Free Beyond This Point Are Monsters by Margaret Millar

too.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œMrs. Bishop. She drowned.”
    Mrs. Bishop had had headaches and took long walks and drowned.
    the table reserved for the press when court was in session had been vacated for recess. Across its polished mahogany surface Ford and Mrs. Osborne faced each other. Mrs. Osborne still wore her public face and her jaunty blue hat, but Ford was beginning to look irritable and his soft voice had developed a rasp.
    â€œI repeat, Mrs. Osborne, Estivar talked more freely than I anticipated. No harm was done, however.”
    â€œNot to you, nothing touches you. But what about me? All that talk about prejudice and ill-feeling, it was embar­rassing.”
    â€œMurder is an embarrassing business. There’s no law stating the mother of the victim will be spared.”
    â€œI refuse to believe that a murder occurred.”
    â€œOkay, okay, you have a right to your opinion. But as far as this hearing today is concerned, your son is dead.”
    â€œAll the more reason why you shouldn’t have allowed Estivar to blacken his name.”
    â€œI let him talk,” Ford said, “just as I intend to let the rest of the witnesses talk. This Judge Gallagher is no dope. He’d be highly suspicious if I tried to present Robert as a perfect young man without an enemy in the world. Perfect young men don’t get murdered, they don’t even get born. In presenting the background of a murder, the victim’s faults are more pertinent than his virtues, his enemies are more important than his friends. If Robert wasn’t getting along well with Estivar, if he had trouble with the migrant workers or with his neighbors—”
    â€œThe only neighbors he ever had the slightest trouble with were the Bishops. You surely wouldn’t dredge that up again—Ruth’s been dead for nearly two years.”
    â€œAnd Robert had no part in her death?”
    â€œOf course not.” She shook her head, and the hat jumped forward as though it meant to peck at a tormentor. “Robert tried to help her. She was a very unhappy woman.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause he was kind.”
    â€œNo. I meant, why was she unhappy?”
    â€œPerhaps because Leo—Mr. Bishop—was more inter­ested in his crops than he was in his wife. She was lonely. She used to come over and talk to Robert. That’s all there was between them, talk. She was old enough to be his mother. He felt sorry for her, she was such a pathetic little thing.”
    â€œIs that what he told you?”
    â€œHe didn’t have to tell me. It was obvious. Day after day she dragged her trouble over to our house like a sick animal she couldn’t cure, couldn’t kill.”
    â€œHow did she get to your house?”
    â€œWalked. She liked to pretend that she did it for the exercise, but of course no one was fooled, not even Leo.” She paused, running a gloved hand across the surface of the table as though testing it for dirt. “I suppose you know how she died.”
    â€œYes. I looked it up in the newspaper files. She was attempting to cross the river during a winter rain, got caught by a flash flood and drowned. A coroner’s jury returned a verdict of accidental death. There were indica­tions that she suffered from despondency, but suicide was ruled out by the finding of her suitcase a mile or so down­stream, waterlogged but still intact. It was packed for a journey. She was going some place.”
    â€œPerhaps.”
    â€œWhy just ‘perhaps,’ Mrs. Osborne?”
    â€œThere was no evidence to prove Ruth and the suitcase entered the water at the same time. It’s easy enough to pack a woman’s suitcase and toss it in a river, especially for someone with access to her belongings.”
    â€œLike a husband?”
    â€œLike a husband.”
    â€œWhy would a husband do that?”
    â€œTo make people think his wife was on her way to meet another