Tales for a Stormy Night: Fifteen Crime Stories Read online

  “I’d be very pleased, Mr. Joyce. But I’d like to pay you for them.”

  “Indeed not. I won’t sell half of them—they come in a heap.”

  She watched his expert hand nip the blooms. He was already tanned, and he stooped and rose with a fine grace. In all the years he had lived next to them he had never been in the house, nor they in his except the day of his wife’s funeral. He hadn’t grieved much, she commented to Gerald at the time. And little wonder. The woman was pinched and whining, and there wasn’t a sunny day she didn’t expect a drizzle before nightfall. Now that Sarah thought of it, Joyce looked younger than he did when Mrs. Joyce was still alive.

  “There. For goodness’ sakes, Mr. Joyce. That’s plenty.”

  “I’d give you the field of them this morning,” he said, piling her arms with the flowers.

  “I’ve got half of it now.”

  “And what a picture you are with them.”

  “Well, I must hurry them into water,” she said. “Thank you.”

  She hastened toward the house, flying like a young flirt from her first conquest, and aware of the pleased eye following her. The whole morning glowed in the company she kept with the flowers. She snapped off the radio: no tears for Miss Julia today. At noon she heard Mr. Joyce’s wagon roll out of the yard as he started to his highway stand. She watched at the window. He looked up and lifted his hat.

  At odd moments during the day, she thought of him. He had given her a fine sense of herself and she was grateful. She began to wish that Gerald was returning that night. Take your time, Sarah, she told herself. You don’t put away old habits and the years like bric-a-brac. She had softened up, no doubt of it. Not a fat woman, maybe, but plump. Plump. She repeated the word aloud. It had the sound of a potato falling into a tub of water.

  But the afternoon sun was warm and the old laziness came over her. Only when Mr. Joyce came home, his voice in a song ahead of him, did she pull herself up. She hurried a chicken out of the refrigerator and then called to him from the porch.

  “Mr. Joyce, would you like to have supper with me? Gerald won’t be home, and I do hate cooking for just myself.”

  “Oh, that’d be grand. I’ve nothing in the house but a shank of ham that a dog wouldn’t bark for. What can I bring?”

  “Just come along when you’re ready.”

  Sarah, she told herself, setting the table, you’re an old bat trying your wings in daylight. A half-hour later she glanced out of the window in time to see Mr. Joyce skipping over the fence like a stiff-legged colt. He was dressed in his Sunday suit and brandishing a bottle as he cleared the barbed wire. Sarah choked down a lump of apprehension. For all that she planned a little fun for herself, she was not up to galloping through the house with an old Don Juan on her heels. Mr. Joyce, however, was a well-mannered guest. The bottle was May wine. He drank sparingly and was lavish in his praise of the dinner.

  “You’ve no idea the way I envy you folks, Mrs. Shepherd. Your husband especially. How can he bear the times he spends away?”

  He bears it all too well, she thought. “It’s his work. He’s a salesman. He sells spices.”

  Mr. Joyce showed a fine set of teeth in his smile—his own teeth, she marveled, tracing her bridgework with the tip of her tongue while he spoke. “Then he’s got sugar and spice and everything nice, as they say.”

  What a one he must have been with the girls, she thought, and to marry a quince as he had. It was done in a hurry no doubt, and maybe at the end of a big stick.

  “It must be very lonesome for you since Mrs. Joyce passed away,” she said more lugubriously than she intended. After all the woman was gone three years.

  “No more than when she was with me.” His voice matched hers in seriousness. “It’s a hard thing to say of the dead, but if she hasn’t improved her disposition since, we’re all in for a damp eternity.” He stuffed the bowl of his pipe. “Do you mind?”

  “No, I like the smell of tobacco around the house.”

  “Does your husband smoke?”

  “Yes,” she said in some surprise at the question.

  “He didn’t look the kind to follow a pipe,” he said, pulling noisily at his. “No, dear lady,” he added when the smoke was shooting from it, “you’re blessed in not knowing the plague of a silent house.”

  It occurred to her then that he was exploring the situation. She would give him small satisfaction. “Yes, I count that among my blessings.”

  There was a kind of amusement in his eyes. You’re as lonesome as me, old girl, they seemed to say, and their frankness bade her to add: “But I do wish Gerald was home more of the time.”

  “Ah, well, he’s at the age when most men look to a last trot around the paddock,” he said, squinting at her through the smoke.

  “Gerald is only forty-three,” she said, losing the words before she knew it.

  “There’s some take it at forty, and others among us leaping after it from the rocking chair.”

  The conversation had taken a turn she certainly had not intended, and she found herself threshing around in it. Beating a fire with a feather duster. “There’s the moon,” she said, charging to the window as though to wave to an old friend.

  “Aye,” he said, “there’s the moon. Are you up to a trot in it?”

  “What did you say, Mr. Joyce?”

  “I’d better say what I was thinking first. If I hitch Micky to the old rig, would you take a turn with me on the Mill Pond Road?”

  She saw his reflection in the window, a smug, daring little grin on his face. In sixteen years of settling she had forgotten her way with men. But it was something you never really forgot. Like riding a bicycle, you picked it up again after a few turns. “I would,” she said.

  The horse ahead of the rig was a different animal from the one on the plow that morning. Mr. Joyce had no more than thrown the reins over his rump than he took a turn that almost tumbled Sarah into the sun frames. But Mr. Joyce leaped to the seat and pulled Micky up on his hind legs with one hand and Sarah down to her cushion with the other, and they were off in the wake of the moon….

  The sun was full in her face when Sarah awoke the next morning. As usual, she looked to see if Gerald were in his bed by way of acclimating herself to the day and its routine. With the first turn of her body she decided that a gallop in a rusty-springed rig was not the way to assert a stay of youth. She lay a few moments thinking about it and then got up to an aching sense of folly. It remained with her through the day, giving way at times to a nostalgia for her bric-a-brac. She had never realized how much of her life was spent in the care of it.

  By the time Gerald came home she was almost the person he had left the day before. She had held out against the ornaments, however. Only the flowers decorated the living-room. It was not until supper was over and Gerald had settled with his book that he commented

  “Sarah, what happened to the old Chinese philosopher?”

  “I put him away. Didn’t you notice? I took all the clutter out of here.”

  He looked about him vacantly as though trying to recall some of it. “So you did. I’ll miss that old boy. He gave me something to think about.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Confucius says…that sort of thing.”

  “He wasn’t a philosopher at all,” she said, having no notion what he was. “He was a farmer.”

  “Was he? Well, there’s small difference.” He opened the book.

  “Aren’t the flowers nice, Gerald?”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Mr. Joyce gave them to me, fresh out of his garden.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Must you read every night, Gerald? I’m here all day with no one to talk to, and when you get home you stick your nose into a book…” When the words were half out she regretted them. “I didn’t tell you, Gerald. I had Mr. Joyce to dinner last night.”

  “That was very decent of you, dear. The old gentleman must find it lonesome.”

  �
��I don’t think so. It was a relief to him when his wife died.”

  Gerald looked up. “Did he say that?”

  “Not in so many words, but practically.”

  “He must be a strange sort. What did she die of?”

  “I don’t remember. A heart condition, I think.”

  “Interesting.” He returned to his book.

  “After dinner he took me for a ride in the horse and buggy. All the way to Cos Corner and back.”

  “Ha!” was his only comment.

  “Gerald, you’re getting fat.”

  He looked up. “I don’t think so. I’m about my usual weight. A couple of pounds maybe.”

  “Then you’re carrying it in your stomach. I noticed you’ve cut the elastic out of your shorts.”

  “These new fabrics,” he said testily.

  “They’re preshrunken,” she said. “It’s your stomach. And haven’t you noticed how you pull at your collar all the time?”

  “I meant to mention that, Sarah. You put too much starch in them.”

  “I ran out of starch last week and forgot to order it. You can take a size fifteen-and-a-half now.”

  “Good Lord, Sarah, you’re going to tell me next I should wear a horse collar.” He let the book slide closed between his thighs. “I get home only three or four nights a week. I’m tired. I wish you wouldn’t aggravate me, dear.”

  She went to his chair and sat on the arm of it. “Did you know that I was beginning to wonder if you’d respond to the poke of a hat-pin?”

  He looked directly up at her for the first time in what had seemed like years. His eyes fell away. “I’ve been working very hard, dear.”

  “I don’t care what you’ve been doing, Gerald. I’m just glad to find out that you’re still human.”

  He slid his arm around her and tightened it.

  “Aren’t spring flowers lovely?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, “and so is spring.”

  She leaned across him and took a flower from the vase. She lingered there a moment. He touched his hand to her. “And you’re lovely, too.”

  This is simple, she thought, getting upright again. If the rabbit had sat on a thistle he’d have won the race.

  “The three most beautiful things in the world,” Gerald said thoughtfully, “a white bird flying, a field of wheat, and a woman’s body.”

  “Is that your own, Gerald?”

  “I don’t know. I think it is.”

  “It’s been a long time since you wrote any poetry. You did nice things once.”

  “That’s how I got you,” he said quietly.

  “And I got you with an old house. I remember the day my mother’s will was probated. The truth, Gerald—wasn’t it then you made up your mind?”

  He didn’t speak for a moment, and then it was a continuance of some thought of his own, a subtle twist of association. “Do you remember the piece I wrote on the house?”

  “I read it the other day. I often read them again.”

  “Do you, Sarah? And never a mention of it.”

  It was almost all the reading she did these days. His devotion to books had turned her from them. “Remember how you used to let me read them to you. Gerald? You thought that I was the only one besides yourself who could do them justice.”

  “I remember.”

  “Or was that flattery?”

  He smiled. “It was courtship, I’m afraid. No one ever thinks anybody else can do his poetry justice. But Sarah, do you know—I’d listen tonight if you’d read some of them. Just for old time’s sake.”

  For old time’s sake, she thought, getting the folder from the cabinet and settling opposite him. He was slouched in his chair, pulling at his pipe, his eyes half-closed. Long ago this same contemplativeness in him had softened the first shock of the difference in their ages.

  “I’ve always liked this one best—The Morning of My Days.”

  “Well you might,” he murmured. “It was written for you.”

  She read one piece after another, wondering now and then what pictures he was conjuring up of the moment he had written them. He would suck on his pipe at times. The sound was like a baby pulling at an empty bottle. She was reading them well, she thought, giving them a mellow vibrancy, an old love’s tenderness. Surely there was a moment coming when he would rise from the chair and come to her. Still he sat, his eyes almost closed, the pipe now in hand on the chair’s arm. A huskiness crept into her voice, so rarely used to this length any more, and she thought of the nightingale’s singing, the thorn against its breast. A slit of pain in her own throat pressed her to greater effort, for the poems were almost done.

  She stopped abruptly, a phrase unfinished, at a noise in the room. The pipe had clattered to the floor, Gerald’s hand still cupped its shape, but his chin was now on his breast. Laying the folder aside, she went over and picked up the pipe with a rather empty regret, as she would pick up a bird that had fallen dead at her feet.

  Gerald’s departure in the morning was in the tradition of all their days, even to the kiss upon her cheek and the words, “Till tomorrow evening, dear, take care.”

  Take care, she thought, going indoors. Take care of what? For what? Heat a boiler of water to cook an egg? She hurried her chores and dressed. When she saw Mr. Joyce hitch the wagon of flowers, she locked the door and waited boldly at the road for him.

  “May I have a lift to the highway?” she called out, as he reined up beside her.

  “You may have a lift to the world’s end, Mrs. Shepherd. Give me your hand.” He gave the horse its rein when she was beside him. “I see your old fella’s taken off again. I daresay it gave him a laugh, our ride in the moonlight.”

  “It was giddy business,” she said.

  “Did you enjoy yourself?”

  “I did. But I paid for it afterwards.” Her hand went to her back.

  “I let out a squeal now and then bending over, myself. But I counted it cheap for the pleasure we had. I’ll take you into the village. I’ve to buy a length of hose anyway. Or do you think you’ll be taken for a fool riding in on a wagon?”

  “It won’t be the first time,” she said. “My life is full of foolishness.”

  “It’s a wise fool who laughs at his own folly. We’ve that in common, you and me. Where’ll we take our supper tonight?”

  He was sharp as mustard.

  “You’re welcome to come over,” she said.

  He nodded. “I’ll fetch us a steak, and we’ll give Micky his heels again after.”

  Sarah got off at the post office and stayed in the building until Joyce was out of sight—Joyce and the gapers who had stopped to see her get out of the wagon. Getting in was one thing, getting out another. A bumblebee after a violet. It was time for this trip. She walked to the doctor’s office and waited her turn among the villagers.

  “I thought I’d come in for a check-up, Dr. Philips,” she said at his desk. “And maybe you’d give me a diet?”

  “A diet?” He took off his glasses and measured her with the naked eye.

  “I’m getting a little fat,” she said. “They say it’s a strain on the heart at my age.”

  “Your heart could do for a woman of twenty,” he said, “but we’ll have a listen.”

  “I’m not worried about my heart, Doctor, you understand. I just feel that I’d like to lose a few pounds.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Open your dress.” He got his stethoscope.

  Diet, apparently, was the rarest of his prescriptions. Given as a last resort. She should have gone into town for this, not to a country physician who measured a woman by the children she bore. “The woman next door to us died of a heart condition,” she said, as though that should explain her visit.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, putting away the instrument.

  “Mrs. Joyce. Some years ago.”

  “She had a heart to worry about. Living for years on stimulants. Yours is as sound as a bullet. Let’s have your arm.”

  She pushed
up her sleeve as he prepared the apparatus for measuring her blood pressure. That, she felt, was rising out of all proportion. She was ashamed of herself before this man, and angry at herself for it, and at him for no reason more than that he was being patient with her. “We’re planning insurance,” she lied. “I wanted our own doctor’s opinion first.”

  “You’ll have no trouble getting it, Mrs. Shepherd. And no need of a diet.” He grinned and removed the apparatus. “Go easy on potatoes and bread, and on the sweets. You’ll outlive your husband by twenty years. How is he, by the way?”

  “Fine. Just fine, Doctor, thank you.”

  What a nice show you’re making of yourself these days, Sarah, she thought, outdoors again. Well, come in or go out, old girl, and slam the door behind you…

  Micky took to his heels that night. He had had a day of ease, and new shoes were stinging his hooves by nightfall. The skipping of Joyce with each snap of the harness teased him, the giggling from the rig adding a prickle. After the wagon, the rig was no more than a fly on his tail. He took the full reins when they slapped on his flanks and charged out from the laughter behind him. It rose to a shriek the faster he galloped and tickled his ears like something alive that slithered from them down his neck and his belly and into his loins. Faster and faster he plunged, the sparks from his shoes like ocean spray. He fought a jerk of the reins, the saw of the bit in his mouth a fierce pleasure. He took turns at his own fancy and only in sight of his own yard again did he yield in the fight, choking on the spume that lathered his tongue.

  “By the holy, the night a horse beats me, I’ll lie down in my grave,” Joyce cried. “Get up now, you buzzard. You’re not turning in till you go to the highway and back. Are you all right, Sarah?”

  Am I all right, she thought. When in years had she known a wild ecstasy like this? From the first leap of the horse she had burst the girdle of fear and shame. If the wheels had spun out from beneath them, she would have rolled into the ditch contented.

  “I’ve never been better,” she said.

  He leaned close to her to see her, for the moon had just risen. The wind had stung the tears to her eyes, but they were laughing. “By the Horn Spoon,” he said, “you liked it!” He let the horse have his own way into the drive after all. He jumped down from the rig and held his hand up to her. “What a beautiful thing to be hanging in the back of the closet all these years.”