The Suspect by L. R. Wright Page A

as soon as he'd done the deed, that would have been different; that would have been all right.
    The point is, though, he told himself, you killed somebody, and you can't remain unpunished.
    He sat very still, thinking about it. It was perfectly true. But it wasn't all there was to say about the situation. It wasn't as though he was a danger to anybody, sitting here free. He probably wouldn't live long enough to get to trial anyway, the way they dragged those things out.
    Yet he knew he was rationalizing. The plain truth was that he didn't want to make a public spectacle of himself, and he didn't want to go to jail. They'd catch him eventually; that pale-haired Mountie would catch him for sure, somehow. There was no need to force upon himself today something that was going to happen anyway, in the impartial fullness of time. And he knew already that he didn't need the R.C.M.R, or the Canadian justice system, to ensure his punishment. George put down his coffee mug and rubbed his head. His arm felt heavy as iron.
    He deeply regretted having committed murder. He didn't believe in it, and he never would have believed himself capable of it. But it didn't surprise him that Carlyle had been murdered. Carlyle had deserved it. He straightened a little in his chair and looked calmly out through the window at his garden. It was true. Carlyle had deserved it.
    He got up, and went back outside, and looked this time at the flowers that grew in the bed against his house. He'd put out his bedding plants more than three months ago, as if subconsciously predicting the unusual warmth and dryness of the spring. He had accepted the weather with pleasure and equanimity. Perhaps it was his last summer; perhaps it was nature's final gift to him. Except that he didn't deserve any gifts from nature. Not now.
    It occurred to him, however, as he bent over his marigolds, that a vengeful God might well give him a present for getting rid of Carlyle.
    George had to brace himself against the side of the house for a minute, to catch his breath and let some dizziness pass. And he closed his eyes, then, and thought of Audrey. A great surge of relief swept through him that he could still remember her, holding an armful of deep purple lilacs and laughing her pleasure. She had been the real gardener in the family. It was only after her death that he took it up, grimly at first, in deliberate homage and apology to her, then gradually finding in it his own personal joy.
    He remembered toiling in the vegetable garden in California, after she died. He had dug up far too much of the lawn. It was a gigantic garden. And of course he'd had no idea how quickly things grew down there. Myra would come out to him, bringing him iced tea or lemonade, never scolding him although she worried. She would wipe his dripping forehead with a cloth carried from the kitchen and put her arm around his shoulders and kiss him.
    He shivered, leaning against his house, as the sea breeze stroked the side of his face, and he thought how lucky he had been to have had Audrey in his life, and then Myra, who had never resented his devotion to his sister, even though he knew she had never quite understood it.
    George opened his eyes and shoved himself away from the house. Marigolds smoldered at his feet, and sweet peas draped themselves along his fence, and the rosebushes along the fence on the other side of the yard were laden with blooms. The only blight upon his entire life had been Carlyle. It I may have been a desperate, bloody, brutal, and uncivilized thing to do, but at least he'd done something, finally, about Carlyle. He decided he would row out into the bay and dump the shell casings overboard. He would have to use Carlyle's boat, since he had none of his own and didn't want to call attention to himself by renting one; it was only fitting, he thought, that Carlyle's boat, now his, should be the one he used.
    But he couldn't do it during the day, and he knew he wouldn't have the strength to