doors of you and your sister and brother-in-law?’
For some reason the smile she showed seemed faintly erotic. ‘Alice and I are both still young enough to want more interest out of life than mere money can provide.’
‘Sure,’ he said for something to say and when she peered across at the cemetery and sighed he added: ‘Something wrong?’
‘Not really. It’s just that funerals depress me in a different way to most other people.’
‘They do?’
‘They remind me that sometimes putting the dead in a grave is the only way to truly bury the past.’
As the first coffin began to be lowered into the ground she stepped through the open gateway into the school yard and asked: ‘Don’t you think that can be so?’
Edge shook his head. ‘The way I think about a grave, lady, it’s about the only kind of hole a man gets into he shouldn’t be able to dig himself out of.’
CHAPTER • 7
___________________________________________________________________________
EDGE WENT to the hotel where this morning Elizabeth Wexler had charge of the desk in the lobby while her husband was deputising at the funeral for the absent Andrew Devlin. He paid her what he owed for his dinner in the restaurant last night but she refused to take money for the room he had hardly used. Claimed disdainfully that the Grand Hotel did not accept payment for services not provided. Then he ambled down River Road leading the two horses toward the livery as the town began to get busier.
Following the funeral everybody who had been present except for the gravediggers had moved out of the cemetery and Harry Shelby was among those to be back at their daily chores. The heavily built, black bearded man accepted payment for the night’s rent due on the gelding and cast an admiringly expert eye over the horse Edge had borrowed from the Quinn stable.
‘I don’t blame you for making use of this fine animal mister.’ He ran a hand over the flank of the dappled grey. ‘The Quinns could afford the best of everything and that’s the quality they always went for.’
‘You reckon that’s why Quinn hired me, feller?’ Edge asked wryly.
Shelby guffawed. ‘I like your thinking. The way I see it, if a man has got any self respect then he needs to have a high opinion of himself.’
Edge swung up into the saddle and muttered: ‘Been times my opinion of myself has sure smelled a little high.’
He rode back across the intersection and as he approached the start of the Old Town Road at the top of First Street he saw a sign that had failed to register in his pre-occupied mind last night. Above a door and between two flanking bow windows it proclaimed in fancy lettering: Nancy’s Coffee Shop. The door was painted with pink and white squares and a set of pink gingham curtains hanging from brass rails covered the lower half of each window. He could see in through the glass above the curtains to where the polished brass and crisp gingham theme was continued inside: with matching coloured cloths on the dozen tables and brass wall lamps, picture frames and countertop. When he drew level with the door it opened and a woman called tentatively:
‘Mr Edge.’
‘Ma’am?’ He reined in his mount and recognised the woman in the doorway as Muriel Mandrell, one of the people who met the stage yesterday.
‘Be my pleasure to offer you a cup of coffee on the house if I can ask you for some advice?’
‘Sounds like a good deal to me, lady.’ Edge swung out of the saddle and hitched the horse to the rail in front of the hardware store which was next to the café. He followed the woman inside and saw her at close quarters for the first time. She was forty, certainly, and no longer the beauty she once had been. But her large brown eyes and elfin features allied with a slender but curvaceous figure meant she was easy to look at, even if her hair as too brightly blonde to be naturally that colour. She ushered him to a corner table set apart from where six other
For some reason the smile she showed seemed faintly erotic. ‘Alice and I are both still young enough to want more interest out of life than mere money can provide.’
‘Sure,’ he said for something to say and when she peered across at the cemetery and sighed he added: ‘Something wrong?’
‘Not really. It’s just that funerals depress me in a different way to most other people.’
‘They do?’
‘They remind me that sometimes putting the dead in a grave is the only way to truly bury the past.’
As the first coffin began to be lowered into the ground she stepped through the open gateway into the school yard and asked: ‘Don’t you think that can be so?’
Edge shook his head. ‘The way I think about a grave, lady, it’s about the only kind of hole a man gets into he shouldn’t be able to dig himself out of.’
CHAPTER • 7
___________________________________________________________________________
EDGE WENT to the hotel where this morning Elizabeth Wexler had charge of the desk in the lobby while her husband was deputising at the funeral for the absent Andrew Devlin. He paid her what he owed for his dinner in the restaurant last night but she refused to take money for the room he had hardly used. Claimed disdainfully that the Grand Hotel did not accept payment for services not provided. Then he ambled down River Road leading the two horses toward the livery as the town began to get busier.
Following the funeral everybody who had been present except for the gravediggers had moved out of the cemetery and Harry Shelby was among those to be back at their daily chores. The heavily built, black bearded man accepted payment for the night’s rent due on the gelding and cast an admiringly expert eye over the horse Edge had borrowed from the Quinn stable.
‘I don’t blame you for making use of this fine animal mister.’ He ran a hand over the flank of the dappled grey. ‘The Quinns could afford the best of everything and that’s the quality they always went for.’
‘You reckon that’s why Quinn hired me, feller?’ Edge asked wryly.
Shelby guffawed. ‘I like your thinking. The way I see it, if a man has got any self respect then he needs to have a high opinion of himself.’
Edge swung up into the saddle and muttered: ‘Been times my opinion of myself has sure smelled a little high.’
He rode back across the intersection and as he approached the start of the Old Town Road at the top of First Street he saw a sign that had failed to register in his pre-occupied mind last night. Above a door and between two flanking bow windows it proclaimed in fancy lettering: Nancy’s Coffee Shop. The door was painted with pink and white squares and a set of pink gingham curtains hanging from brass rails covered the lower half of each window. He could see in through the glass above the curtains to where the polished brass and crisp gingham theme was continued inside: with matching coloured cloths on the dozen tables and brass wall lamps, picture frames and countertop. When he drew level with the door it opened and a woman called tentatively:
‘Mr Edge.’
‘Ma’am?’ He reined in his mount and recognised the woman in the doorway as Muriel Mandrell, one of the people who met the stage yesterday.
‘Be my pleasure to offer you a cup of coffee on the house if I can ask you for some advice?’
‘Sounds like a good deal to me, lady.’ Edge swung out of the saddle and hitched the horse to the rail in front of the hardware store which was next to the café. He followed the woman inside and saw her at close quarters for the first time. She was forty, certainly, and no longer the beauty she once had been. But her large brown eyes and elfin features allied with a slender but curvaceous figure meant she was easy to look at, even if her hair as too brightly blonde to be naturally that colour. She ushered him to a corner table set apart from where six other
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