Bong!
The tenth stroke. Quiet. Then, for the fifth time, a woman’s shriek trailed the bell note across the lake.
The next thing I knew, Dave and I were stumbling down the springy Inn lawn to my car. I yelled, “See you later, Doc,” over my shoulder.
Something hot — no, cold — burned my wrist. I found I was still holding the gin rickey glass and pouring ice up my sleeve as I ran. I flung the glass aside as I plunged ahead. It must have hit the only rock on the lawn, for I heard the crash and tinkle.
Way behind us, Doc Rennie was bellowing something, but I couldn’t understand him and didn’t stop to try.
Dave’s big, panting bulk was already at the car when I got there. I fumbled for my keys and my key case hooked itself into a loop of my belt. In my mind I could still hear those five shrieks, and this delay was like a nightmare.
My pants ripped as I tore the key case free and hopped into the car. I cursed my butterfingers as I groped for the dash light. Suddenly I began to do things right and the engine roared. I threw her into gear and—
“Wait!” It was Dave screeching this time, right in my ear. He reached over and nearly pulled the guts out of the emergency brake.
“Wait hell!” I hollered, as the car ground to a stop. “What the—”
“The Doc!” panted Dave, motioning with his thumb.
And there he was at the rear door on Dave’s side. Dave jerked open the door. Doc Rennie pitched his crutches in, stuck his bad ankle in after them, and finally muscled himself into the back seat, swearing at the pain while I swore under my breath at being held up. I loosed the emergency brake.
“You quite comfortable?” I asked Doc Rennie, sarcastic.
“Nice guests,” grated Doc Rennie, extra peevish now. “Run off and leave a fellow helpless at a hotel...”
We skittered down the gravel to the Lake Road.
“... at a hotel with a bunch of women, bored to death.”
I twirled us onto the greasy red clay of the Lake Road. “So you wanted to go for a little ride?” I said as I straightened her out and took off on the long swing around the lake.
“Why yes, Sheriff.” He had honey in his voice. He usually calls me “Ed,” so I felt something coming.
“Also,” he said, “I was afraid someone might sell you a bill of goods.”
Dave chuckled, the big dope. I rammed the gas pedal to the floor and gave them both a touch of high life. We burned through town and took the Maple Road hill like a towering partridge. I saw folks running now, so I knew we were heading the right way.
“Some’eres near the Thoroughgood place,” shouted Dave, who’d had his head out of the window.
But the people were running past the Thoroughgood place to the Welch place, where the Welch twins, Julie and Johanna, lived. My nephew from agricultural college, Dan Garner, was working for the Welch girls this summer.
I slammed on the brakes.
“There’s Ed McKay,” I heard somebody say as Dave and I piled out.
I’d forgotten all about Doc Rennie in the back seat. Something had happened here. You could smell it in the air; you could hear it in the low chatter of folks hustling up the long, flagstoned path to the big old frame house set well back among a grove of maples.
We ran up the path. The lights were on downstairs. A handful of folks on the steps drew apart to let Dave and me through, and those on the porch clustered up to watch us go in the door.
I heard a man say, “Howdy, Ed,” and I nodded without looking around. Another man said, “Here’s the sheriff now,” and a woman, probably Granny Watkins, cackled, “About time, too.” And just as I passed into the parlor, I caught another man’s voice: “Garner’s his nephew, you know.”
It had been foolish of me to slam the front door, because the parlor windows were open and at each one a dozen or more eyes were staring at the group around the sofa — and at what was on the sofa.
It was one of the Welch girls on the sofa, smears of blood bright red on a face as white as china. Her white dress was a mass of blood. Beside her knelt Dan Garner in blood-smeared dungarees, and old Ma Thoroughgood, chafing her wrists, fanning her. Crumpled in a chair beside them was Hi Fillmore, head in his hands, rocking from side to side, nerves all shot to hell.
I elbowed Dan Garner aside to get a look at the girl on the sofa, and felt Dave stretching his neck over my shoulder. I noticed that my nephew had blood on the knees of his dungarees and streaks of it along his thick brown arms and on the shoulder of his checked shirt.
Old Ma Thoroughgood turned her pointed nose up to me. “She’s all right, Ed — just fainted.” Her false teeth clicked as she spoke. “Go in the kitchen; that’s where you’re wanted.”
“Which one is it,” I asked, pointing at the girl on the sofa, “Julie or Johanna?”
“How should I know?” snapped Ma Thoroughgood. Hi Fillmore glanced up without recognizing me. I saw blood on his hands and on his white shirtfront.
Dave was peering about the room, eyes on the floor. Brown smudges everywhere.
Then there were footsteps through the dining-room and old Doc Frisbie, the coroner, ambled in. He was wiping his knobby hands on a red-and-white dish towel that had once been a white dish towel. Behind him rose Ben Thoroughgood’s parrot’s crest of white hair.
“Come back here, Ed.” Frisbie’s voice was hollow; his lips trembled. All of a sudden the horrors crept up my legs and across my shoulderblades and I dreaded going into that kitchen more than I dread fire.
“Come on, Dave,” I told my deputy gruffly.
Doc Frisbie went ahead. Ben Thoroughgood, face pasty gray and head shaking with palsy, stood aside to let us pass. We skirted the dining-room table — set for tomorrow’s breakfast — and stalked into the kitchen. In the doorway I stopped and had to swallow twice for air.
It was on the floor in front of the old kitchen fireplace. I knew it was the other Welch twin, because the white dress was identical in material and design with the one worn by the woman on the sofa, and because the two or three locks of hair that weren’t blood-drenched were the right color.
That was the only way I’d ever have guessed it, though.
Even now my heart pounds and I sweat a little when I think of it. The neck was almost hacked through, and the face was — well, I guess “destroyed” about covers it. Like the neck, the face had caught the sharp edge of something — many times.
I looked, numb, at Dave and Frisbie. Doc Frisbie read the question in my face and nodded toward the kitchen table. Under it I saw the weapon: the kindling hatchet from the woodbox just inside the door. It looked like one of those red-painted hatchets they used to give us kids on Washington’s Birthday.
Dave, his beefy face gone gray as Ben Thoroughgood’s, heavy shoulders rigid and hands balled into fists, didn’t take his eyes from the thing on the hearth. I knew what he was doing. He was making himself look. Blood frightens Dave, and it makes him mad to be afraid.
He said: “Which one is it, Doc?”
Frisbie used Ma Thoroughgood’s words: “How should I know?” He said it crossly.
My nerves made me want to laugh. It was just too damn silly. All of us had known the Welch girls well — and liked them. They’d lived in Essexville most of their lives. And now one was hacked to death and the other was out cold and we couldn’t tell which was which.
If the one on the sofa’d been up and moving about, there’d have been no doubt. People seeing them on the street never had any trouble telling them apart, even though they looked and dressed alike. Julie carried her head high; her eyes sparkled and she swung her hips and shoulders like she was proud of her figure and enjoyed being alive. It was Julie that the men looked at twice.