As Eunice walked the path leading back home, all these thoughts kept circling in her head. Whom she could trust? Was there really anyone, of whose discretion and assistance she could be sure of? Anyone who would certainly not accuse Harvey of being a murderer..?

(and what if - what if! - Harvey really did this..? Eunice could feel he didn't. But what if..!)

Still wrestling with all her doubts, Eunice found herself approaching her home. She stopped walking for a moment... then, she made a decision and started making her way toward her parent's house.

The couple of miles to her parents' house gave Eunice time to think as she descended into town on small, threading paths that wound over the back road, the valley folding around her. She thunked across the old wooden bridge over the creek in the Sunday quiet and wound through streets where the buzz of insects was overlaid by the fizzing of ill-fixed power lines and telephone wires bringing the twentienth century to Harkness with rearing poles of wonder and sudden death.

Neighbours nodded to her from porches, dogs barked, further or nearer, and looking down Main Street as she crossed it Eunice saw Old Man Henry's mule sucking down water at the trough beside the general store. Some wandering chickens picked at the holes in the surface of the main road and might be anyone's, but were probably Mrs. Winstrom's by the dark speckles on them. A child whooped, somewhere in the distance.

Eunice walked the short way through town with her secret held close, and no-one stopped her. An ancient crow squinted down at her from the dogwood alongside the preacher's house, gently baking in the afternoon heat, but did not deign to fly away as she passed by and made her way around back.

Her mother turned out to be making lace for the edge of an embroidered fly-cover out on the back porch, sun slanted across her thin, tough hands and making her soft straw hat shine out like a made halo. Gertrude looked up at Eunice's movement and the sudden scattering of small birds away from the marrow-bone hung up at the end of the clothesline. "Oh, Eunice!"

She set down her work, the bobbins clattering together like talkative bones. "Do you need something, child? I was-" something in Eunice's expression caught her eye and made her serious, as Eunice had been serious on seeing Harvey come to her in just the same way. "Oh. Has something happened with Harvey, honey?"

Seeing as Eunice had come the wrong way to fetch the doctor, it was clear Ma Birch assumed some argument or worse, all concern and quite ready to bury a man, whether he'd shot himself or hurt Eunice. "Do you need to stay here?" she asked.

"Oh... no, Ma, it's not like that", Eunice replied, having caught Gertrude's unspoken assumption after a second of confusion, "It's... something else..."

Her eyes darted toward the house's front door, as she tried to ascertain who else was present.

"Is Father home?", she asked, "What about Tom?"

As she spoke, she couldn't make her voice not to sound tense.

The back door told her only that it was hot, the true door left wide but the screen door hazing the interior to a jumble of sepia shadows. Her mother gave her a few seconds more of concerned observation, then made her answer:

"Your Pa's in his study and Tom was in his room last I knew, working on the big radio," she said, and rose to show her in, at least.

"Do you want a glass of ice-tea? Cordial? There's cornbread over from lunch if you'd like that, and we've got cookies," she added, since if this was, as it seemed, a manly problem to solve, she could at least provide snacking.
This message was last edited by the player at 09:45, Thu 02 Dec 2021.

"No... no, thank you", Eunice replied, her manner of speech once again awkward and betraying tension, "Ma, could I speak to you and Father... confidentialy? So that Tom didn't hear anything?"

She felt bad at talking of Tom like that, but she really didn't feel she could trust him. He was still young and reckless...

"It... is a delicate matter", she added.

"Well...sure. I'll ask Tom to be sure to leave the study alone awhile, tell him it's women's concerns," her mother replied, nodding slowly. "You go on in and let your father know we need to come together."

The screen door creaked them through softly into the depths of the house with its familiar home scent of book dust, lemon soap and old baking. Eunice's mother went upstairs and Eunice passed the back parlour with its waiting beasts of dark wood furniture to tap on the door of the preacher's study.

She recieved his "Come in," and stepped in to find her father laying the big Bible aside, the little red-edged one that usually served him for reference already open and bristling with bookmarks above his writing on the desk. He looked over at her with a kind of calm so cool and complete, even whilst in motion from an unexpected interruption, it put her in mind of a stone dropped in a pool.

He nodded to her request and some minutes' quiet followed as they waited for Ma to come back. A few dust motes danced above the rag rug Eunice's grandmother had made for busywork during the civil war and a fly buzzed languidly about the ceiling.

Gertrude came back with a tray of some cookies, glasses and the fluted jug of sun tea that lived on the kitchen windowsill, obliging Eunice to drag a little side table out to set it on. Eunice looked up from the snacks once they were placed and a glass handed over to her father, and saw her mother leant against the desk and her father's gaze keenly, coldly, calmly upon her.

"So," he began, with the ghost of the sermon he was writing in his voice, "What do you need to tell us, Eunice?"

Eunice took one more look at the study's door, making sure it was firmly closed. Then, she turned back to her parents.

"It's about Harvey", she started explaining, trying to speak slowly and calmly, "Or rather... about something that happened to him today..."

She spoke on, relating the tale of everything that had happened today. She told her parents of Harvey coming home shaken, of him showing her the body in the shed, his explanation... She also told of all her observations and thoughts: how there was no blood in the shed, how it would've made no sense for Harvey to kill a stranger and, then, drag her body into his shed. She also mentioned the unusual features of the corpse and the feeling of... something being off about the whole situation.

"I don't think that poor woman was murdered by Harvey", she stressed, "I know, he... has been different since coming home from the war. But that whole scene... it really didn't look like Harvey just lost his mind and murdered someone on the spot. I... really think he's telling the truth and that somebody put that woman's body in the shed while he was asleep..."

She gazed at her parents, her eyes begging for some sort of advice.

"What should we do know..?", she asked, "Should we report it or..? People *are* whispering about Harvey, I don't want him to be punished for something he didn't do..."

Her father sat back, his hands clasped together, and rested his chin on his knuckles a moment. "I believe Harvey should turn this matter over to the law, and cast himself on its mercies," he said eventually.

"He is a white man, and a civilised one, if presently balanced on the brink of going far astray: if he believes in Law and the justice of our State he should not fear to be within its power, and his exoneration should still the gossips. As far as they ever can be stilled, of course."

Her mother waited a moment, then chimed in: "I know you're probably worried that it'll be hard on the two of you if they take him away awhile, but he's hardly been around - there for you, I mean, when the work's done - of late, has he? Maybe if it turns out he really does need to go stay in a hospital that'll set him right."

"Hm. I was going to say," the Reverend gave his wife a slight frown, "-that however it might be with him, I believe you would be right to investigate on your own account. The peculiarities - slow blood, a lack of decay, some vagrant who would likely not be missed placed with a local eccentric - are striking and suggest a good deal of organisation and local knowledge."

He indicated that he'd like the snacks proffered at him, taking a cookie but pausing before eating it. "Harvey wouldn't have any access to refridgerated areas without your knowledge, would he?"
This message was last edited by the player at 21:24, Sun 19 Dec 2021.

Having presented the situation to her parents, Eunice waited and listened to what they had to say. She considered all the advice - although she couldn't agree with everything that was proposed...

When Reverend Birch said that Harvey should report the whole situation to the authorities and put his trust in the law, Eunice couldn't help shaking her head in protest.

"I know it sounds like the obvious solution, Father...", she replied, "But... what if the authorities will *not* exonerate him? What if they assume the worst and throw him in jail... or worse? I know, informing the authorities is the right thing to do... in theory. But what if the authorities get it wrong..?"

When her mother spoke of Harvey not being much of a help in the house anyway, an angry wince flashed across Eunice's face. Still, she decided not argue with her mother on that one. Instead, she listened on what her father was saying - and his question about Harvey's access to refridgerated areas.

"No, I don't think so", she replied, a note of irritation creeping into her voice, "And as I said, I really don't think he did it, Father..!"

She calmed herself.

"But...", she continued, "... refridgerated areas. Is that what you think? That the state of that poor woman's body could be explained by her having been frozen?"

That suggestion intrigued her. She hadn't thought about that...

Her father gave her a steady look, cool in the warmth of the afternoon like shaded marble. "Why do you think the Law might fail him?" he asked, returning her question. "Is there evidence you have missed, or do your instincts distrust that he is innocent? I am trying to help you both, Eunice."

He settled back at the question of refridgeration. "It seems to me that for whatever reason - the framing of Harvey, perhaps - the corpse was shot after the unfortunate had met her end. Refridgeration would account for the lack of blood or decay, and might even cover some of the strange look of the corpse; if she died by falling or some other infliction of broken bones, or in some state of poison causing spasms, I can imagine that bone or flesh would shift according to the position they were frozen in, and seem bizarre once laid in a more natural pose."

"My instincts tell me Harvey is innocent", Eunice insisted, "But *proving* that in the eyes of the law... As you said yourself, evidence in Harvey's favour *could* be missed."

Also, Eunice simply didn't fully share her father's ironclad belief in the infallibility of the law. But she decided not to say that...

As her father explained his refridgeration hypothesis, Eunice looked at him, surprised.

"My Lord!", she exclaimed, "Father, you are right... This might explain all the strangeness of that woman's body. I haven't thought about it all..."

She raised from her chair, agitated by the hypothesis. Her mind was racing now...

"The question, though, would be: who could do such a thing? And why involve Harvey in all of this..?"

As she spoke, she tried searching her memory - who in the area could have the means to freeze a body like that?

The preacher gave a slow nod, choosing to take the exclamation as thanks rendered unto Him rather than the taking of the Lord's name in vain that he'd always frowned upon when she was a child.

"Who would kill her, I don't know," he said after a pause. Eunice's mother fiddled uneasily with the beads of her necklace, watching her daughter pace. "To my knowledge, we don't have any of those uncouth types here in Harkness that would hunt her simply for sport, which suggests either an accidental killing during some other clandestine enterprise or a personal motive."

"The curious thing is that the girl appears to be a stranger, and in either case the perpetrator must have been local, both to know of Harvey's hunting shack and that he might be easily handed some blame - or at least obfuscuating uncertainty - for the crime."

"Well, we do know who travels with ice," Gertrude pointed out.

The Reverend considered the possibility of the local iceman's guilt. "I would think the motive you're suggesting might be a little low, even for him," he said eventually. "Brannon's not of high character, but murder to conceal miscegenation? That's a high charge for speculation. If such was the motive, it might as well have been carried out by a man less known for...inciting indiscretion, or indeed a jealous wife. All this verges on gossip, however."

"We know for sure that Brannon, indeed, handles ice, and the Bowlens at the General Store and Mr. Gray at the funeral parlour possess an electric refridgerator and a spacious cool house respectively. The former would know more about his clients, though he would have to be asked delicately. Is Harvey still at the site?"

"Yes, he is", Eunice replied, "At least he was there when I was leaving. Would you like to talk to him, Father?"

As she spoke, she considered the people mentioned. Brannon, Mr. Grey from the funeral parlor and the Bowlens. Could any of them be involved in a murder..?

"I believe it might be well if I gave him some counsel whilst you fetch the authorities," Reverend Birch affirmed, smoothing his hands over his knees and rising. "Should he say anything that might be taken amiss my presence might at least provide some mitigation, not to mention an additional witness to the original state and position of the corpse as it was found."


Gertrude Birch looked up at him, then to her daughter, seeing some movement was afoot. "Shall I go to the Sheriff with you, Eunice? Or let Tom know what's going on with his brother-in-law? He does think the world of that man, same as you." Her tone said she wasn't quite sure why her children held Harvey Owen in such esteem, but since they did she'd not say anything against him.


edit: voice colouration.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:11, Wed 16 Feb 2022.

"Wait..!", Eunice replied, her voice growing agitated for a second, "I mean... I think we should handle it carefully. I... don't want to frighten Harvey, he's unsettled by what happened as it is..."

She looked at her parents, a pleading look on her face.

"How about... me and Father going to Harvey together?", she proposed, "We could try convincing him that he shouldn't be afraid to report all of this. Then, he could go to the Sheriff himself. That way, it'd be his choice and he wouldn't feel like we're conspiring against him... Also, him reporting the whole incident in person might help convince the Sheriff that he's innocent and has nothing to hide..."

She turned to Gertrude.

"And please, Ma... for the time being, don't tell Tom yet. I'll speak to him later myself..."

Her father let Eunice finish and slowly nodded assent, sliding the small Bible into his hand and folding it closed as he waited for her to lead on. Her mother got that particular kind of frown that said Eunice was doing something the wrong way about, but since she was set to be stubborn it was no good to argue. It gave Eunice a little concern that something might get fixed behind her back if she didn't look out for it.

"Well...all right, but that's what I'll say to him, that you'll tell him later. Do you...two want to eat here tonight, to save you doing the fixins after all this fuss? You take Harvey up some cornbread anyhow, and an apple: the way you told it he's had nothing all day."

"That can put a man out of sorts, which won't impress the Sheriff," she said firmly, not quite saying that 'out of sorts' might involve violence, though Eunice caught the implication all the same.

With the parcel of cornbread and suchlike pressed upon her, Eunice and her father took their leave of the house and hiked back into the steep country. They wound their way up where the woods latticed the heat of the earth down under their canopy, a dry heat now that Summer had gained its golden crown and begun to die. The insects sang to them and squirrels and thrushes scurried away from their steps, up and up until the turn onto the trail and at last the hunting shack.

Harvey, it seemed, had decided to chop wood for no particular reason: he cast aside a split log as the preacher moved a little ahead of Eunice and then straightened on catching their movement. For a moment he stood tall and uncertain like a wary bear, then brought the axe down into the stump and left it there, waiting for them to come nigh.

As Eunice and her father approached the shack and Eunice spotted Harvey chopping wood, the young woman found herself feeling... relief. Only at that time she realized that she had been afraid that Harvey might do something rash. Like running or... hurting himself.

"Harvey...", she spoke gently, as she approached her husband, "I discussed the matter with Father and Ma. We think it'd be best for us to go to the Sheriff and report all of this... Then, we'll look into who might be behind it. But we cannot hide this situation from the law... it would only make the matters worse..."

Harvey tensed rather than give in to the instinct to shy away from such news and his wife, though he glanced all about behind them for whatever shadowy cops or soldiers the injury in his mind gave rifles and sent creeping close, just out of sight. At last his gaze settled on his father-in-law, and he swallowed and stoked up his voice to say: "Are you sure? I didn't do it, sir, Eunie'll tell you I dint do it."

"They'll need to know about this, Harvey. Let the law give out the truth." The preacher paused a moment, insects filling up the hesitation with sawing sound.

"If you let me see the body as it is, I will vouch for you," he made towards the shack. "Then we can shift her enough to close that door and we'll all go down to the Sheriff together. Will that suit?"

Harvey looked at Eunice as her father passed him, clearly almost at the point of flight with the rise of unreasoning panic in his head. "I-I guess..." he made to grip the axe for its association of released tension, then realised how that might look and scrubbed his hand over the hair and scar tissue of his scalp, standing awkwardly in that spot.

"I think it's the best idea we have, Harvey...", Eunice said softly, hoping to ease Harvey's nerves. "I do believe in what you told me - and we need the law's help in sorting all of this out"

She approached Harvey and touched his arm gently.

"I am on your side...", she whispered to him.

Harvey made a noise in his throat that was part trapped animal, then carefully, carefully drew Eunice into a hug and held on. There was no crushing nor indication he'd keep her if she struggled, just the firm and desperate grip of a shipwrecked man.

"I don't know that I can live, if they take me away," he said, voice dropping still softer. "I can't keep other prisoners safe like I keep you safe if they put me in prison, and if they leave me drugged or tied in a padded cell...it's not that I dream the War, exactly, but come lately there's things when I sleep that feel that way...they lord it over the high places, hangin up there with no rope nor reason like the inverse of angels...when they draw nigh I feel the bombardment, in my chest, in my blood, and there's no escaping it and maybe each impact kills someone or tears them up, it feels like that, life smashed out...in my dreams I run, an' sometimes they don't even try to catch me but sometimes one drifts after, steady, an' they don't breathe but I feel the shaking, in the blood. I truly feel that if I'm laid down drugged an' can't wake up, them...haints, them dark jellyfish, they're gonna touch me like a shell hits an' there won't be nothin left of me at all..."

Eunice's father ignored such demonstrations as public hugs, finally shifting the corpse and shutting the door. He paid excessive attention to the door being fully shut and poked at the windows to give Eunice and Harvey some extra seconds' privacy, if never so far off that he might not intervene. The axe sat in the stump between the two men, as it had been left.

Eunice shuddered, as she listened on to Harvey describing his dreams. The imagery... it was terrifying. What *exactly* was going on in her husband's head? Did the war damage him that much..?

"Don't... don't think about it, love", Eunice uttered and touched Harvey's back in a comforting manner. "Everything is going to be fine..."

She feared that her voice betrayed her unease... and that Harvey could notice the momentary hesitation that came before she touched him...

Eunice took a deep breath and tried composing herself. Whatever Harvey's dreams were, she still was certain he had not murdered the woman inside the cabin. And she had to help him deal with that situation...

Gently, she removed herself from Harvey's hug, then took his hand again.

"Let's go", she said, her voice more assured now, "Let's talk to the Sheriff and try to find some explanation for all of this..."

They descended: Eunice gently pulled, then led, then let her husband drop a pace or so behind to pick at cornbread and talk with her father in low voices, carrying with her the memory of how his big heart had speeded thinking her shudder was for him. The heat and gold colour in the afternoon light became thicker as they passed down into greater humidity, as though the sun was simmering the air to a syrup. They might have taken the truck to town but didn't, leaving those extra steps for Harvey's resolve to harden and the rhythm of long walking steady his skittish breath.

Still, when they came to the bleached boards and peeling paint of the Sheriff's Office Harvey reached out and brushed Eunice's arm, seeking reassurance before ducking in. Sheriff Wolsey proved to be at his desk, sweating over some paperwork that he set aside with obvious relief when Harvey loomed up. He offered them seats and coffee and listened with a frown to Harvey's tale and Eunice's elaborations, though he seemed most attentive to the preacher.

"Well now," he said at length, the smile spreading across his face as though someone were pulling the skin back on fresh taxidermy and fixing a show of teeth on some animal: "This surely isn't so much of a mystery as y'all are making out. It'll be some coloured fellow who's got to fighting with his girl, shot her an' thought we'll never think to look for him for pointing fingers at each other if he sets her over on the white side of town. Unless any of you all can think of someone who'd want to do this to Mr. Owen in particular?"

Harvey looked to Eunice, a little thrown by the Sheriff's lack of accusation. Her father was sitting very still and very straight, his gaze cold and steady enough that the official looked away with the excuse of hearing his deputy come in the back. "Maurice! You can come through and be in charge here a hot minute, and get the camera out - I've got to go record a corpse."

This had what Eunice felt was probably the desired effect on the young man, who came through pale and looking a little dazed with horror under hs tousled dark hair, clearly wondering which friend or neighbour was dead. The Sheriff turned that smile on him, still not looking at Reverend Birch, and deigned to clarify: "Some vagrant: Black woman showed dead up in Owen's shack. Shot twice in the back."

Maurice Becker visibly flinched at the tone or detail and muttered something about getting the camera, turning to fiddle with the cabinets near the door to Harkness' four cells. Sheriff Wolsey shook his head. "He'd make a better nurse than a lawman..."

"Sir, I'm...not arrested?" Harvey asked, uncertain.

The Sheriff shot him a swift look. "Do you think you ought to be?" he replied, and left the question hanging.

"No, of course not...", Eunice chimed it, "It's just... when one finds a dead person... a *murdered* person... on their property, one fears being accused of the deed. Even when innocent, one fears the suspicions that might arise..."

Eunice paused. She realized she was on the verge of veering into the subject of what made such suspicions so easy in regards to her husband: his reputation and his fragile mental state...

"Anyway", she directed the conversation in a different direction, "You really think that another colored person killed that poor woman? And that she was put into Harvey's cabin to shift the blame?"

Eunice's mind was racing as she was speaking. This explanation was... so perfectly simple. So reasonable. And yet... she wasn't entirely convinced by it. She *wanted* to be convinced... especially as it was an explanation that was really helpful to Harvey... but she truly couldn't. She felt the truth was as simple as the Sheriff was saying...

Should she admit it aloud, though..?

"Well sure - I imagine that if Harvey here'd shot her by accident you'd be coming to tell me so, an' if one of y'all shot her on purpose and was just claiming so y'all'd be a mite more squirrelly, lying right to my face an' all."

"Neither of y'all strike me for a stone-faced liar," the Sheriff said amiably, though he dared a glance at the preacher this time and cleared his throat, unable to keep contact with that cold gaze long.

"I mean, I'll have to take in the rifle awhile, put on the record that it's yours and make sure the fingerprints are likewise - we can do that now, I guess - but I'm about halfway sure it won't even be the same type of weapon. Pity it don't sound like we have the bullets, but we've got charts n' such in back that can get us a fair way to knowing that. Don't fret any."

"Maurice, git out some print cards whilst you're over there," he added to the deputy, who presently had a camera, flash and film boxes bundled precariously against his chest. The young man struggled to set them atop the cabinet and comply with this new request.