She stopped when she was quite near and leaned forward to peer through the shadows. She was wearing a loose, light coat that hung freely from the shoulders, although it was a warm evening, and her hands were thrust deeply into the pockets of the coat.
“Who is it?” she said. “It’s Sydnie Jones, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Why are you here? Was it you who called? It’s a trick, isn’t it?”
Her voice was thin and clear but somehow remote, as if it carried through the air from a great distance.
“It’s no trick,” Sid said. “I had to talk with you, and I knew you would refuse if I merely asked.”
“Have you come here alone? You haven’t, have you? Who is with you?”
“No one is with me, as you can see.”
“Are you sure? You could be lying. Perhaps someone is behind the mausoleum.”
“No one is there, but you can look if you like.”
“I think I shall. Please stand where you are while I do. I don’t want you to come near me.”
It was a precarious moment for the plan, and Sid was depending heavily upon the sharp ears and physical agility of Millie, who did not disappoint her. When Sara was at the front end of the mausoleum, about to turn the corner to the opposite side, Millie popped into view at the rear end, and she kept popping around corners out of sight just ahead of Sara until the mausoleum had been circled entirely and she was back where she had started. The suspense to Sid was severe, but the sudden shock of seeing that Millie was not alone was even worse, and the person with her, popping around corners with an equal agility, was no one but Cotton McBride.
Sara, having circled the mausoleum, turned and came back toward Sid, stopping about six feet away, her hands still thrust deeply into the pockets of her light coat.
“You see?” Sid said. “There is no one here but you and me.”
“Why do you want to talk with me? What do you want?”
“I want to talk with you because Gid, as you know, is in jail on suspicion of having killed Beth Thatcher, but he didn’t do it, as you also know, because you did it yourself right here where we are.”
“Who says I did?”
“I say it.”
“You say it, but you can’t prove it. You told me on the phone that you saw me, but you didn’t. You have only made some guesses.”
“Deductions are what I’ve made, and they’re true ones.”
“That doesn’t matter. Even the truth must be proved. Who will believe that I did it? What reason did I have?”
“The reason is lying here between us, where he has lain for seven years.”
“Sherm? Do you mean Sherm? Yes, that’s true. How do you know? More guesses?”
“More deductions. He killed himself, and it was covered up as heart failure, which was easy enough for everyone to accept, because he had had rheumatic fever as a boy.”
“You’re very clever. You must be very clever indeed. But no matter. It’s all true.” Sara’s voice took on a kind of singsong, crooning tone and tempo. “He was tender and brilliant and very good, and I loved him more than anyone else in the world, more by far than everyone else put together, and then he deliberately killed himself with the sleeping medicine he sometimes used to take at nights. He went to sleep and never woke up, and the empty bottle was there beside him when I found him, and I hid the bottle and told the doctor he simply died in his sleep. I don’t think the doctor believed it at all, but he was a friend of the family and pretended to believe it for our sake, and now he’s dead too and can never say differently. So far as anyone will ever know, Sherm died in his sleep of a bad heart, but he really died of a bad woman, a pretty little whore. I loved him and would have taken care of him always, but he didn’t want me, he wanted the whore instead and didn’t want to live without her, and so he killed himself, lolled himself over the whore, and left me all alone for all these years.”
“I’m sorry. Truly I am.”
“Don’t dare to be sorry. I won’t have you being sorry, for you are married to the man who was partly to blame, but now he is going to pay me back for it, even though Sherm wouldn’t have wanted it this way, and then I will be sorry for you, but it won’t make any difference.”
“Why should you hate Gid? He never deliberately hurt your brother or you or anyone else.”
“He took the little whore and made my brother die. Now I have killed the whore and destroyed her consort. The waiting was long, very long, but in the end it was so easy. She came here willingly with me, to visit the grave out of shallow sentiment, and I’m not really sure that I intended to kill her in the beginning. I only intended, I think, to tell her the truth. How Sherm died, and why, so that it would be on her conscience the rest of her life. That was foolish of me, wasn’t it? To imagine that she would have a conscience? Do you know what she said when I told her? We were standing right here beside the grave, and I told her, and she said, Well, what a perfectly ridiculous thing to do. That was when I picked up the vase and stabbed her in the back. The Voice told me suddenly to do it. It was getting late, not quite so late as now, but getting dusk, and I had to do something with her, of course, and the Voice kept
