Storm Over Longvalley by Jessica Callow

“I’m finding it hard to understand how Harry Bagley could have been killed, in full view of your market, without anybody seeing or hearing anything.” Chief Constable Leonard Hurley stood at our upstairs apartment window, his powerful blue eyes critically examining the vacant lot almost opposite, lit now by a full moon sailing free of the storm clouds. “Emma, from this window there’s a clear view all over that lot where the old house used to be. You say some of you looked out here at about the time we’re interested in. Right past the front of your place Bagley would have gone, and possibly whoever killed him. Nobody here — folks coming and going in the market downstairs, you folks looking out this window — nobody sees or hears a thing?”

“It’s bright moonlight now, chief. When we looked out before, the storm was at its worst. A black night. Rain coming down in sheets. A blackout it was out there, except when lightning was flashing. I could barely see to the middle of the street after that rain got going. Didn’t see a single soul.”

“It’s Friday night, Earl.” The chief turned to where my husband sat, a bit dazed to be sure, on the couch. “Open till ten. Friday night, one of your busiest; people in and out right up to your closing time.” He sounded reproachful. “Let me have the names, Earl, of who was in your place, either coming or just leaving at about — say, from nine o’clock on.”

They went at it together. When I came back with a cup of coffee for the chief, he was closing his notebook. Earl was saying: “Thunder rumbling, real bad lightning from nine on. People who hadn’t shopped by then were putting it off to Saturday. Ron and I had all the produce brought in from the front by nine. After the storm hit at around nine thirty there wasn’t a soul. I let Ron go at nine twenty-five. Polly went upstairs soon after. Emma, she’d her bridge club here from seven o’clock on. It was the ladies leaving at eleven, shortcutting across the lot, who found him.”

Polly Wainwright, a distant cousin of Earl’s, has lived with us for five years or more, helping in the market. Ron Blake, he’s the high school kid who works for Earl weeknights, weekends, and holidays. I manage the post office downstairs and do the bookkeeping for the shop. Earl and I have operated the grocery market and post office for twenty-four years. Our place is a bit old fashioned in this small town of Longvalley. Even so, we pride ourselves that you can get what you need in our general store. We’ve a hardware line as well as meats, groceries, and produce that’s locally grown. All the country round about Longvalley, fifteen thousand people now, is farmland. Five minutes from the middle of town and you can be in some of the prettiest countryside you’ll ever see; three minutes will take you to the river that meanders through the lower part of town. Our Main Street curves to cross the river, becoming at that point South Valley Road. Almost everybody here is known to us, even if some but vaguely, since newcomers, other than tourists, are a rarity.

“A shotgun makes quite a noise,” the chief said. He was walking about the room looking thoughtful. “Your bridge night, Emma. Three tables you say. That means twelve people here who didn’t hear anything. Downstairs are Earl, Polly, and Ron, and a customer or two. Nobody sees or hears anything.” He eyed us skeptically; he couldn’t let it go.

“Who’d hear anything with that thunder crashing about?” Earl said.

The chief was going over again all that we had already told him before he’d had the body removed. He’d asked us all to wait until he came back from viewing the body of Harry Bagley on the vacant lot. We’d watched from the upstairs window, seeing Doc Entwistle moving around in the glare of the chief’s headlights.

“The ladies left at around eleven. You three,” he turned to where Rose Markam, Mary Possit, and Thelma Lindley, the schoolteacher, sat. Rose and Mary both work at the bank. Three solid types, understandably now a bit upset. “You three cut across the vacant lot. The others went down Main Street.”

“Yes, chief,” Thelma said. “Mary, Rose, and I all live on the Terrace, just off Meadow Lane. A shortcut. Even though the lot was muddy the concrete drive that belonged to the old house is still there. About halfway over we came on the body sprawled just near those lilac bushes. At first we thought, since it was Harry, that he was drunk. We decided that we’d have to call you so that you could — I mean, we couldn’t just ignore him lying there. He was sopping wet. We hesitated whether or not to go back to Earl’s place or telephone when we got home. And then we saw his face.” She shuddered. “We got back here as fast as we could.”

They had come hurrying back, ringing the bell at our downstairs door. Earl had gone down, saying, “Now who’s forgot what this time?” They’d gasped out the shocking news.

“Bagley,” Earl had said. “He’ll be drunk, that’s all. Anyway, go on upstairs while I nip over and take a look.”

Earl had come back white-faced, shaking. “That horse he was riding earlier and abusing something shameful has finally finished Bagley off,” he said. “Threw him and kicked him in the face.” Chief Leonard Hurley had joined us but minutes after Earl had put through a call. Dr. Entwistle, also the coroner, had reported that a shotgun blast, rather than the horse, was responsible for Harry’s death.

“How’d you know it was Harry?” the chief asked. “I mean the way his face—”

“I don’t know, really,” Rose said, hurrying to reply lest the chief be moved to describe what Harry’s face had been reduced to. “Clothes, I suppose. We’ve been used to seeing him around for a long time. There was no sign of the horse.”

“It would head for home once Harry let go of the bridle rein.” He took down the names of all who had been at the bridge party and prepared to leave. “If any of you come up with something you forgot to tell me, be sure to get in touch. We’ll talk some more later.” He headed for the stairway, Earl following to let him out. “Thanks for the coffee, Emma. Good night, Polly. Oh, wait. You ladies will have to take the long way home after all. If you care to come now, I’ll drive you over to the Terrace. Don’t want anybody going walking over the lot until we’ve had a good look at it in the daylight.”

Thelma, Rose, and Mary accepted the offer with alacrity. And Earl, Polly, and I were left to tidy up. Bed, for the time being, seemed out of the question. “I was tired as all get out when I first came upstairs,” Earl said. “Now I doubt if I could get to sleep for thinking about this.”

We sat at the kitchen table going over what had happened, trying to come up with answers as to who and why.

“Who’d go to such lengths?” Polly said. “Good for nothing as Harry is — was — folks in Longvalley aren’t the vindictive kind. Not that the most of us wouldn’t have gladly removed Harry if there’d been some way.”

“He wasn’t overdone with friends,” Earl agreed. He was attacking a plate of leftover sandwiches. “Outside of Nora I can’t think of anybody who even moderately tolerated him. Always thought that one day he’d go too far, a beating maybe, but hardly this.”

“What about Nora?” I said. “She’s got to be told.”

“The chief was driving out to the farm right after he left us,” Earl said. “Nora, she’ll be wondering — but no, this isn’t the first time that horse has galloped home without Harry, him lying in a ditch until he sobered up enough to walk.”

“Why such a sweet person as Nora Fitzmaurice married Bagley is past any understanding,” Polly said. “This past year for her must have been hell.”

Nora, although Bagley’s wife for the past year, was still referred to as Nora Fitzmaurice. Everyone in Longvalley had been astounded when Nora had married Bagley so soon after Charlie Fitzmaurice died.

“Bamboozled into it by that rascal,” Earl said. “Trusting little woman, thinking all men were like her dad, or Charlie. That’s where she was wrong.”

I sat thinking about Nora. She hadn’t been to town much after marrying Harry. About a month ago she’d come into the shop. I’d been shocked at her appearance. Her once shining blonde hair had straggled about her neck in rattailing strands. The cream and roses complexion had looked old. And behind her dark glasses, as she’d raised them briefly, I saw that her lovely blue eyes were sunken and ringed about with purple bruises fading to yellowish grey. I’d mumbled something about why didn’t she stay for lunch, as I’d be going upstairs in a matter of minutes. And Earl, tactless as usual, said, “Right, Nora, stay for lunch. Looks to me like you ain’t been eating right.” She had smiled then, for a brief second looking like the lovely Nora we’d always known.

Her voice hadn’t been the same either, low pitched now, and hoarse. And then, as she waited for Earl to box her purchases, she’d said to me, in an intense whisper: “Emma, did you know that Reggie Crossland’s back from Australia?” Her voice and manner had taken me by surprise, for a glimpse of the old, vibrant Nora had shone through. It was after she’d gone that I thought about how close she and Reggie had once been. But it was only a momentary thought at the back of my mind.

“These sandwiches are good,” Polly was saying. She and Earl, the plate between them, settled into the pleasant task of finishing them.

Nora and Reggie Crossland. Was it eighteen or twenty years ago? Both of them eighteen then. Sweethearts they’d been, crazy about each other, it had been easy to see. And I remembered “crazy” was the word Nora’s father had used when he’d put his foot down at their wanting to become engaged. “That crazy Reggie Crossland. I’ll not have him for a son-in-law.” He’d succeeded in separating them by sending Nora off to nursing school. The war coming right about then had helped, I suppose, for Reggie was among the first to join up.

“I’ll wait,” Nora had told me, grimly. “We’ll marry, Emma, you just wait and see. But I’m not going to sit about mooning in my father’s house. He doesn’t really want me to go away to be a nurse. But it’s what I’m going to be. Then when Reggie comes back and becomes a teacher, I’ll have a profession, too.”



Nora was not only very beautiful, she was spunky as well. I could see why Reggie was so taken. Sure, he loved to look at her, who wouldn’t? But it was a sort of lively fire she had that made her especially attractive. As for Reggie’s becoming a teacher, which his dad, Lionel Crossland, was, that was not at all what Reggie had in mind. He’d be a vet, he said, or a farmer. And that was where he ran afoul of his father, a clash of strong wills.

Lionel Crossland was the best school principal Longvalley has ever had, a rather fierce looking, redhaired man immaculately turned out. Hair brilliantined, mustache waxed, and so neat. Grey suits ranging from charcoal shade to highest grey, with a bandbox look. Mattie and Lionel Crossland had had their troubles with Reggie. Not that the boy was bad; far from it. It was the fights he got into mostly, and being hauled off to the police constabulary for a talking to by the chief. They found it degrading. At least Lionel did. Mattie Crossland had a more philosophical attitude. Except for the red hair Reggie took after Mattie, both of them having a lovely sense of humor. You couldn’t blame Lionel, really, for he did have a standard to maintain in the school. His shining red face seemed to get redder after every one of Reggie’s escapades.

Reggie, both Earl and I liked him a lot; he was our box boy at the time he and Nora were going to high school and right up to the time he left for the war. A goodnatured, curly-haired redheaded young giant he was. Forget-me-not blue eyes twinkled with the devil’s own mischief. His flashing grin was, he said, “To show my beautiful false teeth. Something I have to do for my old man. All that orthodontal work he paid for. I sure wouldn’t have had them if it hadn’t been for my father. He wanted me perfect, you see.” Of course they were no more false teeth than were Nora’s gleaming white ones that made her smile something to see. Three boys we’d had need of to do the work after Reggie went away.

But Reggie could get into trouble without even trying, for he was a bit wild, that is, by some people’s standards. There was the motor bike he bought. Tearing about town with that thing banging and roaring all hours of the night — Nora riding pillion, of course — didn’t do a thing for his popularity. Then there were the fights; but every incident was the outcome of one of Reggie’s good deeds: restraining a wife or dog beater, quite aggressively in some cases, for Reggie never had assessed his own strength; sailing into a group of rowdies tormenting a girl. There were the many pranks, too, some with disastrous results. “That Reggie Crossland fighting again,” you’d hear. The constable going for Reggie, seldom for the provocative source. Reggie suffering further in the inevitable row with his father.

When the bike folded, literally, on impact with a tree as Reggie pushed it to ninety on a stretch of open highway, miraculously with but minor damage to himself, he put fifty dollars of his hard earned money into an old jalopy, which, with the aid of stalwart friends, he parked in our back yard and in off hours took completely apart. “We can be thankful,” Earl said, staring at the wreckage strewn about the yard, “that he’ll not injure himself or anyone else driving that. For never is he going to get that lot together again.”

But in a short time Reggie had it chugging rhythmically and, after equipping it with a Klaxon horn, he drove all hours of the night through the quiet town. Two A M. he’d chug past our front, the Klaxon tootling, “Pom-pom-poom-pah.” I’d turn over in bed and laugh. Earl, he’d sit up and yell: “I’ll fire that kid first thing in the morning.” He never did, for if there was one person who loved Reggie — that is, apart from his parents, yes, both of them, and Nora — it was Earl.

Then came Hitler, and the war. And Reggie went “over there.” The atmosphere of Longvalley changed overnight: our town was suddenly a peaceful place, and sad. Only then did many recall the helpful hand of Reggie Crossland in day to day affairs. Along with Nora, Earl and I wept.

The jalopy stood forlorn in our back yard, for Lionel Crossland wouldn’t allow it on their premises. Once in a while I went out and sat in it. Nora came over and sat in it, too. And no doubt wherever Reggie was his ears were burning hot. He wrote long letters to us, telling us to how to run the market. “He’ll be putting the generals straight as to how that war will best be won,” Earl said. He’d met an Australian fellow, Reggie said: “A real guy. Arthur Train his name is. He’s a lot like me. When this war’s over I’m going sheep farming with him in Australia. My dad won’t like it, but then I’ve always told him I’ll never, never be a teacher. I think he’ll not mind too much if I make lots of money, which Arthur and I surely will.”

Earl laughed. “Two of ’em, mind you, Em, over there cooking up the mischief. War’s good as over right now. That Hitler feller might just as well pack it up.”

The war over, Reggie did not come back. Nor did he come to very much harm. He and the Australian went sheep farming together in Australia. “Wait for me,” he wrote Nora. “I shall have enough money soon to set up my own farm back there.” But Nora, a nurse by then, hearing that Reggie had no intention of coming back for three years, feeling sure that someone else had claimed him, did not wait. Her father saw to that. She married Charlie Fitzmaurice. And ten years went by, happily as it turned out, for Nora.

After completing her nursing course, Nora had worked in a hospital for a short while, then had come back to Longvalley. Her first private case being the care of Mrs. Fitzmaurice, Charlie’s mother, she ailing for some time. The Fitzmaurice farm is about a mile outside town along the North Road; its pastures and meadow lands run to the wide river at the foot of the town.

Mrs. Fitzmaurice had taken to Nora from the start. As for Charlie, he’d fallen in love with her right away. They were married that fall, he fifteen years older than she. It was Nora herself who told me: “Emma, he’s a kind and wonderful man. I truly love him. It’s impossible not to. If you’re wondering about Reggie, well, I’ve accepted the fact that by now there is someone else for him. Why not? So long as he’s happy that’s all I should really wish for him.” I had thought I detected a wistful note; but perhaps I read into her voice something that was not there, only the vague disappointment in my own mind. And happy we were for Nora, for no better marriage could have been arranged. The Fitzmaurices were well off, and a good, steady family, too. Charlie and Nora had ten very special years, a rare devotion between the two, for there were no children of the union. And a delight and comfort to the old lady Nora had been, those two years before she died.

Then Charlie Fitzmaurice had a heart attack, leaving Nora floundering, alone on the farm except for Rory O’Brien, the hired man. We’d had no real knowledge of the lonely grief that Nora endured, she with no way to fill the void, for she and Charlie had come upon that kind of peace together that few people find. So Nora had married Bagley thinking, mistakenly, that for her he’d changed his ways; that the two of them could aid each other, for Harry had straightened himself out surprisingly for six consecutive months. A goodlooking fellow, no doubt about that, and but three years older than Nora. And he could turn on the charm when he’d a mind to. Sneaky Harry was past master at that. Making a play for Nora, knowing her loneliness, he’d been available constantly in a useful capacity on the farm, impressing her as he meant to. It was all greed on his part, for he was bent on securing the Fitzmaurice farm and any fortune that Charlie had left. We all knew that what Charlie and his mother had was considerable. And Nora no longer had her dad to advise her.

Nora married him in spite of pleas and warnings. And almost at once found out what that rascal was after. Rory told in town about the beatings when Nora refused him the money he demanded, about the liquor he had hid in the barn. Prize stock Harry sold without Nora’s knowledge, as well as fine and valuable antiques from the house. A heartbreaking year she had endured with him.

If only Charlie Fitzmaurice hadn’t died! If only Reggie hadn’t gone away. If only — no, not a bit of use wishing. But this past year has been a sad one in Longvalley, for we’re not indifferent to the suffering of neighbors and friends. And one could hardly think of Charlie without thinking also of George Banner. George with but months to live, dying of cancer, Charlie’s lifelong friend, and our vet for years. The best in his work, and a fine, kind man besides. And all along there was wastrel Harry Bagley flourishing like the green bay tree. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that, to a man, the people of our community would have wasted no time, had it been possible, in reversing roles for George and Harry. Outspoken they were on the subject, thinking of George.

Rachel Banner’s farm is across the river from the Fitzmaurice place, the two farms backing on each other. The Fitzmaurice place fronts on North Road, the Banner farm faces South Valley Road. We never think of one without the other, for Charlie Fitzmaurice and George Banner grew up together, close friends since they played together as boys. Rachel Banner had farmed her place for years with her son George, he also having had the veterinary practice for a good number of years. The terrible thing happening to George took us back to what his mother had been through. Widowed young, with three children to raise, faced with the prospect of losing the farm, Rachel had battled on with only the help of a youthful hired hand, and eventually what her own two boys could do. The farm prospered, but when trouble should have been letting up, Rachel’s younger son Alvin ran away after getting Elsie Parker into trouble. Elsie’s parents, overly religious, and poor, put Elsie out of their home with no place to go. It had been Rachel who took Elsie in and cared for her and the baby. Then, Rachel’s own daughter, Penny, had an affair with a married man, causing the breakup of his marriage. The two of them had left Longvalley. Elsie’s eventual departure with the child, a boy she’d called Hiram, was a new grief for Rachel, so attached had she become to both.

“I have to let them go, of course,” Rachel said. “Elsie’s marrying a good man.” He was a butcher in a town some distance away. I don’t recall how Elsie met him, but I think he’d come to the farm buying spring lambs on different occasions. The years set Rachel and Elsie apart, but Christmas always brought a letter and pictures showing how well Hiram was doing with his new brothers and sisters. Still, it was in George that Rachel felt vindicated, he compensating for the way Alvin and Penny had turned out. (But for all that she’d have welcomed them back without reservations.)

The amazing thing was that now Harry was dead and George was up and at work, still enjoying his evening horseback rides about the farm. No taking to bed for him. George’s surprising resilience was bolstered, of course, by Rachel’s good care of him; she gained time for him. If George had a passion for any one thing it was horses. For years he had bred and raised them. To see George seated on one of his fine animals was to see man and beast at their best together. A joy it was, like the best poetry. Try as I might I couldn’t banish the sensation of awe that the mood of the community had been taken note of by a higher authority.

Even so, the one really good thing of the year, for I knew, of course, that we wouldn’t have George for long, was that Reggie Crossland came back from Australia. And now he was in the throes of setting up his own sheep farm where the rocky ridges slope up gradually from the valley to Stoney Mountain.

The last crumb cleaned off the plate of sandwiches between them, Earl and Polly decided it was time for bed. “Busy day tomorrow,” Earl said. Turning into her room Polly said: “They come in threes, you know, deaths.” I’ve often thought that if any one person typified the mood of Longvalley it was Polly. On that sepulchral note we sought sleep.


The news that Nora was being accused of shooting her husband hit us Saturday morning. Beamer Ross was doing the broadcasting in our market, because that’s where he knew he’d find the crowd. And crowd it was, since those who’d been homebound Friday night because of the storm were there with the usual Saturday shoppers. Earl, Polly, and Ron were busy. I helped when no one needed post office business. I close the post office at noon Saturdays.

“I seen her right there at the back of the hotel parking lot, among the trees,” Beamer said. “She’d the gun smoking in her hand. And Harry was there laying shot, dead on the ground. I’d had to come out to... well, I’d had quite a few beers. Tom had bounced Harry a few minutes before. A right nasty mood Harry was in. Just starting to rain it was, thundering and lightning something fierce.”

“Mind your big mouth, Beamer,” Earl said. “Harry wasn’t shot on the hotel parking lot. Across the street from here on the vacant lot is where it happened. You told the chief this tale about the parking lot?”

“Damn right I told him. Down there he is right now checking things out. Across here on the vacant lot, you say. No way. Plain as day I see Nora back in them trees at the hotel parking lot. There’s a flash and I see Harry go down, see him lying there on the ground. The horse, he’d a holt of it by the bridle rein. He’d been trying to mount, but that horse it kept on jumping sideways because Harry’d up with his foot to it. A right nasty mood he was in, which was why Tom had had to bounce him.”

“And you ran over to put him up on the horse, I suppose?” Polly gritted. “Shot dead like he was. And the horse galloped up here and threw him on the vacant lot across the street.”

“Not me! I runs back into the bar to tell the lads what’s happened. They come out with me to see. And that’s what I don’t understand.” Beamer looked about wildly. “Harry ain’t there. Him and the horse is both gone. I tell you, last night some devilish power was let loose. And somebody tell me, who else’d have reason for murdering Harry?”

“Beamer, last night you’d had a few too many, that’s all,” Ray Marston, a worker at the lumber mill, said. “Couldn’t mount, you say. So right he couldn’t. Me and my wife saw him and the horse come out of the hotel parking lot. Going up Main Street Harry was at about nine thirty, just as the rain started. We’d been visiting Amy’s folks. All the way up Main Street Harry is trying to mount, hanging onto that poor horse, yelling and scaring it, it prancing sideways. Time and again he fell down, but hung onto the bridle rein. I’d a bit of a job to start my car, and when I finally got in I took a look up the street to see how Harry was making out. He was about level here with Earl and Emma’s place, still not mounted. ‘That horse’ll walk him home,’ I says to Amy, ‘when it ain’t dragging him.’ We drove off going south. And that’s the last we saw of him.”

Jack Stevens, a farmer, told the same story, as did Reed Scott, a plumber who lives at the north end of town. In both cases the time they quoted was “nine thirtyish,” just as it was coming on to rain. “Hurrying to get home before the worst of the storm hit,” Reed said. “Yep, I passed Harry and the horse, them heading north on Main Street.”

So that no one gave much credence to Beamer’s story, not even the chief, he well aware of Beamer’s tendency to the fabrication of wild tales. But, of course, he had had to check Beamer’s story out; Heavy rain had washed the sandy soil along the down slope of the hotel parking lot, obliterating any footprints. If shotgun shells had been ejected, they were nowhere to be found. Furthermore, three men who had been in the bar at the time Beamer had rushed back in testified that they had gone out to see. There had been no sign of Harry or the horse, nor had any of them seen anyone in the trees at the back of the parking lot. The story that Beamer had told them, they said, was that the horse had reared and knocked Harry to the ground, finishing him off right there. Only when the news reported Harry dead by shotgun blast did Beamer say that he had seen Nora with the gun. But he did stick to his story of seeing Nora at the back of the parking lot among the trees, not far from the river.

“Just to get noticed that guy will tell a tale like that,” Earl said.

Various rumors flew about all of that Saturday, Sunday too. And then came Nora’s admitting to having been at the back of the parking lot at the time in question. “I was there,” she said. “But I did not kill Harry. I’d gone to get my horse when the thunder and lightning broke. I knew that Harry would have her tied to a tree. She’d panic. I couldn’t stand it, just sitting there knowing the way he treated that fine mare. I’d begged him not to ride her. He did it just to spite me. I ran by the river path, both going there and coming home. Yes, I have a shotgun, a double-barrelled one that used to belong to Charlie. Right now I don’t know where it is. I did not have it when I went to the hotel parking lot. I saw Harry and the mare leave the lot and turn north onto Main Street.”

Whether Chief Hurley believed what Nora told him we didn’t know. Nora didn’t know either, for she herself, coming in for groceries, told us about that. I have to say that she looked a totally different Nora from the one I’d seen a few weeks back: stronger and more confident, very thin and drawn it’s true, but with eyes sort of fierce, and mouth grim. Yet who else but Nora could possibly have a motive for killing Harry? I didn’t say that to anybody, but I knew that Earl was thinking the same thing when he said, coming back from taking the groceries out to her truck, “A miracle she’ll need to get clear of this mess.”

I’d offered to stay nights with Nora. She’d thanked me and said: “I’m okay, Emma, better able now to think than I’ve been for months.”

Nora’s story was that she had been in the kitchen when she heard the horse come galloping into the yard. The bridle rein was hanging in front of it and the riding saddle had slipped a little sideways. Because Rory, the hired man, was off for the evening, she had put the horse in the stable and had rubbed it down. It was her own mare that Charlie Fitzmaurice had given her for an anniversary that Charlie’s friend George Banner had bred and raised.

“Didn’t you worry about where your husband might be, Nora?” the chief had asked.

“I’d no doubt as to where he’d be, Chief Hurley,” Nora said. “He’d be walking home, or trying to, anyway. And I knew that when he did get home there’d be a beating for me. I hoped that the rain would help sober him up. He was drunk even before he set off for the hotel. He’d been buying liquor and keeping it hid in the barn. He was more violent that night than he’d ever been. It was only because he was so smashed and couldn’t catch me that I escaped a beating earlier. And because he couldn’t beat me he tore up the kitchen and killed my little dog.”

When that piece of news filtered through to us I felt truly sick.

“Killed her little dog! Oh, Earl! That was the last gift that Charlie gave her, for her birthday, but months before he died. That sweet little white poodle she called Persha.” And for Nora it would have been so much more than the death of her little white dog. Motive? A whole pile of motives was going to have to be sifted through.

“I’ve a nasty feeling,” Earl said, looking grim, “that we’re not going to like the outcome.”

The chief, stopping by, had told us that some high-ranking detectives were coming to take the case out of his hands. “They’ll be talking to you,” he said. “Just tell them everything the way you told it to me.” I felt cold inside, for Nora. Monday morning Inspector Hardman and Sergeant Wilshire arrived.

And Monday morning it was that Reggie Crossland came from his farm into town. After a visit and lunch with his parents he came into our shop to stock up on groceries, heading then for the farm. Earl had a great many questions about the farm that Reggie was stocking, at present, with sheep.

“First rate place for sheep, Earl,” Reggie said. “Oh, yeah, I’ll have some dairy cattle by and by; I’ve some fine lowland pasture. Then I won’t have to pay this price for a piece of cheese that some folks are charging. I’ve but two milking cows as it is.”

“Sheep farming, dairy farming! You all alone! You could lose your shirt. You’d a lot of good ideas when you worked here as a lad; always thought you’d come up with something smart.”

“Smartest lad you ever had, Earl. I’m glad to see you took my advice and put wheels on those bins.” There was the same roguish grin, the devilish twinkle in the blue eyes. But the red curls now had a considerable sprinkle of grey. Tough muscled he was now, and lean, brown as a nut, too. But there was a hardness also that I had never thought to see in Reggie’s eyes.

“Smart-assed you mean,” Earl chided. “But yes, best worker I ever had. Not that we aren’t pleased with Ron. He’s a dam good lad. Now, if you’d said beef cattle—”

And as I attended to customers at the post office I heard them at it just like old times. And then Earl was saying: “You’ll find out what a pound of cheese costs before you’re much older. But there’s something you’ve not got on that farm that you’re going to need.”

“What’s that?”

“A wife. I’m hoping you’ve someone in mind, or are you thinking your ma’ll go out there to cook for you?”

“Ma? Heck, no. She’s got more than enough to do. Give me time, Earl. After all, I’m not long back.”

“How much time d’you need? You’re middle-aged as it is.”

Reggie made a deprecatory noise. “Just coming into my prime.”

They went on talking, selecting and packing items into several boxes. There’ll be no difficulty about the wife, I thought. Already female eyes were turning Reggie’s way. There was an air of maturity about him now that made him even more attractive than the youthful Reggie had been. That morning was the first time Reggie had heard of how Harry Bagley had died. He and Earl turned to that topic.

“That’s the night I drove out to my farm. I’d intended coming in then for the groceries but never did get the time. Knew I’d have to come in again anyway. I don’t have the phone, or TV. I do have a radio in the truck, but didn’t hear any mention on the news. Friday night, yeah, that’s the night I ran out of gas in that storm, would you believe it! I’d had a million things to attend to. Knew right well I was low on gas and then clean forgot. Ma had wanted me to stay over, but I’d my two cows needing milking, pigs to feed, hens to shut up so the foxes wouldn’t get ’em. And I’d my two dogs closed up in the house.”

About an hour after Reggie left the shop, word came that George Banner had been taken to the hospital following a stroke Friday night. The gloom thickened. In my post office cubbyhole I sat thinking about George. Polly came downstairs, putting her head around my door. “I’ve put yours and Earl’s tea ready upstairs,” she said. “I’ll buzz if anyone needs the post office or if the shop gets busy.” We’ve a code: one buzz for Earl, two for me or Polly. But Monday is usually our quietest day.

I could see that Polly had been crying, and I remembered that years ago she and George had walked out together. Polly never had said why they split up but I had suspected, well, it was rather more than a suspicion, that George had been in love with Nora. For Nora, it had been only a tentative attraction before she’d gone to care for Mrs. Fitzmaurice. After that there had been Charlie. Polly hadn’t been able to continue the association. Strong Polly is, with her own ideas of what’s right. They’d stayed good friends. I’d long felt that Polly should have made herself more available socially. She tends not to get noticed, so fine a person. She and some good man are missing out. I put up another prayer for Polly.

Earl and I sat upstairs with our tea. “As Polly says,” Earl murmured, a bit shakily, “three times it is.”

“George isn’t — Doc Entwistle says his vital signs are good, that he’ll come out of it. Who else would have held up as George has?”

“The way things are I can’t see—” Earl’s voice trailed off into a deep sigh. “You know, she could have gone up Meadow Lane, since it runs out of the hotel parking lot, while Harry and the horse went up Main Street. They’d have come face to face at the vacant lot. And if Nora did have the gun like Beamer says, well, from there she could have gone home with the horse and not a soul would see her. Hardman’s going to think that.”

The chief was talking to Polly when we went downstairs. I thought he seemed, well, different. I couldn’t have said why. For a bachelor he keeps himself looking neat.

“Just passing, Emma, Earl.” He made to leave. “Oh, my pipe tobacco, Polly.”

“Chiefs upset?” Earl asked, looking at Polly after the door had closed. “He say anything new?”

“He’s not on the murder case, you know.” Polly went back to the weighing of sugar into five pound bags. “Dropped in for his pipe tobacco like you saw. Upset, like the rest of us.”

I was relieved that Polly, no longer tearful, was her brisk self again. Worth her weight in gold; we would have had a hard time without her.

Inspector Hardman came to visit us that afternoon. A goodlooking man, in a cold sort of way. Not unpleasant, but his very direct questions demanded clear answers. The chief had briefed him, of course. We watched after he left the shop, saw him drive the short distance up Main Street and turn right onto North Road, going out to the Fitzmaurice farm. Our hearts were lead weighted. He’d not be long finding out the truth of whatever it was that Nora had done.

Rory O’Brien told of seeing the gun as late as Friday morning on its rack above the chest in the Fitzmaurice farmhouse living room. Now it had vanished. Rory recalled the days when he’d seen Charlie Fitzmaurice teaching Nora to use it. “With Harry,” Rory said, “it was different. He was scared of firearms. Only thing he’d have been likely to do with it was to sneak it off and sell it.”

As the days passed, Beamer’s story gained in credibility. A long week we endured, but finally arrived at Friday. And then a third bombshell hit. Inspector Hardman had come into the shop to verify with us some of the things that Nora had told him. He was about to leave when the shop doorbell tinkled and in breezed Bill Worseley. Every Friday Bill comes in for a mountain of groceries. The Worseleys are Reggie Crossland’s nearest neighbors in the Rocky Mountain area, even though they are miles apart. Annie, Bill’s wife, comes into town but once a year. She makes a day of it, visiting her cousin Maude a few streets to the north of us.

Bill, a boisterous sort of guy, but goodnatured for all that, can be heard all over any room without anybody even trying to listen. “I’ll leave you Annie’s list, Earl,” he bellowed. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours or so. I’ve to run out to the lumber mill for some two-by-fours. Some paint and wallpaper I’m to get as well. Annie’s telling me I have to do the upstairs rooms over. I never have seen anything like the work she can dredge up for me.”

“Seems to me you keep her mighty busy, too, Bill. All them kids you got,” Earl said.

Bill’s laughter stirred the dust on our top shelves. “I’m a lucky man,” he boomed. “My Annie’s the best there is. Mind you put in all that stuff she ordered or my name’ll be mud. Yours, too. Say, this is a hell of a business over Harry being shot. Who’d have thought that right at the very time I was driving past this here corner and out past the Fitzmaurice place last Friday night—”

“Bill.” Earl, seeing the inspector’s sudden interest, had hurriedly laid a hand on Bill’s arm. “Bill, I don’t believe you’ve met Inspector Hardman. He’s working on that job right now.”

“No sir, we ain’t met,” Bill said. “Howdy do.” Bill held out a work-roughened spade of a hand, the grip of which the inspector would remember. His bright brown eyes examined Hardman. He was going to have to give Annie full details of this. A real, top-ranking police guy if that smart suit was any guide. Yes, he’d have to tell Annie how he’d shaken the hand of a top-ranking chap from headquarters. A guy who could tell you a thing or two about murders and such.

“Last Friday night, Mr. Worseley, at around nine thirty you drove by that vacant lot out there, and along North Road past the Fitzmaurice farm. Am I right?”

“Well, more like ten o’clock I’d say, for that rain was really beltin’ down. Real late I was, for I’d had considerable trouble with the truck. I’d had a blowout as well as engine trouble, been in the garage for a couple of hours. I’d picked up the groceries here at about eight and then went up to Annie’s cousin’s place for a bite to eat and I had four dozen eggs to take her. She’d given up on me by the time I got there. And then, sitting there gabbing with Maude and Ben, well, it was getting pretty late. ‘Annie’ll kill me,’ I sez. ‘I better hit the road.’ Maude’s kitchen clock said ten. It was pouring like hell when I turned onto the North Road.” Bill did plenty of arm-waving to indicate his itinerary.

“So twice you went by the vacant lot last Friday night,” Hardman said. “Once at around eight o’clock and again at possibly five after ten?”

“I’d say that’s about it.”

“On that North Road, do you recall seeing anyone? Anything unusual?”

Bill scratched his face. “No, can’t say as I can. Not a night that folks would be out if they didn’t have to. Nothin’ unusual except for somebody who’d run out of gas. I stopped to see if he needed help, but he’d just come from a nearby farm with a gallon can and was okay. Just drove on after that. Nothin’ unusual except for me being late like I never was before.”

“The man who had run out of gas, did you know him?”

“Oh, yeah. The teacher’s lad. Reggie Crossland. He’s just bought a farm next to me. He’d been into town on lawyer business and to gab with his folks, he said, and was headed back to the farm. He’d get his tank filled at the crossroads when he got over to the valley.”

“From a farm you said he came with a gallon can of gas. Which farm was that, Mr. Worseley?”

I felt my throat get dry, and shivers ran down my back. Glancing at Earl I saw the consternation on his face. Apart from Earl and me, the inspector and Bill were the only other people in the shop. Polly had gone upstairs to make the ten o’clock tea. The whole atmosphere of the shop was suddenly charged and tense.

“The Fitzmaurice farm,” Bill said, blithely. “Nearest one to the road at that point. I was but a mile out of town on the North Road. Their place, it’s but a bit back off the road. I could see lights on in the yard.”

The doorbell tinkled again as Bill strode out. I felt drained. Earl was leaning heavily against the counter. “Inspector, I did tell the chief about all the customers we’d had last Friday. I’d thought Bill was headed for home when he went out of here at around eight o’clock.”

“So had we,” the inspector said. “Eight o’clock hadn’t seemed to fit in with what we needed. I’d appreciate it if you’d not mention what you just heard.”

“Oh, no way,” Earl said, not without feeling. “Of course not,” I said. My throat had a swollen sensation.

We watched as Inspector Hardman turned his car once again onto the North Road, this time heading for Reggie’s farm. “This Friday, too,” I said, “we’re not going to forget.”

That afternoon Reggie Crossland was arrested for the murder of Harry Bagley. The clincher had been Inspector Hardman’s finding Nora’s shotgun in Reggie’s house. In a kitchen cupboard it was, the kitchen being the only room in the house that was furnished in any way, that is, with a stove, a table, and a cot bed. Reggie admitted that the gun was — or had been — Nora’s. He had bought it from her, he said, that same night that he went to get the gallon can of gas for his truck. He had need of a shotgun, he said, for the rabbits were overrunning his farm. He drove himself in, Inspector Hardman driving behind Reggie’s blue truck. But because Reggie now had many animals needing his care on the farm he was let out at once on bail.

That night, after the shop was closed, Earl, Polly, and I sat talking about Reggie and Nora, about the days when they had been so young and carefree, riding about Longvalley in the old jalopy, tootling the lighthearted notes on the Klaxon horn.

“Two young people really in love they were,” Polly said. “If it hadn’t been for that wretched war they’d have married, and none of this would ever have happened. When they met again, the way it once had been for them, it all came back. And Reggie saw what Bagley had done to Nora. He took the gun and went out to find Bagley. That’s how it looks to me anyway.”

I thought back, and remembered Nora’s voice, husky with emotion as she’d said: “Emma, did you know that Reggie Crossland’s back?”


I couldn’t get to sleep that night, nor could Earl. We tossed and turned, every now and then breaking into some exclamation about what had happened. At about four in the morning we both dozed off, exhausted, and neither of us heard the alarm go off at six. It was Polly coming in with coffee at seven that roused us.

“Didn’t think you two had plans to sleep all day,” she said, “seeing it’s Saturday. Guess what?”

“At seven in the morning who needs riddles,” Earl growled.

“Nora Fitzmaurice has confessed to shooting Bagley. Last night she went to the station and gave herself up. Ron, he’s downstairs getting ready to open up. He rode to work with that young constable. The news reporter told him the same thing.”

“Bloody hell!” Earl’s cup banged into the saucer. “Those two! Now both of ’em’s up to the neck, for a stinker like Bagley. Polly, you sure know how to start a day.”

“She’s out on bail,” Polly went on, crashing up the window blinds. “There’s a police matron staying with her on the farm. Mattie Crossland, she’s gone out with Reggie to his place.” Polly stood holding the door in her hand. “You ready for something else?”

“Why not, we’re case hardened by now.” Earl’s coffee cup rattled as he set it on the bedside table. “Young Ron, don’t tell me he’s been up to something?”

“Not Ron, no. Remember Rachel’s boy, Alvin, that girl Elsie he got into trouble, and Rachel took her in? Well, she’s back with the child, a teenager he is now. They’re staying with Rachel. Seems Elsie’s divorced. And the boy, I’m told, is the living image of Alvin.”

Polly’s hesitant manner as she stood holding the door indicated that she wasn’t finished. Nervously, Earl and I waited. Still Polly stood, staring over our heads out the windows.

“Something else you’ve got on your mind?” Earl ventured.

“Elsie, she’d be a good one for you to have in the market,” Polly said slowly.

Earl and I looked at each other in surprise. “But, Polly,” Earl said, “we’ve hardly — there’s four of us already.”

“Three, Earl. I’m getting married. The chief and me. He’s been promoted. We’ll be leaving Longvalley.”

I’ve never known Polly to close a door so quietly. We hardly knew she’d gone.

That’s the kind of day that Saturday was from the start.


“Two can’t be charged with the same one murder, can they, Earl?” I asked. We’d gobbled breakfast and had joined Polly and Ron downstairs. What a good lad Ron is for us. I felt truly grateful for him. To be losing Polly, well, if you can imagine feeling glad and sad all at one time, and add to that my remembering how devout my prayer for Polly had been, you’ll understand the turmoil I was in.

“Sure they can, if both have had a hand in it. But you know right well that Nora’s saying she did it just to get Reggie off the hook. Don’t forget that Reggie had the gun. Don’t forget that Rory saw the gun early that Friday. Comes Reggie to the farm for gas and sees the state that Nora’s in. Who’s to say that Reggie didn’t grab the gun and go looking for Harry? Reggie’s in big trouble as I see it.”

But the story that Nora now told had sinister impact; for, little as most of us wanted to believe Beamer Ross’s tale, Nora’s latest version coincided with that.

“Harry and I had had a terrible row,” Nora said. “I’d forbidden him to take my horse. He’d been ruining her. I knew when that thunder and lightning got started that the horse would be panicked, tied up to a tree in the hotel parking lot. I went to get my horse back, and I took the gun because I meant to kill Harry. From where I was at the back of the parking lot I saw him come out of the bar. When he started tormenting the horse I fired, but missed. I ran up Meadow Lane as Harry and the horse went up Main Street. I was waiting for him by the lilac bushes as he crossed the vacant lot. That’s when I killed him. I took the horse and went home.”

“How did Reggie Crossland get your gun?” the inspector had asked.

“I’d just got home when Reggie came into the yard. He’d run out of gas. He came into the kitchen. We talked for a while. The gun was on the kitchen table. Reggie said he had need of just such a gun. I sold it to him along with a box of cartridges and the gas for his truck.” That was Nora’s story, and she was sticking to it.

Needless to say that Beamer Ross went about telling everybody, “I told you so. Seen her shoot him, I did, with my own eyes.”

“You seen nothing of the sort, Beamer,” one of Beamer’s drinking pals told him. “We all went out, remember. And Harry wasn’t there, neither was he dead, for others saw him going up Main Street. Gun flashes you say you saw. Malarkey! Lightning was what you saw.”

And Reggie swore he had proof that Nora did not kill Harry. Her fingerprints on the gun? Why not? It had been her gun, she had handled it many times. He had not cleaned it in any way, had just set it down out of the way in his kitchen broom closet.

“Something’s wrong with all of it,” Earl said. “Nora and Reggie, those two are trying to protect each other. Each thinks the other did it. Now, to me that means that neither of ’em did it. If neither of them killed Harry, who did?”

And then all charges against Nora were dropped. And that was a shock, too, for it meant that now Reggie was surely suspect. He’d left Nora at the farm, taking the gun and cartridges. He was in a rage against Harry, seeing the condition that Nora was in, and upset by what she’d told him. Had the horse arrived back while he was there, or even before, Reggie could have deduced that Harry was not too far away, making his way home on foot. And on the vacant lot Reggie, carrying the loaded gun, had found him. Speculation had Reggie guilty of the crime. Moreover, Inspector Hardman’s findings appeared to bolster that.

What Inspector Hardman had found was that Nora had indeed been on the hotel parking lot, but without the gun, and that she had not gone home by way of Meadow Lane that runs parallel to Main Street. Her first story had been that she had gone to the parking lot by the river path, returning the same way. It was on that path that the inspector found Nora’s footprints in damp soil where, beneath thickly leafed trees, they had not been washed away by the rain; impressions showing clearly Nora’s shoeprints going both ways. Further, there were handprints where she had fallen.

Had Nora been carrying a gun, those handprints, so the detective thought, would not have been so clearly defined, fingers outstretched. Moreover, the gun had not been cleaned by Reggie or anyone and, although showing evidence of having been recently fired, it carried no trace whatsoever of the mud or soil where Nora had stumbled. Then, too, the spot where she had tripped gave proof that the fall had been on her return, the handprints pointing plainly the direction she’d been going. Nora, the inspector said, had not gone up Meadow Lane to meet and kill Harry as he entered the vacant lot from Main Street. She had returned home by the river path as she had said in her first story.

Then, overnight, came further incriminating evidence against Reggie. The two spent cartridges from Nora’s shotgun were found in his rain slicker pocket. “Hidden away in a mountain shack,” the newspaper had it; a cabin that Reggie had built on the mountain for his needs when tending sheep in that area. Simultaneously, in his farmhouse, the detectives discovered a bloodstained jacket. Things could not have looked blacker for Reggie.

All of this was followed by yet another confusing aspect. Through Doc Entwistle, who had had to report it, Inspector Hardman discovered that Reggie had been shot in the right arm. Shotgun pellets embedded there had caused an infection. So, who had shot Reggie? “I suppose I was careless with the gun,” he said. On the same day that the sergeant found the spent cartridges in Reggie’s pocket, Inspector Hardman found two further spent cartridges in Meadow Lane, these latter being totally unexplainable, for they did not fit Nora’s gun. A close check proved that Harry’s face had been full of Number 6 shot from the latter two cartridges found in Meadow Lane, not the Number 5 shot in the ones fitting Nora’s gun. The shot in Reggie’s right arm was definitely from Nora’s gun.

Inspector Hardman, sitting across from Reggie and Nora in the Fitzmaurice farm kitchen, looked grim. “I want the truth and I want it now,” he said. “If neither of you killed Bagley, are you protecting someone? I shall get the truth, of course, and if either of you is withholding evidence it could go hard for you.”

Reggie, right arm in a sling, told the story for both himself and Nora. “I got into the Fitzmaurice farmyard that stormy Friday night with my gallon can for gas,” Reggie began. “There was a yard light on, but no lights were on in the house. I was afraid I’d have to rouse someone out of bed, and then I saw that the kitchen door was partly open. I pushed on the door and had stepped forward to enter, was about to shout, when a blast of shot hit me, getting the doorjamb mostly. I yelled, ‘What the hell’s going on!’

“And then there was Nora, flinging the gun down and screaming. But she could only weep and hold onto me. When I switched on the kitchen light I saw the state the room was in: things overthrown, dishes smashed. And Nora’s little white dog lay dead on the floor. Nora was sopping wet and mudstained.

“After a while, although Nora was still hysterical, she was telling me: ‘I thought you were Harry. I was waiting for him. I was going to kill him for what he did tonight to little Persha, and to my horse that Charlie gave me.’ That’s what she was crying. And had it been Harry she wouldn’t have killed him. She’d have missed him just as she missed me. I know she didn’t kill Harry because there she was at home waiting for him. And when I left I took the gun with me. I said I wanted to buy the gun. Right enough I needed one for the rabbits, like I said.

“When Nora told me what Harry had done, and I saw that little dog and the way that kitchen looked, and the way Nora was, I said, ‘I’ll go and get that bastard. I’ll give him the thrashing of his life.’ I saw what he’d reduced Nora to. I wanted to get my hands on him. But Nora screamed at me: ‘No, Reggie, no. Don’t go near him. Tonight he’s worse than he’s ever been. The drink has finally driven him mad. He’s completely out of control.’

“I ejected the two cartridges she’d fired and dropped them into my slicker pocket. Then together we buried that little dog. I went to the orchard and dug a hole where Nora said while she wrapped it in a bath towel. She sort of collapsed, weeping, on its grave. She was in a shocking state, wet and muddy, and cold. I do believe if I could have got my hands on Bagley right then there wouldn’t have been much left of him. I picked Nora up and carried her into the house. After she calmed down we both noticed that my arm was bleeding. I’d taken off the slicker, even then not realizing I’d been hit. I had felt a bit of a sting. Nora got out some of the shot and put iodine on the arm and bandaged it. I said I’d get it looked after. I tried doctoring it myself later when it began to fester.

“When I thought that Nora was all right I left, taking the gun with me. She was overwrought, and Harry, no telling what mood he’d be in, she might have another go at him. I didn’t see Harry that night. I’d promised I’d not go back looking for him. I didn’t know that Harry was dead until I came into town the following Monday. I’d a deal going through at the bank for the purchase of some farm machinery. Seems when Harry had been found shot Nora thought that I had gone back to find him. Up the mountain as I was most of that week, building my cabin, I heard no news at all. Evenings, I got the chores done and slept mostly.”

Two mysterious cartridges. Someone had waited for Harry, or had met him crossing the lot, and had killed him, then had gone down Meadow Lane ejecting the spent cartridges. Someone other than Nora or Reggie had wanted Harry dead. But who? Well, that could be all the rest of us.

“The hand of God is in it. Charlie Fitzmaurice came back from the grave!” What had been whispers began to be boldly outspoken. Wishful thinking, I say, a way out when nothing logical works; something to mitigate the unbearable frustration. I couldn’t shake the feeling that, collectively, we’d all had a hand in it.

Being released didn’t free Reggie or Nora from suspicion. The grim shadow of doubt hung heavy, a black cloud. Two fine people whom we had watched grow from childhood, whom we all loved, should they come together at last were never to escape the burden of suspicion. Knowing their own innocence could provide no real peace as long as accusing eyes were turned on them. That’s how Longvallians are, we have to have it in black and white. I couldn’t get my heart up out of my boots. The detectives did not leave Longvalley. They had arrived back at the point of beginning all over again, with a trail gone cold. And that, we all sensed, should make them dig deeper, failure being unacceptable to them.

And then George Banner died. With his death the devastating truth was revealed. In wonderment we heard how it had happened. That fateful Friday night, following his nightly routine, George had gone for a leisurely horseback ride. At Rachel’s suggestion he’d taken his gun, hoping to get a rabbit or two. Rachel did make the best rabbit pie, George’s favorite. Returning home as the storm rumbled overhead, George, unobserved among the trees on his own side of the river, saw Nora run towards the hotel parking lot, and also Bagley in the distance, in some sort of trouble with the horse, going off into Main Street. Nora, deeply disturbed, weeping and stumbling, had turned back through the trees and along the river path towards her home. “My poor Brownie. My little Persha, dead, murdered, murdered! Charlie! Charlie! Oh, God! Let me die tonight!”

On his horse George sat, his blood running cold at Nora’s desperate sobbing. Still loving Nora and feeling in his very soul a duty to his lifelong friend Charlie, George put his horse to fording the river, heading into Meadow Lane. Totally without plan or purpose, merely seeking movement to work off the anger pounding in his head, hearing only Nora’s voice, seeing only Nora’s face and Charlie’s.

At the top of the lane he drew rein, not quite knowing why he’d come there. No one was in sight. Lightheadedness seemed to lift him; he no longer felt earthbound. Outside of himself he floated skyward. Vaguely George realized that some untoward thing was reaching a climax inside him, knew that a final destiny was unfolding over which he had no control. Thunder crashed, lightning split the clouds and found its way into his head. It didn’t matter; the pain he’d lived with was gone, numbness was developing. In his ears an ocean roared and pounded.

And in the shadowy distance there was Bagley, and the mare, entering the rubble-strewn lot from the Main Street side. Among the scattered masonry Harry stumbled and fell, losing his hold on the mare’s bridle. A crack of thunder and the mare plunged, rearing, whinnying in terror, then, finding herself free, galloped off.

Without haste, as though other forces than his own had the ordering, George raised the gun and, as a sheet of lightning illumined the area, he fired. There was stillness and darkness, and then the gentler sounds of rain. George’s horse, sensing no restraint nor guidance on the bit, turned homeward. George, following the habit of years, with fingers that fumbled now, ejected the shells into the lane.

At the river’s edge where the footbridge spanned the narrower, deeper water, George let the gun go. It fell into the water with a barely audible splash and sank at once, soft black mud sucking it down, a quiet gurgle. The water’s surface, briefly rippled and mud-dyed, had settled by the time George had crossed. He shuddered and slumped forward. Once home he had had to be carried into the house. He could neither walk nor talk.

“A stroke,” Doc Entwistle said. “But vital signs are good. He’ll come out of this.”

Rachel was horrified. “He’d been feeling so good lately. I shouldn’t have let him — he never should have gone riding.”

“Why the hell not?” Doc said. “I told him to do whatever he felt like doing.”

Only with difficulty had George finally been able to tell Doc what had happened, not being quite sure that it had. Perhaps his realization of what had really happened came only then, for George suffered a second stroke, his overstrained heart giving way. His end had been peaceable. Rachel, who had suffered along with George’s days of pain, felt calm, her own burden lifted. Of course, Entwistle had had to tell Hardman. But they never did find the gun.

The shockwave through Longvalley, though profound, was only briefly devastating. In awed tones Longvallians whispered: “We said all along that the hand of God was in it that night. Since the beginning of time hasn’t He wrought his ordering through special people?” They thought that Charlie, through George, had been the instrument.

As for me, it made me shiver. Never before had I recognized the burden that the ancient ones had carried, the staggering responsibility of asking and of having been listened to.

Tonight, the first in a long time, my poor exhausted Earl is sleeping like a babe. From the window I can see over the moonlit valley. Beneath the lovely trees the river flows, silvered with starlight. So quiet the street outside. The storm, at last, is really over.

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