A loud wail pierced the night air and all conversation ceased.
“I thought I told you to turn off the sound effects,” Marshall growled at a nearby moose.
“I did,” a masculine voice responded.
The wail rose again, raising the hairs on my arms. We rushed onto the patio and peered out over the dark property in the direction from which the sound seemed to have come. We heard it again, louder this time, now a scream, from the cemetery, or beyond.
“Good Lord,” Marshall said.
“I’d better see what’s happening,” Mort Metzger said, shifting into his law-enforcement mode.
He took off at a run, with the rest of us following. We raced through the cemetery, dodging tombstones and grave markers, the damp earth pulling at our shoes. The screams had stopped by now, but we followed the sound of sobbing. As we approached the Rose Cottage, two figures could be seen standing together near the bare branches of bushes that climbed the brick wall. They were in costume, their bodies so close together their moose heads touched as they slowly backed away from the onrushing crowd.
“Stand back!” Mort ordered, bringing us to a halt. But we weren’t so far away that we couldn’t see what had caught his attention. There, in a pool of moonlight, lay a motionless form. A stain, the same claret red as the roses that bloomed on this brick wall every spring, had turned the white hair to crimson. Those incredibly blue eyes were open and dull.
It was Matilda Swift.
Donald Bain, Jessica Fletcher
