Jay Carroll - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, August 1957 (British Edition)

I grinned, told her I was all right, and let her push me into a chair, pour a drink and hand it to me. Then I gave her a brief and very sketchy outline of what had happened. I didn’t tell her much about Anita, though. I could fill her in on the details later. Then, I called Tracy Evans’ office.

“We’ve got it all wrapped up,” Evans said. “We picked up Green and got statements from all three of them.

“Kingston had gone there to see Anita earlier, to tell her he was through. She had told him to come up the back stairs to the apartment. When she found out what he had come for, she lost her head, grabbed Tony’s gun from the desk and shot him. She told Lorio Kingston had followed her upstairs and made a pass at her.

“Then, Lorio and Green framed the robbery, after the club closed. Green came up with the brilliant idea of planting the things in Kingston’s car, including the jewellery he’s confessed he stole himself. Then, Green clipped Lorio to make the whole thing look better, and left. We know what happened then.”

I replaced the phone, as Muriel poured another drink and daubed at the cut on my head with a wet washcloth she had fetched from the bathroom.

“You can’t go home like this, Cory.” She glanced at the electric clock on the mantle. “Besides, it’s nearly four o’clock. You might as well stay here.”

I grinned, reached up and pulled her down on my lap. I decided it was the best proposition I had had all day.

Four times the maniac had killed — but his madness was no match for the sanity of Henry Ferris!

There was, a large knothole in one of the boards near the room of Henry Ferris’ barn. It was in the north wall, just beneath the eaves, and it gave Henry an unobstructed view of his orchard, and the oblong knoll just beyond. The knoll was not on Henry’s property — it was part of the Kimberly’s place — and it was where Colleen Kimberly came, every Sunday afternoon, to set up her easel and her canvas chair, and paint the things she saw around her.

Colleen was old Sam Kimberly’s only daughter, and she was the prettiest girl Henry had ever seen. He had begun noticing her about a year ago, when she just turned seventeen, and he hadn’t really been able to think about much else ever since. Colleen had blonde hair, like rain-washed wheat, and blue eyes that looked almost black until you got close to her, and, lately, her figure had filled out until it made Henry hurt just to look at her.

Henry was looking at her now, with the help of a ladder pushed against the wall of the hayloft and an old brass-cased spyglass. This was the hottest day they had had all summer, and Colleen had hiked up her skirt, to make herself a little cooler. Henry grinned slyly, wondering how fast she’d pull that skirt down again, if she knew he was watching her.

“It’d come down damn fast, I’ll bet,” he said aloud. He often talked to himself, working alone so much. “And, oh! — wouldn’t she blush, though!” He shifted the spyglass to his other eye and adjusted the focus, so that he could see the play of the slanting sunlight across the almost imperceptible golden down on Colleen’s tapering thighs. “If she only knew I was up here! he thought. Man, if she only even suspected!”

He had talked to Colleen twice. The first time had been five weeks ago, when he had driven himself so nearly crazy in the hayloft that he’d felt he simply had to be closer to her. He had crossed the orchard and ambled over to the knoll, and stood watching her paint for a long time, before she noticed him at all. When she did, she didn’t seem to mind his being there. She didn’t even seem surprised. She had just smiled at him and gone back to her painting of a plum tree.

“That’s real pretty,” Henry had said. “It sure enough looks just like an old plum tree, all right.” It was hard for a man to know exactly what to say to her, Henry reflected. Folks hereabouts said Colleen wasn’t quite bright, and that that was the reason her pa didn’t send her to the high school in town, and wouldn’t let her go out with boys.

But hell, folks hereabouts were always saying mean things like that, especially about girls as pretty as Colleen. Why, they had even said he wasn’t bright, too. He had heard it said more than once — just as if a man could run a farm like this one, year after year, and take care of a wife that was paralysed from the waist down and all, unless he was pretty bright.

Hell, he was brighter than any of them! They were just jealous of him, because he was such a damn good farmer, that was all. Just like they were jealous of Colleen, because she was so pretty.

Colleen hadn’t answered him when he complimented her painting of the plum tree. He stepped closer and squinted at the canvas, and nodded slowly. “Yes, Sir,” he said. “It sure looks like that old plum tree’ll be popping out with fruit any minute now. It’s a right nice piece of work, Miss.”

The girl had smiled up at him and made another dab with her brush. “Thank you,” she said. “I... I’ve been working on it for a long time.” It was then Henry saw that her eyes were really blue, instead of black, the way they had looked through the spyglass.

“Must get mighty lonesome for you sometimes,” he said. “I mean, the way your pa keeps you penned up here, so tight and all.”

Colleen had stopped smiling, and her eyes seemed a little cloudy.

“Me, I get pretty lonesome too,” Henry said. “I don’t get off the place more’n two, three times a month.” He paused. “What with my wife being an invalid and all, I have to stick pretty close.”

Colleen had nodded solemnly and lowered her brush. She sat very still, and a sudden fragment of breeze brought Henry the sweet, slightly-dizzying girl-scent of her.

“If it wasn’t for your pa and my wife,” Henry went on, “you and me might...” He broke off, his mouth suddenly dry. “I mean, we might — well, go to a church supper or something. Maybe even to a movie in town.”

The girl tilted her head to look up at him. “But you have a wife,” she said.

“Maybe not for long, though,” Henry said, trying to sound casual “The doc says she hasn’t got much of her row left to hoe.”

Colleen nodded, her face almost expressionless.

Henry swallowed hard, trying to get the dryness out of his throat. “If... if something happened to her, and if I could make it right with your pa... I mean, would you...?”

The girl frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then raised her brush again and concentrated very intently on the addition of some foliage to her plum tree. “If things were different,” she said. “If they really were, I might.”

Henry had wanted to say more, much more, but he had been physically unable to talk. He had stood beside the girl a full minute before he realised he’d have to get away from her, before he lost control of himself and did something he’d be sorry for. This should have been one of the happiest moments of his life, he thought bitterly as he trudged back to his own farm. But it wasn’t... it was one of the worst.

Things wouldn’t get any different, he knew — not for months and months, maybe even years. Martha might linger for goodness knew how long. Meanwhile, there wasn’t a thing he could do. The property was all in Martha’s name, even down to the rakes and hoes. He could leave Martha, sure — but what then?

All he knew how to do was farm. If he went somewhere else, all he’d be was a hired man. This way, at least he didn’t have to take orders from anybody except Martha — and he had his spyglass and his knothole in the bam wall.