moaning from the low sea.

Another car, a dark convertible whoseshape I could barely make out through the thickening air, was parked withoutlights down the road. I ought to have shaken it down. But I was pressed by myown private guilt, and eager to see if Helen was alive.

Her house was a faint blur of light highamong the trees. We started up the hairpinning gravel driveway. An owl flew lowover our heads, silent as a traveling piece of fog. It lit somewhere in thegray darkness, called to its mate, and was answered. The two invisible birdsseemed to be mocking us with their sad distant foghorn voices.

I heard a repeated crunching up ahead. Itresolved itself into footsteps approaching in the gravel. I touched Bradshaw'ssleeve, and we stood still. A man loomed up above us. He had on a topcoat and asnap-brim hat. I couldn't quite see his face.

"Hello."

He didn't answer me. He must have beenyoung and bold. He ran straight at us, shouldering me, spinning Bradshaw intothe bushes. I tried to hold him but his downhill momentum carried him away.

I chased his running footfalls down to theroad, and got there in time to see him climbing into the convertible. Itsengine roared and its parking lights came on as I ran toward it. Before itleaped away, I caught a glimpse of a Nevada license and the first four figuresof the license number. I went back to Bradshaw's car and wrote them down in mynotebook: FT37.

I climbed up the driveway a second time.Bradshaw had reached the house. He was sitting on the doorstep with a sick lookon his face. Light poured over him from the open door and cast his bowed shadowbrokenly on the flagstones.

"She is dead, Mr. Archer."

I looked in. Helen was lying on her sidebehind the door. Blood had run from a round bullet hole in her forehead andformed a pool on the tiles. It was coagulating at the edges, like frost on adark puddle. I touched her sad face. She was already turning cold. It wasnine-seventeen by my watch.

Between the door and the pool of blood Ifound a faint brown hand-print still sticky to the touch. It was about the sizeof Dolly's hand. She could have fallen accidentally, but the thought twistedthrough my head that she was doing her best to be tried for murder. Whichdidn't necessarily mean that she was innocent.

Bradshaw leaned like a convalescent in thedoorway. "Poor Helen. This is a heinous thing. Do you suppose the fellowwho attacked us—?"

"I'd say she's been dead for at leasttwo hours. Of course he may have come back to wipe out his traces or retrievehis gun. He acted guilty."

"He certainly did."

"Did Helen Haggerty ever mention Nevada?"

He looked surprised. "I don't believe so.Why?"

"The car our friend drove away in had a Nevadalicense."

"I see. Well, I suppose we must call thepolice."

"They'll resent it if we don't."

"Will you? I'm afraid I'm feeling rathershaken."

"It's better if you do, Bradshaw. She worked forthe college, and you can keep the scandal to a minimum."

"Scandal? I hadn't even thought of that."

He forced himself to walk past her to thetelephone on the far side of the room. I went through the other rooms quickly.One bedroom was completely bare except for a kitchen chair and a plain tablewhich she had been using as a working desk. A sheaf of test papers conjugatingFrench irregular verbs lay on top of the table. Piles of books, French andGerman dictionaries and grammars and collections of poetry and prose, stoodaround it. I opened one at the flyleaf. It was rubberstamped in purple ink:Professor Helen Haggerty, Maple Park College, Maple Park, Illinois.

The other bedroom was furnished in ratherfussy elegance with new French Provincial pieces, lambswool rugs on thepolished tile floor, soft heavy handwoven drapes at the enormous window. Thewardrobe contained a row of dresses and skirts with Magnin and Bullocks labels,and under them a row of new shoes to match. The chest of drawers was stuffedwith sweaters and more intimate garments, but nothing really intimate. Noletters, no snapshots.

The bathroom had wall-to-wall carpetingand a triangular sunken tub. The medicine chest was well supplied with beautycream and cosmetics and sleeping pills. The latter had been prescribed by a Dr.Otto Schrenk and dispensed by Thompson's Drug Store in Bridgeton, Illinois, onJune 17 of this year.

I turned out the bathroom wastebasket onthe carpet. Under crumpled wads of used tissue I found a letter in an airmailenvelope postmarked in Bridgeton, Illinois, a week ago and addressed to Mrs.Helen Haggerty. The single sheet inside was signed simply "Mother,"and gave no return address.

Dear Helen

It was thoughtful of you to send me a cardfrom sunny Cal my favorite state of the union even though it is years since Iwas out there. Your father keeps promising to make the trip with me on hisvacation but something always comes up to put it off. Anyway his blood pressureis some better and that is a blessing. I'm glad you're well. I wish you wouldreconsider about the divorce but I suppose that's all over and done with. It'sa pity you and Bert couldn't stay together. He is a good man in his way. But Isuppose distant pastures look greenest.

Your father is still furious of course. Hewon't let me mention your name. He hasn't really forgiven you for when you lefthome in the first place, or forgiven himself either I guess, it takes two to makea quarrel. Still you are his daughter and you shouldn't have talked to him theway you did. I don't mean to recriminate. I keep hoping for a reconcilementbetween you two before he dies. He is not getting any younger, you know, andI'm not either, Helen. You're a smart girl with a good education and if youwanted to you could write him a letter that would make him feel different about"things." You are his only daughter after all and you've never takenit back that he was a crooked stormtrooper. That is a hard word for a policemanto swallow from anybody and it still rankles him after more than twenty years.Please write.

I put the letter back in the wastebasketwith the other discarded paper. Then I washed my hands and returned to the mainroom. Bradshaw was sitting in the rope chair, stiffly formal even when alone. I

© Alexander Sviyash, 2009