Ralston Fails Again

Ralston Fails Again

By David Braly, excerpt

Ralston smiled. He went up to the edge of the porch. Merrill stood at the vertical post where the lunch bell hung. A string of reins and bridles hung with the bell, and an old saddle was balanced beneath them on a horizontal rail that ran from the vertical post to another vertical post at the end of the porch. Ralston could smell the leather in the reins and the saddle even though they were very old.

“I need to run through that day with you again,” said Ralston.

“I’ve been over it with you four times, Ben”.

“I know. But once more. There might be something you’re saying that I’m missing the importance of. I believe in being thorough.”

Merrill shrugged. “The day began about the same as usual,” he said. “We were doing the usual things, which I’ve gone over with you before. There was no one here except myself, Amanda, my boy Buck, and Craig Lyle. There hadn’t been anybody out here since noon the previous day. The hired hands were all several miles from here driving the cattle to the corral at Guthrie’s Thicket.”

“What time did Lyle enter the barn?”

“Right after breakfast. About seven thirty.”

“Where were you and your family?”

Wigs. Illustration by Elena

“Here, at the house. I was right here on the front porch, sated here on the edge, filling up the lanterns. Amanda was in the living room sweeping the floor, which she does every morning in summer after a hot night to get out the earwigs. The kid was in his room. We heard the shot and ran out to -”

“How much time,” interrupted Ralston, “passed from the moment Lyle entered the barn until you heard the shots?”

“I’ve told you before, I don’t know. He left for the barn at the same time I brought out the lanterns, The walk to the barn only takes a couple of minutes, but that’s assuming that he didn’t stop for some reason on the way there. All I can tell you for certain, Ben, is that seven or eight minutes must’ve passed from the time we stepped out of the house until I heard the shot.”

Ralston took off his hat and rubbed the sweatband again. It was so hot he hated to wear a hat. The thought about the time gap. Up to six minutes unaccounted for. It mattered, too. If Lyle dallied on his walk to the barn and didn’t reach it until seven or eight minutes after he left the house, it probably meant that the killer was inside waiting for him. But if he went straight there and spent up to six minutes inside the barn before being shot, it could mean that the killer entered after him. But where had the man gone? Or was it a man? He put his hat back on.

“Earlier you mentioned something about your wife threatening Lyle,” said Ralston.

Merrill snorted and shook his head. “Now, don’t you try to make something out of that. It was hardly more than a joke.”

“Tell me about it anyway.”

Merrill took a deep breath and exhaled it loudly, a clear signal to the sheriff that Merrill felt his tie was being wasted.

Published in September 2000, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery magazine.