the bed and lifted her down on to it. There was no rigidity at all yet, and she was hard to handle. I pulled the torn dress down to cover her with the little dignity there was left to her, and cast about for her underclothes. She still had on the bra, and I found the panties shoved into the rumpled folds of the bedspread. I remembered she hadn’t worn stockings, so there would be no suspender belt. There should be one shoe up here, however. I found it under the bed.

Going downstairs, I picked up the shoe that was in the dining-room and got a roll of heavy cord from a drawer in the kitchen. I was recovering now, and thinking quite clearly. On the way back I stopped in the living-room and picked up the four cigarette butts from the ash-tray, the ones that were smeared with lipstick. I flushed them down the toilet. Putting both shoes and her panties down beside her on the blanket, I folded it over her both ways and then folded the ends in. I knew that I was probably as guilty of the actual fact of her being dead as Nunn was, and while the sadism and brutality were all his, I still felt better after I didn’t have to look at her any more. I made several ties around her body with the cord, to hold the blanket in place.

Then I turned my attention to the bed. There’d been surprisingly little blood for a bad beating, but then he’d merely been trying to bruise and puff the face rather than cut it. There was one sizeable spot and two smaller ones on the bedspread, and in one place it had gone through both sheets. I took them all off, washed out the spots in the bathroom, and put them in Reba’s laundry bag. Getting new sheets and another spread from the linen closet. I remade the bed, trying to copy the way it had been tucked before.

I took out the two bags I’d packed and put them in the hall closet. The one down in my den didn’t matter. Jessica would be here long before I got back, but she wouldn’t go down there. I took a last look around. Everything was in order up here. Picking her up with considerable difficulty, I carried her down the stairs and out to the kitchen. I placed her near the door, went out, and closed it behind me.

I studied the distance. It was two steps across the kitchen porch, down two steps to the ground, and then three long strides into the side door of the garage. Situated as it was, with only trees to the rear and the house and garage covering the respective sides, it was exposed to view only from the street and Mrs. Macklin’s house directly across it. As I came back from the garage to the kitchen porch I shot a casual glance across at her windows. The drapes were open in the living-room windows and in two of upstairs bedrooms. She was probably home. The garage door was closed. There were no other cars parked in front, so there probably wasn’t any bridge game or catfight in progress. It was hard to tell just what Mrs. 20/20 Snellen would be doing this time of day.

Well, I could give her something to do. As I recalled the layout of her web, her telephone had two extensions, one in the central hallway and the other in the kitchen. Either would do. I went back inside the kitchen, but left the door unlatched.

I was going to have to take a chance on the street, but very few cars went by as a rule. It ended in a cul-de-sac at the end of the next block. I went into the living-room, looked up her number, and dialed it. It rang four or five times. The receiver clicked on the other end and when I heard her say, “Hello,” I put this one down and ran. Hoisting up Jewel Nunn’s body, I kicked open the door and went out and into the garage. No car went by. I was in the clear.

The end of the station wagon was already open. I put her in, doubled into as small a space as possible, and pulled the blankets and life-belts over her. I went back in the house, replaced the telephone handset, and brought out her overnight case. There was a short-handled gardening spade