Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

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.