The Glass Village

“Well, yesterday at the party I fin’ly talked her into lettin’ me cover the market value of the pictures. So today I ran over to Cudbury to see Lyman Hinchley ’bout an up-to-date comprehensive policy plan, and I got all the figgers and come back here to put ’em to her. That’s when I found her layin’ here like you see.”

“What time was that, Burney?”

“’Bout a minute or two before I phoned you, Judge.”

“We’d better call the coroner in Cudbury.”

“No need to call him,” said Burney Hackett quickly. “I already phoned Doc Cushman in Comfort while I was waitin’ for you to get here.”

“But Cushman’s merely the coroner’s deputy for Comfort, Burney,” said Judge Shinn patiently. “This is a criminal death, directly in the county coroner’s jurisdiction. Cushman will merely have to call Barnwell in Cudbury.”

“Cushman ain’t callin’ nobody,” said Hackett. “I didn’t tell him nothin’ but to get over here right away.”

“Why not, for heaven’s sake?” The Judge was exasperated.

“Just didn’t have a mind to.” The underdeveloped chin suddenly jutted.

Judge Shinn stared at him. As he stared, a wailing scream began that grew and grew until it filled the house.

It was the village fire siren.

“Who set that off?”

“I just phoned Peter Berry to send Calvin Waters over to the firehouse and start it goin’. That’ll bring everybody in.”

“It certainly will!” The Judge turned abruptly to the kitchen door. “Excuse me, Burney...” The chinless man did not budge. “Burney, get out of my way. I have to phone the state police, the sheriff—”

“Won’t be necessary, Judge,” said Hackett.

“You’ve already called?”

“Nope.”

“Burn Hackett, don’t fuddle me,” exclaimed the Judge. “I’m not exactly myself just now. This is a murder case. The proper authorities—”

“I’m the proper authority in Shinn Corners, Judge,” said Burney Hackett, “now, ain’t I? Duly elected constable. The law states I may call the county sheriff to my aid, when necessary. Well, it ain’t necessary. Soon’s my posse forms, we go huntin’.”

“But the summoning of a posse comitatus is the function of—” Judge Shinn stopped. “Hunting? For whom, Burney? What are you holding back?”

Hackett blinked. “Not holdin’ nothin’ back, Judge. Ain’t had a chance. Prue Plummer phoned me here soon’s I hung up after talkin’ to you. Says she mistook your two rings for her three. As usual. Anyways, she listened in. Well, Prue had somethin’ to tell me before she began phonin’ the news around the Corners. A tramp stopped at her back door ’bout a quarter of two today, she says. Dang’rous-lookin’ furriner, spoke a broken English. She couldn’t hardly understand him, Prue says, but she figgered he was after a handout. She sent him packin’. But here’s the thing.” Hackett cleared his throat. “Prue says she watched this tramp walk up Shinn Road and go round Aunt Fanny’s to the back.”

“Tramp?” said the Judge.

He glanced at Johnny’s back. Johnny was looking out the north window at Aunt Fanny Adams’s barn and lean-to and the Isbel cornfield beyond.

“Tramp,” nodded Constable Hackett. “There’s nobody in Shinn Corners’d beat in the head of Aunt Fanny Adams. You know that, Judge. It was that tramp murdered her, and it’s a cinch he can’t have got far on foot in this pourin’-down rain.”

“Tramp,” the Judge said again.

The siren shut off in mid-scream, leaving a shimmer of silence. Then there was confusion in the garden and the road. The swishy movement of feet in the kitchen, the creak of the swinging door, a wedge of eyes.

Judge Shinn suddenly pushed the door in and he and Burney Hackett went into the kitchen. Johnny heard angry female murmurs and the old man saying something in a neighborly voice.

The rain was still driving hard in crowded slanting silver lines, putting up a screen beyond the window through which the cornfield wavered. Water was pouring off the Adams barn in the back yard and the pitched roof of the small lean-to attached to it, a two-sided affair open at the front and rear. Johnny could see through to the stone wall of the Isbel field as if the lean-to were a picture frame.

He turned back to the painting on the easel.

She had caught in her primitive, meticulous style all the raging contempt of nature. The dripping barn, the empty lean-to, every stone in the wall, every tall tan withered stalk in the rain-lashed Isbel field, every crooked weeping headstone in the cemetery corner, cowered under the ripped and bleeding sky.

And Johnny looked down at the crumpled bones, and he remembered the dark gray face, the timid, burning eyes, the green velour hat, the rope-tied satchel, the spurting shoes as their feet fled in the downpour... and he thought, You were a very great artist, and a beautiful old woman, and there’s no more sense in your death than in my life.

Then the Judge and Samuel Sheare came in with a staring man between them, and the Judge said in the gentlest of voices, I’m sorry, Ferriss, that death had to come to her this way; and the man shut his eyes and turned away.