“They had found the dagger again, in the dressing-gown, where Aaronia had stuck it; and Joseph began suspecting that his wife was double-crossing him. When he caught her in the acting of turning on the dead-flower stuff so strong in Minnie’s room that it knocked her completely out–put her so soundly asleep that a dozen ghosts couldn’t have stirred her into action–he was sure of her treachery; and, up to his neck now, decided to kill _her_.”
“His wife?” Fitzstephan asked.
“Yeah, but what difference does that make? It might as well have been anybody else for all the sense it makes. I hope you’re not trying to keep this nonsense straight in your mind. You know damned well all this didn’t happen.”
“Then what,” he asked, looking puzzled. “did happen?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows. I’m telling you what I saw plus the part of what Aaronia Hahdorn told me which fits in with what I saw. To fit in with what I saw, most of it must have happened very nearly as I’ve told you. If you want to believe that it did, all right. I don’t. I’d rather believe I saw things that weren’t there.”
“Not now,” he pleaded. “Later, after you’ve finished the story, you can attach your ifs and buts to it, distorting and twisting it, making it as cloudy and confusing and generally hopeless as you like. But first please finish it, so I’ll see it at least once in its original state before you start improving it.”
“You actually believe what I’ve told you so far?” I asked.
He nodded, grinning, and said that he not only believed it but liked it.
“What a childish mind you’ve got,” I said. “Let me tell you the story about the wolf that went to the little girl’s grandmother’s house and–”
“I always liked that one, too; but finish this one now. Joseph had decided to kill his wife.”
“All right. There’s not much more. While Minnie was being worked on, I popped into her room, intending to rouse her and send her for help. Before I did any rousing, I was needing some myself: I had a couple of lungfuls of the gas. The Finks must have turned the ghost loose on me, because Joseph was probably on his way downstairs with his wife at that time. He had faith enough in his divinity-shield, or he was nutty enough, to take her down and tie her on the altar before he carved her. Or maybe he had a way of fitting that stunt into his scheme, or maybe he simply had a liking for bloody theatricals. Anyway, he probably took her down there while I was up in Minnie’s room going around and around with the ghost.
“The ghost had me sweating ink, and when I finally left him and tottered out into the corridor, the Finks jumped me. I say they did, and know it; but it was too dark for me to see them. I beat them off, got a gun, and went downstairs. Collinson and Gabrielle were gone from where I had left them. I found Collinson: Gabrielle had put him outside and shut the door on him. The Haldorns’ son–a kid of thirteen or so–came to us with the news that Papa was about to kill Mama, and that Gabrielle was with them. I killed Hahdorn, but I almost didn’t. I put seven bullets in him. Hard-coated .32’s go in clean, without much of a thump, true enough; but I put seven of them in him–in his face and body–standing close and firing pointblank–and he didn’t even know it. That’s how completely he had himself hypnotized. I finally got him down by driving the dagger through his neck.”
I stopped. Fitzstephan asked: “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What happened after that?”
“Nothing,” I said. “That’s the kind of a story it is. I warned you there was no sense to it.”
“But what was Gabrielle doing there?”
“Crouching beside the altar, looking up at the pretty spotlight.”
“But why was she there? What was her reason for being there? Had she been called there again? Or was she there of her own free will? How did she come to be there? What was she there for?”