The Glass Village (7 page)

“Two-thirteen,” said Burney Hackett.

“I know, Constable,” Johnny said softly. “You didn't touch the locket?”

“Nope.” Hackett's tone was stiff.

The oldfashioned locket-watch on its gold chain that Johnny had noticed Fanny Adams wearing the previous day was still around her neck. It had died, too. One wild, mad blow had missed her head and scraped down the front of her, smashing the cameo and springing the locket-face, so that the face stood open and the cracked and silenced dial with its delicate roman numerals fixed the moment of eternity. Two-thirteen, it said. Thirteen minutes past the second hour of the afternoon of Saturday, July the fifth. The sooty streak left by the tip of the poker on the battered watch case was as definite as a crossmark on a calendar.

Johnny rose.

“How did you find her, Burney?” Judge Shinn had turned back now, his long Yankee face hardened against the world, or perhaps himself.

Hackett said: “I been after Aunt Fanny for a long time to buy herself adequate p'tection for her pictures. Lyman Hinchley'd wrote her up for fire insurance on the house and furnishin's, but not near enough to cover all them paintin's she's got around. Most a hundred in that slidin' closet, worth a fortune.

“Well, yesterday at the party I fin'ly talked her into lettin' me cover the market value of the pictures. So today I ran over to Cudbury to see Lyman Hinchley 'bout an up-to-date comprehensive policy plan, and I got all the figgers and come back here to put 'em to her. That's when I found her layin' here like you see.”

“What time was that, Burney?”

“'Bout a minute or two before I phoned you, Judge.”

“We'd better call the coroner in Cudbury.”

“No need to call
him,
” said Burney Hackett quickly. “I already phoned Doc Cushman in Comfort while I was waitin' for you to get here.”

“But Cushman's merely the coroner's deputy for Comfort, Burney,” said Judge Shinn patiently. “This is a criminal death, directly in the county coroner's jurisdiction. Cushman will merely have to call Barnwell in Cudbury.”

“Cushman ain't callin' nobody,” said Hackett. “I didn't tell him nothin' but to get over here right away.”

“Why not, for heaven's sake?” The Judge was exasperated.

“Just didn't have a mind to.” The underdeveloped chin suddenly jutted.

Judge Shinn stared at him. As he stared, a wailing scream began that grew and grew until it filled the house.

It was the village fire siren.

“Who set that off?”

“I just phoned Peter Berry to send Calvin Waters over to the firehouse and start it goin'. That'll bring everybody in.”

“It certainly will!” The Judge turned abruptly to the kitchen door. “Excuse me, Burney …” The chinless man did not budge. “Burney, get out of my way. I have to phone the state police, the sheriff—”

“Won't be necessary, Judge,” said Hackett.

“You've already called?”

“Nope.”

“Burn Hackett, don't fuddle me,” exclaimed the Judge. “I'm not exactly myself just now. This is a murder case. The proper authorities—”

“I'm the proper authority in Shinn Corners, Judge,” said Burney Hackett, “now, ain't I? Duly elected constable. The law states I
may
call the county sheriff to my aid,
when necessary
. Well, it ain't necessary. Soon's my posse forms, we go huntin'.”

“But the summoning of a
posse comitatus
is the function of—” Judge Shinn stopped. “Hunting? For whom, Burney? What are you holding back?”

Hackett blinked. “Not holdin' nothin' back, Judge. Ain't had a chance. Prue Plummer phoned me here soon's I hung up after talkin' to you. Says she mistook your two rings for her three. As usual. Anyways, she listened in. Well, Prue had somethin' to tell me before she began phonin' the news around the Corners. A tramp stopped at her back door 'bout a quarter of two today, she says. Dang'rous-lookin' furriner, spoke a broken English. She couldn't hardly understand him, Prue says, but she figgered he was after a handout. She sent him packin'. But here's the thing.” Hackett cleared his throat. “Prue says she watched this tramp walk up Shinn Road and go round Aunt Fanny's to the back.”

“Tramp?” said the Judge.

He glanced at Johnny's back. Johnny was looking out the north window at Aunt Fanny Adams's barn and lean-to and the Isbel cornfield beyond.

“Tramp,” nodded Constable Hackett. “There's nobody in Shinn Corners'd beat in the head of Aunt Fanny Adams. You know that, Judge. It was that tramp murdered her, and it's a cinch he can't have got far on foot in this pourin'-down rain.”

“Tramp,” the Judge said again.

The siren shut off in mid-scream, leaving a shimmer of silence. Then there was confusion in the garden and the road. The swishy movement of feet in the kitchen, the creak of the swinging door, a wedge of eyes.

Judge Shinn suddenly pushed the door in and he and Burney Hackett went into the kitchen. Johnny heard angry female murmurs and the old man saying something in a neighborly voice.

The rain was still driving hard in crowded slanting silver lines, putting up a screen beyond the window through which the cornfield wavered. Water was pouring off the Adams barn in the back yard and the pitched roof of the small lean-to attached to it, a two-sided affair open at the front and rear. Johnny could see through to the stone wall of the Isbel field as if the lean-to were a picture frame.

He turned back to the painting on the easel.

She had caught in her primitive, meticulous style all the raging contempt of nature. The dripping barn, the empty lean-to, every stone in the wall, every tall tan withered stalk in the rain-lashed Isbel field, every crooked weeping headstone in the cemetery corner, cowered under the ripped and bleeding sky.

And Johnny looked down at the crumpled bones, and he remembered the dark gray face, the timid, burning eyes, the green velour hat, the rope-tied satchel, the spurting shoes as their feet fled in the downpour … and he thought, You were a very great artist, and a beautiful old woman, and there's no more sense in your death than in my life.

Then the Judge and Samuel Sheare came in with a staring man between them, and the Judge said in the gentlest of voices, I'm sorry, Ferriss, that death had to come to her this way; and the man shut his eyes and turned away.

When Mr. Sheare said in his troubled way, “We must not, we must not prejudge. Our Lord was poorest of the poor. Are we to lay this crime on the head of a man merely 'cause he must ask for food and walk in the rain?”—when the minister said this, Fanny Adams's grandnephew raised his head and said, “Walk in the rain? Who?”

They had taken him out of the studio into Fanny Adams's gleaming dining room, and Prue Plummer was there with Elizabeth Sheare, stroking the pin butterfly hinge on the door from the death room with patient avarice. But Ferriss Adams's question brought her mouth to a point, and Prue Plummer told him avidly about the man who had begged for food at her back door.

“I saw a tramp,” Adams said.

“Where?” asked Constable Hackett.

Mr. Sheare said suddenly, “I ask you to remember that you're Christians. I'm stayin' with the body,” and he went into the studio. His stout wife sat down in a corner.

“I saw the tramp!” said Adams, his voice rising. He was a tall dapper businessman with thinning brown hair and close-shaven cheeks that had grown pink and blotchy. “I was on my way over from Cudbury just now to call on Aunt Fanny and I passed a man on the road … Miss Plummer, what did this tramp look like?”

“Had on dark pants,” said Prue Plummer, making a smacking sound, “and a light sort of old tweed jacket, and he was carrying a cheap suitcase tied with a rope.”

“That's the man! It was just a few minutes ago! What time is it? He's still up there somewhere!”

“Take it easy, Mr. Adams,” said Burney Hackett. “Where'd you see this feller?”

“I got here just about three-thirty—I passed him only a few minutes before that,” cried Adams. “It was on the other side of Peepers Pond, the Cudbury side, about three-quarters of a mile beyond it, I'd say. He was headed towards Cudbury. Thought he acted queer! Jumped into the bushes when he saw my car coming.”

“Less'n four miles from here, it's three thirty-five … say you passed him ten-twelve minutes ago …” Hackett thought deliberately. “Can't have got much more'n half a mile past where you saw him. Your car's outside here, Mr. Adams, ain't it?”

“Yes.”

“I got to stay here, get my posse together and make sure everybody keeps his mouth shut. Judge, I'm deputizin' you and Mr. Shinn and Mr. Adams to start out after that tramp. He's likely dang'rous, but you got two guns. Don't use 'em 'less you have to, but take no chances, neither. Got enough gas in your tank, Mr. Adams?”

“Gassed up this morning, thank God.”

“Don't figger we'll be more'n five-ten minutes behind you,” said Constable Hackett. “Good huntin'.”

And then they were in Ferriss Adams's old coupé, rattling furiously up the hill in the rain, Johnny and the Judge bouncing around in the jump-seats clutching their guns.

“I hope this windshield wiper holds out,” said Adams anxiously. “Do you suppose he's armed?”

“Don't worry, Ferriss,” said the Judge. “We have a manhunter with us. Fresh from the wars.”

“Mr. Shinn? Oh, Korea. Ever kill anybody, Mr. Shinn?”

“Yes,” said Johnny.

They knew it was the same man the moment they saw him. He was slogging along the streaming road at a fast shuffle, the roped satchel bumping off his knees as he shifted its weight from one hand to the other, the absurd velour hat a cloche now clinging to his ears. He kept glancing over his shoulder.

“That's him!” yelled Ferriss Adams. He stuck his head out of the car, squawking his horn. “Stop! In the name of the law, stop right there!”

The man dived off the road to his right and disappeared.

“He's escaping!” screamed the lawyer. “Shoot, Mr. Shinn!”

“Yes, sir,” said Johnny, not moving. It was hard to keep her shattered head in focus; already she was part of his dreamworld. All he could see was a live man, running to stay alive.

“Shoot where, you idiot?” cried Judge Shinn. “Ferriss, stop the car. You can't drive into that muck. It's swamp!”

“He's not getting away from me,” grunted Adams, struggling with the wheel. “Say, isn't that a wagon road? Maybe—”

“Don't be a fool, man,” roared the Judge. “How far will we get?”

But Ferriss Adams's coupé had already plunged into the marsh, its wheels whining for traction.

They slipped and skidded after the fleeing man. He had been forced onto the path; apparently a few seconds of floundering in swampwater up to his knees had made the road with its mere five inches of mud seem like a running track. He ran stooped over, dodging, weaving, ducking, as if he expected bullets. The satchel was under his arm now.

They were in the marsh area about four and a half miles northeast of Shinn Corners, well beyond Peepers Pond. It was posted with county signs warning against dangerous bogs, and the heavy rain of almost two hours had not added to its charms. Now a rolling mist closed in that made Adams curse.

“We'll lose him altogether in this pea soup! We'll have to chase him on foot—”

“Wait, Ferriss.” The Judge was peering ahead, fingering his gun nervously. “Watch it! Stop the car!”

The brakes shrieked. The coupé skidded to a halt. Adams jumped out, looking ahead wildly.

The car had stopped on the brink of a soft black stretch of the marsh. Adams picked up a heavy rock and lobbed it into the stuff. The rock sank out of sight immediately. The surface of the muck quivered as if it were alive.

“Quagmire.” Adams cursed again. “We've lost him.”

The rain bounced off them. Each man stood in a nimbus of spray, peering.

“He can't have got far,” said Johnny.

“
There he is!
” cried Adams. “Stop! Stop, or we shoot!”

The fugitive was wading frantically through the knee-deep morass forty yards away.

“Mr. Shinn—Judge—shoot, or give me a gun—”

Johnny pushed the excited man aside. The Judge was looking at him curiously.

“Stop,” called Johnny. “Stop, and you won't be hurt.”

The man pressed on in a violent splash of arms and legs.

“Why don't you
shoot?
” Adams shook his fist at Johnny.

Johnny raised the 20-gauge and fired. At the roar of the gun the fugitive leaped convulsively and fell.

“You hit him, you hit him!” shrieked the Cudbury lawyer.

“I fired over his head,” said Johnny. “Stay right there!” he called.

“Scared witless,” said the Judge. “There he goes!”

The man bounded to his feet, glared about him. He had lost his suitcase, his hat. He crouched and scuttled behind a big swamp oak. By the time they reached the tree he had vanished.

They kept together, calling, occasionally firing a shot into the air. But the tramp was gone as if the bog had caught him.

Eventually they struggled back to the wagon road.

“You should have put a bullet in his leg,” Ferriss Adams was saying heatedly. “I'd have done it if I had a gun!”

“Then I'm glad you don't, Ferriss,” said the Judge. “He won't get away.”

“He's got away, hasn't he?”

“Not for long, I warrant you. If he sticks to the swamp, he's bottled up. If he takes to the main road, he'll be caught in a matter of minutes. Burney Hackett and the others should be along any time now. What is it, Johnny?”

Johnny touched the Judge's elbow. “Look.”

They were back at the dead end of the wagon road. Adams's coupé no longer stood on the brink of the bog. It was settling into the quagmire. As they watched, it stopped.