to three inside my head before I answered any of his questions. Doin that might keep me from movin too quick and payin for it by fallin into one of the pits he'd dug for me. But McAuliffe musta thought he had me confused from the word go, because he leaned forward in his chair, and I'll declare and vow that for one or two seconds there, his eyes went from blue-hot to white-hot.
'It don't surprise me,' I says. 'For one thing, seven miles an hour ain't much more'n a puff of air on a muggy day. For another, there were about a thousand boats out on the reach, all tootin to each other. And how do you know he called out at all? You sure as hell didn't hear him.'
He sat back, lookin a little disappointed. 'It's a reasonable deduction to make,' he says. 'We know the fall itself didna kill him, and the forensic evidence strongly suggests that he had at least one extended period of consciousness. Mrs St George, if you fell into a disused well and found yourself with a broken shin, a broken ankle, four broken ribs, and a sprained wrist, wouldn't you call for aid and succor?'
I gave it three seconds with a my-pretty-pony between each one, n then said, 'It wasn't me who fell down the well, Dr McAuliffe. It was Joe, and he'd been drinkin.'
'Yes,' Dr McAuliffe comes back. 'You bought him a bottle of Scotch whiskey, even though everyone I've spoken to says you hated it when he drank, even though he became unpleasant and argumentative when he drank; you bought him a bottle of Scotch, and he had not just been drinking, he was drunk. He was verra drunk. His mouth was also filled wi' bluid, and his shirt was matted wi' bluid all the way down to his belt-buckle. When you combine the fact o'this bluid wi' a knowledge of the broken ribs and the concomitant lung injuries he had sustained, do ye know what that suggests?'
'Several of the fractured ribs had punctured his lungs. Such injuries always result in bleeding, but rarely bleeding this extensive. Bleeding of this sort was probably caused, I deduce, by the deceased crying repeatedly for riscue.' That was how he said it, Andy riscue.
It wasn't a question, but I counted three all the same before sayin, 'You think he was down there callin for help. That's what it all comes to, ain't it?'
'No, madam,' he says. 'I do na just think so; I have a moral sairtainty.'
This time I didn't take no wait. 'Dr McAuliffe,' I says, 'do you think I pushed my husband down into that well?'
That shook him up a little. Those lighthouse eyes of his not only blinked, for a few seconds there they dulled right over. He fiddled n diddled with his pipe some more, then stuck it back in his mouth n drew on it, all the time tryin to decide how he should handle that.
Before he could, Garrett spoke up. His face had gone as red as a radish. 'Dolores,' he says, 'I'm sure no one thinks . . . that is to say, that no one has even considered the idea that -,
'Aye,' McAuliffe breaks in. I'd put his train of thought off on a sidin for a few seconds, but I saw he'd got it back onto the main line without no real trouble. 'I've considered it. Ye'll understand, Mrs St George, that part of my job -,
'Oh, never mind no more Mrs St George,' I says. 'If you're gonna accuse me of first pushin my husband down the well n then standin over him while he screamed for help, you go right on ahead n call me Dolores.'
I wasn't exactly tryin to plink him that time, Andy, but I'll be damned if I didn't do it, anyway - second time in as many minutes. I doubt if he'd been used that hard since medical school.
'Nobody is accusing you of anything, Mrs St George,' he says all stiff-like, and what I seen in his eyes was 'Not yet, anyway.'
'Well, that's good,' I says. 'Because the idear of me pushin Joe down the well is just silly, you know. He outweighed me by at least fifty pounds - prob'ly a fairish bit more. He larded up considerable the last few years. Also, he wa'ant afraid to use his fists if somebody crossed him or got