Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (15 page)

‘Hope your book is as easy to read as I am?’

Benson was quick to speak ahead of Dickens. ‘The Colberts are an old Virginian family. They were raised from blue-blooded British stock that reached these shores not too long after the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock. An enterprising bunch who made an early fortune out of cotton and tobacco. First they grew it and later they manufactured the finished products from their own raw materials.’

‘Of course, that had nothing to do with Art and Olivia and their ma and pa,’ Dickens augmented. ‘We picked up all of that early family history from normal social chit-chat before we even had our idea for the book.’

Benson felt he needed to explain: ‘I was simply telling this gentleman the general background of the Colberts, John.’

Edge lit his cigarette and gestured for the one-time colonel to go on.

‘Anyway, Richard and Mary Colbert – Art and Olivia’s mother and father – they came out to Kansas early on in their married life, before they had the children. Art thinks it was 78

because his father had a quarrel with the rest of the family. But he’s not entirely sure of that and I guess it doesn’t matter.’

‘Not a bit,’ Dickens murmured and drew a frown from his friend.

‘The fact is, Richard Colbert had a whole bundle of money to set up in the farming business out along the turnpike. And to build that fine house that Art and Olivia inherited.’

‘Of course, there wasn’t a turnpike way back then,’ Dickens interrupted again.

‘We all know that!’ Benson snapped. ‘Now, where the hell was I . . ? Oh yeah. They still had strong enough connections with the family business back east to keep them going through the early years and as time went on they made that spread of theirs one of the best there is in Kansas.’

‘Then they went and got themselves killed,’ Dickens said morosely.

‘That’s right, sir,’ Benson confirmed. ‘Art and Olivia’s ma and pa were drowned when a sternwheeler sank in the Mississippi. While they were taking a well-earned vacation away from all their labours out here.’

Edge needed only to express a trace of impatience for Dickens to recognise it and steer his friend back on course. ‘I reckon it’s about Art and his sister that Edge wants to hear, Walt.’

‘Yeah, well . . . ‘ Benson looked set to complain, maybe at how it was Dickens who had brought up the side issues. Then he shook his head, collected his thoughts and switched from the earlier generation of Colberts to the present one.

‘At first, Art didn’t want anything to do with working the land and stock on the spread along the turnpike. He went away to college back east to get himself educated as a lawyer. And Olivia was left at home to help run the place.’

He saw that Dickens was about to interrupt again and hurried to correct a possible misunderstanding. ‘Their parents were still alive then, of course. The riverboat accident didn’t happen until just after Art was through with his education and had come back here for a visit. Well, the tragic way things were, he figured it was down to him to set up his attorney business here in Eternity instead of in some far off big city like he’d planned. So he’d be near to the spread to help Olivia run it. Which is what happened.’

Edge found himself drawn to look at John Dickens because of the knowing smile that had spread across his age lined face and the man toyed with his bushy moustache as he said:

‘No skeletons so far, uh?’

Edge looked from him to Benson and saw that both men were smiling enigmatically now. He said: ‘I reckon the closet door’s about to be opened?’

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‘Now this has nothing to do with any social chit-chat we indulged in with Art Colbert, Mr Edge,’ Benson cautioned and looked suspiciously around the small store in the manner of a rumourmonger checking to ensure there were no unwelcome eavesdroppers. ‘It happened – if it happened at all – while he was away at college learning the law.’

Dickens insisted on making the revelation: ‘What Walt means is that what we
think
happened is that Olivia gave birth to a child.’

Benson scowled and augmented: ‘Or to put it another way, it seemed like she was with child – and then all at once she wasn’t.

Edge recalled what Olivia Colbert had said about never having been a mother and having no maternal instincts as far as she knew. Then he wondered whether, if the outwardly strait-laced woman had not made a point of telling him this, he would have pressed Benson for more details: felt it necessary to rake up what could be groundless gossip. Or an ancient scandal that had nothing to do with the recent spate of killings.

‘Just how – ‘

Dickens misjudged what was in Edge’s mind and hurried to finish the query he had expected to hear and then answered it. ‘ – does that fit into a history of Eternity, Mr Edge?

Well frankly, it doesn’t. Except in the sense that the scandal – if that was what it was –

happened twenty years ago. Which makes it a historical fact.’

‘If it
is
a fact,’ Benson emphasised irritably as he sought to assume again his role in the tale telling.

‘And if it is,’ Dickens went on insistently, ‘it’s valid material for us because of how a child would have extended the Colbert line here in Eternity. And with Olivia pushing on through the years now, and her brother never having shown any inclination to get married, time for that to happen is running out. The Colberts being the most prominent family hereabouts, it – ‘

Benson reclaimed the centre of attention. ‘It’s only a rumour without a single shred of solid evidence to support it, Mr Edge. But it is a tale based upon what certain local folks say they saw with their own eyes and know for a fact happened. Saw how young Olivia Colbert, aged twenty or thereabouts, and not seen to be courted publicly by any man, suddenly started to put on some weight around the middle. And how she unaccountably didn’t visit town any more. Then was packed off east. To visit relations, it was said. And came back after four months looking thin as a whip and sickly pale.’

‘Like we say, just a rumour, Mr Edge,’ Dickens reminded and re-created his conspiratorial smile.

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‘It wasn’t any rumour that a young farmhand named Frank Casey who worked on the Colbert spread wound up dead,’ Benson said wryly. ‘Found floating face down in the Eternity River with a bullet in his head. The day after Olivia went away.’

Dickens said with a shrug: ‘As for the rest of what we know for sure or have been told by local folks about the Colbert family, Mr Edge, there’s nothing at all wrong with them.’

‘What about Billy Childs and Olivia Colbert?’ Edge asked. Dickens pursed his lips, shook his head and toyed with his moustache. ‘We don’t know any more than Travis Hicks has already told you.’

He buttoned his topcoat and started away from the counter toward the doorway.

‘I’m a retired railroadman, as you’ve probably heard? And I feel drawn to stroll on down to the depot quite a lot. This morning I called in on Travis for some chit-chat and he mentioned you’d stopped by earlier.’

Benson came out from behind the counter, trailed his friend to the door and shook his head as he said: ‘Gossip, Mr Edge. It’s what keeps the social life of small towns going. And the people in them from being driven out of their minds by boredom at having not a thing to do when the day’s toil is done and it’s not time to bed down. One of the reasons why me and John started on this little history book of ours to tell the truth.’

Dickens took up the explanation. ‘Collecting what amounts to seventy years of some hard facts laced with a whole mess of chitchat. Well, Mr Edge, I sure hope you’ll be able to draw a neat conclusion to the latest piece of history that got started when Doc Childs’ boy died the violent way he did.’

He stepped out of the store while Benson held back to conclude: ‘I surely hope you do, too, sir. Because I’ve got a mighty strong feeling that Ward Flynt never will.’

Edge went through into the parlour at the rear of the store, turned toward the kitchen but discovered he was not hungry: and that the ache in his head was no longer bad enough to need whatever easing effect was to be had from strong coffee. He returned to the store, put on his hat, reversed the sign on the door so that to potential customers it read
CLOSED
and stepped outside. As he ambled off to the left, he was indifferently aware that the rain had stopped and the wind was no longer creaking business signs or making ripples in the many puddles that pocked the muddy street. Without the freshening breath of the wind the town’s pervading smell of dank decay was more evident than usual. And the dripping of water from the sodden roofs of buildings seemed disproportionately loud. Arthur Colbert worked out of one of four offices in a single story red brick building on the south west side of Main, just before the first of the line of expansive houses at the top end of the street. Because of the sullen November gloom of 81

the afternoon there was a sprinkling of lit windows throughout the town and Edge halted beside one such: a pebble glass panel in a door which opened on to a broad hallway that stretched from the front to the rear of the building. Inside in the subdued glow of two lamps hung from the ceiling, with the door closed at his back, the air was maybe a degree or two warmer than out on the street.

Two doors without glass panels gave off the hallway on each side at the front. To the left was one painted with the legend:
The Eternity Canning Company.
The firm was long defunct and the lettering was faded by age. The door opposite had no sign on it, but Edge knew that a man named Mills worked behind it, making a meagre living as a clock and watch repairer. One of the two rear offices, each with pebble glass panelled doors, was occupied by
Jacob Peckham, Land Agent & Auctioneer.
Across from this, to the right, the door sign proclaimed:
Arthur Colbert, Attorney at Law.
Only the subdued dripping of water from the eaves outside made any sound within the building to counter Edge’s obtrusive footfalls as he moved along the uncarpeted hallway. After he thudded a fist on Colbert’s door nobody called for him to come in and he did not give the lawyer a second chance to extend the invitation. The tarnished brass doorknob turned easily and the door swung silently when he pushed it. Dismal grey daylight from a window in the rear wall augmented the slightly brighter yellow glow from the nearest overhead lamp in the hallway spilling in across the threshold to illuminate the large, under-furnished office. Adequate to show Colbert slumped in his chair behind the desk positioned before the window.

His silver haired head was tilted forward so that his chin rested on his Adam’s apple and his arms hung limply down at each side of the chair. A knife was buried to the hilt in the centre of his chest, like an ornate, oversize pin fixing his necktie to his shirt. The once plain blue tie was only slightly stained because the lawyer had died quickly, so that the heart into which the blade was plunged had had little time to pump out what was left of his lifeblood. Apart from the inert form hunched limply in the chair, the only other disarrayed item in the office was the rectangular blotter: pushed out of alignment on the desktop. Edge advanced to the side of the desk in the room that was pleasantly warm from a pot-bellied stove that had burned low near to where he stooped to peer at the dead man’s face. Saw the heavily lined features were set in an expression of pained surprise. He moved around the back of the chair, into the restricted space between it and a folder laden table immediately under the window that looked out across open ground toward the row of small frame houses on the California Trail.

Rain began to drift gently down from the leaden sky again as he briefly studied the corpses from this angle and saw how the killer would have plunged the knife into Colbert

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from behind. This was as far as he went to satisfy his curiosity about the latest killing in Eternity and he crossed to the still open doorway. Here he paused to look back and murmured sardonically: ‘Well, counsellor, I figure there’s a far better man than me who’ll be giving the final judgement. But there ain’t a doubt you lost the closing argument.’

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CHAPTER • 11

______________________________________________________________________

EDGE STEPPED out into the lamp-lit hallway and had almost reached the front
door when it was thrown open and a pre-occupied man bustled in. The newcomer muttered low toned complaints about the weather as he took off a derby hat and shook it, splattering raindrops in all directions. Only then did he become aware he was not alone and when he saw he had showered Edge with water he blurted anxiously: ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry! Please forgive me, sir?’