The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

the day.” She hadn’t quite the courage to offer him the night as well.
    His face brightened. “Gee, swell,” he said and then, “you’re sure it’s O.K.? Hadn’t I better make it all official though?” he added, after a moment’s hesitation.
    “No, I’m sure if Thane Carey didn’t say anything to you, he was leaving it up to me, and there are no two ways about it—I want you to go home and have a good time.” Fredericka was now enjoying her own generosity.
    Sergeant Brown needed no further urging. In one moment he had put on his coat and, in another, he had started for the door. But as Fredericka followed him into the hall, he turned back to say: “Gee—thanks. I’ll be back before dark.”
    “Will you get supper for us?” Fredericka asked, laughing.
    “You bet,” he called as he disappeared down the path.
    At any rate he hasn’t had to live on those awful sandwiches this last week, Fredericka thought, as she went to find a duster and run it systematically along the bookshelves. Wonderful how once a week was enough in the country.
    Then, the house in order, she went to get ready for church and her early morning’s happiness persisted. But, later, sitting upright on the hard wooden pew of the South Sutton Congregational Church and listening to the flat tones of the Reverend Williams’s voice, her old doubts and anxieties returned.
    She was, in fact, alone and a stranger. No one else sat in her pew. She looked around her and it seemed that the whole village was packed solidly into all the other pews. Was it her imagination, or was it not true, that by being in the bookshop’s hammock the murdered body of Catherine Clay had made Fredericka an outcast? What were these people thinking? What were they saying, some of them, with their heads together while their minister droned on in the sleepy midsummer heat? Suddenly a dreadful thought occurred to her. Suppose she was seriously suspected. Suppose Sergeant Brown had been set as watchdog not for her but over her? But then he wouldn’t have taken the day off. Or would he? Did Thane and Peter really suspect her? It couldn’t be so.
    The service over, Fredericka looked around for a familiar face and could not see one. She now regretted the impulse that had made her want to go to church. She hung back as the others crowded past her to the door. There seemed, to her distorted eye, to be hundreds of them, but there weren’t of course. The church was small and the aisles narrow.
    As she emerged into the full glare of the sun she blinked blindly and stopped for a moment at the bottom of the steps to get her bearings. A group of young girls and boys were deep in whispered conversation near her. Catching the word ‘Margie’, she listened without shame.
    “She’s been taken to the hospital,” one of them was saying.
    “My mother says she’s going to die—that nothing will save her now,” another contributed.
    “And my father says we’ll do well to get rid of the stranger in our midst,” an older boy put in. One of them looked around apprehensively and, seeing Fredericka said “Sh-sh” very loudly, at which they all looked at her and then looked quickly away.
    They fell silent, and Fredericka decided that it would be wise to move off and leave them to it. As she did so, she heard a very audible stage whisper. “It’s true,” the voice said, “nothing like this ever happened in South Sutton before she came. I remember Margie saying—”
    Fredericka could not catch the final words and did not want to. The morning’s glory had faded and she felt old and tired. The worst of it was that she probably deserved this attack. She was faced with the bitter truth that she hadn’t been kind to Margie she hadn’t even been decent. As she walked back to the bookshop, she was so troubled by her own thoughts that she forgot her plan to go to the inn. But, once inside her own quiet kitchen, the vision of more people, gossiping and unfriendly people, sickened her. She looked blankly into the refrigerator to find something for lunch and then decided not to eat anything. The sound of the door slamming in the empty house seemed to announce her loneliness and isolation, not only from South Sutton but from all human beings. She stood up quickly and made an effort to fight back a sudden rush of self-pitying tears.
    Taking herself firmly in hand, she was able to remember that she had been happy before she went to Church. She reminded herself of the comforting