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

Jess Tatum’s face was stone cold. “Leave the house, Mary Lou,” he said sharply. The girl instantly obeyed, and when she was gone, he went on: “I say I killed Will Tubbman. If that ain’t enough, I’ll tell you why. He promised Mary Lou a new dress iffen she’d meet him up the mountain.” He paused uncertainly, looked at the younger man squarely. “I met him instead.”

“Looks like you would have met Mary Lou on her way up to him and told her there wasn’t any use in going on. Pretty hard on a girl, findin’ a man that’s been knifed to death. You could’ve saved her that—”

“I done told you all you need to know.” Tatum’s eyes biased. “You keep frettin’ me, Bill, an’ I’m like to lose my head.”

Bill let his mind wander back to the early days when he had been growing up. When his mother died, leaving him an orphan at the age of ten, it had been Jess Tatum who appeared at the door of the house.

“Pack your things, boy,” he had said, warmly. “You’re comin’ to live with me an’ my Mary Lou.”

The transition was accomplished as easily as that. Jess was a silent, brooding sort of man, quick to anger, quick to cool. Bill had ah ways been afraid of him. If Tubbman had attempted to molest Mary Lou, there was no doubt that Jess Tatum would have killed him.

There was also the law as old as the settlement itself. Decent girls did not submit to the embrace of young men until there was an understanding, usually in the form of “permission to court.” from the head of the house. The law was doubly binding on the young folks. Girls who followed their independent, heedless desires were likely to hear of the suitor’s accidental death.

Men whose instincts grew stronger than reason might expect a knife thrust from the girl to cool their ardour. The mountainous country about Black Gum was no harder than its people.

Bill said, “We got the report back in Warrington that whoever killed Will Tubbman used a thin-bladed knife. I kind of thought you would have used the rifle, Jess.” He took a quick shot in the dark. “Maybe some of the women that Will went after would have used a knife — Peg Tyler, for instance — maybe even Mary Lou.”

The old man’s face was as bleak as a hickory stump in the dead of winter. “I admit to killin’ Will Tubbman. I done told you why. How I done it is my business. I’m goin’ back with you to Warrington.” He thrust out his jaw. “You leave Mary Lou out of this. An’ keep away from her.”

Bill got up slowly. “It isn’t only Tubbman’s murder. I got to find out who killed a state trooper. Back in Warrington they think it was you. You say you didn’t do it. I got to talk to Mary Lou.”

He strolled toward the door, outwardly calm, but inside the pulse pounded in his veins. Jess Tatum was used to having his word regarded as law.

As Bill walked quickly toward the clearing behind the house, he expected any minute to feel the sudden bite of a bullet. Only his blind faith that Jess wouldn’t shoot a man in the back kept him moving straight ahead without once glancing over his shoulder. He had come up here with the idea that Jess was innocent. In spite of the old man Bill Corey had to prove it. And there was only one person on earth who Jess would cover up for, Mary Lou Tatum.

Once in the clearing, he took a deep breath and smiled. Jess wasn’t going to shoot at him, after all.

Bill steeled himself now for a different kind of anxiety, the problem of trying to prove a murder on a friend he had grown up with here, his boyhood companion, Mary Lou.

Remembering so clearly the final scene at headquarters before he had started for Black Gum, Bill let the breath sob through his teeth, then squared his shoulders proudly. The Commissioner had blazed: “I don’t care how many hill-billies they kill off among themselves. But when they kill one of our finest troopers, it’s time we cleaned out that rats’ nest.” He looked mad enough to go to Black Gum himself. “I’ll send a whole company if it’s necessary.”

Bill remembered how his own face had flamed at the insult. The sergeant had whispered hurriedly to the Commissioner how easy it was to call names when you didn’t understand a people.

The Commissioner had apologised handsomely later. “Sorry, Corey. Wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d taken a swing at me. Didn’t realise I was talking about your people. You’ve got a fine record so far. Do you want to go up there — alone — and bring out the killer? Lots of times a man can do better work among his own people than a stranger. It was a mistake to send Evan McGirr in civilian clothes. But I won’t send you unless you want the job.”

“Have you got any idea who did it?” Bill had asked, fearing he’d hear a name he might recognise.

“For what it’s worth, yes. Feb low named Jess Tatum murdered this Will Tubbman. Trouble over a girl. Same man probably killed McGirr. Well, you want the job, Corey?”

He remembered the coldness that had crept along his spine at the mention of Jess. If Jess had to be arrested, it wasn’t fair to send anybody else. Then Bill had jumped at the chance, thinking Jess would understand why he had come. Just then the possibility that Mary Lou might have done it had never crossed his mind.

The man in the grey state trooper’s uniform sighed heavily as he searched the timber line. He disliked intensely what he must do now.

“Mary Lou?” he called softly. “I want to talk to you.”

Almost immediately the girl came out of a scrub thicket as though she had been waiting for his summons and wanting it eagerly. They sat on a pine log that Jess had recently hauled to the clearing to be sawed and split into stove lengths. Around them the air was crisp and cool.

“Jess thinks you murdered Will Tubbman,” Bill said bluntly. “Why?” He looked a little ill at ease.

The thin girl’s eyes grew wide; her mouth dropped open. “From the time I first told him about it, he said he did it. He never asked me even, if I did it. He couldn’t think I did it.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Will Tubbman had been wantin’ to pay court. Dad kept puttin’ him off, sayin’ he had somebody else in mind. Ever since I got grown, Bill, it’s been like that. I didn’t care about Will. But the others, Dad would tell them all he had somebody else in mind. There isn’t anybody else, Bill. It’s just — Dad’s funny about men courtin’—”

“What about the new dress?” He looked at the faded dress she was wearing now. How many times had Mary Lou washed it and hung it out to dry in the hot sun, he thought.

“I ordered a new dress from Warrington with the money I made from hookin’ a rug. I couldn’t tell Dad. You know how he is, Bill. I still haven’t told him. I figured after I’d had the dress a few days, he’d calm down and say it was all right. Will Tubbman picked it up at the depot before I could get down. He asked me to meet him.” She blushed, and the colour started at her slim neck and worked up until her face flamed. “I thought it was all right.”

“And what happened when you met him?” Bill dug pugnaciously into the dirt at their feet.

“Why — nothin’! Dad found out. I went to meet him, and Will Tubbman was dead when I got there.” Mary Lou looked at the ground, then up again as she continued. “The dress was gone. Dad told me about it afterward. He said Will Tubbman was a—” She left the thought unspoken, and brushed vaguely at her eyes.

“Could Will Tubbman have been the man Peg Tyler got in trouble with?”

The girl hesitated. “Dad says he is, but I asked Peg. She said she hated Will; it couldn’t be him. Please tell me what will happen to Dad, Bill?”

“Nothing, I think,” he replied, and hoped Mary Lou would forgive him in case his prediction turned out to be wrong. “Watt Tyler warned me, when I talked to him at the depot, I was in a fair way to gettin’ my head blowed off, comin’ up here after Jess. Reckon I might slip down and tell him we’ll be leavin’ on the afternoon train. If you could see your way clear not to go back to the house for the next hour—”