The Silent Hour (6 page)

Frances drew a breath, and covered her face
with her hands.

“He was so upset,” she said, in a voice that
shook. “So impatient…I thought if he really loved me he would have
been willing to wait.”

“But my dear, if all that you fear had been
true from the first,” said Mrs. Meade, laying a hand on her arm,
“would you still have wanted to marry him, and tried to hold onto
his love—or always be worrying that you were losing it? Would that
have made you truly happy?”

Frances’ hands fell from her face—her eyes
wet, with a look that seemed to mix disbelief and indignation. “You
sound as if you thought
I
murdered Major Cambert!”

Mrs. Meade said gravely, “Did the thought
never cross your mind?”

A strange flicker of expression, the
returning of an instinctive reserve, crossed Frances’ face. She
drew her shoulders together as if she were cold. She said, her
voice hardly above a whisper, “After I knew how long we had to
wait—when I felt more despairing than I’d ever been—I did think
once, ‘If Major Cambert were to die…’ ”

* * *

Tom Hall turned up at the jail the next
morning, entering with a quick step and a brow furrowed with
concern for Jim, and full of apology. “Sorry I wasn’t here sooner,
Jim,” he said. “Old Ted never came around to tell me you were here
till this morning. Must have stopped off along the way and got
drunk last night.”

“Lucky he got to you at all,” grunted Andrew
Royal.

“It’s no matter,” said Jim Cambert rather
listlessly.

He stood a little apart while Hall and the
sheriff went through the formalities of bail, his hands in his
pockets, staring out the window at the sunlight glistening down
through the wet golden and russet trees onto the rain-washed
street. Then Hall joined him, clapping a reassuring hand on his
shoulder, and led him outside.

“Don’t worry, Jim,” he said. “It’ll all be
over sooner than you think. I’m going to see about lining up a good
lawyer for you today.”

“I don’t see what good a lawyer can do,” said
Jim, “except try and confuse a jury about how long it takes to ride
from our house to the line camp and back.”

“Nonsense. There’s precious little against
you, Jim, except a no-good puncher’s story for a motive. Have you
thought about that?”

He gave him another slap on the shoulder.
“It’ll all come out right. We’ll get you out of this, and then you
and I’ll go back to the way you did things before. You’ll have a
free hand to run the ranch; I’ll be just a formality standing in
your grandfather’s place as guardian, and handle the money for you
till you come of age next year.”

Jim managed a slight smile. “There’s nobody
I’d rather work with, Mr. Hall, besides Grandfather.”

“Good. That’s settled, then.” They had been
walking along the street as they spoke, and now Tom Hall nodded
ahead. “Why don’t you come home with me. You’re welcome to stay for
as long as the trial takes. Nothing fancy for meals this week,
since my wife’s away—tell you the truth, I’ve been doing a lot of
eating at the hotel—but it’ll be handier for you being here in
town.”

“All right…I guess so.”

Hall stopped at the street corner. “I’ve got
to be getting on to the bank. Had anything to eat yet?”

“No…I guess I’ll go have something now. I’ll
see you later.”

Jim wandered down a side street, and
eventually made his way through the open door of one of the town’s
cheaper eating-houses—where he would be less likely to encounter
anyone who knew him. There were several tables occupied near the
windows, and a bar across the back; and Jim, paying little
attention to what he was doing, walked mechanically to the bar and
leaned against it.

The bartender eyed him with the mixture of
curiosity and uneasiness Jim had seen on so many faces this week.
But this time it arose from a different cause. The bartender
coughed. “I cain’t serve you liquor, you know,” he said
apologetically. “County ordinance. Them temperance women got hold
of us last election and—”

Long-subdued anger flared suddenly in Jim
Cambert. “Yes, I know, I know!” he said harshly, shoving away from
the bar. “I’m too young. I can’t get married, I can’t sign a check,
I can’t buy a drink. I don’t know why any of you think I’d want to
kill my grandfather; I can’t do anything without him!”

His voice rang loud around the room as he
flung the words at anyone who happened to be in his way; and then
without waiting for anyone’s reaction he stalked blindly out
through the open door.

* * *

A witness to this scene, unnoticed by Jim
Cambert, was the same swarthy, black-eyed cowboy who had stood
outside the door the night of the fateful quarrel. From a table in
a far corner, leaning back a little with one arm hooked over the
back of his chair, he looked on with his dark face inscrutable; but
as always, giving the impression that he stored all away for future
use.

He resumed eating his breakfast, and it was
there, some ten minutes after Jim Cambert’s departure, that Sheriff
Royal discovered him when he entered the eating-house. The sheriff
came over and yanked out a chair at the same table without ceremony
and sat down.

“So it’s you, is it?” said Royal, jerking the
chair in with a shriek of wood legs on wood floor. “How come you’re
not working out at Cambert’s? Not a holiday so far’s I know.”

“Nobody seems to miss me,” said Gennaro.

Royal gave a short laugh. “Can’t say as I
blame them,” he said. “Been kicked out?”

Gennaro took a deliberate pause to swallow,
and lift his coffee cup to his mouth, watching the sheriff to see
how he took it. “I rode in this morning on business of my own.”

Andrew Royal leaned forward over the table,
his eyes boring from between the covert of his hat brim and his
thick moustache. “You listen,” he said. “I ain’t going to pretend
with you. I’ve thought from the first you were more likely to have
shot Cambert than that kid was, for any fool reason at all. But any
fool reason wouldn’t go with a jury, which is why it was the kid’s
name on that warrant instead of yours. So if you’re lying about
anything you seen and heard, or keeping something back, you better
spill it right—here—and—now.” He punctuated the last words with a
stab of his forefinger on the table for each.

Gennaro leaned back in his chair again, and
finished chewing his last mouthful. “Anything I got to say,” he
said, “I’ll say it just once—at the trial.”

Andrew Royal thumped his fist on the table.
“Doggone it, you know who did it!”

A strange, knowing smile flickered across
Gennaro’s dark face. “I know who didn’t do it. That’s all.”

The sheriff opened his mouth, and for a few
seconds he groped for words. “You—”

Gennaro stood up, and pushed his chair back
with one foot. “I’ll talk when I get ready to,” he said. He picked
up his tin cup and threw back the last swallow of coffee, let the
cup down on the table with a dull clank and walked away. He flung a
coin over the counter in payment for his meal and went out, leaving
the sheriff frustrated, suspicious and glowering behind him.

* * *

That afternoon Mrs. Meade had another caller.
Randall Morris, who had been made free of the boarding-house in
times past, let himself in without encountering Mrs. Henney and
went into the parlor, where Mrs. Meade had been sitting
abstractedly counting over the same row of stitches in her knitting
and occasionally putting it down to think with a frown.

She laid it down with some relief at his
appearance and greeted him with pleasure. “Randall! How good to see
you. And how are Charity and the baby?”

For five minutes the conversation was purely
domestic, and then Randall said, nodding toward the knitting on the
sofa, “What seems to be the trouble?”

“I don’t know exactly what the trouble is,”
said Mrs. Meade, picking up the knitting-needles with a slight
sigh. “I have been thinking. Thinking of—I was convinced within
myself that no one could commit a murder out of pity or kindness,
but now I am forced to consider whether they could by reason of an
ardent—a most ardent love?”

“That’s a—a pretty strong reason,” admitted
Randall slowly. “But as to whether they’d actually do it—”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Meade, giving her knitting a
sharp little flap. “
That
is the question.”

“It’s the Cambert murder, isn’t it?” said
Randall. “To tell you the truth, that’s why I came to see you, Mrs.
Meade. I’ve been bothered a lot by it myself. Jim’s a friend of
mine, you know, and I just don’t see how he could shoot his
grandfather in cold blood.”

“It appears to be hot blood that is in
question,” said Mrs. Meade.

“Jim has that, I’ll admit,” said Randall,
smiling a little ruefully. “But it’s still got me baffled. I knew
you’d have an opinion, though, and I was curious to know what it
was.”

Mrs. Meade’s eyes twinkled, but she pretended
to speak seriously. “My dear Randall, why should you think I would
be more interested in this murder than anyone else?”

The young man grinned. “Mrs. Meade, don’t be
a humbug. I owe exactly one beloved wife and one son and heir to
your devastating common sense, and I could name a few other people
who’d say similarly. You know you’ve always got an opinion when it
comes to things like this.”

“Dear me, by those calculations your debt to
me can only multiply,” said Mrs. Meade. “Nonsense. But you’re quite
right. I should never like to be called a busybody, but it has
always been my fortune—or my misfortune, depending on which way you
look at it—to be concerned with other people’s problems. I
am
troubled over this murder. But at present I am at a loss
to see what help anyone could possibly offer.”

“Did you know Major Cambert?” said
Randall.

“I was acquainted with him, yes, but I hadn’t
seen him in some time.”

“I’ve been out there pretty often,” said
Randall. “I sold them some horses when they first set up there, and
Jim and I got to be good friends. I like him a lot—and the Major
wasn’t a bad sort, even if he was as close as the dickens. Wonder
if it came of all those years living on Army pay.”

“Heavens, no. People who live on government
pay are
never
careful with money,” said Mrs. Meade with a
decision that convulsed her listener. “Major Cambert was simply a
suspicious man—and never shy of making his suspicions known. I’ll
never understand how Jim grew up to have such nice manners, living
with him,” she added irrelevantly.

“It’s been rough on him, I’ll bet,” said
Randall. “I haven’t seen him to talk to since it happened. He seems
to be keeping out of the way of anyone he knows, and I can’t say I
blame him. And then he even had to spend a night in jail on top of
it, thanks to that no-good Old Ted.”

“What’s that?” said Mrs. Meade quickly.

Randall explained. “Jim sent Old Ted last
night to find Tom Hall and ask him to come bail him out, but Old
Ted got drunk or something and never found Hall till this morning.
So Jim had to spend the night in jail.”

“Dear me,” murmured Mrs. Meade, almost too
low to be heard, “that is very…interesting.”

She looked up at Randall. “What of this
cowboy called Gennaro? You doubtless know more of the men who work
out there than I could—”

“Well, he’s not the most pleasant character,”
said Randall. “Drinks too much sometimes, and that puts him in an
ugly mood. Most of the time he does his job. But he irked Major
Cambert, and the Major decided to make an example of him and docked
his pay. That’s what Gennaro hated; he thought he was being made a
laughing-stock in front of the other boys. He’s sure not the only
one who’s gotten drunk now and again, but he’s the one Major
Cambert came down on.”

Mrs. Meade had listened to this chronicle of
masculine vice with deep scientific interest, as one might to the
doings of the inhabitants of another planet. “I see,” she said.

She got up from the sofa, straightened out
her knitting and placed it and its ball of yarn on the nearby
table. “And yet I do
not
see. There is a pattern here
somewhere, just as surely as there is in these stitches, but I have
not found it yet.”

Randall considered for a minute. “I’d say it
was—humiliation,” he said. “Major Cambert sure had a knack for
that. He humiliated Jim by telling him he wasn’t man enough to
marry—Miss Ruskin by calling her a fortune-hunter. He made a
laughing-stock out of Gennaro, or at least Gennaro thinks he
did—and he humiliated Old Ted by throwing a dollar at him to get
rid of him whenever—”

Mrs. Meade gave a little cry of triumph.
“
There
it is! Thank you, Randall.”

“Not at all,” said Randall automatically.
“There—
what
is?”

“The pattern I was looking for. And it does
make a difference—oh, yes, it does. But the fact remains, out of
all these people with motive, all had an equal opportunity. That
hour, that hour for which none of them can produce a witness.
That—” Mrs. Meade stood with arms folded, the fingers of one hand
drumming on the other elbow, her brows knitted in thought. “That
remains our barrier.”

* * *

Jim Cambert was walking with his head down a
little—a habit newly formed on him these last few days. But that
did not prevent Randall Morris, who always went straight to the
point, from recognizing him and hailing him just as he turned a
corner off the main street. Jim halted, reluctantly, as Randall
caught up to him.

To anyone who knew him, the change in Jim
could hardly have been more marked. No trace of the firm, youthful
confidence remained; his whole attitude spoke defeat and dejection,
and he avoided others’ eyes almost furtively. Randall hesitated a
second as he reached him, as if a little taken aback; and then he
took him resolutely by the arm. “I’ve been looking for you,” he
said. “There’s something I want to talk to you about. No, it’s
important, Jim. Come with me and I’ll tell you what I mean.”