Fury in the Family

III.

It was Jeddrath Sloan, twisted there in the trunk compartment. His leathery face wore a frightened grimace; his eyes were like two pieces of ice in the moonlight. He had been stabbed in the throat, and the blood, caked with dust from the compartment made his neck a mess. I touched the thing he’d been slabbed with, using my handkerchief. The weapon that had taken his life was a long fingernail file with a fancy, curlicue mother-of-pearl handle.

Far off in the night, I heard the hum of a car motor — coming this way. It jerked me out of the paralysis. I slammed the compartment down, got in the coupé, and swung it around in the road. In another two and a half or three hours Ansel Mace should arrive from New Orleans.

It seemed to me there were a few things Mr. Mace hadn’t told me about the set-up at Mace Manor...

Back at the Mace house, I ran the coupé in the garage, opened the compartment once again. Carefully, I pulled the leathery-faced corpse out. I carried Jeddrath over to the corner, around the pair of long, sleek cars that filled the rest of the garage. I dumped him there, got a piece of tarpaulin from a narrow workbench, covered him with it. It might not have been so good, but it was a lot better than having Jed Sloan in the luggage compartment of my car.

When I went around the house. Hannibal Constan was standing on the corner of the veranda, looking out in the night, smoking. I must have still been shuddering from the shock of finding Jeddrath Sloan’s body. Constan looked at me in the glow from the wan, overhead veranda light, said, “Anything wrong?”

“Nothing time and effort won’t fix, I guess.”

“I thought you’d gone, Martin.”

I shrugged. “I decided the drive back to New Orleans was too long and uncomfortable to make tonight.” I ran the back of my hand over my lips and decided I might as well get started, in a round-about way, on this business of Jeddrath right now. I asked Constan: “Have you seen Jed Sloan around?”

“Not in the last hour or so. Just a little while before old Theron passed on, Jeannie sent Jed up to her room for some trifle.”

“How long before he came back down?”

Hannibal shook his beet-top thatch.

“Why — I don’t know. Come to think of it, he might not have done the errand. An independent old cuss. The way he resents Jean being here, I hope he shoots himself with that shotgun of his.”

“He won’t,” I assured him.

I went on in the house, tossed my hat back on the hall tree, and walked upstairs without being too noisy about it. I tapped on Jean Dupree’s door. There was no answer, no sound in the room.

I tried the knob; the door swung open, and I slipped inside. I clicked on the light. The room had a nice feminine smell, but when I walked over to the dressing table it seemed a chill wind off distant swampland surged into the room.

A tan leather case was open on the dressing table. The case contained a manicuring outfit, a comb, brush, hand mirror — all done in mother-of-pearl. But one leather loop was empty. It was just the right size. You didn’t have to be a soothsayer to know that a long, keen nail file with a curlicue, mother-of-pearl handle was missing from the outfit...

I glanced about the room. There were no signs of a struggle, but any signs could have been erased; Jeddrath’s body could have been pushed out the window, to lie at the side of the house unnoticed until the opportunity had occurred to put him in my car, in an effort to get the corpse away from here and divert suspicion the wrong way.

But could a woman have handled a heavy, limp body in that manner? What if Jean had stayed downstairs after sending Jeddrath up here, and hadn’t followed him? How about Cole Delanard? Ansel Mace had said that Doctor Delanard had been his chum in New Orleans, which didn’t raise Delanard’s reputation in my opinion. Had Delanard, going in too strongly for wine, women and ribald song, in some sort of jam that made him hot-foot it away from the bright lights of New Orleans to this backwoods spot?

I went downstairs and found the maid. Between her sobbing laments for old Theron Mace, she told me Cole Delanard had gone home. She told me how to find his place, and I went out without seeing anyone, entered the garage, and climbed wearily in the coupé.

Cole Delanard’s house was about two miles on the other side of Mace-ton. A long box hedge fronted the highway; the house itself was a rambling, hulking structure in the darkness.

I left the coupé in the drive. The house was unlighted. There was no sign of life or movement over the whole of the flat, black landscape. The fog rolled up around the house, over the lawn, and clouds clutched and receded from the pale yellow moon.

I knocked, listened to the echo. I tried it a couple more times; then I walked off the porch, skirted shrubbery growing beneath the front windows and went around the side of Delanard’s house.

There was no light in the back of the house, either. The place was still, dead. From the back yard, where I now stood, I could see the outbuildings, the barn, the flat, perfectly naked acres that stretched for miles in every direction until they were swallowed by night.

Then I stiffened, staring hard at the barn, wondering if it were the rising night wind rustling a stall shutter, or if a man had really moved out there.

I started forward, across the back yard, the wind sobbing in the multiple gables and eaves of the house which was now behind me. I didn’t see the shadow again. I skirted the barn. Hulking in the night, it was a gigantic structure that could have used a coat of paint. Its massive double doors were closed, padlocked. If I had really seen a man, he hadn’t gone in this way.

I swept the sprawling held with my gaze. It appeared to be hard, sunbaked earth, likely not farmed since Cole Delanard had been living in the place. I took half a dozen more undecided steps. The moon swept free of clouds. It was then that I saw the dark, small splotches on the earth. At first I thought they were large drops of blood, then I bent closer, touched my finger to one; it was oil. I was chiding myself for letting my taut nerves see blood where there was only drops of oil — when the shooting started.

I heard the blasting of the gun, saw the flashes of it at the corner of the barn. I threw myself flat, digging my own gun from my shoulder rig.

I knew what had happened. Whoever had been in back of Delanard’s house had heard me at the front, seen me come around the house, watched me go toward the barn.

Two more shots crashed from the far corner of the barn, and dry dust jumped in my face. His marksmanship was an unhealthy thing for the person on the receiving end.

I rolled toward the barn, snapped a quick shot at the corner that sheltered the murderous party. That one didn’t do so much good, so I took better aim, squeezed the trigger again. I’d have bet splinters jumped off the barn planking in his eyes that time.

I heard the quick shuffle of feet, fading, running. I was at the comer of the barn in nothing flat. There I paused. I didn’t want to go chasing around the side of the barn and have a slug play a tune on my ribs.

Then I heard the grind of a car starter. Its sound was familiar. I’d left the keys in the coupé.

I ran across the yard behind Delanard’s house, heard the car skittering up the driveway. The tail-lights of the coupé were a hundred yards up the road by the time I reached the mouth of the drive.

I jammed my gun back in its holster, thought of all the dirty words I’d like to say. It was a long hike back to Maceton where I hoped I could get a cab to take me to the Mace house.

Lights were still burning here and there in the white-washed colonial mansion where old Theron Mace had lived and died. I paid off the driver of the cab, mounted the broad steps to the veranda. The Mace home had looked elegant when I’d first come here late this afternoon. Now, close to midnight, it sent a crawling sensation down my spine. I went down the vaulted hallway to tell the pinch-faced maid to fix that guest room.

I didn’t know whether I’d do any sleeping or not. I thought about the way I’d come here to do a perfectly plausible piece of work and how the affair was now dragging me along with it. I knew I’d have to stick around until I’d found that coupé. I didn’t know how much old Jeddrath might have bled in the luggage compartment and I didn’t know what kind of ideas the local law would have if the killer contrived to plant the coupé where they could take a look in the compartment.

I found the maid back in the sprawling, scrubbed kitchen. I gave her instructions about the room for me. She set aside her coffee cup, said she’d catch some sleep herself if she ever quit thinking about old Theron’s death. Then she tossed her head. “But I’m not the only one. That Dupree woman must have something on her conscience. She’s been sitting out there in the back yard for the past five minutes.”

I looked out the back window. Small and lovely in the moonlight, Jeannie Dupree was sitting on a stone bench near the rock garden.

I opened the door, went out. The maid snorted.

Jean started a little when she heard my step. “Oh... Mr. Martin.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“I... was thinking about poor old Theron... dying.”

I sat down beside her on the cold stone of the bench. “I want to apologize for the thoughts I had about you when I left New Orleans. I mean... I hadn’t met you then, didn’t know...”

“...Yes?” Her smile was nice.

“Well, you know how it is.” Her nearness made me giddy.

She touched my hand. “You don’t need to apologize, Allan Martin.”

“Yes,” I said. “Because I’m going to show you something — and I want you to know that I’m on your side. I don’t believe you did it. If you had, you’d have got rid of that fingernail file when it was done, and I can’t fancy you stalking me around a barn and shooting that well.”

“Why, what are you trying to tell me?”

“Come on,” I said, “and I’ll show you.”

We crossed the yard, entered the garage. We walked down the passage between a sleek car and the wall. I struck a match. Just ahead of us was the tarpaulin I’d thrown over old Jeddrath Sloan’s corpse.

“Take a deep breath,” I told Jean. I jerked the tarpaulin back. She said, “What is all this. Allan? Whatever is it you’ve been talking about — why don’t you show it to me?” I couldn’t show it to her or anybody else. Old Jeddrath Sloan’s corpse was gone.