Dubois, and robbed her.”

Sheriff Ira blinked. “Who?”

“Marie Dubois. The old gal who painted his picture.” McGavock took down the portrait, examined it. Last night it had been signed in neat black letters: M. Dubois. Now the signature had been painted out with fresh green paint which almost, but not quite, matched the color of the grass in the foreground.

Mrs. Kirkland’s wrinkled face contorted in fear. “There ain’t a word o’ truth in it!”

He took a yellow paper from his pocket. “Here’s the answer to a wire I sent to Nashville. The spectacles you describe are similar to a pair made here for Miss Marie Dubois. Miss Dubois packed up life savings in cash and bonds six years ago and vanished.”

Sheriff Ira smiled. McGavock said: “We found her googs at Francy Scoggins’ cabin. I knew them as soon as I saw them. They make a special kind of bifocals for artists. A big lens for close-up work, for the painting, and a little distance lens set in like a little window, to see the model through. All we need to do now is to check on the prescription.”

Cushman Mapes said weakly: “I deny it, every bit of it!”

“I don’t know how you ran on to her, but when you did, you realized you had a good thing. An old gal, retired, who was a perfect setup for your dignified blandishments. I’ll bet Mrs. Kirkland helped you work out the details. By the way, Mrs. Kirkland is a widow. The death of her husband might be worth a bit of investigation, Sheriff. Well, you married her—”

Cushman Mapes reared stiffly. “How ridiculous!”

“You married her in Chattanooga. I can tell you all about your honeymoon, if you wish. Mrs. Kirkland kept a record to hold you in line. You brought her here, furniture and cash, and killed her. You knew she’d been seen locally — she was here long enough to be seen before she was dispatched — so you made up the Miss Leggett, the housekeeper tale, to explain her. Later, you got worried and added a Mrs. Dalton. This extra touch turned against you in the long run. No one ever saw Mrs. Dalton, by the way, but your pal, Mrs. Kirkland.” He addressed Mrs. Kirkland. “How about it, you want to tell your side of it first?”

She shook her head. “It’s all a pack o’ lies.”

“You know that wooden fisherman’s bobber you found in the woodshed?” McGavock asked her. “I hate to tell you, but that wasn’t a bobber at all. It was a gag. Intended for you. Cushman was saving it for you, if pressure got too strong on him.”

Tennant was interested. “But why would he gag her? You only gag strangers. An acquaintance can later identify you—”

“Just what Cousin Cushman was going to tell the sheriff, my boy, if he was ever questioned. But Mrs. Kirkland would never identify anyone when he’d finished with her. That gag was made to gag a corpse.”

Lamplight shone on Mrs. Kirkland’s evil, withered face. After a moment, she said, in a toneless voice: “I’ll tell what I know.”

Cushman Mapes said harshly: “Shut up, you fool. They’ll have to produce a body.”

“Mrs. Kirkland raises mighty fine asters,” McGavock remarked. “I wondered about it. Six years ago, I learn, the John Halbruck trucking and hauling company, 12 East Market Street, hauled a nice big wagonload of fine black river-loam out to her place and dumped it on her red clay flower garden. Every year or so, they say, she calls them up, and they renew it.”

Cushman Mapes said quickly: “Mr. McGavock, I’d like to talk. I’d like to give you my version of this tragic affair—”

“In the garden, eh?” Littleton Tennant frowned. “Fire, water, air, and earth. And it was earth. Just like the Bender family out in Labette County, Kansas, in 1873. They murdered travellers and buried them in the orchard behind the house. Ten to twelve victims, as I remember it.”

McGavock raised an eyebrow. “Executed, when—?”

“Killed later, according to rumor. But at the time they escaped.”

McGavock said coldly: “Well, friend, here are two that won’t.”