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his own room to do it. That tallied with the suicide's pattern of behavior. In a murder-suicide you almost never found them beside their victim. Spencer pictured the gunman executing his victims in a raging frenzy, lasting ten minutes at most. When the echoes of the last shots fade, there is a great silence, and the killer realizes that his act was irrevocable. More silence; more time passes. Finally, he goes away from the sight of his loved one, and in the privacy of his room, he sits down with the gun between his feet, barrel between his teeth, and reaches down for the trigger.
    Four rooms befouled with blood and brain matter, the incidental selfishness of the madman. Why would Mark and Maggie Underhill want to keep living in that house of death?
    Spencer had spent a futile morning questioning the two surviving siblings, learning very little about them or the relationships in their troubled family. Had there been any problems within the family? A drinking problem? Had

    Josh ever been treated for psychiatric problems? The brother and sister were courteous, but wooden in their replies. Spoken without emotion, their responses might have been comments regarding the deaths in Hamlet. They didn't know what happened, they told him. Perhaps an intruder? No? An accident, then. The sheriff did not even bother to argue with their indifferently proffered theories. The killer was dead; legally, the rest did not matter. It was only the frustration of the enigma that made him pursue it.
    A second aspect of the case was his business, and he dreaded bringing it up to two new orphans, but he had no choice. "What are your plans?" he asked them when the crime-related questioning was out of the way.
    "Plans?" they echoed, politely blank.
    "You're both under eighteen. The law says that you have to have a guardian. You can't stay by yourselves on that remote farm."
    "Why not?" asked Mark Underhill. "I can drive. There's the insurance money for us to live on. We can take care of ourselves."
    "You don't want to live there. With those memories."
    Mark shrugged. "It's an old house. We got used to the idea of people having died there."
    "Besides," said Maggie, "we don't have any close relatives. And we don't want to have to go away. We want to finish school here." She was clenching and unclenching her fists in the folds of her skirt.

    "We know how to cook and use the washing machine," Mark added.
    Spencer sighed impatiently. "It isn't just a question of doing laundry and cooking your own meals. You'd have to see to taxes and house maintenance, and all the rest of the things that adults have to contend with."
    The two dark-haired youngsters looked at each other for a moment. Finally, Maggie spoke. "What about Dad's lawyer?"
    "Dallas Stuart? He can see to the settling of the estate, and probably to the money matters as well, but he's seventy-two. He can't be riding out to Dark Hollow to see if you need anything."
    Mark scowled. "Like we don't have a phone! Okay, Sheriff, appoint us a guardian. Not someone that we have to go and live with but someone who would look in on us every now and then to make sure we were eating all right, and keeping the house in shape."
    "The minister's wife, Mrs. Bruce," said Maggie. "She'd do it for us. She said she'd help us in any way that she could."
    "I'll talk to her about it," said Spencer Arrowood, disliking the suggestion. Still, it made a certain amount of sense. Why should the kids be forced to leave their home and school just because they had no one to come and stay with them?
    "I'm seventeen now," said the boy, sensing the sheriff's weakening. "I'll be eighteen in May. It's just a formality, really. Just a couple of months."

    "I'll talk this over with your lawyer and with Mrs. Bruce," Spencer told them. "It isn't settled yet, but I'll do what I can."
    "Thank you, Sheriff," said Maggie Underhill with a dreamy smile. '7 hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I cannot choose but weep to think they would lay