'Oh. Well, did you ask Charley about it?'
'Oh, he denied it. Categorically. Then we talked to Philip, and he admitted receiving the note. He said he found it on his pillow before the parade. Said it got him all excited. (You sure have a powerful effect on us men.) But then he got very angry when you didn't show up. He didn't remember dropping the note, but he supposes he probably did. And it could have blown into the road where Mrs. B. could have found it. And, say, we found the letter that your signature was traced from. It was one of the letters you wrote to Charley from Amherst, that summer when you were working on that female poet. What's her name?'
'Emily Dickinson. What did my letter say?'
'Oh, you needn't worry. It sure wasn't any smoldering billy doo, it didn't even smell pretty. Say, Mary, listen here, were those boys jealous of each other over you?'
'I told you,' said Mary. 'I turned them down, both of them a year ago. They weren't really serious about me any more, I just came in handy to take out.'
'Is that so? Did they have any other girlfriends?'
'Well, no, not that I know of.'
'Do you think they still hoped to win you over, either them?'
'Oh, maybe, but I did everything I could to discourage it.'
'Well, I just wonder if one of them could have been worked up with jealousy on your account, and tried to eliminate the opposition by getting it accused of murder.'
'Oh, no, no, I'm sure not.' That was absurd. Mary hung and turned away from the telephone, looking troubled. Sh folded her arms on the sash of the window and stared out at the rain that had been coming down obstinately for a week nov. But she didn't see the lowering sky and the sodden leaves. She was aware only of a heavy feeling of increasing guilt—the more she took part in the investigation of Ernest Goss's murder, the more deeply entangled in suspicion Charley became. Whether you loved someone or not, if they loved you, you had a certain responsibility not to hurt...
Alice Herpitude was looking at her, questioning her, picking at her sleeve. Mary had to say it out loud, and admit it to herself as well as to Alice. 'Things look pretty bad for Charley Goss.'
Then Miss Herpitude did an odd thing. She started trembling all over. Her pale old lips looked thin and tight. 'Are you sure?' she said. 'Do you think they'll accuse him of—of—?'
'I just don't know,' said Mary.
*44*
The rain had stopped at last, and the sun was out, hot and bright. Tom came back from a trip to the Fulton Box Company in Boston with a load of crates for packing corn, five dozen to a crate. He was stacking them in the loft in the barn. John was helping him. 'Boy,' said John, 'I sure wish we still had some cider froze from last year. It sure is hot. Boy, I sure am thirsty.'
'We'll try to make more this year than we did last,' promised Tom. 'And we won't wait for our apples, we'll get some early drops down from Harvard.'
'Boy, if we just had a good hurricane, then we'd have plenty of drops.'
Tom stopped tossing crates and scowled at John. 'Don't you go tempting fate to destroy our apple crop again. Plenty of drops, plenty of cider, sure, but plenty of money down the drain, plenty of kids that don't go to college.'
'Well, I love hurricanes anyway.'
'You just go in and wash your mouth out with soap. I'm going to get out the John Deere and harrow that corn stubble in across the way. You go tell Annie. She's been wanting a ride.' Tom mopped his forehead and unbuttoned his shirt. A little later he was heading the tractor down the dirt road that led past the cider shed and into the cornfield. Beside the road there were daisies suspended in the delicate grass. The sun bore down, and he pulled his visor lower.
Annie straddled his lap and hung onto the big holes in the metal saddle. 'What do you harrow the cornstalks in for, Daddy?' she wanted to know.
'What else would you suggest we do with them? We harrow them in and get the dirt turned over, then plant it to rye, and then the rye grows up pretty green before the first snow and gets a good root system and grows some more in the spring. Then we turn it under again. With $2500 a year for fertilizer you've got to get all the return from a field that you can.' Tom bounced up and down on the seat and went on grumbling. Running a farm in this day and age was no business for an honest man. Annie stopped listening. She leaned to one side and looked back to watch the big rusty plates of the harrow turn over the ground. One set of disks was curved one way and threw the dirt out, the other set was curved the other way and threw it back in It was wonderful how nice and smooth and flat it left the ground after churning it up. The dry weedy dusty clods came up dark brown and clean.
Suddenly over the noise of the tractor there was a clatter and rattle as two of the disks jammed and scrabbled at something caught between them. Tom cursed and stopped the tractor. Annie hopped down and looked. She got excited and clapped her hands. 'It's not a rock,' she said. 'It's a gun, a big gun.'
'It's just a stick,' said Tom, looking over his shoulder.
'No, Daddy, really, it is, it's a big old gun.' Annie tugged at it, and hurt herself. She hopped around and flapped her hand Tom sighed and got down to go and look. By gad, Annie was right. It was a gun, an old flintlock, all dirt and rust. Tom stood up and scratched his head. 'Well, I'll be damned,' he said.
'Just imagine!' said Annie. 'An old, old gun buried in our field like it says on the sign on the front of our house! And I saw it first! Can I have it?
Tom bent down again, and began to disentangle the gun from the harrow. 'No,' he said. 'I'm afraid not. Unless I'm very much mistaken this gun is going to make Mr. Flower very, very happy.'
The gun did indeed make Mr. Flower very happy. It filled him with joy and delight. 'Leave it lay!' he chirruped into the telephone. 'We'll send out the photographer and some lab men who'll know how to clean it up. Holy horsecollar, now we're getting somewhere!'
'It's not the musket?' said Homer Kelly.
'You betcher sweet life it is.'
The harrow had scratched it badly, the metal parts were rusted and the wood was mildewed, but Homer recognized at once the lovely long lines of the old fowling piece Ernest Goss had handed around among his guests on the night of April 18th. Bernard Shrubsole cut notches in a couple of cardboard boxes and he and Jimmy lifted the gun into the boxes with the hooks on a pair of coathangers. Then they took it into Boston to the Department of Public Safety, and handed it over. When Mr. Campbell had worked on it, they carried it down to Lieutenant Morrissey in Ballistics. He was delighted with it. He shone a light down the barrel. 'Look at that. See all that black? Wasn't cleaned after the last firing. Didn't you say Ernest Goss cleaned it after it was fired the night before?'
'We did,' said Homer. 'And you'll notice that the flint is missing.'
'This must be the murder weapon, all right. Here, let's give her a try.' Lieutenant Morrissey had made some balls from Ernest Goss's mold. He took one of them out of a drawer, along with a patch cut from a piece of linen, a can of black powder and an oilcan. 'There was a backwoods rule about powder. You were supposed to put a ball in your hand and pour a cone of powder over it just enough to cover it, and that was the right charge. And then you pour it in, like this. You were supposed to use bear grease or something on the patch, but I guess 3-in-l is good enough.' He oiled the patch, set the gun stock on the floor, laid the patch across the muzzle with the ball on top of it and pressed it down a little way with his finger. Then he pulled out the ramrod mounted under the barrel and used it to push the ball and patch gently all the way down. 'Okay, stand back, here she goes.' He held the long gun
