Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 20 Classic Mysteries!

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , October 1967.

Nom Roddenberry took the news of her daughter’s death like a durable hill woman. Her sallow, bony face went as gray as fog. Her slate-gray eyes went out of whack as she tried to keep on seeing me. Her gnarled hands lifted and grabbed her wrinkled cheeks, as if she could make a physical pain that would lessen the hellfire scorching her inside. A wail like a cat caught in a steel trap split her thin lips.

Then she steadied, pulled her shoulders together, stood gasping behind the counter in her cafe. “Gaither... Jerl Brownlee murdered my girl?”

“That’s what I’m trying to say, ma’am.”

She took off the clean white smock that she wore over her simple gray dress as her cafe uniform and came around the counter, a small, spry woman that the Smoky Mountain winters and endless toil had whittled down to a collection of hickory sticks and leather.

“Is Pretty at Doc Weatherly’s undertaking parlor now, Gaither?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Will you walk over with me?”

“You know I will!”

“And tell me the whole of it.” Her fingers were like wires on my wrist “Every last detail. You hear me, Gaither?”

She turned over the cardboard sign that hung inside the glass part of the cafe door. The sign said “Closed.” We stepped onto the sidewalk. The old lady closed and locked the door, then stood a minute looking up and down the dusty street like she was a stranger, although she’d lived in the town of Comfort all her life.

“Not much here to satisfy a gal young’un who dreamed of fancy clothes and big city excitement, Gaither.”

“She wasn’t a bad girl, ma’am.”

“That she wasn’t, Gaither. Just too innocent and ignorant of the ways of the world and too — attractive to men.”

With me at her side, Mom Roddenberry thought of the short eighteen years of Pretty’s life, I reckon, as she set off with dogged hill-woman’s stride. “I’m listening, Gaither,” she prodded.

So I told her how Pretty Roddenberry had come to her end, as we tramped toward the old gingerbread house where Doc Weatherly lives upstairs and undertakes on the ground floor.

Pretty had met her death in cruelly simply manner. She’d sneaked up to the Brownlee lodge to keep a date with Jerl. He was the last of the Brownlees, had inherited a timber and tobacco fortune, and figured he was cock of any walk he cared to set foot on.

Jerl didn’t show up in Comfort often, preferring to spend his time and squander his money in resorts where fancy women were plentiful. With a bunch of friends, he had boozed it up at the UT-Clemson game last week, which took place in Knoxville. The swanky Brownlee lodge being on a thousand-acre estate across the line in North Carolina, the gang had trekked over and kept the party roaring.

They caroused over land, lake, and mountainside for three days before they fizzled out. Finally Jerl was left alone, surly and restless. He got to thinking of that cute little trick he’d made a few passes at previous when he happened to be in Comfort, so he called her on the phone, and she was dumb enough to sneak up there.

Who knows what went through Pretty’s excited mind as she dolled up in her best dress and perfume? Did she think she could tease her way into that rustic mansion and let it go at that? Did she think Jerl would actually take her away from the drabness and boredom of an isolated little mountain town such as Comfort? Did she kid herself into thinking she might even have a chance of marrying into the Brownlee millions?

Ever how her noggin worked, when the showdown came she just couldn’t snatch off her clothes and jump into young Jerl’s bed. But she’d called her shots all wrong. She hadn’t figured on the size of Jerl’s spoiled selfishness. His boozing had sharpened all the meanness in him. Even sober, he reckoned that anything he wanted should be his for the taking.

Pretty fought him. It must have been an unholy sight, Pretty struggling and begging for mercy, of which there was none in the inflamed face before her. She barked his shins and scratched his face; then he knocked her down and busted the back of her head. Maybe she struck the big fireplace or a piece of the heavy furniture.

Jerl thought he’d killed her then and there. He dragged her out put her in his car, got in and drove a ways across the mountain until he was off the estate, then shoved her out. He must have thought he was reasonably safe. Days, even weeks, might pass before anybody found Pretty’s body. By then, Jerl figured, it wouldn’t matter what folks suspected. Suspecting and proving are two different matters. He’d just deny that she ever had come to the lodge. Nobody, he reckoned, could prove that some hill renegade hadn’t seen her walking up the road and got passionate ideas.

Only thing, Jerl hadn’t figured on a situation which the Brownlees themselves had set up. For years the Brownlee estate had been posted and the old man, before his death, had kept a mean caretaker up there to enforce the rule. As a result, the thousand acres teemed with game, and a mountain farmer with a taste for fresh meat had set out that morning to do a little poaching, thinking Jerl’s drinking party had adjourned to the lowlands and wouldn’t bother him.

The farmer heard Jerl’s car booming around the curves on the gravel backroad, ducked into the timber, and his popping eyes witnessed Jerl’s final act. The minute Jerl got back in his car and rounded a curve, the farmer went sliding and tumbling into the thicketed ravine where Pretty’s body had come to rest.

A final flicker of life twitched through Pretty’s china blue eyes. Her silken mane of yellow hair was a bloody tangle about her face as she tried to speak. The farmer dropped his ear close to her lips and caught her final words. She told him what had happened, as if there was any doubt in his mind.

The farmer ran a shortcut to the lodge, broke a window to let himself in, and phoned the sheriffs office in Comfort. Sheriff Collie Loudermilk had flashed the word to the sheriffs of neighboring counties. Roadblocks were set up in minutes.

With Jerl Brownlee in the net, Collie had sent me, his deputy, to fetch down the body. I’d brought the poor broken thing to Doc Weatherly’s, gritted my teeth, and dragged my feet to Comfort’s only decent cafe, wishing it was just for a cup of Mom Roddenberry’s good coffee.

Mom didn’t interrupt my tale once. She had a good grip on herself now. She took my words like the seasoned willow takes the slashing sleet. Her suffering was too deep to show on the surface.

We stopped in the shadow of the porch that rambled across the front of Doc Weatherly’s place. Mom Roddenbery lifted a hand and touched my cheek. “You’re a good young man, Gaither Jones, and I’m beholden to you for telling me the straight of it.”

“She was a sweet, human girl, Mom. She was tempted. And she tried to overcome. You always remember that”

“Yes, Gaither, I will.”

“And be sure we’ll get Jerl Brownlee, Mom.”

She lifted her eyes slow-like, and they were the hoar frost that rimes distant peaks. “Yes, that is all that’s left now, Gaither, justice: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. If Pretty is to rest easy in her grave, Jerl Brownlee must reap his due.”

I didn’t need to answer that one. We were both hill people.

“Again, I’m obliged to you, Gaither. Now, I know you got work to do. I’ll just ease inside alone to spend a last minute with my daughter.”

I watched her creep up the porch steps. Each one added about ten years to her narrow, bony shoulders. The door of the undertaking parlor opened, swallowed her. I turned, jammed my hands in the pockets of my tan twill, kicked some hollyhocks growing alongside the walk, and cussed my way back up the street to the office.