Gentle Murderer (26 page)

“I don’t need orders from you for that. I take care of my friends.” He was already around the bar.

“Don’t pay any attention to me,” Goldsmith called after him.

Krepic led the woman into the tavern as he might have persuaded a child from a window-ledge. “You don’t look good, Mrs. Galli,” he cajoled. “I fix you up. Krepic knows how to take care of you. Here.” He pulled a chair from a table by the window and maneuvered it behind her. “Sit down. Easy does it.”

She kicked the chair away. “I want to look by the window. Five minutes I want. I give them five minutes. Tell me then, Krepic.”

Goldsmith looked at his watch. Surely in five minutes the priest would be out of the house. Or did he need him now? He waited. What a monstrous hoax this would be on him, if Mrs. Galli were watching a vagrant husband!

“A little wine,” Krepic said. “I give you a little wine. It will fix you up like that.” He went behind the bar to get it.

Goldsmith took Brandon’s picture out As soon as the wine was poured, he picked up the glass while Krepic was returning the bottle to the shelf. He carried it to the table and set it before the woman. He held the picture in front of her face. “Ever see this man, Mrs. Galli?”

The woman’s eyes darted from the window to his face and then to the picture. They rested on it only a moment; “No,” she said. “Mind your own business.”

“I want this man for murder,” he said quietly. “I thought you might have seen him.” She spilled the wine in her agitation, but she did not speak.

“Do you want a policeman’s help, Mrs. Galli?”

“I don’t want help. What I have to do, I do myself. Leave me alone.”

Krepic was around the bar. “Get out of here, whoever you are. Can’t you leave the poor woman alone? Policeman? I gave you a drink. I give you a bottle to take home. Tell me what kind.”

Goldsmith turned on his heel and went out. He walked to the call box and gave his location. The moment he left the tavern, Mrs. Galli ran from it and down the street, her big body rolling in her haste. Into the phone, he defined his area. As he turned from the box, he saw Father Duffy hurrying toward him. He saluted the priest and walked briskly toward the Galli house.

M
RS. GALLI PUSHED OPEN
the front door and let it swing agape. She listened at the foot of the stairs, choking back her breath. There was movement upstairs. She pulled back into the living room doorway as her daughter crossed the landing.

“Johnny’s shirts,” she heard her say. “You’ll look like a spook in them, Tim …”

The big woman started up the stairs, lumbering one step after the other. Katie, coming out of Tim’s room, saw her. She stopped, unable to move backward or forward, her eyes and mouth open in horror at the look on her mother’s face. Mrs. Galli reached the top step. “Go to your room, Katerina. Go to your room and stay there.”

“No, Mama …”

Mrs. Galli caught her daughter’s wrist and pulled her after her. “My room. Better it is my room.” With brute force she dragged the girl to the room at the front of the house. She held her with one arm while she took the key from the inside of the door and put it on the outside. Flinging Katie away from her, she lunged out and locked the door.

Tim was in the farthest corner of his room. His eyes were wild on her, the eyes of a trapped animal, mad with fright.

“The police are coming for you,” she said. “Get out of my house. I don’t touch you. I don’t dirty my hands. I go in with my daughter now. We wait till you’re gone.”

“Don’t tell Katie,” he whimpered. “Don’t tell her. She’s all goodness … a holy child.”

“She’s not that good,” Mrs. Galli said. “What she has to know, I’ll tell her. It’s better she knows the truth about her mother than she dreams about you.”

Mrs. Galli had not passed the head of the stairway when Tim leaped from the corner to the window. He pulled it closed and then drove his fists through it, the splintering glass slashing his hands and wrists. Unaware of the pain or sharpness, he loosened a long spear of glass from the frame, clutched it in his bleeding hand and plunged into the hall after her.

A
T THE SOUND OF
the glass smashing, Goldsmith drew his revolver and started up the stairs. He shouted at Tim to stop, but when the demented man did not even hesitate, the detective fired. He fired twice more before Tim fell. Goldsmith let the priest pass him on the stairway. Together, they turned Brandon over.

Goldsmith then took the key from Mrs. Galli’s hand where she was moaning and fumbling at the door. Inside, Katie was beating her fists against it. Police sirens wailed their approach. Goldsmith unlocked the door and went inside with the big woman and her daughter, closing it quickly behind him.

“R
EMEMBER WHEN YOU CAME
to me at St. Timothy’s?” the priest said, close to Brandon’s ear. “You asked for absolution.”

Brandon opened his eyes. “How did you find me, Father?”

“From your boyhood at Marion City—all this long unhappy way. I found your mother, Tim. She’s in a convent. Very happy.”

“How could they take her? I don’t believe it.”

“You’re dying, Tim. I wouldn’t lie to you in any case.”

“She didn’t have the right …” His voice trailed off.

“Before God, who are you to say who has the right or who hasn’t to do anything in this world, Brandon? God’s mercy is greater than man’s justice. Pray with me now that in His infinite mercy, He will forgive your most grievous sins …”

“Tell them for me, Father. I don’t know them any more …”

“The greatest of them is pride. You have been proud even to murder, which you cried on heaven to witness.”

Tim managed to focus his eyes on the priest’s face. “Talk to Katie,” he said, “so she’ll know the truth forever.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …” His head lolled over on the priest’s arm.

Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Series and the Julie Hayes Series; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.

Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1951 by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Cover design by Tracey Dunham

978-1-4804-6048-5

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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