Sisters in Crime by Mike Ashley

Author:Mike Ashley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers
Published: 2013-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

II

The Knot of Ribbon

I think I must have fainted away, for presently I found myself on the floor, and for a minute I could not remember what had happened. Then I remembered, and an awful, unreasoning terror seized me. I must lock all the doors quick, I thought. Quick, or the murderer will come back.

I tried to get up, but I could not stand. I sank down again. I had to crawl out of the room on my hands and knees. I went first to the front door; it was locked with a key and a bolt. I went next to the north door, and that was locked with a key and a bolt. I went to the north shed door, and that was bolted. Then I went to the little-used east door in the shed, beside which the cat had her little passage-way, and that was fastened with an iron hook. It has no latch.

The whole house was fastened on the inside. The thought struck me like an icy hand: The murderer is in this house! I rose to my feet then. I unhooked that door and ran out of the house and out of the yard as for my life.

I took the road to the village. The first house, where Phoebe Dole and Maria Woods live, is across a wide field from ours. I did not intend to stop there, for they were only women and could do nothing; but seeing Phoebe looking out of the window, I ran into the yard.

She opened the window.

‘What is it?’ said she. ‘What is the matter, Sarah Fairbanks?’

Maria Woods came and leaned over her shoulder. Her face looked almost as white as her hair, and her blue eyes were dilated. My face must have frightened her.

‘Father – father is murdered in his bed!’ I said.

There was a scream, and Maria Woods’s face disappeared from over Phoebe Dole’s shoulder – she had fainted. I do not know whether Phoebe looked paler – she is always very pale – but I saw in her black eyes a look which I shall never forget. I think she began to suspect me at that moment.

Phoebe glanced back at Maria, but she asked me another question.

‘Has he had words with anybody?’ said she.

‘Only with Rufus,’ I said, ‘but Rufus is gone.’

Phoebe turned away from the window to attend to Maria, and I ran on to the village.

A hundred people can testify what I did next – can tell how I called for the doctor and the deputy sheriff; how I went back to my own home with the horror-stricken crowd; how they flocked in and looked at poor father; but only the doctor touched him, very carefully, to see if he were quite dead; how the coroner came, and all the rest.

The pistol was in the bed beside father, but it had not been fired; the charge was still in the barrel. It was bloodstained, and there was one bruise on father’s head which might have been inflicted by the pistol used as a club.

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