Children in the Morning by Anne Emery Page B

fellows show up they’ll be long gone. I’ll go out 34

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    and chase them off myself if I have to.”
    “We wouldn’t recommend that, sir.”
    “No, I suppose you’re right. But Beau Delaney isn’t afraid of them.
    I figured he sent that hooligan packing.”
    “Why do you think that?”
    “Well, I don’t know for sure. I just thought that’s probably why he was out there. But who knows? I never got to ask him, with Peggy dying and all.”
    “So you saw Mr. Delaney outside his house?”
    “Only for a bit.”
    “What was he doing?”
    “Just having a look around, it seemed like.”
    “What time would this have been, do you remember?”
    “Oh, it would have been . . . I was waiting for Lloyd, but he hadn’t signed on yet. Then I fell asleep. Guess I missed the news that night.
    Didn’t stay asleep, though, on account of the snow, or it must have been sleet, battering my window. I looked out and saw it was quite a nor’wester. Was glad I paid to have the windows reset. Worth every penny, with the weather we’re having these days.”
    “Did you hear any sounds coming from the Delaney house or grounds that night?”
    “No, didn’t hear a thing.”
    “Is there anything you’d like to add?”
    “Yes. Beau would never have killed Peggy. It had to have been an accident.”
    I put down the statement and got Beau on the phone. “I’ve just read the statement of Harold Gorman.”
    “He’s got his times mixed up.”
    “That may work for us or against us, depending on which time the jury decides he’s mixed up. He says he saw you — not just your car, but you — before Lloyd Robertson’s news broadcast. That would make it before eleven o’clock. You tell me you didn’t get home before twelve thirty-five.”
    “I didn’t. Harold Gorman dozes, peers out the window, watches television, and dozes again. I’ve known him for years. He can’t sleep, so he frets about things going on outside his house. Nothing is ever going on, but that doesn’t stop him.”
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    “He swears you’re innocent.”
    “Good man, Harold, and a sharp-eyed witness! Didn’t I just say so?”
    “He says he got up to check the weather. It started to snow that night. I’ll have to check the time.”
    “It didn’t start till after midnight. I remember.”
    “Good. We’ll get the Environment Canada weather summary into the record. Mr. Gorman had something else to say as well. Said he saw a prowler around your place. Let’s hope he’s right, and we can create the suggestion that there was somebody else —”
    “Forget it.”
    “What?”
    “He’s always seeing prowlers.”
    “The Crown doesn’t know that. He never calls the police.”
    “And he didn’t call them this time either.”
    “Even so, he said he saw a teenager in a hooded sweatshirt.”
    “That’s probably the last image he saw on television before he drifted off to sleep.”
    “I thought you’d be a little more interested in this trespasser angle, Beau.”
    “I would be, if there were something in it for me. But there isn’t.
    Nobody broke into our house, for instance. I can’t point to a smashed window or a jimmied lock. Or signs of a struggle. It doesn’t work.”
    “All right, all right. Let’s just hope we can get Gorman up to twelve thirty in his estimate when we have him on the stand.”
    (Normie)
    “Wow! This is a big house. It’s really nice!”
    Jenny had invited me to her house after Four-Four Time, and Mum said I could go. She had to think about it for a few minutes, but she said yes. Jenny and I took the bus most of the way, then walked the last part of it. Jenny’s was one of those big white houses with a black roof, a door in the middle and windows on both sides.
    It had shutters on the windows, which I really like. It was huge inside with a big living room that you step down into. Jenny took me to her bedroom,