Reeves. . .
Sarah took her time with the turkey pellets, examining these three enclosed pens with a more careful eye than before. They had originally been stalls, and the small windows high up under the slanting roof left the rear part in shadow except for the white snow-light that streamed through the small exists to the outside runs. At the moment, the only tenant in occupancy was the mild ungainly Silver hen, hiding from her warlike mate and listening hopefully to the rattle of the turkey pellets.
Bess had stood the water-holders in a row to be thawed at leisure as the pheasants would eat the fresh-fallen snow. With the feeders also out, the pens were empty except for the Reeves’; this held a propped hickory branch where they could roost and dispose their sweeping tails without damage. That left only the long, narrow nesting boxes and the litter covering the planked floor, but the nesting boxes were cleaned regularly and the litter swept out and replaced from the bale in the corner. So that whatever Charles had thought was here—the thing so important that he had broken a self-imposed rule by writing a private memo in his office engagement book—could hardly be here any longer.
Or could it? Was it coincidence that two of the three names had been the doubtful-tempered breeds which Bess insisted on caring for herself? The illegibly crossed-out name might have been Amherst or Copper; on the other hand it might have been Silver, which would confine his interest to the stable area.
What had Hunter said about the Silvers in the car driving home? “A tremendous wing span, and spurs like knives . . . Long John had lost his bit.”
How big Long John was, three times the size of the Amherst cock, twice the size of the Reeves. The Manchurians seemed to wear their weight comfortably; Long John’s was all power and alertness. Sarah’s eye left him and went probingly around the stable. There was a medicine cabinet nailed to the wall above the bale of litter, and it held surprisingly human remedies: Argyrol, alcohol, sterile cotton, a tube of antiseptic, cod-liver oil, antibiotic tablets.
“It’s pretty much kill or cure with pheasants,” said Bess’s even voice directly behind her. “We’ve been quite lucky so far, nothing more than a frozen toe or an infected eye now and then. Thanks for doing the feeders, but hadn’t you better go in and warm up? You look frozen yourself.”
Sarah wasn’t frozen, only unaccountably chilled at that brisk reasonable “kill or cure.” In the corner behind the bale of litter stood Milo’s mink-killing stick, business end up; from nowhere came the horrifying thought that if this were summer that darkened spot on the wood would have been clotted with flies. The mink’s body had disappeared . . . and where was Peck?
(“People like Peck have no rules, and they think we’re suckers because we have.” That was Rob Clemence’s voice in a short sharp indictment, with Bess’s emerging after it: “. . . what would you have done?”)
“I think I will go in and get some coffee,” said Sarah; she had begun, actively, to shiver. “Won’t you, too, or can I bring you out some?”
“Oh, no. I’m used to this, but then,” said Bess, delicately triumphant, “after all these years I ought to be.”
In the kitchen, so spotlessly cleaned after breakfast that not so much as a spoon showed, Evelyn said sufferingly, “Oh, no trouble at all. I’ll just—” and began to assemble an army of implements.
Sarah glanced into one of the flung-open cabinets. “Isn’t that instant coffee?” Over Evelyn’s protests and insistent taking-apart of the newly washed percolator she put on water to boil and spooned the powdered coffee into a cup. She said while she waited, “Does Peck do this often?”
Evelyn, putting the percolator away again, dropped the glass top with a clatter. She said, “Oh dear. Milo says he’s always waiting for the day when I’ll be all fingers. Yes, Peck’s done it before; that’s why he lost his job at the mink farm. The trouble is that about once a month he seems to—” Evelyn flexed her blue gaze at Sarah, preparing the way for a witticism “—drink up his pay.”
“But then doesn’t somebody call to say he isn’t coming?”
“His wife does and says he has a touch of flu. Milo says that’s short for under the influence.”
“Milo is certainly droll,” said Sarah, watching with wonderment Milo’s daily victim. “Such a quick tongue. Did Peck’s wife call this morning?”
“She must have,” said Evelyn practically. “Or maybe he didn’t even come home and she thinks he’s here. You can’t tell with people like that, can you?”
“People like that.” “People like Peck.” Peck was employed by the Gideons, then, out of the direst necessity. Knowing Bess, Sarah could not quite swallow Evelyn’s earlier suggestion of philanthropy because Charles had been sorry for the man. Kill or cure was Bess’s nutshell philosophy, and there was no room for faltering or sentiment. Somehow, Peck had been in a position to force the Gideons to hire him when he was released from jail.
And where did prescience come from? Coffee downed too quickly on a fluttering stomach, a conviction of something dangerous hidden here, a glance at a heavy blood-darkened stick?
Peck is dead, thought Sarah. She tried it quickly and irresistibly on her mind, like a child mounting to a forbidden height, and just as the child found out that it could balance there after all in spite of the stuffy warnings from its elders, she knew quite certainly that Peck was dead.
Hunter had almost finished cleaning the chicken house when she went out. The old litter had been piled in a cart to be added to the compost heap; he
