The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries
- Автор: Пауэлл Тэлмидж
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press LLC
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries». Краткое содержание книги:
Martin’s big hand closed over the tiny timepiece. I followed him out of the office.
Biddix was a dried-up, seedy little fellow in his late sixties. He’d been separated from the other poker players and put in a solitary cell.
When the cell door opened, Biddix took one look at Martin’s face and backed against the wall.
Martin held out his hand and opened it. “Where’d you get this?”
“Look...” Biddix swallowed. “If it’s stolen, I swear I had nothing to do with it.”
“It was torn from a murdered girl’s wrist,” Martin said.
The dead-gray of Biddix’s beard stubble suddenly blended exactly with the color of his skin.
“A guy put the watch in the game,” Biddix said. “And that’s the truth, so help me!”
“Which one?”
“He left before we was raided.”
“What’s his name?”
“Edgar Collins.”
“Know where he lives?”
“Sure. In a flop on East Maple Street, number 311.”
We went out. The cell door clanged behind us. Biddix came over and stood holding the bars. “I didn’t know anything about the watch.”
“Sure,” Martin said.
“You’ll put me in with the others now, won’t you?”
“No,” Martin said. “Not yet.”
We got the location of Edgar Collins’ room from the building super, went up one flight, and eased to the door.
The house was hot and the hallway smelled of age and many people. We listened. After a little, we heard a bedspring creak.
We put our shoulders to the door, and it flew open. A stringy, big-boned, bald-headed man sprang off the bed and dropped the tabloid he’d been reading. He was tall and stooped. He wore dirty khaki pants and a dirty undershirt.
“What’s the big idear?” he demanded.
“Your name Edgar Collins?” Martin asked.
“So what if it is?”
“We’re police officers. We want to talk to you.”
“Yeah? What about?”
“A girl who was killed in Hibernia Park. If you’re innocent, you got nothing to worry about. If not... We’ve got a shoe-track moulage to start. We’ll find plenty of other things with the help of the lab boys, once we know where to start looking.”
Collins stared at us. An explosion took place behind his pale eyes. He lunged toward the open window.
Martin got between me and Collins and grabbed the man first. He dragged Collins back in the room. Collins threw punches at Martin in blind panic.
Martin hit him three times in the face. Collins fell on the floor, wrapped his arms about his head, and began rolling back and forth.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said, babbling. “She fell on the stone. She was a stranger, nothing to me. It was an accident... please... give me a break! I didn’t mean it, I tell you.”
For a moment I thought Odus Martin was going to start hitting the man again.
A volunteer minister performed graveside rites the next morning.
Martin and I stood with our hats in our hands.
I looked at the casket and thought: Goodbye, Mary Smith — that name will do as well as any. No father, no mother, no one. Killed by a man who never saw you before.
The sun was shining, but the day felt bleak and dismal.
Then, as we returned to headquarters, it came to me that Odus Martin had been right. There are no absolute strangers in this world, no zeros.
The death of Mary Smith had affected Odus Martin. Because I was his partner, it had affected me. Through us, it seemed to me, the human race had recognized the importance of her and expressed its unwillingness to let her die as an animal dies.
Mary Smith had lived and died in loneliness, but she had not been alone.
I didn’t say anything of this to Odus Martin. He was a hard man to talk to. Anyhow, I felt that he understood it already, probably much more deeply than I ever could.
A Break in the Weather
Originally appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1963.
Pearly Jenkins chose a cold, clear, brittle winter day to reveal his discovery — a day with the sky frozen to blue silence, a day when nothing should have happened.
I was at my desk catching up on paper work. I paused to load my pipe, and when I glanced up, I was startled to see Pearly standing patiently in the open doorway of my office.
A lean and grizzled old man, Pearly was dressed in his usual tattered and motley hand-me-downs. The cold, which he’d endured on his long trek down from Lake Poco, had given his face the appearance of a plum pudding with a cherry stuck in the middle.
His blue eyes had a quality in common with the cold sky outside. He took off his cap and shuffled into the office. “Good morning. Sheriff John.”
“How are you, Pearly?”
“At peace now,” he said. “I’m ready to confess and take my medicine.”
I was faintly irritated. In some ways Pearly has the mind of a ten-year-old. “I haven’t heard of any crimes might be laid at your door.”
“Oh, I done this in secret. Covered up the fact of a murder, I did.”
He was so woebegone it was hard to get really sore at him. “Come now, Pearly, these hills haven’t seen a killing in a long time.”
He stood blinking and frowning. “We’ve had one,” he said doggedly. “We’ve sure had one.” Sudden tears came to his eyes. “She’s so beautiful, Sheriff John, like a sleeping princess.”
“Who, Pearly?”
“Mavis. Mavis Worsham.”
He was the sort of old fellow who just naturally called on your more charitable instincts. Right now, my urge to comfort him was mingled with a desire to kick him out of the office.
“Pearly, why don’t you leave that lonely cabin and stay here in the county seat for a while? We’ll find something for you to do.”
“Don’t you believe me, Sheriff John?”
“I reckon I can’t. Mavis Worsham left here nearly three months ago. She was bored here. She told me herself it had been a mistake for her to return to her home town after living in the city so long. She got the yen for brighter lights and went to Scranton.”
He inched closer to my desk and said softly, “A tale to cover up her murder — that’s all it is, Sheriff John. She never got out of this county!”
He was chipping away at my patience. “She wrote a note back here after she reached Scranton, Pearly. Did you know that?”
His eyes were confused for a moment. “Who’d she write to?”
“Me, and I still have the letter kicking around here in my desk someplace. The cottage she rented belonged to summer people. She’d agreed to keep it through the winter. The rent was paid, everything in order. But leaving ahead of time, she asked me to keep an eye on the place until the summer folks returned.”
Pearly’s brow knotted. His eyes were full or pain as his mind worked. Then an inspiration lighted his furrowed face. “The note was a forgery — that’s what it was, Sheriff John!”
“You get hold of yourself, Pearly. The note was in Mavis’ own handwriting.”
“Then,” he said stubbornly, “the person who murdered her forced her to write the note — and after she was dead, he took it to Scranton and mailed it. A dad-burned slick and mean trick to make it look like she really left.”
I was now beginning to worry a little. Pearly had spent a short period in the state mental hospital several years ago, following the death of his wife.
I got up, moved over to him, took his arms, and eased him gently into the big old leather chair near my desk. “All right. Pearly. I guess we better talk this over. Who would want to kill a girl like Mavis?”
“There was talk about her. Sheriff John,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “Loose woman — men slipping in her back door — only there was good in her, I know it for a fact! She let me work for her, and paid me too.”