The Fury of Rachel Monette Read Online Free PDF Page A

asked.
    â€œExcuse me, Mrs. Monette,” said Ed Joyce, standing up. The huge shoes toed out across the rug, leaving a track of deep depressions regularly spaced in the pile. Rachel knew that Ed Joyce was a man who never varied the length or pace of his stride, good weather or bad, indoors or out.
    She got up and went to the window. Andy Monteith was shoveling the snow from the walk. He wore a long purple muffler which he couldn’t keep from tangling with the shovel. There seemed to be no rhythm or system to his work. He stuck his shovel in here and there, casting the loads at the snowbank. But the wind had risen, and it lifted the snow into the air before it could land, shaped it into little clouds and blew them away.
    â€œWhat a winter,” Ed Joyce said behind her. “I can’t remember when we’ve had so much snow. Not since the war, anyway. What part of the country are you from, Mrs. Monette? I mean originally.”
    â€œNew York.”
    â€œOh, New York. My wife loves going to the shows. Two in the same day, sometimes.” Rachel heard him sit down, heard him take his notebook from his shirt pocket, heard the soft plastic click as he pulled the top off his ball-point pen.
    â€œNow, Mrs. Monette, we’re starting to get these times nailed down.” Rachel turned and looked at him, and saw his tired gray eyes and his tired gray skin. If he would go away she could imagine it was yesterday. She returned to the rocker and sat down.
    â€œHere’s the sequence so far.” Ed Joyce opened his notebook. “At eleven forty-five Mrs. Flores arrives. She doesn’t knock or ring, and the door is never locked. According to her that’s the usual procedure.” He looked up, his face inquiring. Rachel nodded. “So, she goes into the kitchen, puts on an apron, and starts doing the dishes. When she’s finished one rackful, she goes into the hall and starts dusting. That way she doesn’t have to dry the dishes, they dry themselves, and when they’re dry she empties the rack and washes another load.
    â€œOkay, I had one of the boys wash enough dishes to fill the rack. It took him twelve minutes. Now maybe, being a man, he’s slower than Mrs. Flores.” He smiled at her; she stared blankly back. “Let’s say it took her ten minutes. Add two for coming into the house and putting on the apron. That makes it eleven fifty-seven when she goes into the hall.” Joyce made a short notation in his book.
    â€œWhile she is dusting the cabinet in the hall, she hears voices upstairs.” Rachel’s hands gripped the arms of the rocker very tightly. “She says that isn’t unusual—students often came to the house to see the professor.” Again he looked up and again Rachel nodded. “One of the voices she recognizes as Professor Monette’s. The other is a male voice that she doesn’t know. She can’t hear the actual words, but she forms the impression that they aren’t speaking English. Now, Mrs. Monette,” Ed Joyce turned to a fresh page, “do you know what languages the professor spoke?”
    When Ed Joyce used the word spoke he set off a sudden shift in the balance of Rachel’s mind. A fundamental realization settled in her at that moment, and although she did not understand it, and might never, it had entered and waited patiently to be dealt with. The newspapers like to use the adjectives shock and disbelief when describing first reaction to the death of a close relative. Perhaps if the newspapers thought about it they would describe the second stage as one of shock and belief. It was because Rachel had just arrived at this point that she was slow to answer Ed Joyce’s question. None of this was she willing to admit out loud: she didn’t want to say “he spoke” or “my husband spoke” so she gave the police chief a list:
    â€œFrench, of course, and Spanish, some Portuguese, some