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

“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.”