Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1947-01-03
CHAPTER XVI

she wasn't alOne?' Bob 1erked
her up sharply.
Miss Martha shook her head.
'Mr. MacTavish was with her."
she said, and now Megan held her
breath and her teeth were clencbed.
"He left few minutes after got
there. They had been quarreling.
could only hear word or two, but
could tell, just looking in at the
window, that Mr.. MacTavish was
very angry and that Mrs. Stevenson
was laughing at him."
Megan could see the picture as
though she herself had stood outside
that window, and it made her shud-
der. Yet here was the thing that
had worried her father-an alibi.
She drew breath of sharp relief.
II waited until he had gone" Miss
Martha went on YEARLY. "Then I
knocked and she opened the door.
She was surprised to see me, and
not very-pleasant. I tried to tell
her why I had come, but she only
laughed. She said that there must
be lot of truth in the stories about
Tom and Miss MacTavish or he and
would not have been so alarmed
and she added that she knew that
Lefty was-out of her midland
that she was menace to the neigh
borhood. She said she intended to
start movement to have her-com-
mitted-" Her voice broke, and aft
er superhuman effort at control,
she said thinly, "And SOL killed
her."
It was once more Bob who broke
the tense, breathless pause. He still
sat on the corner of the desk, and
he scrubbed out the glowing tip of
his cigarette as he spoke, his eyes
on the crushed cigarette in the old
glass ashtray, his voice very quiet
and gentle, "The truth is, Miss
Evans, that you spoke to Mrs. Ste
venson, and she answered you about
as you have said. You did not kill
her-but when you turned to leave
the house, you were astounded to see
your sister in the doorway behind
you, and realized that she had fol-
lowed you. And it was, in reality,
your sister, not you, who killed Mrs.
Stevenson"
Bob sighed. He ran his hands
through his hair and stood up, white
and tired, haggard almost, as though
the long scene had been almost as
much of an ordeal for him as for
the broken, suddenly old woman be-
fore them.
"But how could you possibly
know" Megan demanded of Bob.
It was late in the afternoon of an
extremely hectic day after all the
loose ends and the final details of
the tragic story had been cleared
up. Miss Martha and Tom had de-
parted on their sad errand of "tak-
ing Lefty home" to lay beside the
little son who had never lived.
Megan had asked Bob and Lau-
renee to stay for supper and they
had accepted gratefully. And now
they were in the living room, with
Jim listening and looking on, with
drawn and pale, but genial and
pleasant when spoken to.
II didn't know, of course" Bob
answered frankly. "It was just that
well, call it bunch, what you
will. Only I kept hearing something
in Miss Martha's words that didn't
quite ring true. What she was say
ing would be completely sincere and
convincing. Then something would
creep into the story, nothing I could
set my finger on, but it was there
and could sense it. Especially that
very elaborate ruse of hiding the
knife. If it had really been a knife
out of the kitchen of her own home,
she might have hidden it very care
fully about the house. But to get
herself up like particularly terri
flying ghost and 60 sneaking out into
the night to hide it in the one place
she felt sure would never be found
well, that had me puzzled"
IT thought of that. too, of course"
Laurence contributed.
"Then when she began to talk
about going to Mrs. Stevenson's-
remember she mentioned the short
cut through the woods? Yet she had
been at some pains to assure US
that her sisters strength was not
sufficient for her to walk to the Ste
venson place. But if there was a
short cut through the woods, and if
her sister, in one of her periods of
lucidity, had followed her and over
heard her quarrel with the Steven
son woman, and the sister had been
frightened, excited, as she most GER
tainly would have been-do you see?
The pattern is the sister doing the
deed-not Miss Martha. saw it
suddenly, and-well, you know what