Jill Churchill: Grime and Punishment

Everyone stood, petrified, waiting for his decision. Finally he said, through gritted teeth, "It's only a career. What the hell!”

Swiftly, the man in the "Tit for Tat" shirt abandoned his study of Suzie and all but tackled Shelley, shoving her ahead of himself back down the basement stairs. Jane grabbed Suzie's hand and ran around behind the sofa. Mel Van-Dyne was just behind them. They crouched down, VanDyne between them. With the addition of Suzie's gorgeous but substantial presence, it was a very tight squeeze, and in spite of the emotion of the moment, Jane couldn't help but notice how very nice he smelled.

“If it's Robbie, you can't arrest her!" Jane whispered to him.

“ Shhh—"

“ But you've got to listen. There's no hospital in Oakview, don't you see? And the plastic wrap on the top of Suzie's bowl wasn't even dented.""Be quiet!”

The house fell silent as the kitchen door opened. Again, there was the soft click of footsteps, then the refrigerator door opened. Jane could hear the sound of a dish being removed from the middle shelf and being set on the counter while the larger bowl was put in place. Yes, yes. She'd been right. That's how it had happened before — impossibly happened. A klunk. The heavy bowl, then Suzie's put back in. Jane was thinking of what the teacher had told the blind kids: See with your ears!

Jane held her breath. Mel VanDyne, crouched between them with a protective arm over each— was it protective, or was he just keeping them in place? — was so tense, she could almost feel the electricity of his nerves.

The refrigerator door closed and the footsteps, surprisingly firm — no hesitating, no reconsidering — went across the living room and up the stairs. Mel VanDyne was smiling as he rose, silent and lithe as a cat. He put a finger to his lips and gestured to them to stay put. Suzie and Jane peered over the top of the sofa as he moved across the room. "That's a man!" Suzie whispered.

Suddenly there was the sound of struggle upstairs. Shouts. A woman's scream. Uncle Jim leaped from the closet and headed for the stairs. The "Tit for Tat" man sprang from the basement door and followed. There was a terrible thump, as if someone had thrown the vacuum cleaner, still humming, at a wall.

“God!" Suzie whispered. Her normal high coloring had turned to the yellow-white of parchment. Jane felt sick. Not since the week before had she been truly conscious of the shock of real violence. Most of the time since then, this had been a mental problem. A puzzle of sorts.Very serious, very personal and emotional — God, yes. But not physical.

Jane saw Shelley emerge from the basement and start toward them. She shouldn't do that. Not until it was over. Jane rose to gesture her back, but Shelley was looking toward the stairway and the sounds of her house being torn up. Jane didn't want to shout at her. Even with all the noise upstairs, she might be heard. If she messed this up now, her uncle and Mel Van-Dyne would never get over it. She waved her arms, hoping to get Shelley's attention, but Shelley had stopped in the middle of the room, her eyes and ears locked in horror on the stairway. Jane crept around the end of the sofa and headed for her.

She'd almost reached Shelley when there was a pounding on the stairs, more shouting, bodieshurtling down. Jane whirled just as Mary Ellen Revere, on a dead run with Mel VanDyne only inches behind her, raised her arm in its cast and swung it at Jane's head.

Jane ducked, and Mary Ellen, her fierce swing unstopped, spun around and into VanDyne's arms. She struggled with insane strength for a moment, then suddenly seemed to crumple with exhaustion. Within seconds three men, including Uncle Jim, had hold of her, and VanDyne was barking into a walkie-talkie he'd taken out of his jacket pocket.

Behind them, a man in a Happy Helper uniform was coming down the stairs. His wig had gone askew and the stuffing in his shirt had shifted and he had one "breast" down at his waist. He was rubbing his throat. The "Tit for Tat" man was gallantly helping Suzie up from her position behind the sofa. Jane could hear sirens in the distance.

Mary Ellen's face, as she raised her head and looked at Jane, was flushed. There were stark, white marks around her lips and nose. "You bitch! You knew all along, didn't you? I should have realized you couldn't be as dumb as you always act.”

Jane felt seared by the venom in her voice. She turned away, shaking.

Edith was being led down the steps by a uniformed officer. She shook off his arm and shambled over to Mary Ellen. There was both hate and arrogance in her voice. "You think she's stupid! I never had it so easy as with you. If you ever get out of the clink again, you better not keep a scrapbook about your escape."

“Scrapbook?" Jane said. "Scrapbook! Of course. I thought she was cutting coupons, but she was adding newspaper articles about the murder to it.”

A siren whooped to a stop in front of the house.

“ Did you know all along?" Suzie asked her twenty minutes later when Mary Ellen and Edith had been taken away. Uncle Jim had gone along to get her booked. Mel VanDyne had stayed back with two officers who were filling out forms and putting things into little plastic bags. VanDyne had spent most of the intervening time on the phone, talking in an incomprehensible verbal shorthand. The man in the Happy Helper uniform was waiting for someone to bring his own clothes to him. Shelley had made him an ice pack for his throat.

“No, of course I didn't know all along," Jane replied. "But I see why Mary Ellen thought so. That morning, before it all happened, I went over there and said something about how I'd never had any bones broken, but I once pretended I did and made myself a plaster cast."

“Which is exactly what she'd done," Shelley added.

“So that's what tipped you off?" Suzie asked.

“Oh, no, that didn't occur to me until I was driving back here. What made me realize it had to be her was dropping a bowl. Two bowls, actually. When Shelley and I cleaned out the refrigerator, I lost my grip on that big ceramic bowl of hers and dumped potato salad all over the kitchen. We should have both realized that if it was that hard to keep hold of the thing with two good hands, it would be absolutely impossible to keep a grip on it with one. It was heavy and slippery."

“And then there was the way it was in the refrigerator," Shelley said. "She put it in at the bottom of the stack of dishes because it was the biggest and heaviest — and probably to make it seem like it had gotten there first, even though she said she'd come right after you, Suzie. That meant she had to take the other things that had come first out, slide hers clear in, and put theothers back. She couldn't have done it with her arm the way she claimed it was."

“I still don't really get it," Suzie said. "I had a broken arm once and I got used to doing all sorts of things with it. I used the cast almost like a tool. Pushing things around with it. Balancing things on it—”

Jane took the last crumpled cigarette out of the pack in her purse, and was irritated to notice that she was still shaking so badly she could hardly light it. "But that's when you got used to it. She was claiming to have only broken it the day before. And when I was over there that morning, she was doing a convincing job of acting like it was so excruciatingly painful that she couldn't so much as lift a recipe card with that hand. Besides, she went too far in making the story convincing, and told me how a man at the grocery store had been so nice and drove her to the OakviewCommunityHospital to have her arm set. There isn't a hospital in Oakview."

“Also, the bowl had a plate for a lid," Shelley said. "It didn't even fit tightly, and the bowl had to be kept perfectly level or it slid off."