A Taste for Violence by Brett Halliday

it’s true or not?”
    “Well… you can see that Mr. Roche was trying to reach a settlement,” she pointed out. “Why else would he be going to see Brand?”
    “Maybe to tell him he’d changed his mind about settling, and was prepared to fight it out to the end… by starving every miner. In that case, Brand might have lost his head and shot him. Look at it this way. Charles Roche was evidently schooled by Seth Gerald, after his father’s death, for his future management of the mines. Charles had been out of touch for several years when he was overseas. You read what Gerald thinks.”
    Lucy nodded her brown head slowly, twirling her full glass around. “It looks as though public opinion will be solidly against them, and they’ll have to give up the strike to repudiate the leadership of a murderer,” she acknowledged.
    “Yeh. That’s what’ll happen,” Shayne said, scowling. “Good God, you can’t stand up against that sort of propaganda. But killers sometimes fail to consider the possible consequences.”
    “Michael!” Lucy turned quickly toward him. “You’re not going to side against the miners in their strike! You’ve seen the awful hovels they live in… and read the statistics on annual income. You don’t blame them… surely… for wanting enough money to buy food… while the mine owners live in the lap of luxury!”
    “I’m not blaming them, Angel.” He was silent for a moment, then added, “I just don’t see where I come in.”
    “You can find out who murdered Mr. Roche. I know you can. You’ve got to earn that five thousand dollars.”
    “He hired me to prevent his murder,” Shayne told her grimly.
    “It’s not your fault we were too late for that. Now… it’s your job to find out…”
    “And what if that proves to be a certain George Brand?” He turned toward her and grinned.
    “It… won’t be. I just know it won’t. I’ll bet it’s that Gerald man. He’s probably been stealing money from the firm… and… well, he was right there on the scene about the time it happened.” She was thinking hard as she spoke, a frown puckering her smooth brow, “He could have done it,” she ended on a note of triumph.
    Shayne laughed heartily and poured himself a straight drink. “We’ll have dinner. Then I’ll pay my respects to Mrs. Elsa Maywell Roche and see what’s what.”

 
5
     
    THE Eustis Restaurant was beginning to fill up with evening diners. Most of the customers were young couples, the men in shirt sleeves, the women wearing simple cotton dresses; with a sprinkling here and there of overalled men who were obviously miners, scrubbed as clean as yellow soap could get them. Some of them were with their wives and families. Most of the children were tow-headed and pale, snub-nosed, their mouths open, suggestive of adenoids.
    Shayne sat back and tried to enjoy the bad brandy as he watched the people about him and listened to snatches of their conversation. Many had brought their own bottles or flasks, and there was a lot of quiet drinking, but there was little conviviality. There was an atmosphere of somberness and preternatural gravity. Even the tunes they selected on the jukebox were mournful ditties, and the men and women who fed coins into the slot machines had no hint of enjoyment or hope in their expressions as they pulled the bandit’s arm.
    It wasn’t a natural dourness, Shayne decided, nor yet an assumed solemnity, but more an ingrained listlessness and an apathetic acceptance of the unpleasant verities of life. He supposed this was a normal condition of life in Centerville, not directly attributable to the mine strike nor to the shadow of tragedy hanging over the town as the result of Roche’s murder and the arrest of George Brand.
    That, he thought, was the explanation. Violent death was not an uncommon occurrence to these people. They were inured to these tragic happenings. This was Centerville. They had been born and reared beneath the shadow of tragedy,