“I don’t know that much about them. I have heard that the grandmother is considered a bit queer, but harmless.” He paused. “I understand she told the Sheriff that Stephanie was a wild sort and that the family had been afraid she would come to an end like this.”

How could she? How could she say that about poor docile Stephanie? I was prepared now to believe everything Father Fogarty had said about Mrs. Reddy. Harmless, indeed! She was about as harmless as a rattlesnake.

The two deputies left. We all stood in the front room and watched until their car went up the road and out of sight. Then I turned and looked at Duff. He shrugged and smiled slightly and went upstairs.

“You said they were going to ask me some questions and they didn’t,” Franny complained.

“Be thankful they left as soon as they did,” I told her.

“Why should she be thankful?” Jack asked. “None of us has any reason to fear the law officers.”

I didn’t comment on that. After a moment he said, “What do you think we should do? Should we phone her mother and express our sympathy?”

“You do it, if you like.”

“Maggie, what’s got into you?”

“I just don’t like those people. Put it that way.”

“But that shouldn’t matter at a time like this. We ought to at least find out the time of the funeral and send some flowers. Also, we probably ought to take Stephanie’s clothes over to the Webers and not wait for somebody to come after them.”

“All right, you take them.”

“Maggie, I can’t drive yet.”

Then it occurred to me that I was being very foolish. In spite of my feelings, I ought to visit the Weber home and try to find out what the two women were up to. If they were involved in some sort of demonic activities, now might be the perfect time to learn about them. Maybe I could find out how Duff was involved—and involved he had to be, I was sure, if they were covering up for him.

I was just about convinced that he had had something to do with the death of Stephanie. It could’ve been accidental, maybe something done in anger like his assault on the boy at the high school and his attack on the policemen. Maybe Stephanie had provoked him in some way—or maybe he had raped her again and had been afraid she would tell of it.

Or could it have been the other person who had killed her, the man I had seen in the kitchen? He was brutish enough, seemingly capable of any horror. I was still unwilling to accept the idea that he and Duff might be the same person.