“He's dead!” I said.
“Is he?”
“I don't sec ... did you kill him?”
“Oh, no.”
I held the candle over my head. In a corner of the room I saw a pile of bricks. There were twenty or thirty bricks, left over from building the temple. I went over and found one with blood on it.
“You lousy bitch,” I said.
“All right,” she said.
“You'll get us hung for this.”
“Don't be dumb.”'
“You may like hanging,” I said.
“Nobody's going to hang,” she said.
I was scared as hell. “We've got to get out of here.” I started for the outside door.
“Wait.” She grabbed my arm. “We can make it look like an accident.”
“Don't be a damn fool. The cops'll see through anything we can do.”
“There aren't going to be any cops.”
She began to talk fast, in a low voice that was almost a whisper: “You fool, the Vineyard will never call the cops. Not even if the Elders think it was murder. They don't like cops.”
I thought this over. “How are we going to make it look like an accident?”
She took the candle from me and held it high above her head. I saw the brick walls, with no plaster on them, and the unfinished ceiling. “See those bricks?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose some of them fell on him while he was sitting there?”
“They'd bust him good, all right.”
“Well...?”
I said: “But the bricks are still in the wall.”
“We have to make them fall.”
“It'll take a pick.”
“Come on.”
I knew I was a fool to follow her, but I was stuck. I was an accessory before the fact. That would carry a first-degree rap. I might as well be one after the fact, too. I couldn't do any worse.
She blew out the candle at the door. I felt surprised everything was so peaceful outside. The moonlight was still bright, and there was a breeze blowing from the east. We went from the shadow of the temple to a line of thick bushes. We went past a small pool with water lilies growing in it. The moon was like a smear of silver on the water and some of the lilies were open. They were white. I heard a mousy squeak and saw a couple of bats above the pool. The bats were feeding on night insects.
I followed the Princess up a hill and into a clump of trees. The grass was as soft and thick as a bathmat here, and it was dry. I guess the trees had kept it from the dew. It was very dark under the trees. I banged a toe against something hard and looked down and saw I'd hit a tombstone. We were walking in a graveyard! I saw other tombstones, and felt with my feet the raised sod over the graves. The Princess went to the left, to an open grave. It had been freshly dug, and the shovels and the picks of the gravediggers were still by the side. The Princess picked up one of the picks and gave it to me.
I took it, looking at the open grave. There was something funny about it. Suddenly I knew what it was. It already had a stone. That was strange. I never heard of them putting up the stone until afterwards. I bent over and read the inscription by the light of the moon. It said:
PENELOPE GRAYSON
(1917-1940)
Her Soul Rests With the Lord It was a little bit like seeing your own name on a tombstone. It was also a hell of a lot like a very bad nightmare. I blinked at the stone, and then I dropped the pick and grabbed the Princess's arm.
“Is she dead?”
“What do you care?”
“I asked you if she was dead?”
“Not so loud.”
“Answer me, or I'll break your goddam neck.”
She tried to get loose, and I shook her. She cried out with pain. I shook her again.
“She's not dead,” she said.
“Then what's this for?”
