Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (20 page)

– that it would be soon.

There was a symmetrical neatness to the stored away personal possessions that was totally in keeping with the room which perhaps said something about the character of the young man who had occupied it – a boy who from an early age never had a mother to pick up after him.

Edge struck some kind of gold in the bottom of the wardrobe, in a small, well-crafted wooden box under two pairs of highly polished shoes. A bundle of some two dozen envelopes, each with a folded sheet or two of paper inside. There was nothing on the outsides of the envelopes but each contained a perfectly spelled letter written in a neat, almost copperplate style. The correspondence kept so carefully in envelopes that carried no name nor address was not dated: but the freshness of the paper and black ink that was not faded showed the letters were of fairly recent origin. Written over a short period by a boy growing into a man who was besotted with a woman named Elizabeth. Edge read them while he sat on the uncomfortable low back chair before the bureau at which the letters had surely been written. Although they were undated he quickly recognised their chronology from the changing tone of the contents. At the beginning, Billy Childs had been reticent: as if he had fully intended for the woman to read about his deep feelings for her: telling her how she was admired from afar by a man who was unworthy of her. But as the time went on a gradual then a rapid change in his fantasised relationship with her became clear. And he got to be progressively outspoken until the letters 105

degenerated into a series of obscene diatribes when the self-imposed frustration of not having his feelings reciprocated took hold of the obsessed boy. After Edge got the gist of what the unsent letters were about he gave up reading each one from start to finish. Began to scan them and skip much of the repetitious rambling descriptions of the young man’s unrequited love: and almost missed a vital line in one of the last letters Billy Childs wrote. Or maybe it was just the last one the boy kept?

For there was a possibility he had written even more candidly to the object of his desire but then destroyed what he wrote because he was ashamed at the depths of depravity to which he sank?

Edge got up from the bureau, returned the letters to the box and replaced the box in the wardrobe. Made a cursory search of those places in the room where he had not yet looked but found nothing of interest to him. No trace of anything to imply any other dark secrets. Downstairs he found Mary Whittier in the kitchen that felt luxuriously warm after the unheated bedroom. She was hanging up a newly washed mug upon one of a row of pegs on the wall.

‘I’ve just finished my coffee break, Mr Edge. But there’s at least one more cup in the pot if you want?

‘Much obliged, but I won’t hold you up any longer.’

‘You’re not doing that, honestly.’ She had again been crying in her lonely grief and was disappointed he was not going to spend more time in the empty house crowded with memories.

Edge said: ‘Considering you haven’t done much to them, the bedrooms are pretty well ordered for an all-male house, lady.’

She nodded emphatically. ‘It was a case of like father like son, Mr Edge. Charles and Billy both felt there was a place for everything and everything had to be kept in its place. Of course, being a doctor, Charles was naturally neat and clean. And Billy took after him, I suppose. They never changed after Mrs Childs passed on. Although Billy was no more than nine when the tragedy happened, of course.’

‘I’ve been told you were a really close friend of the doc?’

She frowned, as if she expected him to add some caustic comment about her friendship with Childs. Then after a lengthy pause while he remained impassively silent, she protested defensively: ‘I don’t know what people have been telling you, Mr Edge, but Charles and I certainly had an understanding, I don’t deny that.’ She was holding a piece of cleaning-cloth and moved quickly to the sink under the window to rub at a stain she had seen there. And with her back to him as she gazed fixedly out across the yard behind the house she explained morosely: ‘I was the best friend of Laura Childs for the short time the 106

poor woman had left to live when they moved to Eternity. And I can assure you that nothing untoward ever happened while that angel of a woman was alive. It was several years after she passed on that my close friendship with Charles started. Just three years or so ago. If you’ve heard anything that suggests otherwise, then – ‘

‘What about the boy?’ Edge cut in.

‘Billy and I got along just fine.’

‘I know he was kind of mixed up with an older woman?’

She shrugged and looked uncomfortable. ‘There were rumours about him and Olivia Colbert.‘

‘She says it all ended weeks before he was killed.’

‘Quite right, too, if that was so.’ She vented another throaty sound of righteous disapproval, but confined the voicing of her opinion to: ‘A young man like Billy and a woman of her years!’

Edge said: ‘I hear he was a good looking boy?’

‘He was certainly that, sir. Which was another example of him taking after his father in my opinion.’

‘And he was at an age when he’d be expected to have an interest in women?’

‘Girls, I suppose.’ She shrugged and sighed. ‘Yes, of course. Although it was not something that Charles ever discussed with me. Even that nonsense with the Colbert woman was never spoken of by us.’

A rueful expression spread across her unlined face as she peered into space and shook her head. ‘But it has to be said that Charles could never see any wrong in the boy. It was one of his few faults, I always thought: how he refused to recognise that Billy had any of the normal human failings.’ She expressed disillusion for a stretched second then cleared her throat. ‘As he was growing out of adolescence and into an adult Billy got into his fair share of scrapes. He drank more than was good for him on occasion. And there was a short period when he stole from stores. Once he was suspected of being a prowler: though nothing ever came of that. But Charles always simply refused to – ‘

‘Did any of this trouble happen lately, lady?’ Edge broke in. An adamant shake of the head. ‘Oh no! It was all years ago now. Unless you count that nonsense concerning the Colbert woman. And the way Billy got to be so rude and grouchy during the last few weeks of his life. Towards me, even.’ She looked hurt. ‘Up until then he had always been the perfect young gentleman where I was concerned. And he totally approved of the understanding between his father and myself. He told me once that he was looking forward to having me for a stepmother.’ She found this was a memory at which she could briefly smile.

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Edge asked: ‘Is there a woman named Elizabeth living in town?’

‘Elizabeth?’ She was puzzled. ‘There are surely a number called that in Eternity. It’s not exactly an uncommon name, is it? You mean a woman named Elizabeth who could have been involved with Billy, I suppose?’

‘Maybe.’

‘No, I don’t think so. There are two women named Elizabeth I can call to mind straight away. But neither of them is close to being of an age with Billy. Both are many years older than Olivia Colbert as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?’

‘It’s just a name I came across, Mrs Whittier.’ He turned toward the doorway. ‘I’m sorry to have interrupted your chores. You said the funeral’s tomorrow?’

‘It’s no trouble, Mr Edge. Yes, tomorrow. Ten o’clock at the church. With refreshments here afterwards for those with a mind to come back to the house.’

He put on his hat, tipped it and stepped out of the stove-warmed room to cross the cold hallway. When he reached the front door, she said from the threshold of the kitchen:

‘Of course, there’s the Flynt girl.’

‘Mrs Whittier?’ He paused and looked quizzically back at the pensively frowning woman.

‘Beth Flynt, the marshal’s sister. I expect her full name is probably Elizabeth. And she’s not so very much older than Billy was.

‘I’m much obliged, lady.’

As he let himself out of the front door and started down the walk bisecting the welltrimmed lawn, Edge tried to conjure up an image of Beth Flynt, who he had seen briefly only a few times, with Billy Childs. But he had no mental picture of the dead man because he had never seen him. Though whatever Billy Childs had looked like, it surely had no relevance in a pairing with the attractive woman being courted by Clay Warner – because the boy had simply been setting down his erotic fantasies in letters that were never sent. Unless he abandoned daydreams for reality? And sent a letter to the fine looking, lithe figured woman with lustrous chestnut hair? Or spoke to her in terms like those he had used in the letters written in the privacy of his room? Then, if she had been troubled enough to tell her brother? Or Clay Warner: and he paid a secret visit to town before his public arrival this morning?
Hell,
he rasped to himself. He was stumbling around in the dark in an area where he had no proof anything substantial had ever existed. And before he started along those lines he should first try to build on what he knew for sure. Some broken cloud moved sluggishly across the rapidly darkened sky of late afternoon as he emerged from the dead end street and saw that the windows in both the law office and the building housing the
Eternity Post Despatch
were unlit. Many other 108

business premises were in darkness, their owners having closed up at the end of another less than frantic day of trading in Eternity. Way off to his left, out of sight beyond the curve of Main Street, he knew the saloon would be open and he briefly thought about heading down to the Second Chance. To drink a couple of whiskeys which might combat the cold that was starting to feel like it had penetrated bone deep into his ageing body. Did he used to feel the cold weather so much when he was younger, he wondered as he swung to the right and angled across the drying crust of mud on the street? Told himself nobody felt it so much when they were younger. And they used to eat more, he added in this sour-toned heart-to-heart discussion with himself. In the entire day he had eaten only the late breakfast and an empty belly surely had something to do with the way he felt so damn cold. The hardware store was dark and closed and next door to this the meat market remained open. Beyond, Roy Sims had exercised his prerogative to go home to his devotional painting of an imagined paradise when he figured there was no more corporeal business to be done today.

As he made to open the front door between the almost empty display windows, somebody emerged from the meat market: a woman whose heels rapped unobtrusively on the sidewalk as she hurried toward him.

‘Edge?’

He swung the door open and turned to look at the cold pinched face of Sue Ellen Spencer. Saw that her slender frame was warmly wrapped in a thick coat buttoned from the throat to near her ankles and that in one gloved hand she carried a lightly laden shopping basket. He tipped his hat. ‘Sue Ellen.’

‘Did you get to see Troy Shaver?’

‘Him and his two tough talking hands.’

She grimaced, then shrugged and grinned as she explained: ‘I guess it could be said that Hardin and Brady are what pass for desperadoes in a town like Eternity. Did you find out anything of any use to you?’

‘Some, Sue Ellen. And even more at the Childs house just now. I’d like to talk with you about that. But first I need to eat. And if you want to join me in whatever kind of supper I can throw together with the food that’s in the kitchen here I’ll be real happy to – ‘

She shook her head. ‘I’ve got a much better idea. Wyatt Ramsay has just sold me some fine steak. And I already have a whole mess of fresh vegetables in the house. So why don’t I go home and cook us a meal and
you
can join
me
in about thirty minutes?’

‘That idea sure sounds a whole lot better than the one I had.’ And he suddenly felt a whole lot warmer. Then younger when he watched the bright smile spread across her face. She nodded more enthusiastically. ‘Thirty minutes, then?’

109

She started up the street at a fast pace and he went into the store that was still warm from the stove Roy Sims had kept going all day in the kitchen. Which was still hot enough to heat water for him to wash up and shave.

Because he did not want to encourage untoward notions about supper and conversation and whatever else may possibly take place with Sue Ellen Spencer, he made an effort not to think about the subject that he wanted to talk with her about. But his mind kept drifting back unbidden to the bright smile on her attractive face when he accepted her invitation to supper. And it was just a short cerebral leap from there to the way Billy Childs had been so obsessively infatuated: at first with Olivia Colbert and then with the mysterious Elizabeth. Just as he – more than twice the age of the boy – was smitten, albeit to a lesser extent, by Sue Ellen.

It was not until he was outside the store, freshly washed and shaved, smelling pretty damn good and wearing a warm sheepskin coat over a change of other clothing that he realised he did not know where the woman lived. But he had seen her set off up rather than down the street and knew the only houses in that direction were those across from the school and the church just below the river bridge. So he’d have to simply knock on any door and ask where Sue Ellen lived. Alone or with her parents? Or maybe in a room in a crowded boarding house? He knew hardly anything about her. Except that her eyes were pale blue in colour, her brown hair was cut short and her ears stuck out appealingly,
damnit!