“And we found that blood out there, too. Those leaves should have been scattered around even, not all bunched up like that in one place.” He waited, watching Henry’s face expectantly.
Henry tightened his grip on the shotgun and said nothing.
The deputy shrugged. “We know just how you did it, Mr. Ferris,” he went on, “We even took the dogs up there to the grove. They knew the scent they was after all right, but they couldn’t come near the house, because the man never did. Once we knew you’d done him in, up there in the trees, and carried him down here to the house, we knew all we had to know.”
The constable’s face was gray. He shook his head slowly. “Henry,” he said softly, “I’ve known you all my life. I just thank God I don’t have to take you in.” The deputy took a short step forward. “It’s my territory out here, Mr. Ferris,” he said. “I’ll ask you not to give me any trouble.”
Henry looked at the deputy, but his vision went through him and beyond him, and he smiled at the play of sunlight on Colleen Kimberly’s curving thighs, as she sat there on the knoll beyond the orchard.
He was still thinking of her, when he put the shotgun barrels in his mouth and pressed both triggers with his toe.
THE MUSICAL DOLL
by HELEN KASSON
The doll turned slowly, its china arms spread, its hard toes stretched taut in the immemorial position of ballet. The tiny music box beneath her played a sad, nostalgic tune. Minor notes tinkled down, then up, then down again through three weeping phrases. Then the box was silent for a moment while the doll kept turning, until the faint little tune began again. It was a gypsy song but, because of the small mechanism, it held no gypsy joy — only hopelessness and a heartbreaking melancholy.
The walls of the room were covered with unframed pictures, experiments in color, style and feeling, groping and unrealized. They might have been dream experiences which, for an instant, the dreamer had understood but had been unable to recapture on awakening.
In one corner stood an easel supporting a half-finished picture of interblending planes, while on a tray at its base lay a palette smeared with daubs of paint and poppy-seed oil from an overturned can.
The little girl with the honey-colored pigtails sat on a chair in front of a flat-topped desk, her round amber eyes fastened solemnly on the dancing doll, her body moving in a small circle which continued for a moment even after the notes slowed and finally stopped. She stared thoughtfully, then picked up the box, wound it and set it back on the desk again.
The tune started once more, a little faster now, yet still without gaiety, still mournful. The slightly off-key notes cascaded down and up and down again in weird, disconsolate sequence.
For a moment longer she let her eyes follow the ballet doll in its ceaseless turning. Then, remembering, she looked at the clock on the wall. She arose, walked across the room to a table on which a telephone stood, picked up the slip of paper which lay beside the receiver and dialed a number.
“Hello,” she said, in a thin and reedy voice. “Is this the Police Station?” The tinkling notes sounded in counterpoint behind her, making her voice seem even thinner for an instant.
“My name is Betty Lorman. I live at nine hundred and twelve River Lane, River Hills.” Holding the slip of paper with one hand where she could read from it, she added, “Please send a policeman over. Someone is dead.” She hung up the receiver, replaced the slip on the telephone table and crossed the room, past the outstretched body on the floor, and back to the desk where the doll still turned.
Three minutes later, when the knock sounded, she was still watching the doll. For the third time the notes were slowing. She picked up the music box and twisted the key on its bottom a few times before she arose, and went to open the door.
Immediately the room was filled, both with the bodies of the two policemen (they were close to six feet tall) and with their involuntary recoil. One was young and one was old, but against the duality of the small child and the inert body they stood as one, aghast and incredulous, unable even to admit to consciousness, as yet, the incongruous tinkling tune to which the doll still turned in its interminable dance.
Tom Wallace, the old Inspector, pushed the child behind him, shielding her with his big body from the corpse with its bullet-pierced chest and glazed, half-open eyes. “’Phone in the report, Burns,” he murmured, and walked with her to the chair in front of the desk, sat down on it and drew her onto his lap.
The notes from the music box slowed and died. The sound of dialing scraped unevenly and then Burns’s low, almost whispering voice took over.
Betty reached toward the musical doll but Wallace stayed her hand, covering it with one of his own big ones. With the other, he stroked her honey-colored hair back from her forehead.
“Who is it, child?” he asked.
“My Uncle Bob.”
“Who killed him?”
Her eyes strayed toward the music box. He was startled to see how calm they were. “He died from natural causes,” she said evenly.
“Who told you to say that?” The words came in harsh staccato, though he had not intended that they should. “You’re only about ten, aren’t you?”
“I s’pose so. Daddy didn’t believe in counting years. He always said Mother was younger than I was.”
“All right. Even at ten you ought to realize that being shot through the heart isn’t dying from natural causes.”
He let go of her hand to remove his hat. The moment it was free, she reached out and picked up the doll.
“Put that thing down!” He snatched it from her.
“Give it back. Give me back my doll!” Tears filled her amber eyes as she lunged futilely for it, her tiny arm reaching no farther than his elbow.
“So you can get excited,” Wallace said. “Not about a dead man but about a doll. What’s the matter with you, anyway?” His voice softened a little. “Your uncle’s dead. Didn’t you like him?”
“Of course I did. We played games — Uncle Bob and Mother and I.”
“Not your Daddy?”
“No, Daddy was different. I felt safe with Daddy. Please give me my doll!”
“I found this, sir.” Marty Burns handed the slip of paper from the telephone table to Wallace.
“Lakeview five five-thousand.” The old Inspector read aloud, his voice growing huskier and more disbelieving, until finally, at the end, he was whispering in a sort of breathless protest against the words. “Is this the Police Station? My name is Betty Lorman… Someone is dead.”
“So they left this paper with you,” Wallace said, “and told you to wait a certain length of time, and then to call the police. How long did they tell you to wait?”
“Two hours.” The child’s nose twitched with the effort to keep from crying. “I wish I could hold my doll!”
She grasped it eagerly as he brought it within reach and, for a moment, let one hand lie on the stiff tulle skirt, as a blind man in a strange room might rest his hand against a wall to draw confidence from its solidity before he ventured further.
“Don’t wind it, though,” the Inspector said, holding Burns where he stood beside them with a faint, almost unnoticeable flicker of one eyelid. “Tell me about Mother and Daddy. What do they look like?”
“Daddy looks like me,” the child said. “Only he’s round and a lot taller and his hair’s thin in front. Not as tall as him, though.” She looked up at the young policeman who, even under her child’s eyes, flushed and twitched self-consciously.