The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (16 page)

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AS EDGE neared the end of an early evening supper in the otherwise empty
restaurant of the Grand Hotel Sarah Farmer appeared at the entrance from the lobby and greeted brightly: ‘Hello again, Mr Edge.’

He set down his coffee cup and raised the other hand: ‘This is getting to be a habit, Miss Farmer.’

She remained on the threshold of the large, hushed room. ‘Eating? It’s something we all have to do and I guess as habits go it’s not as bad as some?’

‘Me getting to have company just as I finish chow in this place. But I have to say the kind of company I’m getting is starting to improve.’

He half rose as she came forward, weaving among the tables toward him much as the sheriff had done last night.’

‘I’m flattered you think so. Do you mind if I join you? I’ve already eaten so – ‘

‘Go ahead and sit down.’

She did so and declined his offer to share the pot of coffee he had only just started. Then she gave an even toned response to Mrs Wexler’s frosty greeting from the kitchen doorway and the stone faced older woman silently withdrew into the kitchen as Edge asked:

‘Something I can do for you?’

‘I’d say you and I are like minded in certain respects, Mr Edge.’

‘We are?’

She nodded emphatically. ‘But the only one of any relevance at the moment is that you have empathy for the Quinns. As do I, of course. Because of how they were a self-sufficient family and kept themselves to themselves? Which made them universally disliked on principle in a town where it is normal for the herd instinct to prevail?’

‘Is that so?’

‘As I told you outside the church this morning I’ve lived in Springdale for a long time. And since you are a stranger to town and I know a lot about what goes on here I could perhaps help you more than I did this morning?’

‘It sounds good to me.’

‘Did you find out anything from the Colman boy after the trouble in the saloon earlier?’

He sipped some coffee and smiled wryly. ‘It sounds more like you’ve come here to get something from me.’

She frowned. ‘The trouble with doctors is that they have to take an oath that forbids them from talking about their patients. And Matt Colman was his patient earlier today.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So?’

‘What?’

‘Did you learn anything useful from the boy?’

‘Colman said he didn’t rape Nancy Quinn or kill anybody yesterday morning.’

‘But that wasn’t all of it, I guess?’

‘He said he tried lots of times to get into the girl’s breeches without forcing her but she wouldn’t let him.

Sarah Farmer was totally unruffled by Edge’s frank language and her expression and tone of voice was unchanged as she responded: ‘That doesn’t surprise me, knowing Nancy as well as I did.’

‘But she liked him to try.’

‘All we women like to think we are attractive to men we find attractive.’ Her smile was fleeting and she pointedly refused to meet his quizzical gaze. Tonight she wore a red dress with a high neckline and sleeves that reached to her wrists, so she did not look like a scarlet woman. Just a very appealing one as she hurried on: ‘What will you do if Vic Meeker and that oaf Lacy come back from Austin with confessions from the Ivers boy and his friend?’

‘Same as I’ll do if it doesn’t happen that way and I get lucky and find the killers ahead of the sheriff.’

‘Continue with your own trip to Austin?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Perhaps more than a little richer than before your journey was interrupted?’

He shrugged. ‘Or more broke than when I arrived here. Depends on whether I get lucky or not.’

She was suddenly impatient and became a little petulant when she changed the subject.

‘Have you spent your entire adult life drifting from one town to the next and – ‘

He cut in on her, his tone dispassionate. ‘You said just how that you think you and me are like minded, Miss Farmer?’

Her expression became puzzled. ‘Yes, that is what I really do think, but what – ‘

‘It seems to me that you and Nick Quinn were certainly alike in one way, lady.’

‘I’m sorry?’

He stood up, took a handful of coins from a pants pocket and counted out onto the white linen covered table exactly the same amount he had paid for the identical meal he ate in the restaurant last night. Then he explained to the puzzled woman as he picked up his hat and started for the door: ‘He was somebody else who liked to poke around in other people’s business.’

She rose hurriedly to her feet and moved after him, explaining anxiously: ‘Please, Mr Edge? I’m just trying to help if I can. In a friendly way – and it seems to me you could use a friend in this town!’

As Edge stepped into the lobby the diminutive Owen Wexler bustled out from behind the desk, a nervous frown on his narrow features.

Edge told him: ‘I left enough money on the table for the food, feller.’

Wexler craned his neck to peer into the restaurant, nodded, showed a false smile and excused apologetically: ‘It’s just that I saw my wife go upstairs awhile ago. So I know she couldn’t have collected what was owed.’

He scuttled into the restaurant while Edge ignored the arched entrance to the saloon and led the way out through the hotel doorway on to Texas Avenue. Sarah said when they turned toward the intersection:

‘I bet there’s one thing I found out about you without prying?’

He put on his hat. ‘What’s that?’

‘Whenever you up and drift away from a place you never leave any debts behind. Am I right?’

They started to cross the mid-town end of River Road as he answered with a shrug: ‘I like to pay my own way wherever I am.’

‘Something else I’ve found out.’ She grimaced. ‘That you’re not exactly over-generous when it comes to revealing anything about yourself?’

‘I am what I am, lady. What you see is what the past has made me. And what’s in the past is over and done with. Talking about it doesn’t change anything.’

‘Pardon me, sir,’ a woman said tentatively as she stepped out of the drugstore across an alley from the cotton company office. She had the worn and weary appearance of somebody who had experienced more than her fair share of life’s hard knocks for most of her sixty or more years. Her face was thin, hollow cheeked and heavily lined with deep set eyes, the half circles beneath them as dark as the irises. Her hair was grey and stringy. She stood no more than five feet and a couple of inches tall and weighed little more than a hundred pounds. Wore a long black coat and an old, narrow brimmed grey hat and clutched a burlap bag that did not seem to have anything inside.

Her bony fingers toyed constantly with its handles in much the same way as Joe Kellner worried his cap when he was unsettled. She was afraid and even took a half pace back when Edge turned toward her, then by an effort of will stood her ground and showed a resolute expression when he asked:

‘Something I can do for you, ma’am?’

Sarah introduced: ‘This is Mrs Ivers – Alvin’s mother.’

The woman nodded absently to Sarah Farmer then her demeanour changed from apprehension to melancholic resignation when she spoke to Edge. ‘I know who you are, sir. And I don’t guess there’s much of anything you can do for me. I shouldn’t be bothering you, especially since you’ve got company. It’s plain stupid of me and no mistake.’

‘If you’ve got something to tell Mr Edge, Mrs Ivers, you go right ahead and say it,’ Sarah encouraged.

The older woman took a deep breath and blurted: ‘The sheriff’s gone to bring my boy and his friend back from Austin. But I want you to know my Alvin never did that to the Quinn women. He ain’t got that much badness in him – to do something that evil.’

Edge said: ‘You must know that just because you say something doesn’t make it so, Mrs Ivers.’

She started to shake her head slowly and then worked up speed. ‘There ain’t nothing you can do, I know that. Except maybe tell the sheriff my Alvin’s innocent of what he’s accused of. But I had to see you. I been thinking to do it ever since I heard Mr Meeker and his deputy went to Austin for my boy and that no account Floyd Hooper. I know people been saying bad things about them. All I’ve done for most of the day is sit in my little place and worry.’

‘Mrs Ivers, I – ‘

‘Please let me finish, sir.’ She chewed her lower lip while she waited for his nod, then went on quickly. ‘I didn’t come to you for pity, mister. What I say is that my boy ain’t no angel and that’s a truth can’t be denied.’ Her eyes glistened but she managed to hold back the tears and swallowed hard. ‘My Alvin’s been getting into scrapes of one sort or another since he could walk almost. Likely to steal anything that ain’t nailed down, he is. But he wouldn’t never do what was done to Mrs Quinn and her girl yesterday.’

She sucked in a deep breath, seemed about to launch into the next part of the fast spoken monologue she had maybe carefully rehearsed during the long and lonely hours while she waited to hear the worst about her son. But she suddenly concluded: ‘There, I’ve got it off my chest now. Like I knew I had to - one person to another. So, no matter what people are gonna be saying about my boy when he’s brought back to Springdale, I want you to know he didn’t do that awful thing yesterday. Thanks for listening to me, mister: and you, Miss Farmer. I’ll be getting along now.’

She turned, lowered the bag to carry it in one hand at her side and strode purposefully away along Texas Avenue. And then Edge and Sarah Farmer moved off in the same direction at a more leisurely pace.

‘I suppose it’s inevitable that a mother should claim her son is innocent of murder, wouldn’t you think?’ Sarah asked.

‘Sure.’

‘The poor woman has probably said much the same thing to everyone in Springdale who spared the time to listen to her. Now she can at least tell people she talked to the next best person to the sheriff and he didn’t contradict what she said.’

‘You know much about the Ivers family?’

‘There’s just the mother and son living here. Agnes is a really hard working woman. She runs a little truck farm outside of town. Had Alvin late in life and her husband walked out and left her before the baby was born. Like she admitted, the boy’s been mixed up in petty crime often enough. But he’s never been the violent kind. Floyd Hooper, though, he’s a nasty piece of work.’

‘The drifter?’

She did a double take at Edge, saw no trace of irony in his steady gaze and replied evenly: ‘Yes. A jack of all trades who worked for my sister and brother-in-law for a few weeks until he up and left them in the lurch for a job with the cotton company that paid more.’

‘Is he as black as he’s painted?’

‘He never did anything out-and-out criminal in Springdale as far as I know. But he has a reputation for getting drunk a great deal. And he used to swagger around town seemingly looking for trouble. It’s been said that most of the fights he was involved in were those he started.’

‘Hooper and Ivers would have known Nancy Quinn?’

‘I think it’s likely.’ She shrugged. ‘Last year before she began to be courted by Matt Colman again on a regular basis, Nancy went through quite a wild period.’

‘I heard about that.’

‘I guess Alvin Ivers could have been one of the young man in the fast company she was involved with. But this was before Hooper came to town, I’m certain. Anyway, at that time, Nancy led a kind of double life. She was as decent and hard working as usual at home or working in her café. But when she was out to kick over the traces it seemed she’d go to almost any lengths to shock people.’

‘Almost but not all the way according to the Colman kid.’

Sarah shrugged again. ‘When she crossed over into the dark side of her life I suppose it’s possible she could have got Alvin Ivers stirred up. And maybe when he became friendly with Hooper he probably saw Nancy around town, maybe . . . ‘

‘Did Nancy’s crazy fling have anything to do with making the Quinn family disliked so much around Springdale?’

‘Some, maybe. But at the root of the bad feeling has always been the simple fact that the Quinns were Yankees - and rich ones, which made it worse. That kind of stupid prejudice exists in towns like this one. Jealousy is rife.’

Edge halted outside of the grocery store. ‘Thanks for the information, lady.’

She was surprised by the abrupt stop and made no attempt to mask her irritation when she said waspishly: ‘I suppose I’ll have to be content with mere thanks for the moment!’

Before he could reply Muriel Mandrell emerged from the doorway and was clearly startled to see Sarah and Edge together on the sidewalk: was seemingly lost for words as she nodded frostily to both of them and then strode away, struggling with a heavily laden basket of groceries.

Edge tipped his hat once in farewell to both women and stepped into the store. For a moment it seemed as if Sarah was going to follow him but she was perhaps dissuaded by the sternly critical frowns directed at the doorway by the trio of middle-aged women grouped at the counter.

He began to scan the haphazard displays of bottles, jars, cans, sacks, packs and open baskets and barrels crowded tightly into the aromatic store and to make a mental list of the supplies he would require if he was to stay for awhile at the Quinn house. He did this at first in the continuing near silence caused by his appearance on the grocery’s threshold in company with Sarah Farmer. Then one of the customers at the counter commented loudly on the price of canned meat and the three women and the aproned man waiting to serve them picked up the thread of their earlier conversation, pointedly ignoring Edge. It was perhaps two minutes later when a shrill but indistinct shout sounded from out near the western end of Texas Avenue and everyone in the grocery turned to peer at the open doorway. Within moments the volume of sound in the early evening tranquillity of Springdale had risen to a high, excited volume. Accompanied by a quickening in the pace of visible activity as people hurried across the open doorway, moving in the direction of the initial shout. Edge stepped outside the store as Doc Sullivan emerged from the neighbouring barbershop and said