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motive, got close to the actual murderer. He knows what he did with the body. He would knowby inference what I had done with the body. It would be the easiest thing in the world for him to steer them back toward me. A little lie here and there, maybe a lie about what the deceased had told him—not admissible as evidence, but enough to put them on my trail. “Why yes, Mary told me that Sewell was getting out of hand. She said he’d tried to choke her and then claimed it was just a joke. She said she was a little scared and wasn’t going out with him again after that Saturday night.”
    I ordered some more hot coffee. I’d been very clever. Just as clever as a man I remembered back in the Fall River plant the first year I had worked for C.P.P. He operated a steam hammer in the forge shop. The hammer wouldn’t come down. So he leaned in over the bed and looked up at it, curious no doubt as to why it wouldn’t come down, and wiggled the lever. It came down that time.
    I began to get into such a panic that I even considered going back and retrieving the tarp and the body, taking it home, replacing the red belt and making my belated phone call. After the second time around, I discarded that idea. I’d put myself in this situation. The only thing I could do was carry on. And pray. Pray I hadn’t slipped.
    The second cup was too hot to drink. I put it down. There was a lingering soreness in my head. It was unlike any headache I had ever had. A new thought shocked me. Maybe the headache indicated something. Maybe it indicated that I was the one who had done it. Maybe she had come back to the apartment. From what I knew of her, such an impulse wouldn’t be entirely alien to her. And I had …
    No, damn it. The mind is a strange thing, but not that strange. At least mine wasn’t. If the police had found her in my closet, they could have determined a few things quickly. If she had been attacked, if she had any skin under her sharp fingernails. I remembered reading that they could type fragments of skin, like blood.
    I was getting too restless to stay there. And it occurred to me that I didn’t want to spend too much time in transit between the apartment and Smith Lake. I asked for some water, dumped some in the coffee, finished the coffee and left.
    The Olan place at Smith Lake was built back in the days when, if you wanted a place at a lake you built a house. None of this camp nonsense. It was stone, two stories and an attic, but the ceilings on both floors were so high the house looked three stories high. Three or maybe even four generations of kids living up the summers had beaten its original grandeur into a condition of scarred comfort. The other places on the lake were surrounded by woods and brush. The Olan land was cleared and seeded. It sat on a wide expanse of green that sloped down toward the lake shore and the boat houses. Up near the road was the horse barn and garages. I had been there twice before, and met all the clan. During the summer there is a staff of four. An ancient iron Swedish lady called Mrs. Johannsen does the cooking. Her round shy maiden lady of a daughter, called Ruth, does the cleaning and helps in the kitchen. They both come out from the Pryor house in town, as does John Fidd, a knobbly, sour man who brings up three or four saddle horses from the Pryor farm and reluctantly takes care of the grounds, obviously considering yard work beneath him. The remaining staff member, Nels Yeagger, is a massive, amiable young brute who is hired locally—has been for the past three summers—to take care of the boats and do odd jobs.
    With this complete staff, the Olans and the Pryors come and go as they please. With the bedrooms in the big house, and the bunk rooms on the second floor of each boat house, quite a crowd can be accommodated. People ask their own friends and stick together, so that it is entirely possible to spend a day there without even meeting some of the other guests. The two times I