We All Killed Grandma Read Online Free PDF Page A

room.”
    I nodded. “Arch told me that. But it struck me funny that a woman as old as she was would work those hours. Do you know why?”
    “Yes, we discussed it often, Mrs. Tuttle and I. Most old people, Rod, cannot sleep as many hours at a time as younger ones. For her, she told me, five was an absolute limit, so if she had retired at, say ten o’clock she would have awakened at the absurd hour of three in the morning and would have been unable to return to sleep. So she preferred to retire about one and sleep until six. During the afternoon she would take a nap of about three hours, right after lunch, then consider her time her own until after dinner. Then she would work on her books and papers, write letters—she wrote them all in longhand—until about midnight.”
    I nodded. Henderson said, “But back to Monday night. It was twenty to twelve by the clock when I got up. I looked out of the window and Grandma’s light was on and I saw nothing wrong. She wasn’t at her desk. My eyes aren’t good for distant vision, but I could see that much. However, I remembered it was about that time she went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of hot milk, so I wasn’t worried. But I was becoming more convinced that the sound I’d heard had been a shot and I knew I wouldn’t go back to sleep right away. I almost went to the phone to call her and then decided I’d wait a few minutes to see if she came back from the kitchen.
    “So I went down to my own kitchen and made myself a sandwich and ate it. Couldn’t see her window from there, those little trees are in the way. But I went back upstairs—and it would have been about midnight by then—and looked from the window again and she still wasn’t in her chair at the desk. But of course she might have been in another part of the room, getting papers from the safe,perhaps, so I was still doubtful whether I should do anything. I remembered a pair of field glasses I have and got them out of the bureau drawer; I looked at the window through them and as soon as I got them focused I could see that the screen had been cut and was bent outward. I knew then, of course, that something was wrong, and I was just going to go to the phone to call the police when I heard footsteps on the sidewalk and looked that way and it was you, just turning in the walk toward the front door. You walked—well, you were a little intoxicated. Not really staggering, but not walking straight either. So I waited a minute before going to the phone. You went into the front door—that is, I saw you go up on the porch so I knew you were going in the front door, and I turned the field glasses back to the window. And a minute or so later you came into my range of vision walking toward the desk.”
    “How did I look? Could you see my expression?”
    “You looked dazed, stunned, I would say. You picked up the phone and—well that was all I saw because I decided I’d better get dressed and over there. I was in my pajamas, of course, up to then. I went back to the room I’d been sleeping in and started to dress. I was just getting my trousers on when I heard the first squad car coming up with its siren going and by the time I was dressed and out of my house and going up the walk of the Tuttle house, two more cars were pulling up. From the Homicide Department, it turned out.
    “There was a policeman from the squad car at the door; he stopped me and made me wait there, and then when I’d explained—and some other detectives came up while I was explaining—who I was and what I’d seen, they took me inside and questioned me in one of the front rooms. But not back to Grandma Tuttle’s office, and I never did see you that night. After a while, when I’d told my story five or six different times, I wanted to see you but they’d taken you down to the station by then. I wanted to go down and see if I could help, but they dissuaded me. And they said that Dr. Eggleston was already on his way down, since you were