The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (11 page)

‘None of it was ever a secret, as far as I’m concerned, lady.’ He lit the cigarette. ‘I just didn’t figure a feller like Meeker would ever claim I was doing his job for him.’

She shrugged and waved his expelled cigarette smoke away from her face, the precious stones set in her many rings glittering brightly.

‘I’m willing to be of assistant to you if you want?’

‘Why me, Miss Farmer?’

‘Well, since you have a job to do and you are a stranger to Springdale – ‘

‘I mean why wouldn’t you help Meeker rather than me?’

‘Oh, I don’t mean I can help to . . . ‘ She was perturbed by his inference. ‘What I mean is that I can point out certain people to you and explain who they are.
Apropos
the Quinn family, I mean. As they come out of the church shortly. Or later, where those who didn’t attend the service are concerned?’

‘What’s your interest,
apropos
the Quinn family?’

‘Me?’

‘You were at their funeral service?’

‘Oh, I see.’ She was shame faced for a moment. ‘Yes, well, I freely admit I was snooping to see who showed up. But the Farmer family bakery supplies the pastries and cakes for Nancy’s coffee shop, you know. And although my sister has more to do with running the business than me, she was unable to attend and I thought it only right one of us should be present to pay our respects.’

‘No sweat,’ Edge said in response to the enquiring frown the woman directed at him.

‘Alice and Noah were here earlier, of course. For the burial of Robert Jordan: the young man who worked for them. There were just the two of them and the preacher and pallbearers. A simple graveside ceremony. The casket was not taken into the church.’ Sarah Farmer seemed to be talking to mask some degree of embarrassment she was experiencing. Then she was relieved as the singing of the requiem came to an abrupt end and the town was hushed once more.

Edge said: ‘Anyway, the gossips got it right. Quinn did write me a letter that offered me a job. Which I’ve decided I’d be a fool not to take. And if you figure you can help me to do it, that’s fine with me.’

She nodded and then they both transferred their attention to the other side of the street as the preacher emerged from the church porch, followed by three sets of pallbearers shouldering caskets. She explained: ‘Clearly that is the Reverend Hicks in his dog collar and cassock. And I think you may know Jed Winter, the Springdale mortician. Harry Shelby and Frank Conway are certainly known to you. Like the other men carrying the coffins, they are not relevant. Local men being paid a few cents by Mr Winter.’

Other black garbed members of the congregation emerged from the church and as Sarah Farmer began to verbally catalogue them Edge recognised some faces and a few names he had heard. Like Mabel Travis and Tod Bell who had found the bodies at the Quinn house. Bell was a wizen man of seventy or so with thick lens spectacles, silver side-whiskers and age mottled facial skin who walked with a cane. The Widow Travis was of a similar age. Taller but with a slight stoop, she had short grey hair, tiny bright eyes and a toothless mouth that gave her hollow cheeks and made it seem like her lips were puckered from something bitter tasting.

The distinguished looking, middle aged John Grimes ran the local newspaper and was present to write an account of the funeral for the
Springdale News and Avery County Journal
. Miss Louisa Barry and Mrs Edith Letterman were considered by many to be the most scurrilous local busybodies, present because they were as curious as Sarah about who was and who was not at the funeral. And then there was the handsome, blond haired Matt Colman, who was today red-eyed and puffy faced from weeping in grief over the loss of the girl he had courted. Everyone who came out of the church spared at least a passing glance for the couple standing with the two horses in front of the school yard fence. And some of them did unashamedly long double takes. While Mrs Travis stared with such deep interest that she collided hard with Bell from not looking where she was going. And the myopic old timer had to steer her back on course behind the caskets toward a freshly dug grave in a far corner of the cemetery, close to one that was newly filled in.

Sarah completed listing the names and providing information about the trade or status in Springdale society - and whether they had a firm connection with the Quinns - of the people in the cemetery. Then, as the mourners gathered around the sombre toned preacher at the open grave she said: ‘I hope I’ve been of some help to you, Mr Edge?’

He unhitched the horses and saw the solemn faced children had now gone from the schoolhouse windows. ‘I’m much obliged.’

‘You’re welcome. And now I must get back and try to instil some knowledge into the minds of the new generation.’

‘It ain’t any of my business but I guess the bakery doesn’t pay enough to keep the wolves from the doors of you and your sister and brother-in-law?’

For some reason the smile she showed seemed faintly erotic. ‘Alice and I are both still young enough to want more interest out of life than mere money can provide.’

‘Sure,’ he said for something to say and when she peered across at the cemetery and sighed he added: ‘Something wrong?’

‘Not really. It’s just that funerals depress me in a different way to most other people.’

‘They do?’

‘They remind me that sometimes putting the dead in a grave is the only way to truly bury the past.’

As the first coffin began to be lowered into the ground she stepped through the open gateway into the school yard and asked: ‘Don’t you think that can be so?’

Edge shook his head. ‘The way I think about a grave, lady, it’s about the only kind of hole a man gets into he shouldn’t be able to dig himself out of.’

CHAPTER • 7

___________________________________________________________________________

EDGE WENT to the hotel where this morning Elizabeth Wexler had charge of the desk
in the lobby while her husband was deputising at the funeral for the absent Andrew Devlin. He paid her what he owed for his dinner in the restaurant last night but she refused to take money for the room he had hardly used. Claimed disdainfully that the Grand Hotel did not accept payment for services not provided. Then he ambled down River Road leading the two horses toward the livery as the town began to get busier.

Following the funeral everybody who had been present except for the gravediggers had moved out of the cemetery and Harry Shelby was among those to be back at their daily chores. The heavily built, black bearded man accepted payment for the night’s rent due on the gelding and cast an admiringly expert eye over the horse Edge had borrowed from the Quinn stable.

‘I don’t blame you for making use of this fine animal mister.’ He ran a hand over the flank of the dappled grey. ‘The Quinns could afford the best of everything and that’s the quality they always went for.’

‘You reckon that’s why Quinn hired me, feller?’ Edge asked wryly.

Shelby guffawed. ‘I like your thinking. The way I see it, if a man has got any self respect then he needs to have a high opinion of himself.’

Edge swung up into the saddle and muttered: ‘Been times my opinion of myself has sure smelled a little high.’

He rode back across the intersection and as he approached the start of the Old Town Road at the top of First Street he saw a sign that had failed to register in his pre-occupied mind last night. Above a door and between two flanking bow windows it proclaimed in fancy lettering:
Nancy’s Coffee Shop.
The door was painted with pink and white squares and a set of pink gingham curtains hanging from brass rails covered the lower half of each window. He could see in through the glass above the curtains to where the polished brass and crisp gingham theme was continued inside: with matching coloured cloths on the dozen tables and brass wall lamps, picture frames and countertop. When he drew level with the door it opened and a woman called tentatively:

‘Mr Edge.’

‘Ma’am?’ He reined in his mount and recognised the woman in the doorway as Muriel Mandrell, one of the people who met the stage yesterday.

‘Be my pleasure to offer you a cup of coffee on the house if I can ask you for some advice?’

‘Sounds like a good deal to me, lady.’ Edge swung out of the saddle and hitched the horse to the rail in front of the hardware store which was next to the café. He followed the woman inside and saw her at close quarters for the first time. She was forty, certainly, and no longer the beauty she once had been. But her large brown eyes and elfin features allied with a slender but curvaceous figure meant she was easy to look at, even if her hair as too brightly blonde to be naturally that colour. She ushered him to a corner table set apart from where six other customers were seated in pairs, all of them women aged within a sixty to seventy span. One of the couples was comprised of Miss Berry and Mrs Letterman who were still wearing their mourning black.

‘Would you like anything more than just a cup of coffee?’ Muriel Mandrell’s question obviously broke a silence that had not existed before she invited Edge into the café. She indicated an extensive display of cakes on plates aligned along the countertop at the rear of the room. But although he had not raided the larder to make breakfast for himself at the Quinn house none of the heavily sugared and multi-coloured topped confections stirred his appetite right then.

He shook his head, took off his hat and sat down while she made a note on an order pad, went to the end of the counter and spoke through a bead-curtained archway behind it. Then he smiled at the matrons and greeted evenly: ‘Good morning ladies.’

Some offered politely spoken responses and others gave prim nods. None attempted to match his amiable expression and they all quickly looked away from him to re-open their interrupted conversations. Thus a buzz of unobtrusive talk was filling the place when a girl of twenty or so came through the archway to bring the cup of coffee. She looked like she could be a daughter of Muriel Mandrell even though her hair was jet black, her eyes were blue and she had a fuller figure. The apparent family likeness was emphasised by now the two women were identically attired for work in black dresses and pink gingham waist aprons. She executed something close to a curtsey as she set down a fine china cup and saucer on the table beside Edge’s hat, briefly smiled and then was abruptly grave-faced. Then seemed about to turn on her heels and scurry nervously away, but got an encouraging nod from her mother who had moved behind the counter.

‘Mister?’

‘Just what kind of advice do you think I can give you ladies?’

‘You’re the gentleman who is going to track down the brutes who killed Nancy and her ma, ain’t that right?’ the girl asked.

‘I’m going to try.’ He sipped the coffee that was a little weak for his taste.

‘So since you’re kind of working for Mr Quinn, even though the poor man is dead, do you happen to know what’s going to happen about this place? And the house?’

The room became hushed again as every ear was attuned to the talk at just one table, but all the gazes of the eavesdroppers remained firmly averted from the centre of avid interest. The girl hurried on:

‘See, me and ma . . . I’m Blanche Mandrell and that’s my ma at the counter if you didn’t know it already? Well, like you see, we work here. And ma, she does cleaning at the Quinn house once a week. We ain’t been paid for the work we done so far this week. And we’d like to know where we stand about working now. Keeping the place open? Or if ma’ll be needed to do any cleaning at the Quinn house while it’s empty?

Edge listened as closely as everyone else in the café did while he considered rolling and lighting a cigarette. But then decided the acrid aroma of tobacco smoke would not be welcome in this genteel establishment where the trapped air was scented by feminine perfumes mingled with smells of fresh baked cakes and pastries and brewing coffee. When she was through he asked:

‘I guess this place is making money?’

‘I’m not sure if it would be right for me to – ‘ she began anxiously.

‘It’s a little gold mine, I’d say,’ the grey haired, emaciated looking Mrs Letterman cut in on the apprehensive Blanche.

‘I don’t see that it’s any of your business, Edith!’ Muriel Mandrel rebuked sternly. Another elderly patron pointed out: ‘But surely, Muriel, if Blanche and you choose to broadcast confidential business to a total stranger in a public place it’s only natural that folks are going to – ‘