The Best American Mystery Stories 2014

Festered Wounds by Nancy Pauline Simpson

FROM Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

SHE DIDN’T FLINCH none. Gag neither. I’ll give her that. But after looking flinty-eyed at the body for a minute or more, both of ’em still as stumps, she did stare me straight in the face while we talked, so as not to get another eyeful by accident. That staring was, I figure, more discomfiting for me than seeing a corpse was for her. Our county nurse, Miss Haseltine Polk, is as fine-looking a woman as you’ll find anywheres. I’d never yet been close enough to see that her eyes are green and sparkly, like a bitters bottle. The wavy dark hair, mostly tucked under a poufy crocheted hat, I’d noticed more than I care to admit.

It had been a godsend she’d drove by within shouting distance while I was there. I was down in the creek bed under the trestle bridge, where some colored boys had come across the body an hour afore. The boys had been fishing and were so affrighted by what they found, they flagged down a passing farmer, showing themselves to be in no way responsible for whatever had took place or they’d have surely run away instead. The farmer found me at the railroad depot, buying a box lunch, and I ran right over to the livery to borrow a horse.

I was taking in first impressions of the nattily attired body when I saw her whipping by on the roadbed above me in that little two-wheeled pony trap she favored for unpaved roads. Her dog, a pink-nosed white bulldog she called Gumbo, for no good reason I could think of, rode in the trap beside her. He spotted me afore she did and barked to help me get her attention.

She hopped down that rocky red-clay bank light as a fairy, only stopping to gather up some excess skirt and tie together the ends of that long blue cape she wore when she was on official county-nurse business. Her dog whined and wriggled around in the pony cart where she’d ordered him to stay. The pony was indifferent.

I took off my hat and stationed myself between her and the body to give her time to steady herself on that slick, oozing creek bank before I revealed what I wanted her to see. Her job was mostly checking on the bedridden and the newborn, but I knew that upon occasion she assisted old Dr. McQuinney in some right gruesome undertakings. If what he was doing required four hands instead of two, and there weren’t no man around with a strong stomach.

I was pretty sure she knowed who I was. But I hooked my thumb under my gunbelt, pushing my coat front aside to reveal my badge. I have to pin my badge into the thick leather of my gunbelt ever since the cheap safety catch on the badge back broke off. I can’t pin it to my lapel no more without risking losing it or wounding myself. Might as well get used to it. I’ll have my first set of false teeth afore the county buys me a new one.

“Good afternoon, Miss Polk. I’m terrible sorry to inconvenience you, but I need some assistance and you are just the person to help me. You might need to brace yourself for a disturbing sight.”

She didn’t say nothing, but if she’d been a pup, I’d of said her ears pricked up. I stepped aside. The man’s body was half crumpled up and half flung out over a cluster of smooth flat boulders. A shallow but lively trickle of creek water had soaked the underside of the man’s good-quality tweed suit and near-new pinstriped shirt. Looking up, I could see what was probably his hat wobbling in the breeze overhead, snagged by a bolt projecting from a trestle beam about 20 feet overhead. His head was stove in at the temple and his neck twisted enough to permit us to see most of his face and to conclude he’d suffered a broke neck.

“It appears, Miss Polk, that this unfortunate man either jumped or fell from the bridge. Would you happen to know who he is?”

“I’m sad to say I do. His name is Reynard Farley. A drummer. Haskell Pitt Shoe Company. ‘Ten toes in heaven.’”

“Ma’am?”

“That’s the motto of the Haskell Pitt Shoe Company, not an observation.”

“I see. And you’re sure this is Mr. Farley?”

“Oh, yes, I’m entirely certain, sheriff. Lord, what a pitiful sight!”

“Deputy, Miss Polk. Deputy Jervis Stickley. Farley, huh? I thought that’s who it was. Lives at the hotel, don’t he?”

“Yes. He and his wife are boarders.” She got real quiet, thinking about them that was left behind and was going to have to make do without Mr. Reynard Farley.

“I was hoping you’d help me, Miss Polk, by breaking the sad news to Mrs. Farley about what has transpired and see, maybe, if there ain’t some friends or kin we should communicate with on her behalf. I’ve got to get the body back to town and have the doctor pronounce him officially dead. I’d hate for Mrs. Farley to get such news accidental like. Those colored boys that found him might have recognized him too, and have already set the county grapevine afire.”

She narrowed her eyes to fluttering quarter-moons and mulled things over. “I’ll help you get him into my pony cart. We’ll have to fold him up, but I’ve got some vulcanized rubber sheets we can wrap him in. Dr. McQuinney is in Moultrie visiting his nephew. In his absence, either the sheriff or I have the authority to pronounce a body dead. The sheriff is sleeping off the lancing of an axillary abscess.”

I knowed that already. Our sheriff was susceptible to frequent armpit boils.

She knelt down by the body, pressed his neck and wrist, and draped a filmy handkerchief she drew from somewhere within that cape over Farley’s nose. It lay motionless as them boulders.

“He’s dead, all right. Not a doubt in my mind. And I’ll sign the document to that effect. Wound still gelatinous. I’d estimate he’s been dead no more than a couple of hours.”

She stood up, brushed herself off, and glanced all around. “Where’s his automobile?” I must have looked dumb as a barrel bung.

“What I mean to say, deputy, is how’d he get out here?”

“Had an automobile, did he?” My first thought was that Farley had been in a horse-drawn vehicle of some kind, which the horse had probably already towed home to stall and feedbag. I hadn’t noticed any automobiles stopped alongside the road. More people had them every year, including yours truly, but they was still a whole lot less numerous than mules and still as likely to draw a crowd of excited little boys as the mules are to draw flies.

“Well, might be it’s up there.” She pointed to the trestle bridge. I should mention that the trestle bridge roadbed was wide enough on both sides of the track to serve as walkway or mule crossing, although it would be a mite foolish to attempt such a passage while an actual train was on the bridge. Flying cinders might scorch your clothes, and the side draft could knock a scrawny fella off his pegs.

A regular-sized dirt road extended beyond the bridge on both ends, running alongside the rail bed. On the east side that road made a sharp turn downhill, becoming a feeder to the county road. On the other side the road soon shrank to just tracks and enough rail bed for the train to follow into town.

Miss Haseltine Polk whistled for Gumbo to come on down and keep an eye on the deceased while we scouted the area. His hackles went up at the first close whiff, but he did as he was told. Miss Polk had a naturally commanding presence.

Sure enough, there, parked at the foot of that dirt road, occulted by hovering redbuds, was a Sears and Roebuck Model P, its trunk lid neatly tied down to secure all the shoe boxes stowed inside that kept the latch from catching like it was supposed to.

I pointed out to Miss Polk some deep scrambling-type footprints going up the road toward the trestle bridge. There was none coming back down.

“What in the world would lure him up onto that bridge in such a hurry?”

Me and her mused as one. Once onto the trestle bridge, we didn’t see nothing out of the ordinary, until Miss Haseltine Polk found some tweedy wool threads trapped in the rivets and welded seams of a particular steel railing, about two-thirds of the way across.

“Must be where he pitched over,” I concluded.

I was the one who spied what might be splatters of blood on a nearby upright.

“Don’t seem likely he jumped, you know, intentional, now does it?”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t make sense even without the blood. He’s got a load of orders to deliver and make a profit on. A real sweet wife waiting for him at home. He was wearing a watch and chain that were in no respect trinkets. Wouldn’t you think he’d have left those behind for his wife if he intended to take his own life?”

She cleared her throat. “And to add to the conundrum, there’s that peculiar injury to his face.”

“Good God, I mean, good gracious, Miss Polk. The man fell off a bridge onto a pile of rocks. Can’t hardly expect him to look like the Arrow collar man.”

She gave me a look I would have described as fish-eyed, only nothing sporting gills ever had eyes made my mustache tingle like hers did.

“I know that perfectly well, Deputy Stickley. But those rocks he leapt or fell onto are mossy and humpbacked as a camel. That wound across Mr. Farley’s eye and cheek looks like it was made with a hoe handle. Something elongated and shaped the same from one end of where it struck to the other. It appears he suffered an orbital… eye socket… fracture.”

I hadn’t paid much mind to that particular wound, but now that I recollected it, she was right. “Then you think he was struck in the face, up there on the bridge, afore he fell?”

“I do.”

“But why? If somebody wanted to rob him, why’d they leave his watch? And all them spanking-new shoes in his automobile? Not to mention the automobile itself.”

She shrugged.

“Say, how well do you know the Farleys? Anybody holding a grudge? Old enemies? Ever been accused of cheating anybody? His shoes give anybody one too many bunions?”

It wasn’t fish eyes but daggers she was flashing my way now.

“Beg pardon, miss. My levity was uncalled for.”

The wind gusts on the trestle liked to knock off both our hats. She wrapped her cape more snugly around her, to keep from getting airborne like one of them Wright brothers’ flying machines. Meanwhile the wind continued to riffle her skirt above a pair of sturdy, lace-up shoes and dainty ankles. Her stockings were white as moonlight peeking through dark clouds. She let me cradle her elbow as we made our way off the bridge.

“I understand that Mr. Farley travels quite a bit,” she told me, “but whenever he’s in town, he seems to get along with everybody just fine. He moved here from Michigan, I believe. But he’s not the least bit brash or irritating. His wife’s from Clayton County. And his reputation as a businessman is spotless. That fusspot Lottie Kreuger just about wore out a pair of pumps before deciding they didn’t fit and she wanted her money back. He gave it to her too.”

I won’t detail the events surrounding our getting Farley’s body out of the creek bed and into the pony cart, all wrapped up in them vulcanized rubber sheets. Just let me say that Miss Haseltine Polk’s strength in no way is a reflection of them dainty ankles. I swear, I think she could have done the job all by herself. We left the body with John Milton Penrose, the most respected embalmer and undertaker in the county. Penrose could make a ninety-year-old scrofula victim look like a Florodora girl.

Mrs. Farley was sitting on the front porch of the hotel stringing beans. She was a well-made young woman with yellow hair pulled back from a Kewpie-baby face. She was wearing a shirtwaist and one of them boiled-wool jackets women wear nowadays instead of a shawl. Her shoes were perfection, embossed black leather with gilt buttons. Her gold wedding ring was plain, but wide enough to reach her first knuckle. I pulled off my hat, introduced myself, and asked if there was somewheres me and Miss Polk might talk to her alone.

Mrs. Farley reacted to the news like somebody at the periphery of a coal mine explosion, stricken but not really grasping the situation. Which is why I’d wanted Miss Polk to stay with her awhile. I didn’t want Mrs. Farley to be alone when she got to be fully cognizant of what had happened to her husband.

I left them in order to roust Edgar Fulton and have him go to Penrose’s to take some camera pictures of the body for Dr. McQuinney and the sheriff to argue about. I told Fulton the county would make good on his expenses, but that was more wishful thinking on my part than anything else.

That evening Miss Haseltine Polk swept through a fiery sunset to tell me Mrs. Farley was unloading her grief on the Methodist preacher and his wife and that one or the other of them would be sending a telegram to Mrs. Farley’s people in Valdosta, who were good Christians and would probably come to collect Mrs. Farley as soon as they could.

We were in my office, such as it is. It’s really a tacked-on back room of the general mercantile. Half of a back room. The other half is where the post office stashes undeliverable letters and parcels. But I got my own desk and a rack for my hat and my overcoat. My law-enforcement certificate hangs behind my chair, which swivels if the wheels are canted just right. And there’s a sign on the door with type set by the same fella makes the posters when a tent revival or circus comes to town. It says: DEPUTY SHERIFF, CLAYTON COUNTY. No name. I’m a probationary hire until the county commissioners quit insulting each other long enough to put me on permanent.

I gave Miss Polk the chair and sat on the old church pew that serves as visitor seating.

“I think she finally grasped what had happened when I gave her Mr. Farley’s watch and chain. It’s a terrible thing for a woman to lose a husband she loves,” Miss Polk said.

“Indeed it is.” I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to seem unfeeling, but I suppose we can ascertain that Mrs. Farley was at some distance from that trestle bridge when Mr. Farley was killed?”

She gave me a mildly reproving look, but the same thought must have passed through her own mind because she answered me right away.

“Gansy Washington, one of the hotel cooks, said Mrs. Farley spent the morning in the kitchen, learning how to make yeast rolls. Apparently Mrs. Farley is sufficiently skilled at biscuits but falls short of the mark when it comes to yeast rolls. Gansy is an exacting instructor, I guess, and Mrs. Farley had to go right upstairs for a rest afterwards.”

“Mrs. Beasley lets guests have the run of her kitchen?”

Mrs. Beasley’s was one of two hotels in town, but the only one you’d let your sister stay in. I’d already learnt that Miss Haseltine Polk and a lady tutor who preferred not to live with her pupils and a spinster living on her father’s railroad pension and the Farleys boarded there in respectable comfort.

“Can’t see why not. The Farleys have been staying in the Bullet Room for more than a year.”

“The Bullet Room?”

“Oh, I keep forgetting you weren’t brought up here. The Bullet Room is so named because of the evening a group of drummers decided to relieve the monotony of travel with some target practice, using a portrait of Solomon Beasley as the target. They fired off a regular fusillade before somebody got up the courage to intervene. But after everything calmed down, the drummers were properly ashamed of themselves. No one was hurt. And their aim had been so godawful, Solomon Beasley didn’t even get nicked. So Mrs. Hymenia Beasley decided not to make too much of it. Just set a rule that no more than two imbibing drummers can congregate upstairs after dinner. She patched the holes, of course, but it’s been known as the Bullet Room ever since. It’s more of a suite than a room, truth be told, with a side room to dress in and a big rosewood screen separating the sitting room part from the bed.”

Truth be told, I was getting so tuckered out and hungry, I was starting to hallucinate about Miss Polk in one of them pink silk wrappers women are said to wear when they brush out their hair at night. I pushed open the door to let in some fresh air and skeeters.

“Was she able to tell you anything more about Farley?”

“Oh, once the dam broke, it was a regular flood.” Miss Polk unhooked her cape and opened it to show me the damp spots on her bodice. I forced my gaze to be fleeting.

“She told me they met three years ago, at a Chautauqua in Michigan. She was there as part of a Methodist ladies’ chorale and he was there lecturing on persuasive speech. Their eyes met during ‘Glow, Little Glow Worm,’ and a few lectures and refrains later, he persuaded her to marry him.” Miss Polk sighed deeply, and her eyes welled up in sympathy but did not overflow. No breached dams for Miss Polk.

“And they decided to settle here instead of in Michigan?”

“The Haskell Pitt Shoe Company wanted to expand south and had offered Mr. Farley an exclusive sales territory. Having married into a southern family, he seemed like an ideal candidate. Mrs. Farley told me more than once that he’s done quite well.”

“Married three years, you say? And no children?”

She flushed. “I didn’t ask her to explain that.”

“Whys and wherefores aside, no young ’uns?”

She shook her head sadly. “I almost wish… That’s to say, she’d have something, someone, to remember him by, if they had… if she were…”

I stood up and cracked my tired back. That pew was meaner than a bony mule. “On the other hand, all things considered, a young widow might fare better childless than otherwise.”

Miss Polk jerked to her feet and gave me a look sharp as a crosscut saw. “Well, some people can find a silver lining in just about anything.”

As admiring as I was of her, sharp look and all, I was not about to apologize for being sensible.

I accompanied her through the dim empty store to the main street door, not wanting to turn her out into the pitch-black alley my office door led into. She refused my offer to accompany her to the hotel, but she seemed to have softened a little toward me during our passage through the livestock feed section.

“It’s been a trying day, Deputy Stickley, and I want you to know I think you handle your job beautifully. For the most part.”

“Likewise, Miss Polk.” I cleared my throat. “Might I impose on your kindness one more time?”

She looked a little wary, but curious.

“Since the Miss Wainwrights live closest to that trestle bridge, I’d like to pay them a call. And I’d like you to go with me. My little birdies tell me they think of you as a friend.”

“I have no objections whatsoever. I was on my way there today when you waved me down. I’d be glad to help out.”

“Wagon or automobile?”

“Your roadster?” She laughed. “Their dogs would have fits and their chickens would die from fright.”

What with one thing and another, I didn’t get myself out that way for two days. I’d spoke to the sheriff by telephone and he seemed inclined to think Farley was a victim of ungainliness, not mischief. Till I had evidence to the contrary, I was to look to that for the explanation. What I looked to even more keenly was the Miss Wainwrights, because I heared from my little birdies that one or both of ’em walked over that trestle bridge almost every day and might have seen something. Miss Haseltine Polk had a pressing obligation that morning but agreed to meet me at the millpond afterwards to help me analyze any developments and share a scenic picnic lunch.

I telephoned Miss Lucretia Wainwright beforehand to give her fair warning. By then there was almost a dozen telephones in town. Although the Miss Wainwrights had been among the last to get electrified, they were among the first to get a telephone. Their place was a little hard to get to and both ladies had some health problems, so it was interesting but not unreasonable that the oldest person in town had one of the newest gadgets. The house itself was the crumbling remains of the only plantation house in the county to survive the War Between the States and the turn of the century with the same family in residence. It appeared, however, to be about the end of the line for both.

I had to run a gauntlet of wheezing, nipping old dogs to get to the front porch, but the immediate yard was nicely tended and the steps swept. The colored woman who answered the door was lanky, pop-eyed, and, I’m guessing, somewhere in her forties. Her hair was completely hid by a mustard-yellow kerchief wrapped tight as a ball of twine, so I can’t speak to how gray she was. She let me into a small side parlor, glaring at my insufficiently scraped boots like she wanted to chop ’em off with a ax.

A brisk little pitter-patter in the outer hall told me someone was on her way. I’d only seen the “old” Miss Wainwright from a distance in town. I was surprised to realize that the younger of the “old” sisters wasn’t so very old at all. She had some white wisps at the hairline, where it ran up against a pink powdered face. And she wore her hair pulled back from a straight-razor center part in that antiquated style old ladies favor over a fringe. But the bun that gray hair fed into was still chestnut brown. And though she was plumped up in several directions, she had held on to most of her womanly shape. I speculate she wasn’t much more than fifty. She introduced herself as Lucretia Wainwright and said her elderly sister, Beryl, had been so upset by the news of a death on the trestle bridge that she’d taken some “calming” syrup and was unlikely to be downstairs the rest of the day.

My little birdies had told me that Beryl Wainwright was something of a holy relic, being the oldest local survivor of the Lost Cause. There was an old man in town who might qualify as such a relic too, only nobody had knowed any of his people and his memory was so full of holes, it was hard to credit anything he said.

Lucretia was Beryl’s half-sister, born of her father’s postbellum second marriage to a woman hardly older than Beryl. The shortage of men after 1865 had led to some peculiar mismatches in age and social standing. The second wife didn’t outlast Lucretia’s arrival by much.

When they were younger, I hear, both sisters sang in the Methodist Church choir and held office in the local chapter of the DAR. But the past few years the sisters had kept to themselves for the most part because Beryl was now deaf as a fence post and Lucretia had nerves. But they got along, what with the colored woman and the telephone, which Dr. McQuinney used regularly to reassure Miss Lucretia that Miss Beryl could live forever. And they had occasional visits from other old ladies and whichever of the old ladies’ grandchildren could be bribed to come along. The sisters took frequent walks into town, a distance of about three miles. I asked Miss Wainwright about their perambulations.

“I’m not so fond of walking as my sister is, Mr. Stickley. But Dr. McQuinney says the exercise is beneficial for us, so I occasionally accompany her. She sets a leisurely pace for herself, of course. I don’t discourage her. Oh, I’ve mildly protested from time to time, on those days when her knee is stiff enough to require the aid of a walking cane. But she will have her way. Sometimes Iris-that’s our colored girl-goes with her as far as the other side of the trestle bridge and lends her an arm to help her descend the path that leads from there to the county road. She could go directly down our drive, of course, but she admires the view from the bridge, with the willows and the creek and all.”

“Nonetheless, Miss Wainwright, three miles to town and back seems right arduous for an elderly lady.”

“Oh, it’s not quite the expedition it sounds. When Big Sister gets to the main road, one of our kindly neighbors often stops to offer her a ride the rest of the way. And she never walks back. Why, the postal delivery man, Gus Murchison, practically considers her part of his route. Weather permitting, she goes to the train depot and checks the schedules to see if there are any changes.”

She leaned toward me and lowered her voice-though I don’t have no idea why, since we was talking about a sedated deaf woman. “She said something once that gave me the idea she thinks-only in passing, mind you-that she’s checking the war casualty lists they used to post there when she was a girl. Oh, she’s still sharp as a tack. I just mean that sometimes the very old can mix up the past and the present in equal parts. Time doesn’t dilute old memories as much as we might expect, Mr. Stickley.”

Or might hope, I thought.

“She checks that schedule religiously. I bought her a lovely little Gallet quarter-repeater pocket watch. She pushes a tiny button and the prettiest little chimes tell her the time. So even if she loses track of-oh my, I made a little joke, didn’t I?-she can avoid being on that bridge if a train is almost due. She attaches the watch to her pince-nez chain.”

“A chiming pocket watch? I understood she was hard of hearing.”

Miss Wainwright laughed a not-displeasing laugh and patted my sleeve.

“Hard of hearing? I’d say impossible of hearing was a fitter description. No, I suppose she doesn’t actually hear the chimes, but she can distinguish the vibrations that represent the hour and quarter hour. When one sense fails, the others compensate sometimes, they say.”

“How do the two of you communicate, Miss Wainwright?”

“We communicate through hand gestures and little notes. And she is capable of some lip-reading if she puts her mind to it. But she can still talk, believe me, and makes her wishes known.”

“And day before yesterday? The day of the unfortunate accident on the bridge?”

“Perfectly awful, wasn’t it? I shudder just to think! Well, let’s see. She set out as usual, about nine o’clock. I had wound her watch for her, same as always. By afternoon her fingers are fairly nimble, but they’re not too cooperative in the morning. She went on her way, in a fine mood because her jonquils are starting to flaunt their pretty yellow frocks. The weather was lovely, if you recall.”

“What time did she get home?”

“In time for lunch, same as always. About twelve-thirty. I think her appetite would keep her punctual even if the pocket watch failed.”

“And did she make mention of seeing anything unusual when she come home?”

“Why, no. She did seem a bit more tuckered out than usual, but, Mr. Stickley, my poor sister is over eighty. I can hardly expect her to be lively as a cricket every day.”

As if on cue, a specter in a rustling black dress crept into the doorway, a look of guarded surprise on a shriveled face pierced by two dark glaring eyes. Before Lucretia Wainwright could rise to greet her sister, the specter disappeared and could be heard rustling and mumbling her way down an unseen hall. But she’d been in view long enough for me to see the trembling, clawlike left hand gripping the door molding. A stump the size of a candle end held the space where a ring finger should be.

“Please forgive my sister, Mr. Stickley. She’s not herself today and, frankly, doesn’t enjoy making new acquaintances much anymore.”

“Nothing to apologize for. I won’t impose no further, Miss Wainwright. Excepting one thing. Did y’all know Mr. Farley, the, uh, victim?”

“I do seem to recall meeting him at the train depot one afternoon last fall. It must have been in connection with his business. Yes, that’s it. A member of my Sunday school class, Beatrice McKay, had recommended Mr. Farley’s shoes highly and took the opportunity to introduce us. But Big Sister and I special-order our shoes from Atlanta, as Mrs. McKay should know very well, so that was the extent of my association with Mr. Farley. A nice-looking young man, I do recall that. From the Great Lakes area, wasn’t he? I’ve heard that those lakes freeze so solid in the winter that people can actually take horse-drawn sleigh rides all the way across.”

Once I’d made my adieus and heard the door close at my back, I had the urge to fly down those steps like a schoolboy fleeing the truant officer. The millpond! But I stifled that impulse when I saw the colored woman, Iris, heading toward the house with a Baby Moses-sized basket of laundry riding on her hip.

She stopped but did not speak or smile when I blocked her path at a nonthreatening distance.

“Fine day, ain’t it? Been with the Wainwrights long… Iris, is it?” I fished a fresh double square of Oceanic cut plug from my coat pocket and passed it to her. She palmed it in a flash and secreted it in the folds of her apron. Then she smiled.

“Yes, sir. Iris Washington. My people been with the Wainwrights for three generations. The others all died or moved away. Mr. Ellington Wainwright-their papa-was already an old man and Miss Beryl middle-aged when I come on to work regular.”

“I was wondering, Iris. It’s too delicate a thing to bring up to the ladies directly, but I am curious. How did Miss Beryl lose that finger?”

“Miss Beryl’s life been one sorrow after another, the worst of it heaped on ’fore Miss Lucretia and me even knowed her. And it ain’t really ‘Miss.’ She done married twice. One husband kilt in the first year of the war, one kilt in the last. Two babies too. One born already dead, and one dead from the whooping cough. I never knowed any of their names. She be ‘Mr. Wainwright’s older daughter’ so long, people forget she was ever Missus Somebody. After Mr. Ellington Wainwright died, people just slipped back into calling both of the sisters ‘Miss.’ As to that finger… Miss Lucretia told me, serious as judgment, that it was cut off by a renegade Yankee soldier when Miss Beryl couldn’t pull off her diamond wedding ring quick enough to suit him.”

I must have recoiled, first from the story itself, and then from the eerie cackle she followed it with.

“Folks can’t believe everything they hear, Mr. Stickley. Seems like everywhere I go, I hear some variation of that old story ’bout a Yankee cutting off a lady’s finger to get her ring. Sometimes a old lady. Sometimes a young lady. Makes me sorta ponder. I expect a lot of ladies who never held a ax afore in they life learned to chop wood the hard way during the war. Gutting a chicken can be tricky the first few times too.”

“But she is missing a finger, Iris.”

“That so. Sure is.” She sighed and shifted Moses to her other hip. “More sad stories done come out of that war than come out of the Book of Job.” A slow sweet smile brought a broken picket fence of teeth into view. “But she do all right, Mr. Stickley. They never hungry. And Miss Beryl, she got her flower garden and her Victrola. She can’t hear it no more, but she still wind it up and hug it tight to feel the vibrations. Most days she need a cane to walk any distance, but she still get around pretty good. She got more to keep her content than some old folks.”

“And Miss Lucretia? What’s she got?”

“Why, I guess she got Miss Beryl to take care of. ’Fore that she had old Mr. Wainwright to take care of.”

“Is Miss Lucretia really a ‘Miss’?”

“Far as I know. Never heard nothing different.”

“Thank you, Iris. One more thing. Were you here yesterday morning when Miss Beryl went out?”

“No, sir. Was helping my husband set out tobacco. All day. Same as every year.”

She shifted the basket with a noisy groan, to indicate I was making a nuisance of myself, and I let her pass.

I half expected Miss Haseltine Polk not to put in an appearance at the millpond, but I’d come prepared. I’d bought two box lunches at the train depot from Mrs. Beasley’s cousin Lydianna, who sold them every morning from a table set up on the platform for that purpose. Each box contained two pieces of fried chicken-one white meat, one dark-a biscuit; an apple; a hard-boiled egg; a slice of layer cake; and a little twist of paper that held a spoonful of salt. To be truthful, I oftentimes bought two box lunches and finished them both off by myself. I wasn’t always sure I’d have more than a can of porky beans on hand for supper. My wild-hare work hours meant my meals were mostly movable feasts.

But there she was, her cape thrown back to reveal a green-striped dress with a dark green sailor collar and flyaway cuffs. Seeing her hatless hair was a revelation. Our picnic, laid out on a cloth as white as those memorable stockings, proved a banquet. Miss Haseltine Polk had brung homemade pimento cheese sandwiches on bread thin and translucent as magnolia petals. She’d brung pickled tomatoes and okra and boiled peanuts and squares of toasted pound cake spread with fig preserves. Instead of having to resort to the jug of stale water in my saddle kit, we were able to refresh ourselves from a washed-out vinegar jar she’d filled with delicious lip-puckering lemonade. Gumbo got a cow hock.

Afterwards, I come as close to trying to kiss that woman as I ever come to doing anything risky. But I reckoned, at that juncture, the odds of offending her were about equal to the odds of pleasing her and decided to wait for better odds.

We talked about all kinds of things. My one-armed grandfather coming down out of Missouri after the war. Me being one of five children, two of which was twins. We talked about her deciding to be a nurse after going with her suffragette aunt to hear Clara Barton talk on providing relief for refugees from the Galveston hurricane. I learned that she had three sisters and knowed how to ride a velocipede and had delivered a baby with six fingers on each hand. I ain’t never been so captivated by the finer points of somebody else’s life. Even without the kissing, I went home a happy man.

The next day I got a message that Miss Beryl Wainwright had died during the night and would I come over. I headed out there as soon as I could get a shave and put on a clean shirt. If I had expected Miss Lucretia to be beside herself with grief, I would have been mighty disappointed. I don’t mean to say she was skipping around the yard exactly, but she had a demeanor more fitting for the undertaker, Mr. Penrose, than the grieving next of kin. Her black get-up-moiré taffeta trimmed in silk braid, Miss Polk told me afterwards-was so picture-perfect, I wondered if Miss Lucretia hadn’t set it aside some time ago, anticipating the day she’d put it on.

She took me upstairs and gestured me into the room where Miss Beryl was laid out in bed, looking like an unconvincing waxwork. The little shriveled face peeked out of a ribbon-trimmed night bonnet. Both were propped up on a ruffled bolster. The rest of Miss Beryl was concealed by linens smooth as boiled frosting. Them piercing eyes would pierce no more.

I heared a creak and a rustle and a thump, thump, and realized Miss Haseltine Polk had beat me there or, from the tired circles under her eyes, had sat a deathwatch with Miss Lucretia most of the night. She was sitting in a rocking chair, nearly invisible in a gloomy corner. Gumbo was sprawled at her feet. That explained why the Wainwrights’ elderly dogs was whining and laying low under the porch.

I nodded at Miss Polk, then turned back to the deceased, where I stood, head respectfully bowed, for several seconds. I hoped to give the impression I was meditating on the fleeting nature of mortal coils. I had no idea what to say or do next.

Miss Wainwright took the problem out of my hands by stepping between me and Miss Polk, blocking our view of Miss Beryl’s frilly remains.

“I’m so glad y’all have been kind enough to come and offer me comfort. You see, there’s something heavy on my heart and I wish to unburden myself.” As Miss Lucretia looked about as heavyhearted as a flying squirrel, I was curious as to what this burden might be. She waved for Miss Polk and me to follow her out of the room, touching her finger to her lips as if Miss Beryl’s hearing had miraculously returned at her soul’s passing. She led us downstairs to a more formal parlor than the one my muddy boots had been tolerated in earlier, and swooped her hand over the two pink velvet chairs me and Miss Polk was meant to sit in. She herself sat on a shiny horsehair loveseat.

Miss Lucretia arranged all that moiré taffeta in a black puddle around herself like she was fixing to sit for a portrait painting.

“I hardly know how to begin,” she chirped. “You see, last night, before she fell into her final stupor, my sister confided in me a secret so terrible, I feel it is my duty to impart it to you, Mr. Stickley, as an official representative of the law, and to you, Miss Polk, as my sister’s and my succoring angel and confidante this past year.”

Terrible secret? A love child disposed of in the wishing well? A third crazy sister in the attic? Falsified DAR papers? I don’t think even Diviner Dave could have guessed what was coming next.

“My sister was responsible for Mr. Farley’s death.”

I thought of the little ribbon-trimmed mummy lying in the bed upstairs and had to repress a smile.

“She struck him with her cane and she watched him fall off that bridge to his death and didn’t regret it for one minute.”

Miss Haseltine Polk found her vocal cords afore I found mine. “B-u-ut, why on earth would she do such a thing, Miss Wainwright?”

“Mr. Farley must have heard the train coming and seen my sister crossing the bridge, walking on the tracks. When she didn’t respond to his shouts of warning, he ran up onto the bridge and tried to pull her to safety.”

Miss Polk gave a little gasp of realization. “Oh, dear! Poor Miss Beryl! I guess she mistook Mr. Farley’s intentions, running at her like that. Scared her out of her wits, like as not.”

Miss Lucretia Wainwright smiled an unwholesome smile. “She knew what she was doing, all right.”

“Beg pardon, ma’am?”

“Oh, she mightn’t have meant to kill him. Although I wouldn’t have put it past her.”

“Kill Reynard Farley! But why? She hardly knew him!”

“She knew where he came from. That was enough. I’m not sure how she got wind of it. Maybe reading Beatrice McKay’s lips. But she forbade me to take even the smallest peek at his shoes.”

“Where he came from? Do you mean to say…” I felt a cold epiphany creeping up my neck like a big wolf spider. “Michigan, ma’am?”

Miss Lucretia shrugged off my simplemindedness. “Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maine. Take your pick. Up north.”

Miss Haseltine Polk seen where this was going too. She slumped down beside Miss Lucretia, half on the loveseat, half on the floor. She took Miss Lucretia’s forearm in both her hands. Whether to shush her or to embolden her to keep on talking, I cannot say. But Miss Lucretia kept on talking.

“When Big Sister turned around and saw who it was had laid his hands on her, she struck out with her cane like she thought she was Nathan Bedford Forrest at Shiloh.”

“Do you mean to say…”

“Mr. Stickley, you do repeat yourself! I’d never have guessed she was physically up to such a thing. She must have summoned every ounce of strength left in her poor, frail body. Knocked him right up against the trestle railing, she said. ‘I’d rather be hit by a train,’ she shrieked at him, ‘than be touched by a Yankee.’ Those were her very words.

“I suppose he was concussed. Stunned, at the very least. He lost his balance, she said, and then made the mistake of turning his back on her, trying to retrieve his hat, and she did him another. He went all rubbery and kind of slithered over the railing, she said. I always did contend those low railings were a safety hazard. When the train did finally cross the trestle bridge, Big Sister was holding on to an upright beam, barely out of harm’s way, looking down at the creek bed where her eternal foe lay vanquished at last.”

I don’t mean Miss Lucretia no disrespect, but I sensed a kind of theatrical character to her recitation that was, well, in poor taste. She thought my dumbstruck expression meant I didn’t believe her.

“I assure you, it’s God’s own truth. ‘I’ve settled all my accounts,’ she kept saying. ‘I’ve settled all my accounts.’ Those were her last words. Next thing I know, she falls into a comalike state-our poor father went the same way-and I sent word to Miss Polk to come sit with me until the end. Comforting as any angel, that’s our dear Miss Polk!” Miss Lucretia rose, her languid movement accompanied by a sustained, three-note sigh.

“Would either of y’all like some coffee while we’re waiting for Mr. Penrose? I’ve got with chicory and without.”

I guess she took our being speechless as assent and started out of the room with an airy step. But she stopped in the doorframe and twirled around. “I feel I share her guilt, at least a teensy bit, because I forgot to wind her watch that morning. I thought about needing to do it, then I thought I had done it, instead of just thinking about needing to do it, and then she was out of the house. I didn’t realize my oversight until later. If she hadn’t been on that bridge when the train was coming, Mr. Farley wouldn’t have rushed to her assistance and he’d still be alive. It’s all so tragic, it’s, well, Shakespearean.”

I don’t think I ever in my life took part in a conversation quite as peculiar as that one. If Iris hadn’t arrived about then, I’d have been more than a little uneasy about going outside to answer a call of nature, leaving Miss Haseltine Polk alone with a corpse and a crazy woman. Iris’s arrival meant I could escape to the outdoor privy for several forms of relief, including fresh air.

When I returned, Miss Polk was patting Miss Lucretia’s hand and saying Miss Lucretia had no cause to torment herself.

“The last thing she required of me and I failed her.” Miss Lucretia was sniffling into a little lacy wad. “That watch will haunt me!”

Miss Polk, gentle as May rain, tried to shift the conversation.

“You needn’t stay in this big house by yourself, Miss Wainwright. Perhaps…”

Now, I expect Miss Polk was thinking about that particular day and the next, but Miss Lucretia had her eye set on a more distant object. I swear I thought I saw her toes start tapping under that long black skirt.

“Well, now that you broach the subject, I have always wanted to travel. The Holy Land, of course. And the Ziegfeld Follies.”

“Ma’am?”

“Ever since I was a girl, I’ve wanted to go see that Broadway. Ziegfeld Follies. I know I sound foolish as all get-out, but before I die, I want, just once, to hear people telling naughty stories and laughing out loud and see women wearing spangled stockings and headdresses with plumes tall as Christmas trees.”

Speaking of plumes, you could have just about knocked me over with a hummingbird feather. Miss Lucretia Wainwright must have noted the staggered expressions Miss Polk and I were exchanging.

“Oh, I have every intention of seeing my sister laid to rest with proper dignity and sacrament. Don’t give that a moment’s worry. But I must confess, after all these years, not even being able to utter the words New York without being accused of every perversity known to mankind, I do feel a certain iota of… release. I couldn’t even look at Papa’s stereoscope slides of Niagara Falls when she was in the room. I finally determined to put all thoughts of personal satisfaction out of my mind. It’s amazing how quickly they’re all popping out again.”

Miss Polk and I climbed into the pony trap in silence, seating ourselves by necessity close to each other, going extra slow on account of my horse being tethered to a hitching eye at the back end. The silence continued until she suddenly swiveled toward me and gasped.

“Oh, Deputy Stickley! Something perfectly chilling just occurred to me.”

I looked at her in mock disappointment. “We’ve shared two dead bodies and a box lunch. Can’t you bring yourself to call me Jervis, leastwise when it’s just the two of us?”

She didn’t appear to hear me.

“It’s the wickedest thought you could ever imagine.”

“Share it and it’ll be only half so wicked.”

“All right. What if Miss Lucretia forgot to wind Miss Beryl’s watch… on purpose? Miss Beryl knew that train schedule by heart. Checked at the depot almost every day for any changes. She knew she had to get it right, because she wouldn’t hear the train coming. And Miss Lucretia knew the schedule too. What if she… planned for Miss Beryl to get hit by a train? What if all that caregiving had just gotten to be too much, what with Dr. McQuinney saying Miss Beryl could live forever? Plumes, my foot!”

I couldn’t help myself. Her expression was so indignant and adorable, I had to slip my free arm around her waist. She didn’t pay it no mind.

“But look here, Miss Polk. She didn’t have to conjure up a plot fittin’ for Edgar Poe in order to get away. If she was tired of being a nursemaid to her sister, she could have just divvied up their money, stole away on a Seaboard sleeper heading north, and spent the rest of her days chasing down bawdy jokes and spangles.”

Miss Haseltine Polk cocked her head in my direction. It brought her face so near to mine, a strand of that fine dark hair skittered over my mustache. Did I detect a coquettish little gleam mixed in with all that bitters-bottle sparkle?

“Why, Jervis Stickley, you know better than that. There’s some kind of devilish plotting goes on in the best of families. But abandonment?” She drew her dark-crescent eyebrows together. “There’d be no end of talk.”