Read Online The Broken Bell by Frank Tuttle - Free Book Online

brother.”
    “Lots of people do. So?”
    “He’s dead too.”
    Silence. Gertriss was on the verge of tears. I looked to Mama.
    “Kilt with the same knife that kilt Harald,” she said. “On the same night. The Suthoms reckon Gertriss kilt him too.”
    Gertriss wouldn’t meet my eyes. My mouth went dry.
    “I have to ask, Gertriss. You know I do. Did you kill them both?”
    She shook her head.
    “I didn’t know nothing about the other Suthom boy ’til today,” said Mama. “The Sprangs got big mouths. They talked it all up and down the Old Ruth, about how they come to Rannit to put the vengeance on the man what took up with the woman what killed the Suthom boys. I reckon they aims to kill you, boy, and then go home and collect a reward from the Suthoms. So I ain’t sure eight crowns is going to stop this mess. I ain’t sure at all.”
    I swallowed the rest of Gertriss’s warm beer, opened my cold bottle, and took a swig of it too.
    “And I thought my day couldn’t get any worse. Funny old thing, life.”
    Gertriss burst out crying, and I thought seriously about joining her.
     
    It was nearly Curfew before I got the women settled enough to finish talking things out.
    We were all out of beer. My throat was dryer than the Regent’s tears. Gertriss had cried away most of her make-up, leaving nothing but dark circles under her eyes. Even red-nosed and a bit raccoonish, she was still fetching.
    Mama was gruffing and puffing and threatening to set out for Pot Lockney at first light to “set them Suthoms straight.” I’d dissuaded her from that notion only barely, and at the cost of most of my voice.
      I’d filled two notebook pages with times and names and dates and places. I wasn’t ready to leap to my feet and declare the identity of the real murderer of Harald Suthom’s brother Ash, but I had my suspicions.
    “I still say they can’t know the same knife killed both Suthoms,” I said. “Especially if the second body wasn’t found for nearly a month.”
    Mama shook her head. “Old woman Nilkill says it were the same. She fancies herself a blood witch. If she says both Suthom’s blood is on that knife, that makes it so, boy, in Pot Lockney.”
    “How convenient. And they know it’s Gertriss’s knife how, exactly?”
    Gertriss sighed. “I carved my name in it when I was ten.”
    I groaned. “Well, at least now I know you didn’t kill the second Suthom, Miss. You’re too smart to use a signed knife.”
    “Boy!”
    “Sorry, sorry, fine. So Harald Suthom meets his well-deserved demise at around eight of the clock. Gertriss is on the road by nine. Sometime in the next few days, Ash Suthom is dispatched with the same knife, wrapped in old burlap, and laid to rest in a briar patch. He lies there until a bear pulls him out and scatters him over old man Ferlong’s cotton patch. That about right?”
    Mama and Gertriss exchanged glances, then nodded yes in unison.
    “Since we know Gertriss didn’t kill Ash on her way out of Pot Lockney, that means somebody else did. Any idea who? Was Ash as charming and well-loved as his older brother?”
    Mama shrugged. “Ain’t none of them Suthoms worth a damn. But I’d never heard tell of Ash ’til today.”
    “He was quiet,” said Gertriss. “Never heard him speak. People were scared of him, just for being a Suthom, but I never heard any stories about him. He worked the cows. He paid his bills. He didn’t cause any trouble at the inn. That’s all I know. Except that I didn’t kill him.”
    I doodled on the paper, drawing a little stick man with a knife in his back.
    “So who found Harald?”
    Gertriss looked at Mama.
    “Way I hear it, it was his foreman, come looking to roust him out and get started working. They knowed he’d been to see Gertriss, he’d bragged about it. Came in and found him dead in her bed, and her gone.”
    I gave my little stick man Xs for eyes.
    “So for all we know this foreman took the knife out of Harald and then left it in