Free 13 French Street by Gil Brewer Page A

beat at Petra with the cane, her sly face twisted, eager. They tore at each other before the open casement window, then the old woman’s body sprawled out toward the screen.
    “Damn you, damn you!” Petra whispered savagely, striking at her again.
    Verne’s mother moaned and moaned. The cane fell, drummed against the rug. I moved then, fast, but I moved too late.
    “Catch her!” I said. Petra’s moving figure was between me and the old woman. The screen ripped, sang out. I heard Petra’s breath indrawn on a gasp. A dry noise, almost like wind in an alley, reached us, followed by a faint thud.
    Petra whirled and leaned against the window, wide-eyed, her breasts heaving. “Alex!” she said. “Alex!”
    I grabbed her arm, hurled her across the room, looked out and down through the torn hole in the screen. The screen was rusted, old. Verne’s mother was sprawled out in a mass of gray on the flagstones of the patio, two stories below.
    A quiet wind rustled in the curtains.
    “She’s surely dead,” I said.
    As I turned, Petra began to scream. She screamed three times. Then she stopped and looked at me.
    Tomorrow and tomorrow and … tomorrow.

Chapter Eleven
    “W HAT ’ S the matter?” It was Verne. I heard him running down the hall, his bare feet pounding.
    “Quick,” I said to Petra. “Cover yourself!” I started for the door. Verne burst into the room in his pajamas, white ones. I whirled toward Petra. She was on the other side of her unmade bed with a flame-colored robe wrapped about her.
    “What’s the matter?” Verne repeated. “Who screamed?” His hair was mussed, his face haggard.
    I started to say something, but Petra interrupted.
    She pointed toward the window. “I was just getting up when she came in,” she lied. Her hands went to her head. “Oh, God, Verne! She reeled against the window. Alex beat you here.”
    “What? What window? Who?” He stepped farther into the room and his mother’s cane rolled beneath his foot. He stared at it, slowly awakening. His gaze moved to the window to his left, to the torn screen. He leaped over, stuck his head through the rent. I saw his shoulders shake.
    Petra looked at me with genuine fright in her eyes.
    Verne kept on looking down at the patio.
    Petra said, “She just went all of a sudden, Verne. She just fell, she just reeled toward the window. I don’t know what she wanted. She didn’t say anything. She just—she just—she just—”
    It was a great act. She sat on the bed and began sobbing uncontrollably.
    Verne turned slowly, stared at me, then at Petra. He suddenly ran from the room. I heard his feet pounding on the stairs.
    Petra wheeled on the bed. “Go with him, Alex!” she whispered. “Hurry! It will look bad if you don’t!”
    “You pushed her,” I said. “You murdered her.”
    “No, no, no, don’t be a fool. Hurry downstairs with him, Alex. Hurry, I say!”
    I stared a moment longer at her beautiful face and felt the flames creeping up around my legs. Then I went after Verne.
    He stood in the patio staring down at his mother. It took but a glance to know she was dead. Her head was shattered like an orange. She had landed flat on her back. Her face was in repose. Her right leg had flapped beneath her, and the toe of her right shoe projected over her right shoulder.
    Neither of us spoke. Verne seemed unable to tear his gaze away, then finally he went over and sat at the round luncheon table and bit his lower lip. He ceased biting, looked up at the torn screen. Then he commenced biting his lip again.
    I heard Petra behind me. She walked past me, without glancing toward the body, and stood by Verne. He didn’t look at her, either.
    “Verne,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”
    “Don’t say it, then.”
    I hadn’t moved. She glanced at me, her face still, her eyes jetty and unamazed.
    A fly came from nowhere, lit on the old woman’s nose, crawled across her half-opened left eye on to her cheek. It stopped then.