The Silent Hour (3 page)

“I expect nearly everyone in Sour Springs has
heard by this time,” said Mrs. Meade.

“Ugly kind of a thing,” said Royal. “There’s
been shootings enough here in my time, but when somebody walks into
a man’s house at night and shoots him sitting in his chair—you
don’t like it.”

From Andrew Royal, who seldom expressed
himself on a personal level, this was a strong statement. Mrs.
Meade looked at him more attentively. He coughed and said
ironically, trying to keep a twitch of a smile under cover of his
large moustache, “I suppose you’ve already settled for yourself who
done it?”

“No,” said Mrs. Meade, “so far I have only
concluded one thing, and that is that Major Cambert did not shoot
himself.”

Andrew Royal cracked a laugh. “Score one for
you. He didn’t. No gun there, no powder burns on him or his
clothes. Hadn’t told anybody that, though, till I got back to town
a little while ago.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Meade. “No, I had only
decided that he was not of the temperament to take his own life. I
don’t believe anything could torment Major Cambert to the point
where he could not stand it; he was the kind of man who would sit
and let it rattle off his hard shell.”

“Didn’t know you knew him that well.”

“I didn’t. Only well enough to presume, but
if the facts bear me out—”

“They do,” said Royal grimly. “And it doesn’t
make it any easier for me. Complicated—that’s what it is. Too
doggone complicated.”

Mrs. Meade had an inkling of what this meant,
and she ventured to test it. “The love-affair that is said to be
mixed up with it, you mean?”

“It beats me,” said Royal explosively, trying
to get up in order to pace the room, but failing to launch from his
low seat—“how any serious case, you scratch it and find some
sentimental nonsense mucking it up. Makes people behave in ways
they wouldn’t on an average day. Without a love-affair to turn his
head, a boy like Jim Cambert wouldn’t ordinarily shoot his
grandfather.”

“
Did
he?” inquired Mrs. Meade.

Andrew Royal shrugged. “He’s got the
loudest-crying motive, anyhow. Had a fight with his grandfather
four days ago because he wanted to get married and the old man
refused his consent. Boy’s not of age. Last night he left the place
to ride out to one of their line camps. All the men are out on fall
roundup except two who stayed on in the bunkhouse to do the chores.
Doc Dunton says the Major was killed between ten and eleven, likely
closer to eleven. Jim Cambert swears he left the place before
ten—but the man at the line shack says he didn’t get there till
past midnight, and it properly ought to take him only
three-quarters of an hour. Nobody saw him leave the house, nobody
heard him, only his word on it.”

Mrs. Meade tilted her head slightly. “The two
men in the bunkhouse,” she said. “Was one of them—Gennaro?”

Sheriff Royal ran a hand over his head and
rumpled up his rough gray hair. “Here’s where it gets even better,”
he growled. “This Gennaro never had any love lost for the Major
either. Cambert was tough with his crew; he’d docked Gennaro’s pay
for every time he got drunk, and Gennaro let on that he didn’t like
it. He claims he was asleep in the bunkhouse from before Jim
Cambert left. Didn’t wake up, didn’t hear a shot, nothing. Only his
word on it.”

“I begin to see,” said Mrs. Meade. “And the
other man—?”

“Whole outfit swears he sleeps like the
dead,” said Royal grumpily. “Didn’t hear nobody come in or out, no
shot—nothing. Dumbest ox I ever had to question. I’d go bail he’s
telling the truth just because he’s not smart enough to lie.”

“Yet Gennaro was the one to discover the
body—or so I have been informed. How does he account for that?”

“His story is, he woke up after midnight,
stepped outside for a smoke, and saw light in the house window. The
fire was usually banked down when Major Cambert went to bed, so he
walked up to the house to see if everything was all right, went in
and found him dead.”

“He was the one to overhear the quarrel as
well,” said Mrs. Meade, “or so I’ve been informed…Yes; well, there
is the possibility he could have seized upon the chance to kill the
Major in its aftermath, knowing Jim would be implicated. Making
sure to spread his account of the quarrel far and wide, of
course.”

Royal shook his head. “Seems he’d have made
it easy on himself and swore he saw Jim leaving the place after
eleven, or that he heard the shot.”

“He may be too shrewd for that,” said Mrs.
Meade. “Shrewd enough to know that if his story was found false
later, he would have implicated himself. Suppose Jim Cambert
had
arrived at the line camp at a reasonable time? He had no
way of knowing Jim would
not
.”

Royal considered it, and grunted in half
approval. “He’s a hard one to figure,” he said. “Gennaro, I mean.
Doesn’t say much, and doesn’t let on what he’s thinking. Always
watching people like he’s waiting to catch ’em out in
something.”

There was a pause, and then Mrs. Meade put
the question she had been wanting to ask from the first, yet been
rather reluctant to hear the sad answer. “Jim knows by now, of
course? How did he take the news of his grandfather’s death?”

Sheriff Royal got himself up off the low sofa
and stalked the room with his hands behind him, looking rather big
and uncouth for the little parlor with its crocheted tablecloths
and china knick-knacks. He spoke in the gruff, abrupt tone he
always used to distance himself from such subjects. “Sure he knows.
Sent a man out to the line camp after him soon as I got there.
Seemed pretty stunned at first—then he got mad. Went after me like
he thought I was keeping something from him—wanted to know who did
it.”

“Then he didn’t seem to—suspect anybody.”

Royal shook his head again. He caught a
glimpse of himself reflected in the glass of a picture-frame on the
wall, scowled, and surreptitiously tried to smooth his hair
down.

Mrs. Meade got up, and turned to the window,
her arms folded at her waist. Perhaps she did not mean to let her
face betray anything she was thinking. “I know this is a highly
indelicate question, but—does anyone seem to know the name of the
girl who occasioned Jim Cambert’s quarrel with his
grandfather?”

Royal turned away from the picture-frame.
“Don’t suppose I forgot that, do you? Had to go and see her.
Frances Ruskin, the schoolteacher.”

“Frances?” said Mrs. Meade softly, half to
herself. “Frances…and Jim Cambert…dear me.”

She thought for a moment, looking out the
window at the crisp dried garden, and then turned to the sheriff.
“You saw her this morning? What did she say?”

“Seemed struck into a clean daze. Stared at
me like I wasn’t really there. Had to ask her three times before I
could make her understand a question.
She
was alone last
night too—the folks she boards with were out to dinner and she
stayed home with a headache.”

“Then you view her as a suspect, too,” said
Mrs. Meade, coming a few steps forward from the window.

Royal lifted his hands. “She’s got the same
motive as Jim Cambert. She has a horse she uses for getting to
school and she’s used to saddling him herself. She seems sensible
enough to handle a gun. She
could
have rode over to
Cambert’s herself and done it.”

Mrs. Meade struck quickly with her next
question. “Why did Major Cambert object to the marriage?”

Sheriff Royal coughed. Mrs. Meade gave a
knowing smile. “Mr. Gennaro was very thorough, I see.”

“Seems Major Cambert had a bee in his bonnet
about her being older than Jim. Said she was only marrying him
because it was her only chance—because she knew which side her
bread was buttered on, and so forth. And I don’t deny it gives her
a lot more reason to be in a hurry.”

“Oh, Andrew,” said Mrs. Meade reproachfully.
“I needn’t expect you to be sympathetic, but you might be more
generous.”

“She’s no fool,” said Andrew Royal
skeptically. He thumped himself down again on the low sofa.
“
She
wouldn’t want to wait till he comes of age. Maybe it’s
all right now, but by then she’ll be halfway to thirty and he’ll
still be a boy. He mightn’t be so eager anymore.”

“Your arithmetic is acceptable, Andrew, but
your logic is flawed,” said Mrs. Meade, seating herself rather
primly in her chair. “How can you presume to say what either of
them feels?
I
think it very probable that Frances is quite
fond of Jim. But a sensible girl, such as you’ve described her to
be, would hardly agree to marry if she thought his affection would
not last.”

“Women do strange things out of pity
sometimes,” said the sheriff sagely.

“Yes—but when their whole future life and
happiness, and someone else’s, depend upon it? And I will tell you,
that never in the course of my existence have I heard of someone
committing a murder to indulge a sense of pity.”

“All I know is,” said Royal firmly, “Jim
Cambert says he was riding to the line camp and can’t prove it;
Gennaro says he was asleep in the bunkhouse and can’t prove it; and
Frances Ruskin says she was home with a headache and can’t prove
it. And it wasn’t robbery. Major Cambert had a safe in the same
room he was murdered in with every cent he had in it, and it wasn’t
touched. I made Jim open it and we counted the money—there wasn’t a
dollar missing.” He slapped his hat discontentedly against his
knee. “And nobody else in this town I know of who might have had a
grudge against the old man.”

“Except perhaps Old Ted,” suggested Mrs.
Meade.

Old Ted was one of the seedy characters of
Sour Springs, a broken-down ex-soldier who cleaned out stalls at
the livery stable. He had once been in Major Cambert’s command, and
when their paths crossed again in Sour Springs, Old Ted made a
great show of being the Major’s friend, hailing him on the street
with grating civilian familiarity whenever they met. Major Cambert
would give him a dollar for beer to get rid of him, and about once
a month Old Ted used the accumulated proceeds to get soundly drunk,
and spent several hours railing about former friends and superiors
who had mistreated him—Major Cambert among them. The real extent of
their acquaintance had been the Major’s putting Old Ted in the
guardhouse several times for petty thievery, and complaining that
he was the worst groom ever to look after his horse.

“True—I’d forgotten about him,” said Sheriff
Royal, his bushy eyebrows working a little at the thought. “Measly
sort of grudge, if he’s even got one—but he could have got drunk
and shot him, I suppose. I’ll see where he was last night.”

He added vindictively, “I’d
like
it to
be Old Ted, just so all this rot we’ve been talking would be a mess
I don’t have to untangle.”

He got up, as Mrs. Meade concealed a rather
rueful smile. “Well, I’ve got to go. Have to go and see Tom Hall
about all this still, and then I guess I’ll dig up Old Ted.”

“Tom Hall? Why?”

“Executor. Cambert left a will—found it in
the safe. Everything goes to Jim, of course, but Hall’s got to
handle it till he comes of age.”

Mrs. Meade nodded. Tom Hall was president of
the First National Bank, one of Major Cambert’s oldest friends in
Sour Springs; that he should be named executor was to be
expected.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been much help to you
so far,” she said to Royal, as she rose to see him out.

Royal snorted—whether in ridicule at the idea
that he had wanted help, or in rough consolation to Mrs. Meade, one
could not say. “Couldn’t expect you to. I sure didn’t bring you
much to make sense out of.”

“No, that’s not entirely true,” said Mrs.
Meade, thoughtfully; “you’ve brought…some very interesting things
indeed.”

* * *

Frances did not see Jim until the second day
after the murder. He came to see her at the house where she
boarded, after she had got home from school; and they sat together
in the parlor, uncomfortably conscious of the fact that the lady of
the house, who had withdrawn rather obviously to the kitchen, would
very much like to have listened to what they said. Jim told Frances
all the facts he knew, in a controlled, quiet voice, with Frances
interposing a brief question now and then.

“And that’s about all,” he finished, after a
short pause. “I haven’t—spoken to the sheriff since yesterday
morning.”

Neither had acknowledged in words what they
both knew—that suspicion of the crime rested heavily on Jim. None
of her friends had discussed it directly with her, but Frances
knew, more by their omissions than anything else, that the whole
quarrel and her own role in it were by now public property in Sour
Springs.

She had been sitting thinking silently of
this for a moment when Jim’s next words pulled her from her
reverie. “Frances, do you really think it’s necessary to wait till
Christmas holidays? I’m sure the board can find a substitute
teacher in a week or so. Why can’t you give them your notice now
and we’ll get married this week.”

“Oh, Jim, no,” said Frances. “It wouldn’t
do…and besides, I—I can’t marry you just yet, not after all that’s
happened. People would think—they’d say that—”

“That I shot my grandfather so I could marry
you? They already think that.”

He stood up and crossed the room. The tinge
of sharp almost-sarcasm in his voice roused an unreasonable feeling
of antipathy in Frances. “It would be almost proof of it.”

Jim stood opposite and looked down at her for
a minute. He said quietly, “Are you backing out now because you
believe I did?”

“Oh, no!” Frances rose and took hold of his
arm, looking up into his half-averted face. “Never. I just don’t
think it’s wise—and I don’t think it would show much respect for
your grandfather, either, if we were to marry in such a hurry
after—well, afterwards.”