Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

But Mary took to him from that first day. She helped him in more ways than we knew at the time. First, she did two good turns at once by getting him room and board at Nancy Baldwin’s. Billy hadn’t left Nancy more than a rabbit’s skin, and she hadn’t been the same since his death. The baby, too, was sickly. It cried most nights through, according to the neighbors. That stopped whenever the reverend was there. If you listened close you could hear him sing gospel at all hours, Annie Pendergast said, as sweet as any you ever heard on the radio. He’d go off for days at a time and come back weekends. He was laying out a summer tour of the campsites, it was told, and on one return when he stopped first at the bank, Big Mary came out and climbed into that woebegone vehicle of his and rode with him past the inn and up over Lookout Point. You had to say his attitude toward Mary was gallant, not exactly bowing and scraping, but so respectful it could turn your stomach. We didn’t begrudge her such attention, you understand. I suppose we even pitied her, the way you would anybody you thought was being taken advantage of.

What happened to me that winter was that Tom Kincaid sold the drugstore to a chain company, and the first thing a chain company does is renovate. Clara suggested I move my office into the first-floor parlor of the inn. Pointed out it had a separate entrance. After hemming and hawing and looking her straight in the eye to see if I could tell what was going on with her, I agreed. I knew that was the door Clara had come out of in the negligee. But I also knew that moving my office into the Red Lantern, I might help spread a little goodwill where it was needed most. Clara didn’t go into town much, just for what shopping she had to do, and some of that she shunted onto me. The women were cold toward her, crossed the street when they saw her coming, things like that. She never was sociable. Loving people didn’t come natural to her. She’d learned a lot in prison, but not about loving.

The day after I moved my office in, she was watching me put things away where I could find them. She was being lazy, which was unusual for Clara. I put my violin case on the top of the shelves for my law books. I never played it at home. Too lonesome.

“Fiddle us up a tune,” Clara said.

“I’m getting terrible arthritic,” I told her, but I got the fiddle out and tuned it. I don’t get asked so often anymore.

Clara, sitting half off, half on the side of my desk, the sunlight playing round in her hair, looked prettier than I’d seen her since she went to prison. Not a bit like her sister Maudie, who I’d thought she was getting to resemble more every day.

“Anything special you got in mind, Clara? You know my repertoire.”

She grinned at me and gave her nose a crinkle. “How about a lullaby, Old Hank?”

It was going on ten o’clock when I got a call from Clara. She wasn’t feeling so good and wanted me to take over the desk. I asked her if she didn’t want me to get in touch with a doctor for her. I hadn’t mentioned it till then. She hadn’t either. Now she exploded.

“What in hell for? Go to bed, Hank. You’re getting to be a nag, a nanny. You’re more old maid than I am.”

I guess that was the truth. There was a storm coming sure, that dead quiet when even the crickets stop to listen. They’re better forecasters than radio or television, closer to home. I still live in the house I was born in, and going out, I locked the door. I wasn’t sure when I’d get back.

Clara was sitting in the lobby, sweating and bubbling gas. Like I’d thought, all eight room keys were hanging in a row. Nobody was coming off the interstate that night. Webbtown wasn’t even on the interstate, three miles from the nearest exit.

“I’m going upstairs now,” she said, and lifted herself out of the chair, real careful. Didn’t show much, but she was a big woman, and a heck of a lot stronger than I was.

“I could fix that storeroom off the kitchen for you, Clara. I could set up a bed in there. You’d be more comfortable.”

“Think so, Hank?” Real sarcastic.

She went up the stairs one creaky step at a time. From the landing she called down to me, “Better fire up the hot water. Feels like we’re going to need it soon.”

No point in going into details here, but my first trip upstairs she warned me if I tried to call a doctor she’d get up and pull the hall phone clear out of the wall. When she got to moaning and twisting the brass rungs of the bedstead, I couldn’t take any more of it. I started out of the room and said I’d come back soon.

“You better, Old Hank. I did fifteen years on account of you.”

You don’t take serious what people say to you at a time like that, but I sure felt it.

“I didn’t mean to say that ever. It’s this ornery little son of a bitch inside me trying to get out.”

I just nodded and went on, but I’d been standing there long enough to notice that fancy negligee draped over the chair like somebody invisible was sitting in it.