The Investigations of Avram Davidson (7 page)

T
HE
C
OST OF
K
ENT
C
ASTWELL

“T
HE
C
OST OF
K
ENT
C
ASTWELL
” was published in 1961, and won an Alfred Hitchcock Special Award for that year.

This clever story makes one think about the cost of crime and punishment—not the social cost, or the hidden cost, but the actual tax dollars coming out of your pocket and mine to build vast institutions and lock up many people—especially nonviolent offenders—for long periods of time. Is there a less costly way to deal with crime and justice? Can we afford the cost of Kent Castwell?

—
GD

 

Clem Goodhue met the train with his taxi. If old Mrs. Merriman were aboard he would be sure of at least one passenger. Furthermore, old Mrs. Merriman had somehow gotten the idea that the minimum fare was a dollar. It was really seventy-five cents, but Clem had never been able to see a reason for telling her that. However, she was not aboard that morning. Sam Wells was. He was coming back from the city—been to put in a claim to have his pension increased—but Sam Wells wouldn't pay five cents to ride any distance under five miles. Clem disregarded him.

After old Sam a thin, brown-haired kid got off the train. Next came a girl, also thin and also brown-haired, who Clem thought was maybe the kid's teenage sister. Actually, it was the kid's mother.

After
that
came Kent Castwell.

Clem had seen him before, early in the summer. Strangers were not numerous in Ashby, particularly strangers who got ugly and caused commotions in bars. So Clem wouldn't forget him in a hurry. Big, husky fellow. Always seemed to be sneering at something. But the girl and the kid hadn't been with him then.

“Taxi?” Clem called.

Castwell ignored him, began to take down luggage from the train. But the young girl holding the kid by the hand turned and said, “Yes—just a minute.”

“Where to?” Clem asked, when the luggage was in the taxi.

“The old Peabody place,” the girl said. “You know where that is?”

“Yes. But nobody lives there any more.”

“Somebody does now. Us.” The big man swore as he fiddled with the handle of the right-hand door. It was tied with ropes. “Why don't you fix this thing or get a new one?”

“Costs money,” Clem said. Then, “Peabody place? Have to charge you three dollars for that.”

“Let's go dammit, let's go!”

After they'd started off, Castwell said, “I'm giving you two bucks. Probably twice what it's worth, anyway.”

Half-turning his head, Clem protested. “I told you, mister, it was three.”

“And I'm telling you, mister,” Castwell mimicked the driver's New England accent, “that I'm giving you two.”

Clem argued that the Peabody Place was far out. He mentioned the price of gas, the bad condition of the road, the wear on the tires. The big man yawned. Then he used a word which Clem rarely used himself, and never in the presence of women and children. But this young woman and child didn't seem to notice.

“Stop off at Nickerson's Real Estate Office,” Castwell said.

*   *   *

L
EVI
P. N
ICKERSON
, who was also the County Tax Assessor, said, “Mr. Castwell. I assume this is Mrs. Castwell?”

“If that's your assumption, go right ahead,” said Kent. And laughed.

It wasn't a pleasant laugh. The woman smiled faintly, so L.P. Nickerson allowed himself an economical chuckle. Then he cleared his throat. City people had odd ideas of what was funny. Meanwhile, though—

“Now, Mr. Castwell. About this place you're renting. I didn't realize—you didn't mention—that you had this little one, here.”

Kent said, “What if I didn't mention it? It's my own business. I haven't got all
day
—”

Nickerson pointed out that the Peabody place stood all alone, isolated, with no other house for at least a mile and no other children in the neighborhood. Mrs. Castwell (if, indeed, she
was
) said that this wouldn't matter much, because Kathie would be in school most of the day.

“School. Well, that's it, you see. The school bus, in the first place, will have to go three miles off what's been its regular route, to pick up your little girl. And that means the road will have to be plowed regular—snow gets real deep up in these parts, you know. Up till now, with nobody living in the old Peabody place, we never had to bother with the road. Now, this means,” and he began to count off on his fingers, “first, it'll cost Ed Westlake, he drives the school bus, more than he figured on when he bid for the contract; second, it'll cost the County to keep your road open. That's besides the cost of the girl's schooling, which is third.”

Kent Castwell said that was tough, wasn't it? “Let's have the keys, Nick,” he said.

A flicker of distaste at the familiarity crossed the real estate man's face. “You don't seem to realize that all this extra expense to the County isn't covered by the tax assessment on the Peabody place,” he pointed out. “Now, it just so happens that there's a house right on the outskirts of town become available this week. Miss Sarah Beech passed on, and her sister, Miss Lavinia, moved in with their married sister, Mrs. Calvin Adams. 'Twon't cost
you
any more, and it would save
us
considerable.”

Castwell, sneering, got up. “What! Me live where some old-maid landlady can be on my neck all the time about messing up her pretty things? Thanks a lot. No thanks.” He held out his hand. “The keys, kid. Gimme the keys.”

Mr. Nickerson gave him the keys. Afterwards he was to say, and to say often, that he wished he'd thrown them into Lake Amastanquit, instead.

*   *   *

T
HE INCOME OF
the Castwell ménage was not large and consisted of a monthly check and a monthly money order. The check came on the fifteenth, from a city trust company, and was assumed by some to be inherited income. Others argued in favor of its being a remittance paid by Castwell's family to keep him away. The money order was made out to Louise Cane, and signed by an army sergeant in Alaska. The young woman said this was alimony, and that Sergeant Burndall was her former husband. Tom Talley, at the grocery store, had her sign the endorsement twice, as Louise Cane and as Louise Castwell. Tom was a cautious man.

Castwell gave Louise a hard time, there was no doubt about that. If she so much as walked in between the sofa, on which he spent most of his time, and the television, he'd leap up and belt her. More than once both she and the kid had to run out of the house to get away from him. He wouldn't follow, as a rule, because he was barefooted, as a rule, and it was too much trouble to put his shoes on.

Lie on the sofa and drink beer and watch television all afternoon, and hitch into town and drink bar whiskey and watch television all evening—that was Kent Castwell's daily schedule. He got to know who drove along the road regularly, at what time, and in which direction, and he'd be there, waiting. There was more than one who could have dispensed with the pleasure of his company, but he'd get out in the road and wave his arms and not move until the car he got in front of stopped.

What could you do about it? Put him in jail?

Sure you could.

He hadn't been living there a week before he got into a fight at the Ashby Bar.

“Disturbing the peace, using profane and abusive language, and resisting arrest—that will be ten dollars or ten days on each of the charges,” said Judge Paltiel Bradford. “And count yourself lucky it's not more. Pay the Clerk.”

But Castwell, his ugly leer in no way improved by the dirt and bruises on his face, said, “I'll take jail.”

Judge Bradford's long jaw set, then loosened. “Look here, Mr. Castwell, that was just legal language on my part. The jail is closed up. Hasn't been anybody in there since July.” It was then November. “It would have to be heated, and illuminated, and the water turned on, and a guard hired. To say nothing of feeding you. Now, I don't see why the County should be put to all that expense on your account. You pay the Clerk thirty dollars. You haven't got it on you, take till tomorrow. Well?”

“I'll take the jail.”

“It's most inconvenient—”

“That's too bad, Your Honor.”

The judge glared at him. Gamaliel Coolidge, the District Attorney, stood up. “Perhaps the Court would care to suspend sentence,” he suggested. “Seeing it is the defendant's first offense.”

The Court did care. But the next week Kent was back again, on the same charge. Altogether, the sentence now came to sixty dollars, or sixty days. And again Castwell chose jail.

“I don't generally do this,” the judge said, fuming. “But I'll let you pay your fine off in installments. Considering you have a wife and child.”

“Uh-uh. I'll take jail.”

“You won't like the food!” warned His Honor.

Castwell said he guessed the food would be up to the legal requirements. If it wasn't, he said, the State Board of Prison Inspectors would hear about it.

Some pains were taken to see that the food served Kent during his stay in jail was beyond the legal requirements—if not much beyond. The last time the State Board had inspected the County Jail it had cost the tax-payers two hundred dollars in repairs. It was costing them quite enough to incarcerate Kent Castwell, as it was, although the judge had reduced the cost by ordering the sentences to run concurrently.

All in all, Kent spent over a month in jail that winter, at various times. It seemed to some that whenever his money ran out he let the County support him, and let the woman and child fend for themselves. Tom Talley gave them a little credit at the store. Not much.

*   *   *

E
D
W
ESTLAKE, WHEN
he bid again for the school bus contract, added the cost of going three miles out of his way to pick up Kathie. The County had no choice but to meet the extra charge. It was considered very thoughtless of Louise to wait till
after
the contract was signed before leaving Castwell and going back to the city with her child. The side road to the Peabody place didn't have to be plowed so often, but it still had to be plowed
some.
That extra cost, just for one man! It was maddening.

It almost seemed—no, it
did
seem—as if Kent Castwell was deliberately setting himself in the face of New England respectability and thrift. The sacred words, “Eat it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” didn't mean a thing to him. He wasn't just indifferent. He was hostile.

Ashby was not a thriving place. It had no industries. It was not a resort town, being far from sea and mountains alike, with only the shallow, muddy waters of Lake Amastanquit for a pleasure spot. Its thin-soiled farms and meagre woodlots produced a scanty return for the hard labor exacted. The young people continued to leave. Kent Castwell, unfortunately, showed no signs of leaving.

All things considered, it was not surprising that Ashby had no artists' colony. It
was
rather surprising, then, that Clem Goodhue, meeting the train with his taxi, recognized Bob Laurel at once as an artist. When asked afterwards how he had known, Clem looked smug, and said that he had once been to Province-town.

The conversation, as Clem recalled it afterwards, began with Bob Laurel's asking where he could find a house which offered low rent, peace and quiet, and a place to paint.

“So I recommended Kent Castwell,” Clem said. He was talking to Sheriff Erastus Nickerson (Levi P.'s cousin) at the time.

“‘Peace and
quiet'?”
the sheriff repeated. “I know Laurel's a city fellow, and an artist, but, still and all—”

They were seated in the bar of the Ashby House, drinking their weekly small glass of beer. “I looked at it this way, Erastus,” the taxi-man said. “Sure, there's empty houses all around that he could rent. Suppose
he
—this artist fellow—suppose
he
picks one off on a side road with nobody else living on it? Suppose
he
comes up with a wife out of somewhere, and suppose
she
has a school-age child?”

“You're right, Clem.”

“'Course I'm right. Bad enough for the County to be put to all that cost for
one
house, let alone two.”

“You're right, Clem. But will he stay with Castwell?”

Clem shrugged. “That I can't say. But I did my best.”

Laurel stayed with Castwell. He really had no choice. The big man agreed to take him in as lodger and to give over the front room for a studio. And, holding out offers of insulating the house, putting in another window, and who knows what else, Kent Castwell persuaded the unwary artist to pay several months' rent in advance. Needless to say, he drank up the money and did nothing at all in the way of the promised improvements.

Neither District Attorney Gamaliel Coolidge nor Sheriff Nickerson, nor, for that matter, anyone else, showed Laurel much sympathy. He had grounds for a civil suit, they said; nothing else. It should be a lesson to him not to throw his money around in the future, they said.

So the unhappy artist stayed on at the old Peabody place, buying his own food and cutting his own wood, and painting, painting, painting. And all the time he knew full well that his leering landlord only waited for him to go into town in order to help himself to both food and wood.

Laurel invited Clem to have a glass of beer with him more than once, just to have someone to tell his troubles to. Besides stealing his food and fuel, Kent Castwell, it seemed, played the TV at full blast when Laurel wanted to sleep; if it was too late for TV, he set the radio to roaring. At moments when the artist was intent on delicate brush-work, Castwell would decide to bring in stove-wood and drop it on the floor so that the whole house shook.