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

Ash.”
    Mama shrugged. “Ain’t no way for me to know that, boy. Nor you.”
    “And then a bear helpfully pulls the corpse out of a briar patch and makes sure he gets a proper burial, right after the good people of Pot Lockney remove a signed knife from his back. How fortuitous. Miss, the next time you go to all the trouble to wrap a corpse and drag it into a briar patch, you might consider removing the murder weapon at some point during the festivities. Especially if said weapon carries your name.”
    Mama opened her mouth to gruff at me, but caught on. Gertriss got there faster.
    “Someone wants me blamed for Ash’s murder.”
    “Oh yes. Bear my ass. They hoped the body would be found, but it wasn’t. So they helped matters along. Now, we’re looking at one of two things here. One, they knew you’d killed Harald, and they knew you’d left town. That made you the perfect pick for killing Ash, too, nothing personal, just business. Or second, somebody back home hates you enough to kill a second man just to make sure you’d be hanged for killing the first. Who would want to do that to you, Miss? Who hates you that much?”
    “No one.” She shook her head. “Honest, Mr. Markhat. Nobody.”
    I dropped my pencil and leaned back in my chair. Fatigue was settling over me like a coat made of rocks.
    “All right. We can worry about who killed the Suthoms later. Right now, here’s what we do.”
    And I spent my last bit of wile making plans for the night.

Chapter Six
    The Big Bell clanged out midnight before I lay my weary head down to sleep.
    My plan to keep Mama and Gertriss safe from any lingering Sprangs involved installing a pair of ogres at Mama’s door. I chose ogres because they’re out and about after Curfew, and are thus easy to find, and because short of a Troll or a brace of the Corpsemaster’s newfangled cannons there isn’t a better deterrent against mischief than half a ton of implacable ogre.
    I lucked out and managed to catch up with a Hooga, who agreed to bring his cousin Hooga in on the deal. Don’t ask me how ogres keep identities established when they all bear the same name. But this was a Hooga I knew from Darla’s old job at the Velvet, and we were still on an eye-dipping basis, which practically makes us littermates according to Mama’s encyclopedic knowledge of all things ogre.
    I’d given Gertriss orders that she wasn’t to venture outdoors for anything. She didn’t like that, any more than Mama liked hearing the same, but I had to trust they understood the necessity of staying safe behind a wall of ogres until we had a handle on the Sprangs.
    So I handed out coins right and left and made sure the Hoogas understood spilling blood was only to be done as a last resort.
    That done, I turned my attention to the bigger picture, a task made well nigh impossible by my sudden tragic lack of beer.
    After the Hoogas trundled away with Gertriss, Mama and Buttercup, I put my feet on my desk and got out a pad, and tried to make sense of my sundry confusions by putting them down on paper in the form of questions.
    Where is Carris Lethway? appeared at the top of my page.
    Who or what compelled him to leave, and why? followed.
    Exhaustion does strange things to the mind. I didn’t realize I’d written Who has more animosity toward the marriage between Carris and Tamar—the Lethways or the Fields? until after I’d written the last word.
    I put a big question mark under that.
    More entries followed— Was I really drafted? was asked twice, with heavy underlines, and When to tell Darla? below that.
    Finally, I scribbled something unflattering concerning Corpsemasters and wild goats and headed to bed.
     
    I dreamed that night. I saw cannons, rows and rows and ranks and ranks of them, hurling thunder and belching flame. I saw the sky criss-crossed with lingering smokes, heard the shriek and howl of battle.
    I wasn’t alone, in my dream. The Corpsemaster was there. Not as a corpse, either. She was a