“The boy next door,” Weigand said, “was named Russell Clarkson. He was some years—fifteen, about—older than Fern Hartley. Not a boy any more, when she was in high school, but still ‘the boy next door.’ He did go to jail, as you said, Mrs. Notson. He helped set up a robbery of the place he worked in. A payroll messenger was killed. Clarkson got twenty years to life. And—he escaped in two years, and was never caught. And—he was a chemist. Mr. Notson. As you are. Mr. Clark Notson.”

Notson was on his feet. His face was very red and he no longer looked younger than he was. He said, “You’re crazy! I can prove—” His voice rose until he was shouting across the few feet between himself and Weigand.

And then it came to Pam—came with a kind of violent clarity. “Wait, Bill. Wait!” Pam shouted. “It wasn’t ‘ohs’ at all. Not saying them. That’s what was wrong.”

They were listening. Bill was listening.

Then Pam pointed at Hortense. “You,” she said, “the first time you said doing ohs. Not saying ‘Oh.’ You even asked how one did an oh. We thought it was the—the o-h kind of O. But—it was the letter O. And—look at him now! He’s doing them now. With his fingers.”

And now she pointed at Stanley Pitt, who was forming the letter O with the thumb and index finger of his right hand; who now, violently, closed into fists his betraying hands. A shudder ran through his body. But he spoke quietly, without looking up from the floor.

“She hadn’t quite remembered,” he said, as if talking of something which had happened a long time ago. “Not quite.” And he put the thumb and index finger tip to tip again, to measure the smallness of a margin. “But—she would have. She remembered everything. I’ve changed a lot and she was a little girl, but . . .”

He looked at his hands. “I’ve always done that, I guess,” he said. He spread his fingers and looked at his hands. “Once it came up,” he said, “there would be fingerprints. So—I had to try.” He looked up, then, at his wife. “You see, Phyl, that I had to try?”

Phyllis covered her face with her hands.

After a moment Stanley Pitt looked again at his hands, spreading them in front of him. Slowly he began to bring together the fingertips and thumbtips of both hands; and he studied the movements of his fingers intently, as if they were new to him. He sat so, his hands moving in patterns they had never been able to forget, until Weigand told him it was time to go.

THE MONKEY MURDER

Stuart Palmer

Detective: Hildegarde Withers