Suddenly he snatched at Betsy. The kid started to howl, and Tru Wyler held on, and for a moment I thought they were going to play tug of war with her. Then Daille drew his fist back, and Tru Wyler seemed to know that any notions he might have about chivalry wouldn’t apply to her. She let go, and he handed Betsy, still howling, to his housekeeper and chased her out of the room with a glance.
He pointed at the door, which the two younger women were already using.
It was something to see Tru Wyler struggle out of that chair. Her chins moved one at a time, she pushed with both hands, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she popped out of the chair like a cork coming out of a bottle. Finally she got to her feet and started to move. I expected her to shake the house when she walked, but she took delicate little steps and managed to look about as dignified as one can when being ordered out of a house.
At the door she turned. “Wife killer!” she said again. “The poor baby — her own mother’s finger—”
He took a step toward her and she went through the door sideways and disappeared.
Daille turned to us, still pointing at the door. Grandfather said, “Are you Jim Daille? I’m Bill Rastin, a friend of your grandfather’s. This is my grandson, Johnny.”
“Oh,” Daille said. He closed the door and slumped back against it with his hands over his face. “The witches!” he muttered. “The damn witches!” His whole body was trembling with rage. Suddenly he straightened up and looked at Grandfather. “What’s going on here?”
Grandfather told him, speaking very slowly and keeping his eyes on Daille’s face.
“Bone?” Daille said. “A human bone?”
Grandfather nodded.
“So that’s what the old witch meant!”
“You didn’t know anything about this?”
He shook his head. “Shirley telephoned my landlady that there was big trouble here and I was needed, and I started as soon as I got the message. This filthy neighborhood! I should have left it years ago, but I’ve had so darned many bills, and what with my work being seasonal—”
In the next room Betsy started to howl again. Daille said bitterly, “It wasn’t enough that they poisoned my wife’s mind. Now they’re working on my daughter and I suppose on Shirley, too. The damn witches! I’ve put up with this long enough. Shirley!”
The housekeeper stuck her head around the comer, looking scared to death. “Start packing,” Daille said. “We’re getting out of here right now. Permanently.”
“This might not be the best time for you to leave,” Grandfather observed.
“The best time would have been a long time ago. But I hated to farm Betsy out like an orphan. I wanted her brought up in her own home, and besides, with all the bills I’ve had I just couldn’t manage another place.”
“What sort of trouble have you been having with your neighbors?”
Daille snorted. “Those foul-minded witches! Couldn’t keep men of their own to bedevil — all three of them are divorced — so they take their spite out on any man they can get their claws into. If you’ll excuse me — I want to pack some clothes. Then I’m going to walk away and leave this house and everything in it to rot.”
He went to the bedroom, and Grandfather sat down in a chair and crossed his legs and screwed up his face. He was thinking so hard that he didn’t even look up when the Sheriff came to the door.
“Daille here?” the Sheriff asked.
I nodded.
The Sheriff hesitated, did some thinking of his own, then went out and came back with four deputies. As it turned out this was one situation he handled correctly. It started out real friendly-like, the Sheriff saying, “Where’s your wife, son?” and Daille answering politely, “None of your business,” and the Sheriff saying, just as politely, “I think it is and I have a warrant for your arrest.”
By the time it ended, the Sheriff needed all four of his deputies, and it was just as well that Daille wasn’t planning on taking the house furnishings with him because two chairs, the coffee table, a floor lamp, and the television set weren’t in condition to furnish anything but a junk yard.
Grandfather and I ducked outside when it started and waited until they persuaded Daille to come quietly. The Sheriff had one eye that was going to get worse before it got better, and Daille’s shirt was ripped, but otherwise the furniture took most of the punishment.
We helped the housekeeper clean up the mess. She was being brave about it and trying not to cry. Grandfather sat down in the kitchen to talk with her, and I spent the next half hour babysitting. I read aloud from the Mother Goose book, and Betsy pulled herself onto the sofa and sat watching me very seriously. I gave her the latest scoop on the three little pigs and Goldilocks and the three bears, and then — intentionally skipping the history of Tom Thumb — I acted out Jack and the Beanstalk in a new and improved version of my own.
When Grandfather was finished we went outside. Steve Carling, one of Sheriff Pilkins’ deputies, was standing by the hole in the fence and looking forlorn. “Those dratted trees are thick,” he complained. “You need a machete to hack your way through.”
“Cheer up,” Grandfather said. “Maybe Daille will confess.”
“Not him. He isn’t stupid. He’ll know we haven’t got much of a case with only one finger bone.”
State Police Sergeant Reichel drove up and wanted to know where his men were, and when Steve pointed to the woods the sergeant shook his head and commenced wondering if he should start sending out search parties.
“This fellow Daille seems to be a very unusual sort of murderer,” he said.
“Have you bought it?” Grandfather asked.
“I think so. Haven’t you?”
“I came over here ready to buy it, but since I got here I’ve turned up something that has me wondering.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing that says he didn’t do it. Just something that makes me wonder if he did. Pilkins should have done some checking before he arrested him.”
The sergeant had a big bag of hamburgers, which he invited us to share. The two dogs showed up as soon as we started eating and hung around till the Dockett woman called them down to her house and put out a pan of food. Sergeant Reichel told us that Daille had spoken only four words after his arrest, “I want a lawyer,” but that Sheriff Pilkins seemed pretty confident he had the right man and would find a body to go with the finger bone.
By that time it was getting dark. Sheriff Pilkins drove up and hallooed everyone out of the woods, but they were coming out anyway. They stood around eating Sergeant Reichel’s hamburgers and arguing.
The Sheriff said disgustedly, “Those dratted women can’t even agree on when they last saw Daille’s wife. Mrs. Wyler is positive he took her and the kid on a trip and came back without her.”
“That’s interesting,” Grandfather said. “He brought back just a finger bone?”
The Sheriff shrugged. “Wyler lives two houses away and anyway she’s gone half the time visiting her sister. Ruth Loken lives next door and should know, but she has a cottage on Mud Lake and spends half her time there in warm weather. Anyway, she’s positive that she saw Mrs. Daille a number of times after that trip. Mrs. Dockett is still trying to remember. The only proposition that gets no arguments is that Daille is a heel. All three of them hate his guts.”
“Why?” Grandfather wanted to know.
“At a guess, because he hired housekeepers instead of letting one of them look after Betsy.”
The Sheriff announced that he was going to have another try at getting the kid to talk. Grandfather walked off with Sergeant Reichel and Steve Carling. I went with the Sheriff, because he’d heard about my reading stories to Betsy and wanted to find out if I could coax anything out of her.