Free The Woman Who Fell From Grace by David Handler

shove in the right direction. “And next to you … no, that’s no good. We’ll have two men sitting next to each other. You’ll have to sit between my brothers, Charlotte, with Hoagy and Mercy across from you. Yes, I believe so. No, wait … ”
    “I appear to be fouling up the seating somewhat,” I suggested to Mercy.
    “No, you’re just giving her an excuse,” she murmured.
    “To do what?” I asked.
    “Move me to a different chair. Mother won’t allow me to sit in the same chair for very long for fear I’ll get comfortable. She thinks comfortable people are soft people.”
    Mercy seemed to accept this with good grace. I found myself thinking how sorry I was she had Mavis for a mother.
    The lady was still playing musical chairs. I started for the kitchen.
    “Wait, Hoagy,” she commanded. “Where are you going?”
    “I want to tell Fern to start churning,” I replied, smacking my lips. I could practically taste that homemade licorice ice cream.
    “Churning? Churning what?”
    “She’s not in there,” Charlotte informed me. “She went to the old house for a second.”
    I went to the old house after Fern. I had my priorities. I found her in the entrance salon. She was lying there on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Her neck was at a very funny angle. At least I thought it was funny. She thought it was funny, too. She was grinning up at me. She hadn’t lost her jolly sense of humor. Just her life.

CHAPTER FIVE
    P OLK FOUR WAS SO clean you could eat off him.
    There wasn’t a wrinkle in his crisp khaki uniform. There wasn’t a smudge on his wide-brimmed trooper’s hat. His black leather holster gleamed. His square-toed blucher oxfords gleamed. He gleamed. Polk was in his late twenties and stood several inches over six feet and didn’t slouch. He had the trim athletic build and flat stomach of a high school basketball star. His hair was blond and neatly combed, his eyes sincere and alert and wide apart over high cheekbones, a thin, straight nose, and strong, honest jaw. He had no blemishes on his face. I doubted he’d ever had any, or ever suffered from excess stomach acid or insomnia or the heartbreak of psoriasis. I hated him on sight.
    He got there in ten minutes in his shiny-gray, sheriff’s-department Ford, a deputy trailing behind him in another just like it. He took charge right away. There was nothing youthful or indecisive about Polk Four. He was the sheriff of Augusta County. The deputy kept himself busy taking photographs of Fern’s body. The paramedics came, but there wasn’t much for them to do except stand around. The body couldn’t be moved until a doctor looked her over and signed the death certificate.
    We all waited for him in the old parlor. Mavis was exceptionally still and composed. If there were tears in her, she would not allow them out now. Mercy wept openly into one of my white linen handkerchiefs.
    The brothers had sharply contrasting reactions. Frederick was in total command — it was he who had called Polk Four and herded us into the parlor. Edward was unconsolable.
    He rocked back and forth in his chair, sobbing and moaning. “I keep thinking of the night Mother died, Fred,” he cried. “I was at Fern’s when I got the news, remember? She was the one who actually told me.”
    “Let’s not go into that, Ed,” Frederick said sharply. “Come on, now.”
    “She was a rock, Fred, is all I meant.”
    “That she was.” Frederick patted his brother gently on the shoulder. “That she was.”
    Richard had gotten himself a large brandy and sat there sipping it and furtively trying to make eye contact with Charlotte, who sat in a corner wringing her hands, her own eyes firmly fastened to the floor.
    The doctor arrived in half an hour. He was weary and elderly. He examined Fern where she lay. Cause of death: broken neck. Then Fern O’Baugh was lifted onto a stretcher — it took three strong men to do that — and wheeled out.
    Polk joined us in the parlor.