The Murder at Fourmile Farm

“Excuse me, Sir. Do you have a book on Fourmile Farm?”

The visitor seemed to be diffident about interrupting me but honestly, I want to sell books, not organize the shelves. She was an older woman, not the typical ghoul who wanted to relive the spicy aspects of the murder. I wondered if she was a local, or perhaps a relative from out of town.

“You mean about the murder? There’s a book by a local author that gives all the details, along with a couple of likely explanations. Is that the kind of thing you want?”

She winced at my description. Possibly a friend or relative of Daniel? “Anything at all, really. My daughter asked me to get any information I could. She’s in hospital, and she hopes she can solve the murder.”

I smiled politely. “Yes, everyone wants to solve that one. Does she have some special link to the farm, or to the victim?”

The woman avoided my eyes. “I don’t know, I suppose it just intrigued her because it’s local and recent. She has a lot of time to kill.”

“Well, you’re in luck. Miles Crowley spent his whole life here, and he wrote what you might call the definitive book. He self-published, and I’m afraid he overestimated the potential sales. It never sold well, so I bought up all his remaining copies for sale here. It’s of interest to the locals and people who pass through. It’s on this shelf…”

I trailed off. The copy I knew I had left on the shelf was nowhere to be seen. Again. “Oh, I must have sold it. I’ll get another from the back.”

There were still more than fifty copies in the back room. Although I had sold quite a few over the last five years, at least as many had sprouted legs and walked out on their own. I pulled three of the copies and brought them out into the main bookstore. Putting two on the shelf, I handed the third to her. She looked at the cover, then rifled through the pages.

“Does the author ever come here to talk about it?” she asked querulously.

Miles died only a year after the book was published. Drowned in Fourmile Creek after a few too many drinks with friends. The nice old lady didn’t need to hear that. “I’m afraid the author is no longer with us. That’s another reason why I bought up the excess copies. He was a friend of mine.”

She offered the standard apologies for an intrusion upon my grief, then hurriedly paid and left with her purchase. When the shop was empty, I searched around to see if the book had been picked up and put back in the wrong place. It’s not a big store, and I’m here nearly all hours when it’s open. I would have seen if someone did that. The copies just kept disappearing without explanation. I had lost other books, but only one of each, here and there. Perhaps one of my regular customers was a thief with specific requirements. I took another copy home with me. I knew the story very well, of course, but I was trying to see what might make this particular book so important to someone.

After dinner, I sat with a cognac and thumbed through the book. It was called “The Murder at Fourmile Farm’ – not terribly inventive, but Miles was not an imaginative fellow. Following a common structure for this type of book, Miles started by describing the scene when the body was found, then delved into the history of the farm, and descriptions of Daniel’s life. Miles had known him well, of course, and so had many people in town. They all had stories to contribute. Daniel’s ex-wife told the story of how Daniel had been her “one true love”. Funny, given what we all knew about Daniel and their marriage.

The book then covers the last few days of Daniel’s life, including the game of golf on the morning of his murder. Daniel had been found in a pool of blood, beaten to death with a nine iron. From the physical evidence, he had been attacked in his kitchen, fled out of the house, and finally succumbed to his injuries by the barn. There were no fingerprints (the club was left on Daniel’s body but gave up no clues), no DNA, and footprints and tire tracks had been obscured by the rain and by the actions of the first people to arrive on the scene.

Miles postulated that Daniel was murdered by someone he met at the golf club, or perhaps the husband of a secret lover. There was no evidence of robbery, so the motive appeared to have been either something personal or a random act by a complete stranger passing through.

I looked for any clues that might hint at the murderer. I’d read this a hundred times, and nothing new emerged from the rereading. Why was someone so determined to keep stealing copies?

* * *

The next day, the old woman was back. She had the look of a woman on the trail of something. “My daughter loved the book, but she wants to know if you have anything else on the murder, or on Daniel Beltran himself.”

That surprised me. Firstly because she had apparently read through 200 pages of Miles’ turgid prose in less than a day, and secondly that she thought there was something to be said that Miles had failed to cover.

“Not really, although I do have some copies of the newspapers from when the murder happened. I can’t sell them to you, but I can let you photocopy pages. The machine over there costs five cents a page, or I can copy it all for you for seven cents a page.”

Of course, I had long ago scanned all the newspaper pages, so now I could produce copies of any page they wanted, even the sports results. A surprising number of people were lazy enough to pay me extra rather than do the hard work of photocopying page after page.

The woman looked at me shrewdly. “Did you know Daniel well? What can you tell me about him?”

I hesitated, unsure what I wanted to say. “What sort of information are you looking for?” I countered. Instead of replying directly, the woman went over to the shelf where there was a copy of Miles’ book, picked it up and started to skim through it.

“According to the book, his ex-wife and he were devoted to each other. Why did they divorce?”

Ah, the woman – or perhaps her daughter – knew something. I gave her the standard reply. “They had been close since high school, but I suppose they grew apart. She wanted to move to the city, but he wanted to stay out here. I think it just caused too much strain on the marriage. You never know what goes on inside a marriage, do you?”

Again, the old woman peered at me. She definitely had an agenda. “My daughter met Daniel and his wife before they married. They all went to the same college. She said neither of them was interested in that kind of marriage.”

She waited, to see if I would respond. I was not about to gossip about Daniel. “People change as they grow up,” I said easily. “I expect they saw the benefits of marriage when they came back to town.”

She smiled at me as though she knew something I didn’t. “My daughter was very sure about his sexuality – and hers,” she murmured. “They may have had a lavender marriage. Wasn’t there any gossip in town?”

I shook my head. It’s a small town, but most of the population stay out of each other’s business. “Not sure what you’re implying, but there was no gossip about Daniel. He was well-liked in this town. His wife, too.”

She flipped to the biographical notes on the back cover of the book. “I see Miles Crowley went to school with them too. But he never married. Were he and Daniel close friends?”

I blinked at her, startled. No one had put those pieces together before. I often thought Miles had written the book as an act of misdirection. I took the book from her hands and replaced it on the shelf. “I have no desire to indulge in idle gossip about the dead. Especially since they were friends of mine. Do you want to have copies from the newspapers?”

She sensed my hostility and nodded to herself. “No, I think not, thank you. I’ll tell my daughter there’s nothing more to read. She already has a theory about the murder. I suppose people in a small town would close ranks to protect one of their own. Thank you for all your help, Mr. …”

I escorted her to the door. “Mr. Fielding. Like the name over the shop window. It’s been a pleasure to meet you. Please give my best wishes to your daughter for her recovery.”

* * *

As I drank my cognac in the evening, I looked at Miles’ book and chuckled. Poor Miles. He had wanted a relationship with Daniel, of course. He was devastated by the murder. It was surprising that after he published it, no questions were asked.

I took a drive out to Fourmile Farm, the book in my hands. The property was abandoned after the bloody events of that day. His ex-wife had inherited it but never returned to it. I walked into the remains of the house, through the kitchen where the attack had occurred, and into the living room. There were more than thirty copies of Miles’ book scattered around, and I dropped the latest among them. Who brought all these books here? Someone with a guilty conscience, perhaps.

I walked back into the kitchen. I could see Daniel standing there, admitting that he wanted to end the affair. He wanted to be with Miles instead. I remembered my rage as I swung the nine iron again and again, following him outside as he tried to get away. Poor Miles never guessed it was me. Daniel had never told him about us. He didn’t even guess when I pushed him into the creek. Now maybe someone would try to prove that he was the murderer.