The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (10 page)

‘It opens the front door of the Quinn house. But it may be a waste of your time going out there.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because you could have no job to do anymore, mister. I just got word from Austin that Ivers and Hooper are under arrest up there. They were caught red-handed in the act of breaking into a ranch house outside of town. And somebody in the next cell in the jailhouse overheard them bragging about how they did some stealing down here in Springdale.’

‘They didn’t sound off about killing anybody?’

‘I guess they didn’t do that. But Max and me will be leaving for Austin right soon to go talk with the punks. And if we need to stay some time up there to get confessions out of them I’ll telegraph you, okay?’

‘Much obliged, feller.’

Meeker went into his office and Edge backtracked to head down River Road toward the livery stable. There he saddled the same gelding he had rented in the afternoon and rode out to the Quinn house under an almost full moon: chose tonight to take the Old Town Road that ran out of Springdale from the north end of First Street.

Because recent sign in the dusty surface within the narrow defile was undisturbed he was easily able to locate the place where Martha Quinn’s buckboard had snapped a spoke. But since he had not expected to find anything here to help him earn two thousand dollars he did not feel any sense of disappointment as he rose up from his haunches and swung back into the saddle.

When he reached the house and the fenced off property in which it stood it was as quiet as the surrounding country and just the setting down of his mount’s hooves on the ground broke the silence until he hitched the gelding to the rail at the foot of the terrace steps. Little moonlight entered the hallway but there was a brass lamp on a stand between a row of coat hooks and a mirror and he lit this and carried it up the staircase. First went into the master bedroom that overlooked the terrace. Saw the bed was neatly made and all of many closet doors and drawers were closed.

He next went through a doorway at the rear of the landing that gave on to the daughter’s bedroom. Here the single bed was not made and the clothes Nancy Quinn took off before she went to bed for the last time were carelessly strewn over the mirrored dressing table and its matching stool. Coloured jars, ornate bottles and fancy boxes from which the girl had made up her face and perfumed her body to go to the dance on the night before her dying day were still in evidence. Some on the top of the dressing table and some in pulled open drawers. So, the room was in a mess: but, as Meeker had presumed, it was surely simply the kind of disorder a young woman in a rush to go out would create – not made by intruders searching for valuables.

Two other bedrooms were for guests and these smelled a little musty and were extremely neat from not having been occupied for a considerable time. He carried the lamp back downstairs and looked briefly into the luxurious parlour. Found it much as it was when he was last in there: minus the distraught Quinn and the uncomfortably out-of-his-depth Meeker. Broken glass still littered the floor in front of the sideboard and the whiskey bottle Quinn had opened stood on top, more than three-quarters full. He checked an urge to lower the level in the bottle still further, then carefully circled the shards of sparkling broken crystal: left the scene of the double murder and went back into the hallway and along it to a door at the rear that gave on to the kitchen. This was antiseptically neat and clean except for a coffee-pot that stood on the cold stove and the four cups that were still unwashed on the pine table in the centre of the room. Through the window was a view of the moonlit garden at the rear of the house: an area of lawn and four flower beds surrounded by shrubbery that were all in need of attention. Next he found the dining room that was as immaculate as everything else about this fine house. And he wondered idly as he closed the door on the room if the house had always been kept in such pristine condition: or if Martha Quinn had made a special effort to get it looking this way to mark the return of her husband after his business trip. He opened a final door off the hallway and halted on the threshold of the study where Quinn had written him the letter: seated at the desk on which, among other items, stood an empty glass and a half-finished bottle of bourbon. Abandoned when the doomed man staggered out of the house to drive to Springdale. There paid his final drunkenly anguished respects to his wife and daughter before he pulled the shotgun triggers: ensured he would not have to remain alone in this tragic vacuum their deaths had left in his life. Edge decided on impulse to spend the night at the house and went outside. Led the gelding to the stables where four other horses stood contentedly in their stalls while they munched on fresh hay: all of them finer animals in better condition than the rented mount he now unsaddled. Then back in the house he went into the study and set the lamp from the hall on the desk. Sat in the comfortable high backed leather covered chair behind the desk and looked around the walls lined with bookcases except where the door was positioned in one wall, a window opposite and an area faced by the desk where oil portraits of two women hung. One of these depicted a woman in her thirties, the second a girl half that age. Surely Martha and Nancy Quinn painted a few years ago. He felt no immediate compulsion to examine them more closely in a brighter light than that thrown across the room by the lamp on the desk. Instead he wiped the rim of the used glass on his shirt front and poured a large measure from the bottle that had an identical label to the one Quinn had shared with him on the stage from Pine Wells.

It was the best kind of Kentucky sipping whiskey and Edge sipped it with slow care, relishing the taste but, because of the circumstances, feeling slightly disconcerted at how he had been blessed with such good fortune simply from meeting the ill-starred Quinn on the stage. He suddenly laughed without reason and the sound had a curious quality. It did not echo exactly but there was a strong resonance to it. Which warned him he had probably had too much to drink. And he looked at the glass clutched too tightly in both hands: saw it was empty. Then had worrying trouble focussing on the bottle before he was able to register it was in the same depleted state. A moment later the oil was exhausted in the lamp reservoir and the flame guttered out with an accompanying pungent smell.

For no better reason than before, he felt a compelling urge to laugh again. But now he found it impossible, because his face involuntarily formed into the shape of a deep-set grimace. And abruptly he had a logical notion: acknowledged that yet again liquor had failed to provide a solution to a problem.

Should he light the other lamp on the desk? More importantly, should he invest time in doing what a doomed man had asked of him . . ? For two thousand dollars . . . Which was a very large amount of bucks. Hell, who could know that? Meeker had implied some doubt. And fresh illumination in the room would not shed any new light on the question. He closed his eyes to give the dilemma greater consideration . . .

Awoke with a start and for several stretched seconds did not recall where he was or why he was there. Just knew who he was and what he was trying to escape from. But at least there was no need to try to count the seconds that were quietly passing by - for he knew instinctively that he was in no danger.

Then he recognised exactly where he was. Which in turn triggered the memory of why he was here, seated behind the elegant desk of the very recently late Nicholas Quinn in the dead man’s luxurious home. His mind still not made up on what he should do about the lucrative offer that had brought him to this point in a different life on the far side of a newly turned over leaf. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes with both fists and discovered he had no nagging headache. Then he rose carefully to his feet, pleased he did not sway, grinned and told himself that at least he had come to a decision: albeit for a less than admirable reason. He knew from experience that if he had drunk a half bottle of cheap saloon rye before falling asleep, fully clothed and slumped in a chair, he would have awakened in terrible shape, feeling lousy. So, he figured he owed it to the supplier of the high-class whiskey to at least try to comply with the man’s final wish. Too, if he succeeded, the money he received would enable him to enjoy such fine liquor more often. Certainly it was not the best of premises on which to base his decision, but here and now it was good enough for him. A clock struck eight and he went to the window to peer out over the sunlit terrace and landscaped garden beyond. These few paces he took signalled to him that he was not yet ready to face the new day with total confidence. He needed a little gentle exercise to loosen his stiffened muscles and maybe some coffee to cut through the fur in his mouth and throat. Then he rasped the back of a hand across the bristles on his jaw and realised a shave would not be amiss.

Although it had plainly not been the way things were done by Nicholas Quinn, Edge chose to wash up and shave at the kitchen sink. He used his own razor from the neck pouch and his own soap from out of a saddlebag. His own grounds, too, to make a pot of coffee. So needed only Quinn water delivered to the sink by an efficient pump plus a little Quinn kindling and cordwood to start a fire on the ashes of the old one in the stove. Then, feeling as good as he ever did these days, he was drawn to go into the study to take a closer look at the portraits hung on the wall. And saw that both Martha and Nancy Quinn had been beautiful women. The mother more appealing to him than the daughter, who had inherited her father’s pouting mouth: a feature which to Edge’s way of thinking detracted from the girl’s adolescent good looks. As he turned away and left the room he called himself a heartless sonofabitch for viewing the women in terms of their sexual attractiveness to him. They were newly dead in the worst of ways, as was the husband and father. And if he was to earn the offered two thousand dollars and make restitution for the whiskey he drank and the free use he had made of their home, he had better get his mind focussed on other things. He locked the front door behind him, went out to the stable and turned three of the Quinn horses loose in the corral out back. Then saddled a bright-eyed dappled grey gelding and fastened a lead line to the roan he had rented from the town livery. As he rode down the gravel driveway he did not look back at the house with its windows gleaming in the morning sunlight and again could think of no good reason for something he did or, in this case, did not do. He rode at an easy pace back to Springdale by way of the Austin Trail. And not for the first of many times over the years entered a small country down where the most obtrusive sound in the hot, still air of a bright day was the mournful knell of a funeral bell. He needed to cover the entire length of Texas Avenue to get to the church and every yard of the way he was aware of concealed watching eyes behind the slightly moving curtains of many houses and the well stocked displays in some store windows. Drew on his sometimesreliable sense for such things to judge the prime emotion directed at him was curiosity. Which made a welcome change from resentment, hostility or on some occasions hatred. Although there was less activity on the streets than he would have expected at this time on a weekday morning, it was clear from what he sensed and saw that the majority of local citizens had not attended the Quinn family funeral. And as he neared the church, out front of which stood two highly polished hearses with black plumed horses in the traces, a sudden burst of organ music prefaced the faltering singing of a dirge by a small number of voices. He angled his mount to the opposite side of the street, swung down from the saddle beside the school yard fence and hitched the two horses to it. Sensed more strongly than before that he was under surveillance and looked at the single story frame built schoolhouse: saw that from each of four windows in its façade several solemn faced young children were peering out at him.

Then an abrupt rise in the volume of sound from the stone church drew his attention in that direction and he saw Sarah Farmer close the door, muffling the voices, as she stepped out of the shade of the arched porch. She wore an unrelieved black dress and hat, the veil of which was up off her sultrily attractive face to show a beaming smile that was totally at odds with her mourning garb and the sombre timbre of the singing in the building behind her. The expression remained in place as she crossed the street and greeted brightly:

‘Good morning, Mr Edge.’

He tipped his hat with his free hand while he continued to roll the cigarette he was making and responded: ‘Miss Farmer.’

‘The talk in town is that you are being paid to do the sheriff’s job of investigating the Quinn murders?’ There was a quizzical look in her green eyes as she gazed levelly at him.

‘And very well paid for it by all accounts?’

‘Is that the way the sheriff put it?’

She shook her head and showed an earnest frown. ‘Oh no, Vic Meeker has not said a word on the subject as far as I know. As I understand it the talk started in the saloon after Vic and you had a little
tête-à-tête
over dinner in the Grand’s dining room last night. If any secrets did come out of the law office, my opinion is that it would certainly have been Max Lacy who did the talking. Is it true that Nicholas Quinn left a letter? Some sort of suicide note?’