“Officer,” said Bess steadily—and Sarah had been asleep, and for some time, because there was a uniformed man at Bess’s shoulder. “My nephew has been planning flight, for the reasons I’ve told you. I haven’t missed any cash from the house, but there’s a gold watch, an heirloom, that I haven’t been able to find.”
Milo’s mouth curled. He submitted confidently to the policeman’s embarrassed search; his jaw dropped blankly when Charles’s gold watch was removed from his suit coat pocket. The policeman interrupted a spate of cursing to turn to Bess. “Well now, do you want to press charges, Mrs. Gideon? I mean . . . ?”
People never did, in families, they had it out among themselves. In spite of the weird tale he had been told, they would decide against the police blotter, the inevitable publicity in a small town.
“Yes,” said Bess. She put her face into her hands, but only for a second. “Yes, I want to press charges, Officer.”
The pheasants called shrilly in the dawn, their chopped-off shrieks as surprising on the air as their color was in the pearl and charcoal light. Sarah, walking about the pens for the last time, lifted her face now and then as though the wet and piercing cold were rain. She gave a final piece of bread to the bantam rooster, who stood back gallantly for his hens and never got a crumb, raisins to the Manchurians and the Amhersts, a shredded leaf of lettuce to the Japanese Coppers.
She could not bring herself to go near the Silvers.
Behind her the house was quiet, although only Evelyn slept. Hunter had accompanied Milo and the policeman, to turn over the diary which would have to be read and then, because of the respect accorded Bess in the town, treated with all possible discretion. The Clemences, shedding with their robes a little of the dream-like quality of the night, had returned to stay with Bess. It was as though a year had been wiped out and someone lay upstairs in danger of death.
Sarah emerged onto the back lawn. There was the cherry tree she had gazed at from the window of the attic room, and hanging from one of its lower branches the crow’s cage, its door propped open. When the echo of the front door closing had roused the crow to say horrifyingly, “Hi, Milo,” Bess’s rigid poise had cracked apart; she had said in a trembling voice, “Hunter, will you please— I can’t, I cannot stand . . .”
And now the crow was trying to make up its mind. It tipped its head in a dreadful mimicry, half arched its black wings, stooped to peer incredulously at the open door. Inside were food and water and security. Outside . . .
Footsteps came quietly across the cold gray grass. Sarah turned her head and said to Harry in a whisper, “Look,” and they stood without speaking while the crow hopped off its perch, sidled to the door, and rolled a bright wary eye at these people who obviously didn’t know what he was about to do. Sarah was prepared to clap her hands to her ears, but the crow only ruffled itself briefly and took off in a beating of wings, soaring over the far fields, disappearing in the woods.
“That’s a smart crow,” said Harry, his voice not quite his own. He stood scrupulously apart from her, because it was one thing to know each other instantly over a barrier, and a very different thing when the barrier was gone. His face was sober and thoughtful, thinner and older than when Sarah had first seen it, and infinitely dearer. “The car is ready. . . . Coming?”
Sarah had an advantage over the crow; she knew perfectly well, she had always known, what lay outside. “Coming,” she said.
So Dies the Dreamer Page 16
