Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Patricia McGerr Nothing but the Truth

That Sunday was, in its beginning, no different from any other Sunday. I got up about 7:30 and put the coffee on to boil while I shaved and dressed. Then I had my usual breakfast — corn flakes and milk, toast with grape jelly, and coffee. I was finishing the second cup when the bell rang to let me know that a car was driving into the service station.

I hurried down the stairs, through the office, and out to the pumps. It was a ’69 Pontiac with out-of-state tags and it took 12.8 gallons of high test. I entered the sale in my log, noting the time as 8:15, then went back to my living quarters to make the bed and wash the dishes.

It was kind of chilly for the end of April, so I pulled a sweater on over my work shirt. With the chores done. I settled down in the office to tot up the week’s receipts and write an order for the supplies I needed for the month ahead.

Business is always slow on Sunday mornings. My station is at the junction of State Highway 40 and the road to Morristown. That’s a town in name only — a two-block business district surrounded by farms — and the people don’t do much Sunday gadding. It’s a good day for paperwork and I finished with only two interruptions, both from the highway. A ’66 Mercury took 12 gallons of regular and a ’63 Volks wanted directions to a turnoff he’d missed a mile and a half back.

I was putting the order into its envelope when I heard the first car on the Morristown road. By the sound it was traveling faster than is safe or legal on the two-lane gravel surface that is still as winding as the cowpath that provided its original design. There’s a stand of timber behind my station, so I can’t see vehicles till they’re almost here. This one hardly slowed for the turn into the station and pulled up beside the pumps with tires screeching, it was Chad Bascom in his ’72 Chevy.

“Fill ’er up, Gimpy,” he said.

I walked to the back of the car with the heat starting someplace near the bottom of my stomach and rising in waves to the top of my head. My fingers were unsteady when I unscrewed the top of his gas tank and I was afraid, when I set the nozzle down, he’d hear the clatter and get satisfaction from knowing he’d pushed me once more to blind and trembling rage.

You’d think that after twenty years I’d be immune to Bascom’s insults, that a single word, so often repeated, would have lost its power to send my blood pressure soaring. I stood still while three gallons flowed through the hose and while I built a fantasy of lighting a match and bringing gas and flame together to turn his car into a fiery coffin. Then, as the throbbing in my temples eased, I picked up the spray bottle and paper towels and cleaned his back window. When that was done I did the same to the front, keeping my lips tightpressed to hold back an answer to anything he might say. But today, for a change, he didn’t keep on riding me, just sat in stony silence till I was forced to speak.

“Check under the hood?” I asked.

“The way you move,” he snapped, “that would take all day. Put the lid on and let me out of here.”

The pump cut off at 13.2. I squeezed out a few more drops to make it an even $5 and capped his tank. He thrust a $5 bill at me and had the car moving almost before I could step out of the way. I went into the office, put the money in the register, looked at the clock on my desk, and entered it in the log: “10:10–13.2 regular — $5.”

Then I stood at the window and watched Chad Bascom’s car head north on the highway. There’s a straight stretch of almost a mile with good visibility, but even after he was out of sight I still stood there with my eyes on the white-lined asphalt. Going to the city, I thought, on his way to a good time — with Ruth, predictably, left behind.

I wasn’t really seeing the highway. My thoughts, as always after an encounter with Chad, turned inward. Gimpy he’d called me and gimpy he’d made me. Time had honed my anger to a bitter edge and my hatred now had a depth and hardness that would have been beyond my capabilities at the time it happened.

I was a year out of Ag College then and had put my savings into the old Mullen place. The mortgage payments were manageable, the spring weather benign, and a good crop would have permitted me to buy a tractor and modernize the kitchen. After the harvest Ruth Hadley and I were going to be married. We weren’t engaged — folks in our community don’t formalize things that way; but ever since high school it was taken for granted that as soon as I was able to make my own way and had a place to take her, it would be Ruthie and me for life. Nobody had to tell me how lucky I was.

Ruth wasn’t the prettiest girl in our class. Thelma Frankes, with her blonde curls and china-blue eyes, had that distinction. But in any group it was Ruth your eyes kept coming back to. Her dark brown hair had a sheen that caught the play of light and shadow. Her eyes were brown too and held a glint of humor that even her most serious mood couldn’t quite vanquish. What held attention, though, was her sheer aliveness, the sense she passed to all around of a deep and bubbling joy.

I never knew what she saw in me. I was that nice Sprague boy. Good old Nate Sprague. Steady, honest, hard-working, dependable. All the adjectives were dull. But Ruth looked at me as if we shared a wonderful secret. And I could never look at her without a sense of inner singing. Not in those days.

That June was the fifth reunion of our high-school graduating class. We met in the gym and danced to records and reminisced. There were platters loaded with sandwiches and a bowl of punch made from grape juice blended with ginger ale. Chad Bascom’s class was holding its tenth reunion in the cafeteria. Late in the evening he crossed the hall to the gym. I was dancing with Ruth when I noticed him first. He was standing near the door looking over the crowd with something in his expression that was like a cattleman at an auction. I wondered whom he was looking for and then forgot him until a few moments later I felt a sharp rap on my shoulder.

“Cutting in, partner,” he said.

That’s an alien custom in our county. When we bring a girl to a party we dance with her all evening. Or maybe, if two or three couples come together, we trade off a few dances within the group. But Chad was an older man with big-city ways. I looked at Ruth and she gave her little what’s-it-matter shrug, so I let him dance with her.

At the time it didn’t seem important. I leaned against the wall and watched them. Together they made a very pretty picture. Like him or not, no one could deny Chad’s handsomeness. He was big, well over six feet, with rock-hard muscles. And he was a far better dancer than I. Ruth’s natural rhythm matched his and they seemed to float across the floor as a single body.

“Better watch out, Nate.” A classmate stopped beside me, only half kidding. “That Bascom’s a grade-A wolf.”

I knew Chad’s reputation, but it didn’t worry me. I was too sure of Ruthie. When the dance ended he kept his arm around her and guided her to the refreshment table. I followed and saw him fill two paper cups from a pint bottle he took from his back pocket.

“This’ll put back our bounce,” he said.

“No, thank you,” she refused politely. “I’d rather have punch.”

“Punch with no punch in it.” He pushed his own brew toward her. “Come on, baby, live a little.”

I went to the bowl, ladled punch into a cup, and carried it to Ruth. Chad gave me an ugly look.

“Don’t crowd me, youngster,” he said. “I’m taking care of the lady.”

I tried to ignore him and offered her the cup. He knocked it out of my hand and purple drops spattered her white linen dress. She looked frightened. Chad. I realized, had already drunk most of his pint.

“Let’s go home, Nate,” she said.

“Yes, sure.” I moved to her side, but Chad put the flat of his hand on my chest and pushed me away.

“Stay out of this, small fry,” he warned. “I said I’d take care of the lady.” He took Ruth’s arm, tightening his hold as she tried to pull away. “I’ll see you home, baby, by the longest way round.”

I sprang at him with a fist that was aimed at his chin but landed on his shoulder. His surprise and my momentum nearly knocked him off balance, but my advantage was brief. He was four inches taller and forty pounds heavier. Almost before I knew it I was on the floor with a feeling that the room was rocking like a boat. He nudged my side with the steel-tipped toe of his boot.

“Get up, boy,” he ordered. “I got some more things to show you.”

I tried to raise my head and focus my eyes. Chad drew back his foot and kicked me with stunning force. The last thing I saw was his mouth stretched in an exultant grin.

I was in the hospital for five months. The hip bone was shattered and at first it looked as if I’d spend the rest of my life on crutches. Twice Ruth drove ninety miles to visit me. The first time I asked her not to come again. The second time I had the doctor tell her that seeing her was bad for my morale. That was true. I’d been shamed in front of her and I couldn’t stand being reminded of that or of all that I’d so nearly had and lost.

Later they moved me to a hospital in another state where there was a surgeon especially skilled in bone grafts. The operation was successful and I came home almost as good as new, except that my left leg was two inches shorter than my right.

While I was healing, my neighbors pitched in to save my crop. And the county sheriff had a long talk with Chad. He offered him a choice — pay my medical bills or face trial on assault charges. As a result I left the hospital in fair financial condition. But a farmer needs to work on two good legs. So I sold my land and made a down payment on this gas station. With the second story fixed up as a small apartment it makes a good enough living for a man alone.

Since Ruth and I weren’t formally engaged, there was nothing to break off. I kept away from her and when her mother called or her friends came round I told them it was over and Ruth should forget me. A woman like Ruth deserves a whole man and I just couldn’t take her pity. Chad moved quickly to fill the vacuum and those same friends described the smoothness of his operation.

When sober and trying, Chad could display great charm. He came to her first with profuse apologies for his behavior while under the influence. He let her know that he was taking care of my medical expenses, but he carefully neglected to mention Sheriff Crane’s alternative. He took her to movies and dances and was always a perfect gentleman. He won her mother with flattery and her younger brother with presents. He told her he loved her and needed her and wanted nothing in life so much as to make her happy.

Six months after I began living above my service station, Ruth became Mrs. Chad Bascom.

I tried not to hate him. A man shouldn’t be held responsible for what he does when he’s drunk. I had been a fool to stand up to him. He hadn’t taken Ruth from me, I’d given her up. Those were the things I told myself to hold down the bile that surged up at the thought of him. After a while I was able, most of the time, to put him out of my mind.

He seldom patronized my station and I seldom left the premises. It was painful going out among my old friends with things so changed and I had everything I needed right at home. The weekly bookmobile supplied plenty of reading material, and daily banter with my customers was sufficient social life. So I was a long time learning how things really were between Ruth and Chad.

I heard a few things. People who came by the station dropped hints that he was giving her a bad time. They told stories about his jealousy, how he raged if she smiled too brightly at another man. Some even said he beat her, that they’d seen bruises on her face and arms. But I know how easily gossip starts in a small town and how quickly it can grow. I didn’t encourage them to talk and dismissed their tales as puffed-up versions of normal crises in married life. Perhaps, I told myself, they were exaggerating on purpose, thinking it would cheer me to believe the marriage had turned sour. Then Ruth’s mother began to call me and I discovered the reports weren’t exaggerated at all.

Mrs. Hadley and I had been close in the early days. My own mother died when I was thirteen and in high school and when I was eating more dinners at the Hadley house than at home, I had started to call her Ma. She seemed to like it and joked sometimes about my being the first young man to choose a mother-in-law ahead of a wife.

For the first few years after the marriage I didn’t hear from her. Then Ruth’s brother went off to college and Mrs. Hadley’s arthritis got so bad she couldn’t go out much. I guess that gave us a special bond — both alone, both crippled. Anyway, she began to phone and tell me her worries. Mostly they had to do with Chad’s treatment of Ruth.

“Ruthie doesn’t tell me half of it,” she said. “She tries to pretend everything’s all right. But I’ve seen her eyes red and puffy with crying. Sometimes there are black and blue marks she can’t hide. And I’ve heard him yell at her as if she were his servant. Remember, Nathan, how bright and pretty she always was? You wouldn’t know her now.”

Others too spoke of these changes. Ruth had lost her looks and her vitality, and she seemed to care little about her appearance. Chad no longer had cause for jealousy, but that didn’t improve his temper. Instead he berated her for being such a poor stick that no other man would look at her. It was as if he’d set out deliberately to break her spirit and then, having succeeded, made the deterioration that he caused another mark against her. He used it too as excuse for infidelity.

He drove often to the city, sometimes stayed two or three days. The rumor was he had a woman there. On his return he’d be more cruel than ever to Ruth, as if that was a way of working off his guilt.

I didn’t want to hear these things, but I couldn’t endure not knowing either. One of the worst times was after her miscarriage. She was in the hospital for nearly a week and Mrs. Hadley was barely coherent when she told me about it.

“He hit her in the stomach,” she sobbed. “A woman four months pregnant! Now she can’t have children, the doctor says. But maybe that’s a blessing. It’s bad enough what he’s done to my girl, but to see an innocent little one at his mercy — who could bear it? You should have married her, Nathan.” It was the nearest she ever came to reproach me. “When you turned away from her he was there. And none of us saw the brute inside him.”

Ruth’s friends tried to persuade her to leave him. Some thought he should be sent to jail and Sheriff Crane went to the hospital to ask if she was willing to bring charges. But she gave everyone the same answer. Chad was her husband. She’d promised to honor and obey him for better or for worse and she was bound, whatever he did, by that promise. If there’s a thin line between a saint and a fool, Ruth Bascom walked very close to that line.

A peculiar thing happened after that. Chad began coming more and more often to my service station. Some perverse streak seemed to make him want to draw me into the orbit of their discontent. The purchase of a few gallons of gas bought him the right to rail at his wife’s misery and my helplessness.

“You ought to give me a discount,” he said once. “That gimp leg of yours cost me a packet. Maybe you think your girl was my payoff. Boy, was I ever fooled! You should come out some time and see the sourpuss bag of bones she’s turned into. Could it be you knew something I didn’t?”

I learned to say nothing, not even to look at him, just to fill his tank, take his money, and pretend not to hear his taunts. But they got under my skin, every one of them, and grated long after he was gone. Sometimes he thought up small meannesses, like buying just one gallon of gas and asking me to check the battery and all the tires. He watched with a sneering smile as I hobbled and bent my way around the car. “Shake that short leg,” he jeered. “I’ve places to go even if you don’t.” I gritted my teeth and told myself that if he got the spite out of his system here, maybe he’d take less home to Ruth.

So I felt relieved, that Sunday morning, because he was in and out of the station in such a hurry and with so little to say. I serviced three more cars before going upstairs to make myself a liverwurst sandwich and reheat the coffee. I had just returned to the office when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Hadley.

“Oh, Nathan!” Her voice was strange, low and breathy as if each word was pulled from a deep pit. “Nathan, is that you?”

“Yes, Ma. Is something wrong?”

“You haven’t heard yet? Oh, Nathan!”

“What is it? Has something happened to Ruth?”

“My poor girl!” It was a drawn-out wail. “Nathan, he’s killed her.”

“My God!” Blood rushed to my head and I grasped the edge of the desk to keep from falling. “How — what—”

My disturbance neutralized hers. She told me the story in a fiat tone as if it had grown stale with repetition.

“I didn’t go to church this morning, my arthritis was that bad. Instead I listened to Pastor Meyer on television. His text was ‘Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice’s sake,’ and it was beautiful. He could have been talking about Ruthie, I thought, and as soon as he finished I called to tell her what he said. But we only talked for two or three minutes when she said, ‘I’ve got to go now, Ma. Thanks for calling,’ in that scared voice she uses when he comes into the room and catches her at something he doesn’t like. ‘I’ve got to go now, Ma. Thanks for calling.’ Those are the last words I’ll ever hear her say.”

“What did he do to her?” My fingers ached from the tight grip I had on the phone.

“Maybe she told him about Pastor Meyer’s sermon.” She went on as if she hadn’t heard my question. “Maybe she repeated the part about people who suffer in doing their duty and earn a high place in heaven. That might have set off one of his rages. He doesn’t like her talking to me anyway. I shouldn’t have called. It’s my fault what happened.”

“What did he do to her?”

“Joachim and Kitty found her.” Kitty is Ruth’s cousin, hut they were as close as sisters. “They drove round that way, thinking if he wasn’t home she might like to go to church with them. When they didn’t see his car, they went up to the back door. They saw her through the window. She was dead, Nathan. She was already dead. He’d hit her — like he was always hitting her — but this time he broke her neck.”

“He was here, Ma,” I said the first thing that came into my head, trying to shut out the picture her words made. “He stopped here for gas, then drove off toward the city.”

“They’ll catch him, Nathan. They’ll bring him back and make him pay for what he’s done.”

“Yes, Ma,” I said, “he’ll pay.”

For a long time after she hung up I sat and stared at the phone as if it might have more to tell me. Dead, I thought. Ruth is dead. All our dreams, all we planned to do together, and this is how it ends. But our dreams and plans were twenty years out of date and what had ended for her was pain and humiliation and despair. I couldn’t, in honesty, mourn her death. On an obscure impulse, seeking a share in her last moments, I went to my bookshelf, pulled out my Bible, and opened it to the Sermon on the Mount.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit... Blessed are the meek... Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Ruth was poor in spirit. Ruth was meek. Ruth was persecuted. She lived by those words and she died by them. Had she, at the last, found comfort in her mother’s quotation from the TV preacher’s sermon?

I put the Bible down and my thoughts turned from Ruth to Chad. Now I understood his haste, why he didn’t play his usual games with me. He had just killed her and was making his escape. His tank was low and he couldn’t risk running out of gas on the road. If I had looked at him I might have read what he had done in his face. How long was it, I wondered, between the murder and the time I saw him?

The county paper was on my table. It comes out on Thursdays and carries the television schedule for the week. I spread it out and ran my eyes up the Sunday column till they reached Pastor Meyer’s name. He was on, it told me, from 9:30 to 10:00 A.M. So Mrs. Hadley had called Ruth at ten o’clock. And Chad had driven into my station a few minutes later.

It took several seconds for the two facts to meet in my mind and register. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t have happened that way, it absolutely couldn’t. The Bascom place is twenty-five miles from here over a very rough and winding road. The best driver, the fastest driver, can’t make it in less than forty minutes. Chad must have left home before the TV program even began.

So Mrs. Hadley had to be mistaken. She’d listened to some other preacher. I looked again at the newspaper schedule. There’s only one channel that reaches our area. Its first Sunday program, from 8:00 to 9:00 A.M., was made up of children’s cartoons. From 9:00 to 9:30 the Department of Agriculture had a special report. Pastor Meyer’s sermon was the only one Ruth’s mother could have heard. And my own log proved that Chad left my station with a filled tank at 10:10.

He must have gone back, I reasoned. That’s the only answer. He couldn’t have been home when Mrs. Hadley phoned Ruth. After he left here he must have remembered something he’d forgotten and circled back. He found Ruth doing something he disapproved — like getting ready to go to church — and struck her down.

It was the only answer, but it wasn’t a good one. I remember how long I’d stood at the window after Chad was out of sight, speeding toward the city. The only road from the highway to his house is the one that goes by my station. And I’m conditioned to be aware of every passing car. How could he have turned round, come back, and gone down that road without my knowing? Especially on Sunday morning when traffic is so light. It could only have happened when I was servicing another car, perhaps with my head under the hood.

That theory lasted a short while, till the Kroehler brothers brought in their Ford pickup. It took only 4.4 gallons, so I knew they’d come to find out if I’d heard the news and how I was taking it. I said yes, I’d heard, and didn’t tell them any more. But that didn’t stop them from sharing the news they’d gathered elsewhere.

Jointly the Kroehlers play the role of town crier. They’d talked to Joachim and learned, among other things, that it was 10:40 when he and Kitty got to the Bascom house. He was sure of the time because the church service began at 11:00 and they were worried about being late. So there was no way that Chad could have made it home ahead of Joachim and Kitty.

For a moment I toyed with the notion that he’d left her dying but not dead, that she’d lived a half hour or so, long enough to receive her mother’s call. One of the Kroehlers answered that question without my asking it.

“She died instantly, the doc said,” he reported. “Didn’t suffer at all, Nate, if that’s any consolation to you.”

“And Chad will get his just deserts,” his brother added. “The sheriff ought to be back with him pretty soon.”

“They’ve caught him?” I asked.

“Sure. He has a woman in the city. The sheriff’s known about her for a long time — he doesn’t miss many tricks, old Crane doesn’t — and he figured that’s who he’d run to. The sheriff phoned the city police, they went round and picked him up, and Crane and his deputy drove in to get him. Reckon Chad thought he had more time to plan a getaway. Ordinarily it might have been a day or so before anybody found Ruth’s body. Joachim and Kitty stopping by was his bad luck.”

I didn’t contradict him and a few minutes later they drove away. I went into the office, entered their 4.4 gallons in the log, and gazed at the earlier entry. “10:10–13.2 regular — $5.” Chad hadn’t killed Ruth and the proof was right in front of me. I realized then that what had borne me up, what had made Ruth’s death a tolerable fact, was the belief that it carried the seeds of Chad’s destruction. He had at last done something for which he would be punished — punished to the full extent of the law.

Now that prop was pulled from under me. Someone else had murdered Ruth. A stranger, perhaps a tramp. I didn’t care who had done it. All that mattered was that Chad was not guilty and would go free. He was probably lording it over the sheriff right now, showing him up in front of the city police as a hick who went chasing after the wrong man while the right one got away.

I was surprised, therefore, about an hour later to get a call from Sheriff Crane.

“Mrs. Hadley says she called you about Ruth,” he began. “A bad business, Nate.”

“Yes.”

“You told her Chad got gas at your place?”

“That’s right.”

“Good. I’ll be right over to talk to you. Your evidence should fill in the last gap in our case against him.”

“You’ve arrested Chad?”

“Just locked him in the jail.” There was grim satisfaction in his tone. “His next stop will be the state prison.”

“You still think he did it?”

“Not a doubt in the world.”

“But he — he hasn’t confessed, has he?”

“Chad? Not a chance! He denied everything and then clammed up. You don’t catch him doing anything to make my job easier. See you in a few minutes, Nate.”

So Chad was in jail charged with murder. At least he’d have a bad hour or so. Until the sheriff heard my story and went back to set him free. Was I the only one who’d seen him, the only one who could swear he was miles away from home at the time of the murder? God in heaven, I prayed, don’t play that kind of trick on me. Don’t make me the instrument of Chad’s freedom.

Yet there it was in my logbook, in black and white, in my own handwriting — the incontestable proof of his innocence.

But he’s not innocent! The protest was thunder in my brain. He’s black with guilt. What if he didn’t strike the final, fatal blow? What he did to Ruth, day in, day out, was worse than murder. He deserves a murderer’s penalty. Everybody in town will agree to that. I’d be nobody’s hero if I saved him. So why do it? Why should I give Chad an ironclad alibi?

The more I thought about it, the more right it seemed. Chad had been arrested for Ruth’s murder. Without my evidence he would be tried and convicted — not a shadow of doubt about it. All I had to do was fudge the time a little, say it was later when he came to my station. Or perhaps it would be best to be vague. Might have been 10:30, I’d say, or maybe 11:00. It’s quiet here on Sunday morning, so I don’t pay much attention to what time it is. That way I wouldn’t need to perjure myself, probably wouldn’t even be called as a witness. Chad would be convicted without my saying a word.

I closed the log and pushed it under the order forms in the bottom drawer of my desk. No one even knew I kept a log. There was no reason for anyone else to see it. Twenty years, I told myself. Twenty years since he crippled me and stole my girl. But I mustn’t think of that. Not about my own injury. I was seeking retribution for Ruth. That mustn’t be tainted with thoughts of personal revenge.

Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay. The long-forgotten text came unwanted to my mind. But the Lord, I answered, uses human agents. And there’s justice, the purest kind of justice, in convicting Chad for Ruth’s murder. The person who killed her only stopped her breathing, her suffering. The life that person took today ended many years ago and Chad was the destroyer. He deserves to pay for that and I have no obligation to testify in his defense.

There had been, I realized suddenly, something odd in my conversation with the sheriff. It was Mrs. Hadley who told him about Chad’s stopping here for gas. Chad hadn’t mentioned it. Why not, I wondered. Ruth was alive when he left home and he knows that I can help establish the time. Why hadn’t he said so?

The answer to that was easy. He knows how much I hate him. He’s sure I’ll never lift a finger to help him. He didn’t send the sheriff to me because he was afraid I’d seize the chance to lie and make it worse for him. I’d only be doing what Chad expects, acting as he would if he were in my place.

With that thought I knew exactly what I had to do. One Chad Bascom in this world is enough. I could not — no matter how righteous the words in which I cloaked my motive — remake myself in his image. When the sheriff drove up to the door I was waiting with the logbook in my hand.

He sat in my office and went over it again and again, as if I might, in repeating it, change my story. The logbook lay open on the desk between us.

“You’re sure that’s the record of Chad’s buy?” Crane’s index finger moved on to the line below. “Not this one? The later time would fit.”

“I’m positive he’s the one at ten past ten,” I said wearily. “I remember his snapping that $5 bill at me. And the 10:55 entry shows a quart of oil. Chad got nothing but gas.”

“That pulls it apart. I checked the television station to confirm the time and text of Pastor Meyer’s sermon. He talked about blessing the persecuted and went off the air at 9:58. Ruth was alive and talking to her mother at ten o’clock. So your story gives Chad an airtight alibi.”

His tone was angry, blaming me for the flaw in his case. “When it comes to credibility he couldn’t have a better witness. His woman would protect him, he might have gotten a pal to lie for him. He could even bribe a stranger. But you, Nate — when you testify on Chad’s side it has to be the truth.”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s the truth.”

“Funny thing,” Crane went on. “Chad’s been taken off the hook by the testimony of the three people who’d most like to make him pay for what he did to Ruth — her mother, her cousin Kitty, and you.”

And me, I added mentally. A sanctimonious fool who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

“Nothing left but to go back to the jail and turn him loose.” His lips twisted in a humorless smile. “With apologies yet.”

The bell rang and I left him sitting there while I went out to fill another tank. When I came back he was pacing the length of the office with an air of great impatience. I wondered why he hadn’t left.

“Go on.” He waved me to the desk. “Write up your sale.”

I did so and he moved round beside me. “Is that” — he pointed to the desk clock — “your only timepiece?”

“I’ve a watch upstairs. I don’t wear it when I’m working. That clock keeps good time.”

“Okay, let me see what you just wrote.”

Puzzled, I pushed the log toward him and let him read the last line: “5:20–11.3 gallons high test — $4.55.”

“Then it’s all right.” He let out his breath in a long sigh. “We’ve got Chad tied up in a neat package.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This is the last Sunday in April, Nate. Daylight Saving Time began this morning, but you didn’t turn your clock forward.” He thrust his left arm in front of my face, pushed back the sleeve. His watch said 6:20. “Chad was here not at 10:10, but at 11:10 — one hour later than you thought.”