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Thelma knew it was a small thing, fetching a glass of water, but she had done it thousands upon thousands of times, and got no more than a mumbled thanks for it, and half the time James was already asleep by the time that she got back from the kitchen with it. That was all she ever got, for all the things she did for him, in fact - mumbled thanks.

Thelma paused as she passed the open door to little Mary's bedroom. The child had been born in pain, and since then, Thelma had had her daughter beside her every day of the child's miserable little life. Every single day for the past eight years, Thelma had had that little girl hanging on to the hem of her dress, whining. And out of little Mary, Thelma hadn't even got mumbled thanks. She had got nothing at ail.

Thelma stamped into the room, and turned on the overhead light.

Mary woke suddenly, blinked her eyes open, and stared at her mother. 'Oh, Mama, what you want?' she cried. 'What's wrong?'

Thelma didn't answer, but stared hard at the child, with undisguised loathing.

With a hard swipe with the side of her hand, Thelma Shirley knocked the light switch off, and said, 'Don't let me catch a sound out of you for the rest of the night, you hear me,
giillNot a sound.'

Mary was bewildered by the harshness in her mother's voice, and wondered if perhaps she had been screaming in the course of a nightmare. But she couldn't remember one. She could only repeat helplessly, 'Mama, what's wrong?' But her mother was in such a bad mood that little Mary was thinking to herself that she really didn't want to know what the matter was. And she certainly hoped that whatever it was, it had nothing to do with her.

'Go to sleep!' Thelma cried viciously, stepping back out into the hallway, and slamming the door shut. Little Mary cowered beneath the covers for a few moments.

In the darkness, Mary wondered if she were dreaming now. In the moonlight, she had caught the gleam of the necklace that she had found in the burned-down house that morning. Her mother had said that she didn't want to have anything to do with it. Maybe her dream was really about the necklace, and not about her mother at all. Little Mary had fallen back asleep before she could decide whether she had been dreaming all the time or not.

The kitchen was dark, now that the moon had fallen behind the clouds, and Thelma turned on the overhead light. She blinked in its glare, went to the refrigerator, removed the water carafe and poured a glass of water for James. She started to go out again, but with her finger on the switch, about to go through the door, she suddenly paused and retraced her steps. Placing the glass on the counter, she opened the drawer in which all the kitchen utensils were kept and extracted two handfuls of them. She placed a large rubber band round them so that she could carry them in one hand. Then with the glass of water, she started back.

She paused again for a few moments at the door of little Maiy's bedroom, beating the kitchen utensils angrily against her thigh, but at last she moved on and returned to her own bedroom.

The glass of water she placed carefully on the table next to her husband. He gave incoherent thanks, and settled himself into his pillow. Already he was asleep.

Thelma sat herself again at the dresser, thoughtfully removed the band from the implements she was carrying, and then slowly laid them out on the shelf of the dresser. There were two meat forks, a couple of knives, one of them sharp, the ice pick used by Gussie earlier that morning, a long teaspoon, a small eggbeater, a spatula, and a can opener. She stared at them all for a moment or two, and then touched them one by one, testing the tines and the points of the pieces.

'Thelma', her husband grumbled from the bed, 'when you gone finish with your hair and turn that light out?'

Thelma rose from the little wicker bench, grasping the ice pick in her right hand. Her knuckles were white from the pressure of her grip round its wooden handle. Unhesitatingly, she moved over to her husband's side, leaned down over him, and let the point of the pick slide into his ear. She twirled it round just the slightest bit, so lightly that James did not even move with the sensation of it. But then Thelma pushed the point towards her husband's brain. She was much surprised how difficult this was, how much resistance there proved in the operation. The pick wouldn't go very far in, and she had to place one palm on top of the other, over the end of the handle, and lean on it with all the pressure that she could bring to bear.

James flailed with the surprise of the assault, and knocked over the glass of water in the process. It smashed to the floor. In the last second of consciousness, he glanced at his wife. There was not even a flicker of knowledge, or remorse, or even intent in her eyes. The expression on her face was the same as when they had breakfast together each morning, across the table from one another. She bore a small, unselfconscious smile.

There was a satisfying crack when the point of the ice pick penetrated James Shirley's skull. Thelma pulled her hands back and crossed them above the amulet.

James was staring at her, but then the pain hit him, a point of screaming pain, that had only begun to expand when he was dead.

Thelma had jammed the pick into her husband's brain, up to its wooden handle. His body buckled at the waist and slid off the bed. A thin stream of blood bubbled out of his ear. Thelma leaned down to try to lift him back on to the sheets, but she slipped in the spilled water. Her legs shot out backward from under her, and she fell flat on her face. The jagged-edged base of the broken water glass caught against her throat, slicing through her jugular vein.

The blood filled her throat so quickly that there was not even time for Thelma to cry out before she too was dead.

When Gussie arrived on foot the next morning at the Shirleys' at about seven, she was surprised to see that the car was still in the driveway. Thelma had told her it was impossible to pick her up because of one car's being at the repair shop, and the other being taken out by James on his hunting trip.
Well,
said Gussie to herself,
she just wanted me to walk because she knows how much I hate it. No sidewalks half the way on over here and the gravel just eating up the soles of my shoes, which don't fit proper anyhow.

The back door was locked, which was strange as well, because usually Thelma got up early just to leave it open for Gussie on those days when she-,didn't come to pick her up. She knocked and there was no answer. The black woman walked round the house, peering in one window after the next; all was dark and motionless. When she came to the room belonging to Mary, she glanced inside, and saw the child asleep, only a few feet from the window, but hesitated to knock, fearing to frighten her. Besides, she liked the child, and had no wish to disturb her sleep. It would be much more pleasant to wake Miz Thelma, and make
her
get out of bed to open the door.

Gussie peered in between the curtains of the first bedroom window and could see, to her surprise, that Thelma was not in bed. That side was empty. She moved to the next window, and looked in. The sightless eyes of James Shirley stared directly into hers. Gussie jerked out of the way, instinctively avoiding that gaze and only then realised that the man was dead. She drew her breath in quickly, threw her hands up over her face and squinted, between the crossed fingers of both hands, back through the window again. She ducked a little and tried not to look back into James Shirley's eyes. Then it was she noticed the wooden handle sticking out of his ear.
Why!
she thought to herself
,Miz Thelma done that, done gone and left and locked the

T.A. - D
door behind her and done gone and left that child to find the body!
When she dropped her hands in anger for Thelma's supposed conduct, she suddenly saw the woman's crumpled body, hidden a little behind James's, and realised that the murderess was dead too.

But, thought Gussie suddenly, if both of them were dead maybe it was little Mary that had done it.
Gone in there while they was sleepin' and dreamn' and stuck a ice pick in her daddy's ear, and then done somethin' else -1 don't know what - to Miz Thelma. Ohhh, that child! Kill her mama and daddy, and then go right back to bed, and sleep the sleep of the righteous!

Gussie knew that little Maiy was not a particularly sweet little girl - but she wasn't a mean oae either and Gussie knew anyway, from experience, that it was the sweet ones that were always playing around in somebody else's belly with a butcher knife. Probably then it wasn't little Mary - maybe it was robbers, or an escaped con from the pen come back to settle a score with Officer James Shirley.

The black woman had turned away from the window and leaned against the side of the house. It didn't matter now what had happened or who had done it, but it was veiy important that she get little Mary out of the house without her seeing the bodies of her parents. The door to the master bedroom was open, and Gussie could see that if she waked the child and told her to come let her in at the back door, Mary would pass that way and see the corpses.

Gussie went back to Mary's bedroom window and tried it; it was unlocked. Gently she pu shed it up, and then called to Mary. The child sat up sleepily in the bed.

"Gussie', she said softly, 'why you climbing in my window?'

'Come here, child.'

'What?' said Mary, not understanding what Gussie could want with her at the window. 'Let me go open the back door, Gussie. You cain't climb in the window. Daddy'll shoot you for a burglar.'

Gussie sighed briefly. If little Masy thought that her father was still alive, then it hadn't been she who had committed the double murder.

'Come here, child', said Gussie again.

Mary shrugged, and went over to the window, a little unsteadily.

Gussie thrust her hands beneath the small child's arms, and lifted her out of the window.

'Oh, Gussie!' cried Mary, 'Mama is gone kill me if I get my feet on this wet grass. You know how Mama hates the dew!'

'Child', saidGussie, 'your mama'snot gone never yell at you again!'

Taking the child by the hand, Gussie ran next door, to the Presbyterian manse, and beat on the back door.

Little Mary stared round her and wondered what on earth her mother was going to have to say about these strange, unprecedented proceedings. She had already begun to make up excuses for herself, for she was positive that she would be blamed, and not Gussie.

Sheriff Garrett and Deputy Barnes were now the only senior members of the Pine Cone police force, now that James Shirley was dead. They stood in the bedroom of their slain colleague, shortly after the bodies had been removed to the funeral home. They had come immediately after being called, and were sickened by what they had found. It had been obvious to the officers that no one but James and Thelma were involved in the crime, and so they had allowed the corpses to be removed after only a cursory examination.

These were rural southern policemen, used to brutal, sudden murders of passion. Few crimes in Pine Cone went unsolved. A murder was frequently threatened beforehand, and was rarely denied afterwards, and there was no great need for sophisticated techniques of clue-gathering. It was obvious what had transpired in this bedroom, or rather it was obvious 'who had done the transpiring', but the motives, the causes, wouM remain forever unknown.

Deputy Barnes shook his head solemnly. 'Don't make sense, just don't make no sense.'

'Thelma Shirley was a hard woman, sometimes', the sheriff judged, 'but I never thought she'd really go and kill James.'

'You're sure though that she killed him, and then killed herself.'

'It's not a accident, Barnes, to get a ice pick stuck up your brain. So I'd say yes, Thelma Shirley killed her husband.'

'He couldn't have done it himself?' asked the deputy.

'Couldn't have got it in that deep 'fore he'd be dead. Would have stopped because of the pain. Couldn't have gone on if he had wanted to, so she must have done it. Bad way to go', the sheriff concluded, and sighed heavily.

'So', said Deputy Barnes, trying to get through this all step by meagre step. 'Thelma lolled James, and then killed herself.'

'Nooooo', said the sheriff slowly, and glanced with some distaste at the blood on the floor. So much had been spilled that the centre of the stains was still damp. He noticed as well that it had just begun to rain outside. The moisture in the air drew the smell of blood up from the floor. Human blood smelt a lot different from animal blood. It wasn't a buck that had died in the bedroom, the sheriff thought. "I didn't say Thelma killed herself. You don't cut your throat with a piece of broken glass that's been on the floor. I think she must have slipped and fell on it.'

'Accident then?'

The sheriff nodded.

'So she killed him on purpose, and then died herself by mistake.' The sheriff nodded again, exasperated by Deputy Barnes' unconquerable slowness.

'Well', said the deputy, 'how was she gone explain that? If she hadn't of died accidental, I mean? Gussie would have come in here today and she would have found the body, and ever "body in town would have knowed who done it. It's not something she could get away with.' ,

'No', said the sheriff, agreeing almost reluctantly, 'it's not.' He didn't want to admit what didn't make sense at all: why Thelma Shirley would have killed her husband in so obvious a way.