Murder in Stained Glass. Armstrong Margaret

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СКАЧАТЬ hand shook. He dropped the white fragment. It shivered into dust.

      “Look out!” Leo said. “We ought to leave everything just as it is for the present.”

      Clarence stumbled to his feet.

      “What do we do, Mr. Leo? Will I go get Sam Beers?”

      “Sam Beers? The traffic cop?”

      “He’s the only cop we got.”

      “Any good?”

      “Well, Sam won’t ever set the river afire, Mr. Leo.”

      “There must be a sheriff somewhere in the neighborhood,” I suggested. “Or a coroner.”

      Clarence meditated.

      “I don’t guess there’s a sheriff or a coroner nearer than Banbury, that’s the county town. Judge Cornell, he’s the coroner, is awful old, most ninety. I don’t guess he’d come ’way out here in winter time, and Mr. Pepper, he’s the sheriff, was took sick last week. They say it’s appendicitis. I guess we better begin with Sam, anyway.”

      “I’ll call him up.” Leo turned to me. “You and Phyllis had better go home, Miss Trumbull. Take my car.”

      “But Leo!” Phyllis caught his arm. “What’s it all about? Why do you care? Just some old bones, a dog or something like that. Why do you have to send for Sam Beers?”

      “Because I’m not sure. These bones may be human bones. The piece Clarence broke just now looked to me like part of a skull.”

      “A doctor would know,” I suggested. “Why not send Clarence for a doctor? That is, if you have a doctor in the village, and he isn’t too old or too sick to come.”

      Clarence looked hurt.

      “Of course we got a doctor,” he said. “Doc Greely. And he ain’t sick or old, and he lives right near here. Will I go get him, Mr. Leo?”

      “Yes. Tell him to come as quick as he can. I’ll go and call Sam Beers.”

      Leo went upstairs to the telephone. Clarence departed on a run. Phyllis and I looked at each other, moved to an inconspicuous corner of the cellar and sat down on a pile of boards.

      “Human bones!” Phyllis whispered. “But how could human bones have got into the kiln?”

      I hesitated. I had seen what Leo had seen, the small object he had picked up and slipped into his pocket, and I thought I knew what it was. But I wasn’t sure, and until I was sure I didn’t want to talk. Before I had to answer, the door opened; Clarence hurried in with the doctor, a fat bald-headed little man very out of breath.

      Leo came downstairs at once, and began explaining the situation. But the doctor seemed dazed. He hesitated, and before he could grasp what was expected of him the door opened again.

      Two men peeped in and then entered timidly. Others followed less timidly. In five minutes the place was crowded. When the doctor finally turned reluctantly to the furnace and knelt down on the dusty floor, he was hemmed in by a double ring of excited spectators, getting as close as they could and watching eagerly as he began his examination.

      Most of this throng, men, women and children, were strangers to me, of course. But I recognized three of Mr. Ullathorne’s workmen; the village postmistress, Mrs. Flack, small and thin; Mr. Merritt, who kept the general store, stout and pompous; and Sam Beers, the “traffic cop,” a red-cheeked boy of eighteen or so, in a blue uniform with an old-fashioned policeman’s helmet perched on the back of his head.

      Sam tried to look competent and important. He told everybody to stand back and give the doctor more room. No one listened to him. More and more people kept coming in. They crowded closer to the kiln, elbowing each other, whispering, giggling and asking questions.

      Phyllis and I caught the contagion. We joined the circle and shoved and tiptoed and stared at the doctor kneeling in the ashes, examining the fragments in what seemed to me a perfunctory manner. Was he incompetent. I wondered. Or merely bewildered? He would pick up a bit of bone, squint at it uncertainly through his spectacles, lay it aside and pick up another, as if he had never seen a bone before. But I felt sorry for the man, though I didn’t like his face. It reminded me of the stuffed fox in Charlotte’s spare room. Obviously he realized he was in for something unpleasant, disliked being involved, and hated the responsibility.

      Clarence stood beside him brandishing an electric torch; the cellar was lighted only by one small bulb in the ceiling. He flashed the torch back and forth, brightening the ashes, the furnace, the doctor’s anxious face, now and then letting it rest inadvertently on some one face in the audience, with an effect so like that of a spotlight on the stage that I lost all sense of reality and became a spectator at a rather queer sort of show. I think that was the way everybody felt. Ghoulish of us? Well, I suppose it was. But by that time none of us—not even I—really believed those whitish fragments could be human bones. We expected Dr. Greely to bring the comedy to an end with a laugh:

      “Bones?” he would say, grinning and dusting off his hands. “They’re bones all right. A dog’s bones. Someone been getting off a joke on Clarence, I guess.”

      And we would all laugh, and the crowd would melt away, and Phyllis and Leo and I would go home to supper.

      Well, that wasn’t what happened. Dr. Greely did stand up at last, and he did dust off his hands; but he didn’t laugh. Far from it. His watery blue eyes were blinking nervously behind his glasses, his flabby face had lost every vestige of color. He was, in fact, the picture of misery as he stood hesitating, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger, while we all leaned towards him waiting in a strange hush.

      Sam broke it.

      “What’s the verdict, Doc?” he said hoarsely. “Is them bones human?”

      The doctor started to speak, thought better of it, caught Sam by the arm and whispered.

      Sam nodded and turned with a traffic gesture.

      “Doc says clear the room. Get out everybody. Shoo, I tell you! Shoo!”

      He spread out his arms, advanced on the spectators. They fell back, protesting and arguing. Sam rounded them up, got them outside and slammed the door in their indignant faces. Only Leo and Phyllis and I, Mr. Merritt and Clarence were left staring at the doctor.

      “What about it?” Sam said again. “Is them bones human?”

      “They—they appear to be.”

      “You mean you ain’t sure?”

      “How can I be sure?” the doctor snapped. “They’re burned to bits.”

      “You wouldn’t like to give a guess?”

      “Well, that fragment,” he pointed, “might be a portion of a human skull, and those,” he pointed again, “are probably ribs and the remains of a collarbone.”

      I felt a little sick. Leo turned away and sat down on the lowest step of the stairs and buried his face in his hands. Phyllis clutched my arm. Mr. Merritt shook his head solemnly.

      “Well, СКАЧАТЬ