Read Online The Luck Runs Out by Charlotte MacLeod - Free Book Online

admirable restraint. “We just want to talk with some member of her family.”
    “She ain’t got none.”
    “We understood the Flackleys were a large family,” said Shandy in his most sternly professorial tone.
    “They’re all gone.”
    “Then we’d like to see where she lives. Could you tell us, please?”
    After a good deal of fishing to find out what they were there for, the woman gave up and grudgingly imparted directions in as confusing a manner as possible. Since there was really only one road, however, they managed to locate what must be Miss Flackey’s home.
    The place looked as immaculate as the woman herself had been. Though the house must be edging toward the two-hundred mark, its weathered shingles were all in place, its ridgepole straight as an arrow, its chimney bricks well pointed. There were neat little brick-edged plots that no doubt would have been planted with Patient Lucy and other old-fashioned annuals if Miss Flackley had lived till the ground warmed up.
    “It’s a damned shame,” said Corbin.
    Shandy nodded. “Yes, she was a good woman. Do I see someone—”
    The door opened. A man’s voice called out, “That you, Aunt Martha?”
    So the farrier had not been alone in the world, after all. The man who appeared in the doorway looked exactly like the sort of nephew one would expect Miss Flackley to have, not large in the frame but well muscled and wiry. His hair was dark, wavy, and plentiful, his eyebrows thick, his mustache enormous and dashingly twisted at the ends, his beard short but bushy. What little they could see of his face wasn’t bad-looking. Probably in his late thirties, Shandy thought. He had on clean brown corduroys and a clean plaid flannel shirt such as his aunt herself might have worn. Shandy didn’t recall her having mentioned a nephew at dinner, but neither had she alluded to any other details of her personal life.
    The man didn’t seem at all disconcerted to see two strangers in a police cruiser. He merely remarked, “Oh, sorry, I was expecting my aunt back. If you’re looking for her, I’m afraid she ain’t around right now. She went to visit some friends last night and she never came in. I guess she must of slept over. Anything I can do for you?”
    “You’re her nephew, eh?” said the lieutenant. “Live here right along?”
    “No, I’ve only been here a couple of days. I was passing through the area and thought I’d stop and see what the old homestead looked like. My grandfather used to talk about Forgery Point a lot. I think he’d of been as well pleased to stay on, but it never came to be his turn.”
    “His turn for what?”
    “Well, see, the way it’s always been, when anything happens to Flackley the Farrier, whoever’s handiest steps in and takes over. If there’s more than one son, for instance, the oldest one gets the job and the rest light out for themselves. That’s what my grandfather did. Aunt Martha’s father was Flackley the Farrier for quite a while, then he took sick and died all of a sudden during World War II while the rest of ’em was off in the army, so Aunt Martha quit schoolteaching and took over.”
    “Who taught her the craft?” asked Shandy.
    “Shucks, no Flackley ever has to be taught how to shoe a horse or ram a pill down one’s throat, for that matter. It’s born in the blood. You might think farriery was kind of heavy work for a woman her size, but it don’t seem to faze her none.”
    “Why didn’t one of the men take over from her when they came back from the war?”
    “Wasn’t many came back,” said the nephew. “Anyway, once you start you mostly keep on. That’s the way it’s always been. Say, I don’t mean to be nosy, but who are you folks? I hope there ain’t anything the matter.”
    “I’m afraid there is,” said the lieutenant “What’s your name, by the way?”
    “Flackley,” the man replied in some surprise. “Frank Flackley. What’s wrong? She been in an accident or something? Is