“It’s murder,” Thorpe declared flatly. “No spooks ever killed off those two people in a minute, just like that!”
“Murder, your grandmother!” snorted Stebbins. “Who done it, and how? I ask you that! Those folks came up here to hunt ghosts, and I should say they found ’em, good and plenty! You know’s well’s I do, this house has always been ha’nted, ever since that woman killed her husband in that very room where the little girl’s lyin’ now. I wouldn’t go in that there room for a fortune, I wouldn’t!”
“Now Eli, don’t be foolish,” and Thorpe shook his head. “How could a spook kill two folks at onct,—right out in the open, as you may say?”
“For that matter, how could anybody murder two people at once? Nobody was around but their own crowd, and that lot of people ain’t for murderin’ each other! I know that!”
“It was spooks,” declared Hester, with an air of settling the matter; “I’ve smelled ’em of late. That smell of bitter almonds is been in the air a heap, and I ain’t had none for flavourin’ or anything. Land, I’d never flavour a cake with that! I put vanilla even in my ‘Angel Food.’”
“I’ve smelled it too,” spoke up Nannie, a helper of the older woman’s; “when I’ve been a-dustin’ round in that there ha’nted room, I’ve smelled it—not strong, you know, but jest a faint whiff, now’n then. I skittled out ’s fast’s I could, I kin tell you!”
“Nope, you’re all wrong,” insisted old Thorpe. “’Tain’t spooks, it’s murder. That’s what it is.”
“Who done it, then?” demanded his wife.
“That I dunno. But I have my s’picions. How,—I dunno, either. But that’s neither here nor there. Murder’s been done, but I’ll bet that mutton-headed Crawford ain’t got brains enough to see it.”
“He ain’t got brains enough to go in when it rains,” agreed Stebbins, “but you’re ’way off, Thorpe, a surmisin’ murder. Why, jest f’r instance, now, how could it ’a’ been done?”