Free The chuckling fingers by Mabel Seeley Page A

room. He said, ‘There’s no one here but us.’ It sounded as if he were fighting for his life. And I felt as if I— didn’t even want to fight.”
    She’d been bewildered and lost; she was that again, even remembering.
    I said swiftly, my mind foraging, “That fire must have been set before the others left.”
    “They’d left Saturday noon. The fire was more than twelve hours later. If there’d been fire we’d have smelled it when we went to bed.”
    “Lottie.”
    “She was at the resort.”
    “The resort or Auden, if it comes to that. Anyone could have come in—”
    “The bedroom door was still locked. Bill looked for marks of ladders under the windows or for signs in the logs if anyone had climbed. There wasn’t anything.”
    “But it must have started somehow.”
    “Bill found two partly burned matchsticks under the bed. He said, ‘And maybe they came from pulpwood I cut.’”
    I sat helpless, wanting to see an answer harder than anything I’d ever wanted in my whole life but unable to see any light.
    Jacqueline twisted her hands from mine. She said, low, “It is possible, isn’t it, for people not to know what they do? I keep thinking, suppose I should hurt Toby “
    Suddenly she’d twisted around; she had my robe and the scissors in her hands; she cried, “Look, Ann—look, I could take your robe like this and push the point of the scissors through! Look, it cuts so easily, as if I had a razor blade!”
    At once and on instinct I slapped the scissors out of her hands, grabbing them up, tearing out that telltale wisp, rolling it between forefinger and thumb until it was a characterless pellet, throwing it.
    “That’s enough! Your door was open last night—anyone could have walked in to take your scissors!”
    But her voice was hysterically over mine. “I could have done the other things, too, couldn’t I? I could have wrecked the motorcycle Fred got and I could have cut up Myra’s dress and Phillips Heaton’s pajamas and Octavia’s magazine she hadn’t read. Everyone’s had something done, except me. I—”
    I shook her to break it. “Listen! We’re getting away from here! You’re leaving with me today—you and Toby! We’re going to Minneapolis! Can’t you understand? There won’t be any more of this!”
    As quickly as it had begun her hysteria stopped; she was quiet in my hands, her eyes quiet but defensive, wary.
    “Oh no. I won’t do that. I knew you’d say that if you knew. That was why I didn’t want you to come or know.”
    “But you’ve got to leave. Don’t you see? When you’re gone and things still happen—”
    “No.” Just the one determined syllable.
    “Bill talked to me last night. He asked if there ‘d been any insanity in our family. You don’t have to take that. You don’t have to care what he thinks… .”
    I was strained forward, shaken with the urgency of my pleading, but she looked coolly back at me, completely in control of herself now.
    “That’s your mistake, Ann. I do care. Really I know I didn’t do any of those things. It isn’t often I lose my head. I’ll never lose it again. And I’m glad now that you’re here. You can help find the answer.”
    She believed the explanation would have to come and that when it did she and Bill would be back in the happiness they’d lost.
     
    * * *
     
    She seemed to have opened some reservoir of strength; finally and wearily I had to acknowledge temporary defeat. We went down to a subdued and worried Myra who obviously knew of the struggle and its outcome—we’d been talking loudly enough.
    “Over to Ella’s people eat their breakfast before it’s noon.” Lottie slammed bowls of chilled blueberries before us.
    Myra took her place behind the coffee urn. “Toby got too hungry to wait. She ate and went to the resort with Bill. Jean’s going out on one of the boats with Mark this morning, and Bill wanted to see them before they left.”
    When Lottie had stumped back to the kitchen she made a