The Kellys of Kelvingrove by Margaret Thomson Davis Page B

wondered if she should lock herself in the house all day while Jack was out, so that the robbers would not be able to discover that some of the money had gone. But then there was shopping to do, food to buy, etc. And there was the hour that she would go next door to sit with old Mrs McIvor.
    Should she keep out of the house all the time, keep well away and leave the robbers to do whatever they wanted? And what would that be? She could never figure it out. Never be quite sure. Never get her head round the alternatives. The robbers would be furious, of course, as soon as they realised that somebody had been helping themselves.
    They were bound to be furious. But then what? A policeman’s house of all places. They’d think about that. Bound to. And that would make them all the more enraged. Then what?
    As soon as she reached the house after shopping, she got a terrible shock, but not the one she had feared.
    Old Mrs McIvor was lying on the ground in front of the door of number one. Her white head was crimsoned with blood. Doris was standing weeping over her.
    ‘Doris! What happened?’
    ‘I’ve killed her.’
    ‘Nonsense, you couldn’t.’
    ‘She’s dead.’
    Mae knelt down and searched for a pulse but found none. Old Mrs McIvor was dead.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. All I can remember is finding her lying there. And I wanted to kill her, Mae. I wanted her dead. I was going mad enough to do it. So I must have done it. I want to die now. I can’t live with the knowledge that I’ve been so wicked. And what’ll Alec say when he comes now? He’ll want me dead. He’ll know that I’m too wicked to live.’
    Mae struggled to her feet.
    ‘Stop talking like that, Doris. You’re not wicked. You loved your mother. Come back into your house.’ Mae put her arm round Doris’s shoulders and led her back into house number two. ‘Where’s you mother’s sedative tablets?’
    Doris pointed towards a sideboard drawer and Mae hurried over to take out a tablet from the box inside. Then she ran into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water.
    ‘Here, swallow this over. It’ll calm you.’
    ‘It might make me fall asleep.’
    ‘That’s fine. Hurry up. Just do it. Now sit down and relax. I’ll see to everything.’
    She helped Doris over to the nearest easy chair and propped cushions behind her.
    ‘Keep this in your head, Doris. Keep repeating it. “I loved my mother and I’d never harm her.” Keep repeating that, Doris, because it’s the truth.’
    Already Doris’s eyelids were beginning to droop. And in a few minutes, Mae felt it safe to slip away.
    She went out of the back door, round to her own back door, where she removed her muddy shoes. She left them outside her own back door and entered the house. The first place she went was the cupboard to see if the money she’d put there was still there. It wasn’t. Her dreadful suspicions were confirmed. The robbers had come to take the money but either when they were trying to enter or when they were leaving, old Mrs McIvor had been struggling to get in and she struggled with them, all the time shouting as usual, ‘I’ll get the police to you.’
    As a result, they’d either hit her or pushed her out of the way and she’d fallen. The blow to her head had killed her. Violently trembling now, Mae took a large suitcase and filled it with a change of clothing. Then she returned via the back door to Doris’s house. Doris was sound asleep.
    Dumping the case down, Mae reached for the telephone. She could hardly hold it, she was shaking so much. But she managed to dial the police station number.
    As she sat in Doris’s house, her distress became focused on Jack. If he hadn’t been so bloody stupid about money and so selfish about inviting so many of his friends to the house to gorge themselves on expensive food every week, she would never have got into debt and she would never have needed to steal the money from under the floorboards. When she