“I was afraid you wouldn’t like me,” said the murderer.

“Then why did you build a house for me?” she asked. “Who builds a house for a woman he thinks won’t like him?”

“I hoped you would like the house.”

They all looked at the house. “It is a fine one,” said the woman, “but what kind of empty-headed fool would marry a man she didn’t love because the house he built was so sturdy?”

“I hoped you would,” said the murderer. “Now I’m going home with my family.”

He reached for his wife, who had been there when the conversation started. But she was gone. With the children.

“She must have gone ahead to prepare the table,” the murderer said.

Only then did the murderer seem to realize that his outward calm was no longer in place. He looked tense. He looked as if he was barely controlling himself. So now he let go with an emotion he thought might explain his nervousness. “Why are you asking me these questions? Are you accusing me?”

“She wasn’t wearing her clothes, they were wrapped around her,” said a woman. “I think someone tore them off and then wound them around her dead body.”

“Not me!” said the murderer.

No one looked at him.

“Not! Me!”

“Why isn’t your wife standing by you?” asked a woman. “I’d stand by my husband, if such things were being said or even thought. Because I know he doesn’t have it in him.”

“She knows I don’t have it in me, either,” said the murderer. “Do you think she’d have married me and stayed with me all these years if she did?”

That was when some men came back with the wife, who hadn’t gone far. “Found her crying just around the corner there,” one of them said.

“You know something,” said a woman. “Tell us all.”

“She knows I’m innocent!” said the murderer.

Reluctantly, the murderer’s wife spoke. “I had my eye on him for a long time. When he built his first house, I hoped it was for me. But it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t because he never looked at me. He never looked at any girl but one. And her too young for a house.”

“If you’re accusing me,” said the murderer, “how can I stay married to you?”

“He kept building on it after she disappeared,” said his wife. “But maybe that was just for show.”

“I’m the father of your children,” he said quietly.

“I think you need to winter in another house,” she said.

Those words hung in the silent air. Snow once again started drifting down, but there was no wind and it looked like just a flurry.

“I think you need to winter in another valley,” said a man.

There was a murmur of assent.

The murderer visibly sagged. “Do you even care that I didn’t do this?”