Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (14 page)

All in all, Kent spent over a month in jail that winter, at various times. It seemed to some that whenever his money ran out, he let the county support him and let the woman and child fend for themselves. Tom Talley gave them a little credit at the store. Not much.

E
D
W
ESTLAKE, WHEN
he bid again for the school bus contract, added the cost of going three miles out of his way to pick up Kathie. The county had no choice but to meet the extra charge. It was considered very thoughtless of Louise to wait till
after
the contract was signed before leaving Castwell and going back to the city with her child. The side road to the Peabody place didn't have to be plowed so often, but it still had to be plowed
some
. That extra cost, just for one man! It was maddening.

It almost seemed—no, it
did
seem—as if Kent Castwell were deliberately setting himself in the face of New England respectability and thrift. The sacred words, “Eat it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” didn't mean a thing to him. He wasn't just indifferent. He was hostile.

Ashby was not a thriving place. It had no industries. It was not a resort town, being far from sea and mountains alike, with only the shallow, muddy waters of Lake Amastanquit for a pleasure spot. Its thin-soiled farms and meager woodlots produced a scanty return for the hard labor exacted. The young people continued to leave. Kent Castwell, unfortunately, showed no signs of leaving.

All things considered, it was not surprising that Ashby had no artists' colony. It
was
rather surprising, then, that Clem Goodhue, meeting the train with his taxi, recognized Bob Laurel at once as an artist. When asked afterwards how he had known, Clem looked smug and said that he had once been to Provincetown.

The conversation, as Clem recalled it afterwards, began with Bob Laurel's asking where he could find a house that offered low rent, peace and quiet, and a place to paint.

“So I recommended Kent Castwell,” Clem said. He was talking to Sheriff Erastus Nickerson (Levi P.'s cousin) at the time.

“‘Peace and
quiet?
'” the sheriff repeated. “I know Laurel's a city fellow, and an artist, but, still and all—”

They were seated in the bar of the Ashby House, drinking their weekly small glass of beer. “I looked at it this way, Erastus,” the taxi man said. “Sure, there's empty houses all around that he could rent. Suppose
he
—this artist fellow—suppose
he
picks one off on a side road with nobody else living on it? Suppose
he
comes up with a wife out of somewhere, and suppose
she
has a school-age child?”

“You're right, Clem.”

“'Course I'm right. Bad enough for the county to be put to all that cost for
one
house, let alone two.”

“You're right, Clem. But will he stay with Castwell?”

Clem shrugged. “That I can't say. But I did my best.”

Laurel stayed with Castwell. He really had no choice. The big man agreed to take him in as lodger and to give over the front room for a studio. And, holding out offers of insulating the house, putting in another window, and who knows what else, Kent Castwell persuaded the unwary artist to pay several months' rent in advance. Needless to say, he drank up the money and did nothing at all in the way of the promised improvements.

Neither District Attorney Gamaliel Coolidge nor Sheriff Nickerson, nor, for that matter, anyone else, showed Laurel much sympathy. He had grounds for a civil suit, they said; nothing else. It should be a lesson to him not to throw his money around in the future, they said.

So the unhappy artist stayed on at the old Peabody place, buying his own food and cutting his own wood, and painting, painting, painting. And all the time he knew full well that his leering landlord only waited for him to go into town in order to help himself to both food and wood.

Laurel invited Clem to have a glass of beer with him more than once, just to have someone to tell his troubles to. Besides stealing his food and fuel, Kent Castwell, it seemed, played the TV at full blast when Laurel wanted to sleep; if it was too late for TV, he set the radio to roaring. At moments when the artist was intent on delicate brushwork, Castwell would decide to bring in stove wood and drop it on the floor so that the whole house shook.

“He talks to himself in that loud, rough voice of his,” Bob Laurel complained. “He has a filthy mouth. He makes fun of my painting. He—”

“I tell you what it is,” Clem said. “Kent Castwell has no consideration for others. That's what it is. Yep.”

Bets were taken in town, of a ten-cent cigar per bet, on how long Laurel would stand for it. Levi Nickerson, the county tax assessor, thought he'd leave as soon as his rent was up. Clem's opinion was that he'd leave sooner. “Money don't mean that much to city people,” he pointed out.

Clem won.

When he came into Nickerson's house, Levi, who was sitting close to the small fire in the kitchen stove, wordlessly handed over the cigar. Clem nodded, put it in his pocket. Mrs. Abby Nickerson sat next to her husband, wearing a man's sweater. It had belonged to her late father, whose heart had failed to survive the first reelection of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and it still had a lot of wear left in it. Abby was unraveling old socks and winding the wool into a ball. “Waste not, want not,” was her motto—as well as that of every other old-time local resident.

On the stove a kettle steamed thinly. Two piles of used envelopes were on the table. They had all been addressed to the tax assessor's office of the county and had been carefully opened so as not to mutilate them. While Clem watched, Levi Nickerson removed one of the envelopes from its place on top of the uncovered kettle. The mucilage on its flaps loosened by steam, it opened out easily to Nickerson's touch. He proceeded to refold it and then reseal it so that the used outside was now inside; then he added it to the other pile.

“Saved the county eleven dollars this way last year,” he observed. “Shouldn't wonder but what I don't make it twelve this year, maybe twelve-fifty.” Clem gave a small appreciative grunt. “Where is he?” the tax assessor asked.

“Laurel? In the Ashby Bar. He's all packed. I told him to stay put. I told them to keep an eye on him, phone me here if he made a move to leave.”

He took a sheet of paper out of his pocket and put it on the table. Levi looked at it, but made no move to pick it up. To his wife he said, “I'm expecting Erastus and Gam Coolidge over, Mrs. Nickerson. County business. I expect you can find something to do in the front of the house while we talk.”

Mrs. Nickerson nodded. Even words were not wasted.

A car drove up to the house.

“That's Erastus,” said his cousin. “Gam should be along—he
is
along. Might've known he wouldn't waste gasoline; came with Erastus.”

The two men came into the kitchen. Mrs. Abby Nickerson arose and departed.

“Hope we can get this over with before nightfall,” the sheriff said. “I don't like to drive after dark if I can help it. One of my headlights is getting dim, and they cost so darned much to replace.”

Clem cleared his throat. “Well, here 'tis,” he said, gesturing to the paper on the table. “Laurel's confession. ‘Tell the sheriff and the DA that I'm ready to give myself up,' he says. ‘I wrote it all down here,' he says. Happened about two o'clock this afternoon, I guess. Straw that broke the camel's back. Kent Castwell, he was acting up as usual. Stomping and swearing out there at the Peabody place. Words were exchanged. Laurel left to go out back,” Clem said, delicately, not needing to further comment on the Peabody place's lack of indoor plumbing. “When he come back, Castwell had taken the biggest brush he could find and smeared paint over all the pictures Laurel had been working on. Ruined them completely.”

There was a moment's silence. “Castwell had no call to do that,” the sheriff said. “Destroying another man's property. They tell me some of those artists get as much as a hundred dollars for a painting … What'd he do then? Laurel, I mean.”

“Picked up a piece of stove wood and hit him with it. Hit him hard.”

“No doubt about his being dead, I suppose?” the sheriff asked.

Clem shook his head. “There was no blood or anything on the wood,” he added. “Just another piece of stove wood … But he's dead, all right.”

After a moment Levi Nickerson said, “His wife will have to be notified. No reason why the county should have to pay burial expenses. Hmm. I expect she won't have any money, though. Best get in touch with those trustees who sent Castwell his money every month.
They'll
pay.”

Gamaliel Coolidge asked if anyone else knew. Clem said no. Bob Laurel hadn't told anyone else. He didn't seem to want to talk.

This time there was a longer silence.

“Do you realize how much Kent Castwell cost this county, one way or the other?” Nickerson asked.

Clem said he supposed hundreds of dollars. “Hundreds and
hundreds
of dollars,” Nickerson said.

“
And
,” the tax assessor went on, “do you know what it will cost us to try this fellow—for murder in any degree or manslaughter?”

The district attorney said it would cost thousands. “Thousands and
thousands
… and that's just the trial,” he elaborated. “Suppose he's found guilty and appeals? We'd be obliged to fight the appeal. More thousands. And suppose he gets a new trial? We'd have it to pay all over again.”

Levi P. Nickerson opened his mouth as though it hurt him to do so. “What it would do to the county tax rate …” he groaned. “Kent Castwell,” he said, his voice becoming crisp and definite, “is not worth it. He is just not
worth
it.”

Clem took out the ten-cent cigar he'd won, sniffed it. “My opinion,” he said, “it would have been much better if this fellow Laurel had just packed up and left. Anybody finding Castwell's body would assume he'd fallen and hit his head. But this confession, now—”

Sheriff Erastus Nickerson said reflectively, “I haven't read any confession. You, Gam? You, Levi? No. What you've told us, Clem, is just hearsay. Can't act on hearsay. Totally contrary to all principals of American law … Hmm. Mighty nice sunset.” He arose and walked over to the window. His cousin followed him. So did District Attorney Coolidge. While they were looking at the sunset, Clem Goodhue, after a single glance at their backs, took the sheet of paper from the kitchen table and thrust it into the kitchen stove. There was a flare of light. It quickly died down. Clem carefully reached his hand into the stove, took out the small corner of the paper remaining, and lit his cigar with it.

The three men turned from the window.

Levi P. Nickerson was first to speak. “Can't ask any of you to stay to supper,” he said. “Just a few leftovers is all we're having. I expect you'll want to be going on your way.”

The two other county officials nodded.

The taxi man said, “I believe I'll stop by the Ashby Bar. Might be someone there wanting to catch the evening train. Night, Levi. Don't turn on the yard light for us.”

“Wasn't going to,” said Levi. “Turning them on and off, that's what burns them out. Night Clem, Gam, Erastus.” He closed the door after them. “Mrs. Nickerson,” he called to his wife, “you can come and start supper now. We finished our business.”

Many men have
disappeared under unusual circumstances, but perhaps none more unusual than those that befell Billy Calm.

The day began in a routine way for McLove. He left his apartment in midtown Manhattan and walked through the foggy March morning, just as he did on every working day of the year. When he was still several blocks away, he could make out the bottom floors of the great glass slab that was the home office of the Jupiter Steel & Brass Corporation. But above the tenth floor the fog had taken over, shrouding everything in a dense coat of moisture that could have been the roof of the world.