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'Maybe she was planning on getting rid of the body. Burying it. Throwing it in the river. Burning it in the dump.'

'Thelma Shirley had a bad back', the sheriff argued, 'she couldn't have managed that body by herself, and she would have known that she couldn't.'

'Maybe she was gone say robbers did it', suggested Barnes. The sheriff shook his head again.

Then people would have said, "Where was you when the robbers come, Thelma? And why didn't they wake up little Mary? And what robbers carry around ice picks for weapons?'''

The men were silent a moment, and then the deputy spoke again. 'Sheriff', he said.

'What, Barnes?'

'I don't think it makes sense.'

'No', Garrett reluctantly agreed, 'it don't make no sense.'

At this juncture, Gussie appeared in the doorway of the room.

She nodded to the two policemen, and said, 'Well, guess I ought to clean up a little in here. Miz Dorothy's on her way down here. She's the only family they had around here, Mr James's sister, and I don't think she's gone want to see all that blood.'

The sheriff looked at Gussie. 'Was they getting along, Gussie?'

She shrugged. 'Not no worse than ever before.'

The two policemen shook their heads, and left the room. Gussie opened the windows of the room, reaching across the bed so that she wouldn't track through the blood. The sound of the soft rain across the lawn was comforting.

On the side of the bed where the bodies had lain, Gussie dragged a throw rug out of her way, and then pulled the bedspread off. Part of the fringe had been stained with blood, and the whole thing would have to be sent to the cleaners. She carried the spread into the kitchen and returned with a large bundle of thick rags and cloths with which to wipe up the blood. She knelt at the edge of the stain, and had just begun to sop up what was nearest her when her eye was caught by something just underneath the edge of the bed. She leaned forward, resting a few fingers on the spilled blood, and retrieved anecklace, a piece of jewellery she had never seen before. It was caked with blood. She took it to the bathroom, put it under running water, and wiped it clean. She examined it carefully as she dried it, and then brought it back into the bedroom. She stared at it a moment, and then dropped it on to the dresser shelf. It wasn't any more strange finding the necklace than it had been to discover the corpses of her two employers that morning.

As she continued to mop up the biood, she wondered who was going to pay her for the morning's work.

Gussie had only just finished setting the bedroom to rights, wiping up the blood, mopping and cleaning the floor, dragging a rug from the guest bedroom in to cover the spot, changing the bedspread and sheets, before Dorothy and Malcolm Sims arrived from Montgomery. Dorothy was James's sister, a woman Gussie didn't care any more for than she had for Thelma Shirley. Gu ssi e had worked fear the family fas' years, but she and Dorothy had never gotten along very well, and Dorothy had always translated this dislike into a mistrust of Gussie's honesty. She told anyone in Pine Cone who would listen that Gussie was robbing her brother blind; the town, to its credit, believed not a word of it and for the most part cared no more for Dorothy Sims than Gussie did. It had been a relief when she had married Malcolm Sims and moved to Montgomery. The only thing that people had regretted about that marriage was the contemplation of what would be Malcolm's lot. Everyone was surprised to arrive at the wedding ceremony and find a pleasant, gentle man. There were two questions that were asked about him: how had be been roped into it all? and had anyone had the decency to warn him against what he was getting himself into?

At any rate, Dorothy and Malcolm Sims had disappeared from Pine Cone, making only sporadic return visits. More often, they entertained James and Thelma and little Mary in Montgomery, since of course the capital possessed many more attractions than the small town. But now they were back for a couple of days, and on a very melancholy occasion. What the Shirley s had possessed was left to Mary, and, Dorothy and Malcolm had been designated her guardipns. James Shirley had been a policeman, and therefore hsd realised the suddenness and arbitrariness of death; he had thought it wise to provide for the child.

In the afternoon, when the Simses arrived in Pine Cone, it was still raining. They stopped by the funeral home to make sure that everything had been taken care of there. Malcolm looked at the large pile of broken wooden crates in the back of the establishment, wondering at the number of coffins that had recently arrived. Dorothy briefly conferred with the funeral director, and determined peremptorily on closed coffins, though she was assured that the wounds in the two corpses could be effectively disguised. 'Well', said the undertaker, 'we just make sure that James is lying with his right side to the congregation and that way won't nobody be tempted to look in his ear, and then we just have to find Thelma a high-necked dress.'

'Closed coffins for murders', snapped Dorothy Sims, 'don't want to have gawkers sticking their fingers in the holes to see how deep they were. And you know as well as I do that that's just what people around here are liable to do.'

'Well', said the undertaker softly, seeing that Dorothy was taking this matter-of-fact view, 'are you going to have the services together, seeing it was a murder? And do you want them in the same plot - or maybe at opposite ends of the cemetery?'

' 'Course not!' Dorothy cried. 'That woman may have killed James, but they were husband and wife right to the very end, and there's no sense separating them in death. Murder's a bad thing, but there's no use being vindictive. I didn't like the woman when she w as alive, and that' s enough as far as I'm concerned.'

Dorothy Sims was motivated perhaps more by considerations of the greater cost of two funerals and two burial places for her brother and sister-in-law, than by any real forgiveness in her heart for what Thelma Shirley had done.

After leaving the funeral parlour, Dorothy and Malcolm went to her brother's home. Dorothy stepped next door to speak to the Presbyterian minister and asked him to keep little Mary for a while longer, while she and Malcolm went over the house. It was necessary to make sure that everything was out of the way; the child ought not to be upset.

Little Mary came out of the den, where she had been watching the Saturday afternoon horror film on television, and spoke briefly to her aunt.

'You all right, Mary?' said Dorothy Sims.

'I sneezed three times, 'cause Gussie dragged me across that wet grass, and she pulled me right out through the window.'

Dorothy thought it best not to mention the deaths to her niece, and therefore said only, 'You wrap up good then, because it would be a fool thing to catch pneumonia in the middle of summer, you hear me?'

The child nodded, and Dorothy took her leave, perfunctorily thanking the minister for his assistance. He faltered a few words of condolence, but Dorothy shot a quick look at the child, and shook her head for him to say nothing more. It was actually she who didn't want to be bothered with condolences.

When she went into her brother's house she found Malcolm hovering in the doorway of the bedroom, anxious to see the place where the murder had occurred, but reluctant to step inside. 'I thought I'd wait for you, before I went in.'

'That Gussie's not here, is she?' demanded Dorothy.

'No', said the husband, 'I sent her on home. There wasn't anything more she could do, I s'pose. I paid her for the day.'

'I don't know why you bothered to do that, Malcolm! Once she found the bodies, I just know she took enough for two months' pay! I'm glad we didn't get here any later than we did, 'cause we might not have found the house here.'

Then, without hesitation, £)orothy stepped into the room. She pulled open the closet doors, and looked briefly into them. She pulled out each drawer in the dresser and the chest of drawers, and then set herself at Thelma's dressing table, and began to go through the cases and contents in earnest.

Malcolm was still at the door. 'Dorothy', he said, 'can't you wait till after the funeral? It was your own brother and he died in this room, right under that rug you're sitting on. I can see the stains, 'cause blood don't come up that easy.'

'He was in the bed, Malcolm. That's Thelma's blood. And I'm not going to wait for the funeral. I want to make sure that Gussie didn't take anything.'

'How would you know if she did?' her husband asked.

Dorothy did not answer, but was examining each piece of jewellery in the left-hand drawer. After a moment, without looldng up, she asked: 'Malcolm, you think James's pants'11 fit you?'

This time it was Malcolm who did not answer. He was displeased that his wife reacted so casually to what had happened only the night before.

'You look in that closet', she said, choosing not to recognise his reticence and displeasure. 'Take out a pair, and try them on. If they fit all right, we'll take 'em all back with us.'

Malcolm grimaced and stepped gingerly into the room. He moved swiftly to the closet, pulled out a pair as quickly as he could, and then retreated into the hallway.

Dorothy glanced up, and saw her husband, standing just outside the door of the room, removing his pants.

'Why you doing that out in the hall?' she asked.

'I don't know', he said, 'I just don't think it would be respectful to the dead, if I was to take off my pants in there.'

Dorothy laughed briefly, and then said, 'I know she didn't take any of the silver, 'cause she knows I'd miss it. I know every piece that Mama left to James. But I just bet she went through eveiy piece of jewellery that Thelma had.'

From the hallway, Malcolm said, 'What about that piece right there on top? She didn't take that.' Dorothy looked down at the dresser shelf. There lay the amulet.

'Well, that's 'cause it's not
gaudy
enough! Coloured folks like to
sparkle,
Malcolm!'

"That's a terrible thing to say, Dorothy! And you know it's not true. I'm glad nobody heard you say that.'

'Well', said Dorothy, 'I'm not gone give her the chance to get it now either', and with that, she picked the amulet up, and dropped it into her dress pocket.

Dorothy Sims turned and looked at her husband in the doorway of the room. He was standing uncomfortably in a pair of James Shirley's pants. They're real tight', he said.

From the Shirley house, Sheriff Garrett had telephoned Malcolm Sims in Montgomery, and told him what had happened. Garrett explained to his deputy, 'She was James's sister, and it ought to be broke to her as easy as possible.' But the truth was that the sheriff just didn't want to talk to Dorothy at all. She was a difficult woman at the best of times and goodness rally knew what she would say to him if he tried to tell her that her brother James had just been ice-picked to death by his wife. Let Sims do it, the sheriff thought, he ought to be used to it by now anyway. It was a bad business all around.

The news lurched through Pine Cone. As soon as the Presbyterian minister's wife had prepared little Mary a tall glass of coffee that was mostly sugar and milk, she ran into her laundry room, closed the door carefully, and plied the pink Princess-phone extension to all her friends. She had climbed on top of the washing machine and was watching out a little ventilation window all the while that Garrett and Barnes were inspecting the scene of the crime. In a short time the details that die minister's wife had got from Gussie, as well as her firsthand report, had taken care of Pine Cone north of Commercial Boulevard.

In the meantime the sheriff and his deputy were having a melancholy breakfast in the diner near the train tracks, and here the two friendly waitresses quizzed the two men on their dour looks. They received the information on the murder-suicide with little endearing screams and great rolling of mascaraed eyes. They distributed the news freely among all the customers who came in afterwards, and this provided for the part of Pine Cone below Commercial Boulevard.

When Gussie walked home in the middle of the morning, she was stopped and asked by half a dozen people whether she had finally got fed up with Miz Thelma, or whether Miz Thelma had finally got fed up with her. She replied, 'I been fed up since the day that Miz Thelma married Mr James, and I wasn't fired 'cause there's nobody else in town would work for that woman, and she knew it - but
you are right.
I ain't got no job no more .. .' And she went on to explain why; the news spread on the black side of Burnt Com Creek as well.

A number of people arrived at the munitions factory not having heard of the deaths, but they were informed quickly enough. Those who had learned of it, at most, fifteen minutes before, invariably cried, 'Ohhhhh! You mean you hadn't heard? It's all over town! Nobody's talking about anything else! The seven dead Coppages is old hat!'

Becca and Sarah were a little late for work, and got into their places no more than ten seconds before the conveyer belt started up, and because it was impossible to hear over the noise of it, they discovered nothing until coffee break at ten o'clock. Even before the belt had stopped vibrating the woman on the line next to Becca stood up, leaned over the partition and cried, 'Wasn't it
just awful i'

'What?' cried Becca, for she knew by the tone of the woman's voice that something spectacular had occurred.