The Clay Hand Read online

  They drew up to the Rockland garage, and Phil got out while Jimmie filled the gas tank. An overland truck passed, the driver dimming and raising his lights. Phil waved, and watched him up the deserted street.

  “Okay, kid,” Jimmie said. “Good luck.” Phil opened the back door. “You’ll be warmer in the front seat, Margaret.”

  Without a word she got out and permitted him to fold the blanket about her there. As he rounded the car, the wind picked up a circle of dust and danced it down the road ahead of them.

  On the highway, he kept the speedometer between fifty-five and sixty until they got into the hills. The sky was still a murky black, with no stars showing, and the wind sloughed along the side of the car, a lonely, monotonous cry. The turns on the blackened highway were treacherous. He slowed down, glancing now and then at the dreary progress of the mileage register.

  Presently an even band of gray showed beyond the hills to the east. Along the road, lights began to flicker on in the farm houses. An occasional lantern bobbed along in the stride of a farmer between house and barn. Weariness began to overtake him in the tantalizing half-light between dawn and sunrise.

  “I’m getting groggy, Margaret. We’ve got to talk or something.”

  “Sing,” she said, without looking at him.

  He gave no thought to the song he started until he realized the association. All his life he would remember this night drive, singing when his stomach was knotted. And for that song to have come to him then…

  “Why do you stop?” Margaret asked.

  “It’s queer I should have picked that one. I met Dick in Italy during the war when it was popular. Half the U.S. army seemed to be picking it out on broken-down pianos. I remember one place all bombed out except the damn piano, and there was a G.I. sitting in the middle of the rubble playing that.”

  “How far now, Phil?”

  He glanced at the speedometer. “Forty miles maybe. Watch for Route 17.”

  “Route 17,” she repeated.

  “What was Dick doing in Winston, Margaret?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Route 17 was a gravel road. A gray dawn came slowly over the grayer hills and rolled down them like lazy smoke. They passed an occasional group of men trudging along the roads with dinner pails, others checking in at mine gates. Sweatered women were hanging up Monday washes already, the wind catching the wet clothes and twisting them around the lines. The women hurried into houses that seemed scant protection from the weather, hot or cold—fragile frame buildings that looked to be standing by the grace of God.

  “I wonder if Dick was working on these,” he said, nodding at a group of the shabby houses.

  She did not answer. Presently she read aloud: “Winston Colliery Number Two.”

  Rounding a curve they saw the town in the valley below them, like card houses lined up on a barrel stave, Phil thought, thinning out at either end where the first rises of the hills began. There were two church steeples, the nearest with a cross atop it and alongside it a wide white-dotted cemetery.

  “Phil,” Margaret said, her voice almost harsh with the effort, “I’d better tell you now. I don’t think Dick was coming back to me, even if he had lived. I think he was leaving me.”

  Chapter 3

  HE STOPPED AT AN intersection in the town, parked and went into Lavery’s General Store. The storekeeper was firing the stove in the middle of the room, his coat collar turned up. A bundle of newspapers lay just inside the door.

  “Where can I find the sheriff?” Phil asked.

  Lavery wiped the coal dust from his hands on to his overalls and went out on the veranda with him. He pointed through the town.

  “Yonder. Krancow’s Funeral Parlor.” He glanced at the license plate on Phil’s car, and then into the car itself. “That Coffee’s wife?” he asked bluntly.

  “Yes.”

  Lavery shook his head and went back into the store.

  They drove up the main street past the fire house, with a single garage door, a drug store, a Penny variety store, a movie house where Buck Rogers was riding still, a grocery…There were a couple of farm trucks parked on the street, and a few cars, all of them dusty but quite new.

  “When you live in a hovel,” Phil said, “I guess you make your Studebaker your castle.”

  They stopped in front of the funeral parlor, a large house with one great window, the fernery scratching the dusty glass. Two other cars were parked there. He rang the doorbell and walked in, holding the door for Margaret.

  The parlor itself was a long, drab room despite its over-furnishing—upholstered chairs, carpeting, and the walls hung with tinted reproductions of holy pictures… The Christ Child in the temple…the garden of Gethsemane… Christ weeping over Jerusalem…. It was a few seconds before anyone came. A delicate-looking little man looked out from a door at the rear of the room. He stepped back to say something and then came in with two other men, one of whom introduced himself.

  “I’m Maurice Handy, coroner of Corteau County.”

  Phil gave his own name and introduced Margaret, and they in turn met Joseph Krancow, undertaker and constable of Winston, and Sheriff Sam Fields. The Winston men offered Margaret their solicitude.

  “We’ll hold the inquest as soon as we can,” the coroner said, “as soon as the sheriff has lined up his witnesses and the medical examiner is ready. We’ve taken the precautions of having an expert.”

  There was not much solicitude in him, Phil thought. Perhaps it was good in his job. He gave the impression of knowing that job, at least.

  “Am I to be told how my husband died?” Margaret said coldly.

  “We’re holding an inquest to determine that, ma’am,” the coroner said. He turned to the sheriff. “Sam, you want to talk to Mrs. Coffee?”

  Fields nodded. “First I have to ask you to identify the deceased, Mrs. Coffee. He wasn’t carrying much identification.”

  For an instant the wild hope occurred to Phil that it might be someone else who had died in Winston. Margaret dispelled it. “I want to see my husband.”

  In the rear room, it was the state medical examiner who guided their viewing of the body. Somewhere in his subconscious, Phil realized that the expert had already begun his work. There was no doubt that the distorted face was Dick Coffee’s. Margaret bit her lip hard, seeing it, but she refused the arm he offered her.

  In the parlor again, Fields motioned them into chairs.

  “May I stay?” Phil asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” the sheriff said, “for the time being, anyway. Sit where you’ll be comfortable, Mrs. Coffee. You’ve had a long trip.”

  He was a rangy, hard-bitten man of about fifty. His face had the look of weather about it, and his voice the ring of the hills. He took off his hat and laid it on the table, smoothing down his thin hair. He looked at both of them carefully with an open curiosity that had not a trace of self-consciousness. Then, having taken their measure apparently, he pulled up a straight chair and sat down opposite them.

  “You’re a family friend?” He nodded to Phil.

  “Yes.”

  The sheriff waited, and for some reason Phil felt it necessary to explain further. “I offered to come with Margaret. My home is in Rockland, some miles north of here…” Having started the explanation he didn’t seem to be able to stop. It was as though he was trying to extricate himself from a guiltiness that came of being there with her.

  “I know the town,” the sheriff said easily. “Mrs. Coffee, can you tell me why your husband came to Winston?”

  “No. I didn’t even know he was coming here when he left.”

  “I see. How long were you married?”

  “Nine years.”

  “Any children?”

  “No.”

  “You were home this Saturday night past?”

  “I was in Chicago. I went to a movie.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes. I often do. Sheriff, for the love of heaven tell me what happened.”r />
  “I’ll tell you what I can in a minute, Mrs. Coffee. First I got to ask you some questions.” He turned abruptly to Phil. “Where were you Saturday night?”

  “I was in Chicago covering the basketball tournament for my newspaper.”

  “When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Coffee?”

  “The last week of January. It was a Thursday night. He left in the morning without waking me.”

  “And didn’t say where he was going?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When did you hear from him then?”

  “Two weeks later. He wrote that he was in Winston.”

  “Do you have that letter?”

  “It was only a card. I don’t know if I have it or not.”

  “Weren’t you worried at not hearing from him?”

  “I was worried. I have always worried about Dick. His work was dangerous.”

  The sheriff studied the knuckle of his thumb a moment. “He was identified from a letter you wrote to him, you know, Mrs. Coffee. He wasn’t carrying any other identification at all.”

  Margaret waited. She was about to say something, Phil thought, but changed her mind.

  Fields went on quietly. “It wasn’t mailed in Chicago.”

  “I know. After I learned he was in Winston, I wrote to him—that I would go to Cincinnati. I wrote to him again from there. I thought he might come. But he didn’t. I returned to Chicago.”

  Margaret told it, her head up, her voice a little choked. It was the first Phil had known of such a trip.

  “There’s a calendar there on the wall.” Fields pointed. “I wonder if you’d give me the exact dates you were in Cincinnati.”

  “Why?”

  “Routine information,” Fields said, explaining nothing.

  Without looking at the calendar, Margaret said, “March third, fourth and fifth.”

  “All right,” the sheriff said. “Just one or two more questions. Did you and your husband quarrel before he left?”

  “We didn’t quarrel, really. The last couple of months at home Dick acted very strangely. He was depressed, almost morose, I’d say. He seldom spoke to me. He was away a great deal, and before he left he cleared out all his papers. He was drinking a great deal…”

  “Dick wasn’t much of a drinker,” Phil said before he realized that he was contradicting her.

  “You didn’t see him for a year,” she said. “How do you know the changes that might have come over him?”

  “Have you any idea what made him that way?” the sheriff asked, ignoring their exchange.

  “None.”

  “Didn’t you try to find out, ma’am?”

  “Yes, I tried. Over and over again. Whatever was wrong with him was beyond my power of healing.”

  They were talking about someone he had never known, Phil thought. Dick Coffee was a healthy, aggressive guy, a good fellow with a fine mind and a keen wit. He was a crusader with a level head, something not altogether common.

  The sheriff straightened up from where he had tilted his chair against the table. “All right, Mrs. Coffee. We don’t know much more about what your husband was doing here than you seem to. He got to know just about everybody in the town. He was here just short of six weeks. It takes a pretty good sort of person to get liked in that much time. In less time, in fact. Because in the last week or so, it turned out just the opposite. He did a lot of drinking, and you’re going to hear it come out at the inquest, so’s I might as well get you ready for it now: there was a lot of talk about him and a woman here. It may come out to be just talk. I hope that’s so.”

  “How did he die?” Margaret said. “That’s what I want to know.”

  “He died in a fall from a cliff out at the edge of town. He could have jumped, he could have been pushed, the way we figured it till now. Or it could just have been an accident. That happened some time Saturday night. The last person we know to of seen him was about three o’clock Saturday afternoon. A boy found him there early yesterday morning.”

  The sheriff got up. Margaret sat a moment, tense and pale, her teeth cutting into her underlip. She looked up then, meeting Fields’ eyes. “What was the woman like?”

  Fields’ mouth tightened downward a little. “You’ll see her at the inquest. Now Mrs. Krancow has fixed a room for you upstairs where you’ll be comfortable while you’re here. I’ll want to talk to you again later.”

  “Where did Dick stay? I’d rather stay there, Sheriff.”

  “I don’t think you better, ma’am.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” Fields said, putting his chair back, “to put it in the raw, the old lady doesn’t want you.”

  Chapter 4

  AS SOON AS HE had taken Margaret’s luggage up to the room prepared for her, Phil went outdoors. Away from her, he might escape the nightmare feeling. He could smell the coal dust in the wind, and feel its grit against his skin. A few townspeople were on the street, huddled deeply in their overcoats and peering at him curiously as he passed….a barber shop and a hardware store, opening for the day, a frame house with two youngsters peeking at him through the picket railing. He called “hello!” to them, passing. Behind him, he heard them scramble into the house and slam the door.

  He paused at McNamara’s Tavern. Looking over the half curtain, he saw Randy Nichols talking with the bartender. The reporter noticed him and waved him in.

  “Pour another one, Mac,” Nichols said as Phil joined him.

  The large red-faced man behind the bar was pouring a brand Phil had never heard of. His face was hard, although its flesh was soft, and when he looked up, his small blue eyes were needle-like. “There’s a terrible raw day out,” he said, rubbing away with his finger the solitary drop of whiskey he had spilled.

  “It is,” Phil said. “What time did you get in, Randy?”

  “With the dirty dawn. I got a midnight flight to Cincinnati. I caught the milk train over from there. How did she take it?”

  “His death? How would anybody take it?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Nichols said. “Does she know what was going on down here?”

  “Do you?” Phil asked irritably. He sipped the raw liquor and felt his empty stomach contract with it.

  “I know what I hear,” Nichols said. “Doesn’t mean I like it. But I can listen.”

  A card game was going on at a table in the back. Phil looked at his watch—nine o’clock in the morning. It was a part of the unreality that five men should sit in a silent card game, giving no recognition of time or man. “I’ve got to get something to eat,” he said. “I feel like I haven’t touched ground in a month.”

  “You’ve just got one foot on the merry-go-round,” Nichols said. “Wait till the music starts!”

  There was a mirror the length of the bar, reflecting the meager line of bottles, a cigar box, and the broad back of McNamara, his ears lopping away from his head like daffodils. It also caught the two men at the bar, an upright piano against the wall behind them, and above it, the bare-chested, arm-folded physique of John L. Sullivan.

  “Just what have you heard?” Phil said.

  “That the sheriff is grilling her husband on it,” Nichols said. “They’re trying to break down his alibi. He works on the Cleveland and Mobile, a brakeman. He checked in for work at four-forty-five that afternoon—claims he was on his way to Cleveland by five-thirty. The coal train gets sidetracked about twenty miles north, while the passenger goes through. They figure he could have clocked in all right, then dropped off and caught a ride on the passenger train as far as the switch a while later, getting on the job again without being missed.”

  “Randy, does this business sound like Dick to you? You knew him pretty well.”

  Nichols shook his head. “No. It doesn’t. But I’ll tell you, McGovern. I saw Coffee last Christmas, and he was a mess, a hell of a mess. Him and his wife came round to the Press Club. You couldn’t say a word, he didn’t flare up. One of the fellows made kind of a play for her—
kidding, you know, a few drinks. And holy Joseph, I thought Dick was going to knock his teeth out.”

  “How did she react?”

  “The smile of Gioconda—all mother, and no wife, I thought. Just my impression, of course. She isn’t the motherly type.”

  Phil emptied his glass, and McNamara had it refilled before he could stop him. “I hear he was drinking, too,” Phil said. “That’s out of character for him.”

  McNamara picked that up. “Drinking?” he said. “That boy could lay a dozen in the aisle, and walk out with his hat straight.”

  Phil looked at him, wondering if there was any reason to exaggerate. “Here?”

  “Here where you’re standing till last week,” the barkeep said. “I flung him out when he came round with the old man on Friday night.” He leaned across the bar confidentially. “I’ve my reputation, you know. And me after recommending him to the widow, and her taking him in, the dear soul.”

  The two children Phil had seen next door were nudging the window where the curtain parted. McNamara noticed them. “Get home out of here,” he roared, waving his big red fist at them. “It’s no place for children.” They fled. His bellowing could have been heard in the next county.

  “Will you cut the palaver and bring us a drink, Mac,” one of the men shouted from the card table.

  “Come and fetch it yourself. You’ve got me flat-footed with carting it to you.”

  There was reality to it, after all, Phil thought. He looked at the tray McNamara set on the bar and watched him cover, glass by glass, a stenciled nude.

  Nichols looked up at the picture of John L. Sullivan. “There seems to be an Irish element in the town.”

  “Where isn’t there an Irish element?” Phil said.

  “Well,” said Nichols, “they say it’s a little rare in Dublin these days.”

  “Who’s the old man he said Dick was drinking with?” Phil asked.

  Nichols turned his back on the bar and leaned his elbows on it. “Henry Clauson, an old-time magician, from what I’ve collected. It’s his daughter…”

  His words were cut off with McNamara’s shout: “Are you coming for this or no? You’ll be belly-aching there’s no head on it.”