"Come in!" old Dr. Sam Hawthorne said, greeting the afternoon visitor with his usual warmth. "Here, you just sit down here while I pour us a small libation. What was I gonna talk about today? Oh, sure—it was when my nurse April left me to get married in the winter of '35 . . ."

April had been my only nurse since I came to Northmont and set up practice back in 1922. When she met this fella up in Maine and decided to marry him, it was a real blow to me. But I couldn't stand in the way of her happiness. (Dr. Sam poured a little more brandy into his glass and continued.) That was in late January. April had agreed to work through February and help train her replacement, but finding someone qualified in a town like Northmont was easier said than done. Friday, March first, was supposed to be her last day in the office, but I prevailed on her to stay one more week.

"Sam," she said with a sigh, "I want to get back up to Maine and take care of our wedding plans. We're being married right after Easter."

"You've got time, April. You'll have the rest of your life to be Mrs. Andre

Mulhone."

"It sounds nice, doesn't it?"

"I've got to say you've seemed happier this past month than I've ever seen you. Just give me another week and I'll try to come up with someone."

Perhaps it was this feeling of a deadline hanging over me that made me so receptive the following Monday morning when Sheriff Lens stopped by the

office. "You're still lookin' for a replacement for April, Doc?"

"I certainly am, Sheriff. Do you know of anyone?"

"Well, a funny thing happened yesterday out on the County Line Road.

One of my deputies came across a young lady in a fancy yellow

Duesenberg car. It had gone off the road on a curve and she was in a ditch. Anyway, she's stayin' at the hotel till the car is fixed and she asked me this mornin' if I knew of anyplace here she could get a job to pay for it."

"Ladies who drive Duesenbergs can usually afford the upkeep," I remarked. "Besides, I'm looking for someone who can last thirteen years like April did. I don't have any temporary jobs available."

"Said she likes Northmont and might stay if she found the right job. She worked for a dentist in Stamford. That's pretty much like working for a doctor, isn't it?"

"There are similarities," I admitted.

"Then there's her name. You know what comes after April. Her name is May."

I had to chuckle at that one. "Okay, Sheriff, I'll talk to her," I said.

By noon that day Sheriff Lens hadn't gotten back to me, and when I went out for lunch I purposely detoured past Rex's Garage. I've loved fancy cars all my life, and if there was a yellow Duesenberg in town I wanted to see it.

Rex himself was working on it when I walked in, hammering the last of the dents out of the front fenders. "Quite a car, eh, Doc?"

"Sure is." I walked around it, marveling at the fine workmanship.

Just as I was lifting the hood to inspect the engine, a young woman walked in from the street. "What are you doing with my car?" she asked sharply.

"It's all right, Miss," Rex Stapleton assured her, wiping the grease from his hands. "This here's Sam Hawthorne, Northmont's best doctor. He appreciates fine cars like yours."

"I'm May Russo," she said with a ready smile, stepping forward to shake my hand. "The sheriff told me I should contact you." She was fairly short and moved with an energy that set her blonde hair bouncing. She wore a grey sweater and a matching pleated skirt. I guessed her to be in her midtwenties, a good decade younger than April.

"I was admiring your car. The Duesenberg is a fine machine."

"Thank you. I only hope Mr. Stapleton here has it running again."

"Good as new," Rex assured her, slamming one of the doors to emphasize the point. "I've got the bill right here. It's not too bad."

I watched while she paid with a pair of new twenty-dollar bills. Then

I asked, "Do you want to talk about the job?"

"Yes—climb in and I'll give you a ride back to your office."

I didn't have to be asked twice. We rolled out of the garage and turned right on Main Street, and I felt like every eye in town was on us. "What makes you think you might want to stay in Northmont, Miss Russo?" "I'm escaping."

"Oh?"

"From Boston and fast cars and a fast life. I thought Stamford was the answer but it's too close to New York. I want to slow down."

"Did your parents give you the car?"

She looked away and nodded. "When I started my senior year at Radcliffe. I graduated five years ago. Mr. Stapleton says you appreciate fine cars. What kind do you have?"

"A red Mercedes 500 K."

"Very nice!"

"You'll see it at my office."

"Am I going the right way?"

"Turn left at the next corner. I'm in the office wing at Pilgrim Memorial Hospital."

"Are you a surgeon?"

"Nothing so glamorous. Just a lowly general practitioner."

She made the turn without hesitation, handling the car with skill. "Is it much farther?"

"No. It's less than a mile from town. The way you drive I can't believe you could end up in a ditch."

"I was distracted," she answered. "I lost some of my clothes in the accident. I have shopping to do."

"Sheriff Lens said you worked for a dentist."

"That's right. I went to Stamford to try life on my own."

"What happened?"

"The dentist had a jealous wife." Almost as an afterthought, she asked,

"Are you married?"

I had to laugh. "No, I'm not."

We turned into the hospital driveway and I pointed out a parking space next to my Mercedes. "Did you walk into town from here?" she asked.

"Of course. I walk there and back nearly every day if the weather's good. It's the best exercise I get."

She was impressed by my new Mercedes and I promised her a ride in it.

Then I took her inside to meet April. "May, this is April—soon to be April Mulhone."

"Hello, May." April gave her a smile and made the obvious jokes about their names. Then she settled down to describing the office procedure, hopeful that I had found her replacement. I decided to hire May Russo.

As those first days passed, I quickly learned May's strengths and weaknesses. A telephone call to the dentist in Stamford had brought forth a grudging recommendation and I could see at once that she was a bright, hard worker with a cheery word for all the patients. Keeping the records and accounts, scheduling the patients, even devising the best routes for my house calls all came naturally to her. She wasn't a trained nurse as April had been, and there were times when I wished I could call on her to help with more medical procedures, but she was willing to learn and that was the important thing.

Friday was April's final day, and I took both of the women to lunch at a nice little restaurant across the street from Rex Stapleton's garage. Rex ate there regularly and passed our table at one point. "How's the Duesenberg running?" he asked May.

"Running very well, thanks."

"I heard you was workin' for the Doc here. Is he a good boss?" "The best." May smiled at April and me.

After lunch she excused herself and I had a few moments alone with April. "You know she'll never replace you," I said, meaning it.

"I think she'll work out fine if you give her a chance, Sam."

"Anything I should watch out for?"

"Not with her work, certainly." April hesitated and then added, "She's scared of thunderstorms, but I suppose that's not that unusual."

"Thunderstorms?"

"Remember Wednesday afternoon while you were visiting your hospital patients we had that freak thunderstorm."

"Freak is right. In March!"

"It lasted only a couple of minutes, but it really terrified her. She put her head down on the desk. She said they used to have a thunder room at home and she and her brother would be terribly frightened when their parents dragged them in there during a storm."

I'd known some old New England houses to have thunder rooms, including a few in Northmont. They were inside rooms without windows, where the family could take refuge during severe storms. It always seemed to me they tended to make people even more afraid of thunder and lightning, and May's reaction might bear that out. "Well, we don't have too many bad storms around here," I said.

April reached across the table to take my hand. "I'm going to miss you,

Sam. You've been the best boss a woman could hope for."

"I hope you'll be very happy. Have you and Andre set the date yet?"

"I know it'll be soon after Easter. I'm hoping for April twenty-seventh because Easter is so late this year, but we'll let you know for sure. You will come, won't you?"

"Nothing could keep me away."

The rest of the month was generally quiet and May and I settled into a daily routine of seeing patients, making house calls, and sending out statements. Though April had rarely gone on calls with me, I tried to get May out of the office at least twice a week. For one thing, I enjoyed her company. More important, I wanted my patients to know and trust her so she'd be more than just a voice on the telephone when they called in an emergency.

It was toward the end of March that we visited the old Foster place on Berry Road. The unseasonably warm weather that had provoked the early thunderstorm had lingered, off and on, through the month. This day was a sunny spring jewel, and some farmers could be seen already plowing their fields. Hank Foster wasn't among them because a bad knee injury had laid him up through much of the winter.

His wife Bruna was a tall humorless woman who'd been known to do much of the outside work around the place. She greeted me at the door, nodded briefly to May, and led us into the sitting room. "I hope you'll have him back on his feet soon, Dr. Hawthorne. Otherwise I'll have to ask our son to drive down from Springfield to help with the planting."

I inspected Hank Foster's knee, flexing it a few times. "How does that feel?"

"Better than last time, Doc. I've been gettin' around pretty good."

"This is a lovely old house," May commented to Bruna Foster as I finished my examination.

Mrs. Foster thought about that and suddenly unbent enough to ask,

"Would you like to see the rest of it?" "I'd love to."

I remained downstairs with my patient while they inspected the kitchen and the second floor. I heard them moving above us and then suddenly there was a heavy thump from up there. "What was that?" Hank asked, half out of his chair.

"I'll go see." At the foot of the stairs I called out, "Everything all right up there?"

"No," Bruna called back. "Your new nurse has fainted."

I found May sprawled on the floor at the doorway of a bleak, windowless room. To my relief she was already coming around. A whiff of ammonium carbonate from a bottle in my bag quickly had her sitting up.

"What happened, May?"

"I don't know. I—I think it was that room."

"It's a thunder room," Bruna Foster explained. "Apparently the former owners were frightened of storms and would go there during really bad

ones. Hank and I occasionally use it ourselves."

"It reminded me of something from my childhood," May explained. "You'll have to excuse me." She got to her feet a bit unsteadily. I helped her down the stairs.

"A great nurse I make!" she said with a self-deprecating shake of the head.

"It could happen to anyone," I assured her.

The following Monday was April Fools' Day, but it was no joke to Sheriff Lens. I stopped by the jail as he was doing his monthly cleaning-out of hobos arrested near the railway tracks. There was a burly black man, a short fellow with long blond hair and a beard—a half dozen in all.

"This batch has been in for four weeks," the sheriff told me. "There are no jobs here for 'em. I can't hold them any longer, so I just shoo them out of town, let someone else worry about them. Those birds in Washington

better start doin' something about this Depression."

Most of them left quietly, anxious to be free, though the short blond one demanded a suitcase he'd had when he was arrested. Sheriff Lens found it in the property room and sent him on his way. "It seems there should be something for them with all the public-works projects around," I said.

"They don't want to work. They just want to bum around lookin' for handouts. That big fella looks like he's got the strength of three people but you don't see him using it." He went back to his desk. "At least I emptied out the cells for the next batch. Now what can I do for you, Doc?"

"I was out to the Foster place a few days ago. On the way back I noticed a couple of junked automobiles in a field at the old Bailey farm. Know anything about it?"

Sheriff Lens pounded the desk with his fist. "Aren't they outa there yet? Rex Stapleton leased that field from the estate a few months back. Maybe they thought he was takin' up farming, but all he wanted was space to store some old wrecks from his garage. He says he might need them for parts, but I told him they're an eyesore and to get them outa there fast. I guess the next thing to do is to give him a summons."

"I just wanted to let you know about it."

"I appreciate that, Doc. How's the new nurse workin' out?"

"May's fine. It's a funny thing, she'll never replace April, but in some ways I feel closer to her. She's a bit more friendly than April, even if she's not as good a nurse."

"When's April's wedding?"

"Three weeks from Saturday. I'll be going up to Maine for it."

"Give her my best, Doc. I always liked that gal."

I returned to my office and found that the usual rash of early-spring illnesses were upon us. May had calls from two people with the flu and one woman whose child had broken out in spots. It was probably chicken pox since he'd already had measles, but I promised to take a run out there.

"Someday doctors will stay in their offices and everyone will come to them," May remarked as I prepared to leave.

"That would be a sad day for the medical profession," I said. "Some of these people can't even afford cars. How would they get here?"

The thunderstorm came on Thursday of that week, as surprising as the one a month earlier. It was my first opportunity to see the effect it had on May Russo. She'd been unusually edgy all week long, almost as if she somehow sensed the oncoming storm. With the first clap of thunder, she buried her head in her hands. We were alone in the office.

"Come on, May," I said to her. "I'm here with you. Nothing's going to happen."

There was a flash of lightning and then another crash, closer this time.

"You don't know," she moaned.

"Don't know what?"

But she didn't answer me. It was almost as if she'd gone into a trance. "Go in here and lie down," I suggested, helping her to her feet and guiding her to the examining table in my inner office. She stretched out there and I left her alone for a while.

By three o'clock, some fifteen minutes later, the storm had passed. What thunder there was could be heard far in the distance, moving away. I found May sitting on the edge of the table. "I'm sorry, Dr. Sam. I always think I'm getting better, but then the thunder comes and it's like a fog settling over my brain."

"Did you go to sleep?"

"I think I did, for a few minutes. I had a dream. It was a terrible thing— about a hammer and people being killed." "You're all right now," I assured her.

"I hope so." She slid off the table and returned to the outer office. In that moment she seemed more like a frightened child than a confident young woman who drove an expensive yellow Duesenberg.

"Have you ever considered seeing a specialist?" I suggested. "I'm not a believer in Freudian psychology myself, but some doctors can do wonders these days."

"Do you think I'm crazy?" she asked quietly, wanting to know.

"Of course not. Whatever your trouble is, we'll get to the bottom of it," I told her.

My three o'clock patient arrived then, a few minutes late because of the storm. I asked May if she wanted to take the rest of the afternoon off, but she insisted on staying at her desk.

It was more than an hour later when Sheriff Lens arrived at the office. His face was dead serious and I knew something was wrong. May must have seen it, too. "There's been a killing, Doc," he said without preliminaries.

"What? Who?"

"Hank Foster. It happened out at his house about an hour ago. An intruder came in during the thunderstorm and killed him with a hammer."

"My God!" I looked at May, remembering her dream. "What about

Bruna? Is she all right?"

"She was hit on the shoulder. Nothing more than a bad bruise. Doc Quinn is with her."

"Doc Quinn? Bruna's my patient."

"Under the circumstances, Doc, I thought it was better to call in someone else."

"What circumstances are those?"

Painfully, he glanced from my face to May's. "Bruna swears that the person who entered their house and murdered her husband was May here."

Oddly, my first reaction was one of relief. It was so impossible, so easy to disprove, that I felt no apprehension for May at all. "That's quite fantastic," I assured him. "May was here in the office with me during the entire storm."

"Bruna says she's sure, Doc. She was only inches away from Hank when he was killed."

May's face had gone white, drained of blood. "Where did it happen?" she managed to ask. "In the thunder room?"

"That's right." Sheriff Lens eyed her carefully. "Do you remember what happened now?"

"No, of course not. I wasn't there. I had nothing to do with it."

"Then how'd you know it happened in the thunder room?"

"You said it was during the storm, and I saw the room when I was there. I supposed they'd have been in it to keep away from the thunder and lightning."

"May is very frightened of thunderstorms," I explained. I told the sheriff everything that had happened during the storm, pointing out that it would have been impossible for May to have left the office long enough to have committed the crime.

"But she was outa your sight for fifteen minutes, Doc. You just told me so yourself."

"Fifteen minutes at most, just before three o'clock. What time did the killing take place?"

"Just then, at the height of the storm."

"All right. May was resting in the examining room for fifteen minutes or less. Are you trying to say that in such a short period she could have climbed out the window, driven her car out to the Foster house, killed Hank Foster, driven back, and climbed back in the window? In that storm it would have taken her at least fifteen minutes to drive just one way. And

what about her clothing? You can see it's perfectly dry."

"Could she have been there for maybe twenty or twenty-five minutes, Doc?"

"Not a chance! We had a three o'clock patient who arrived just a few minutes later. May was back at her desk by that time."

Sheriff Lens fidgeted. "Well, I never really believed Bruna Foster, but you know I have to check these things out."

"I'd like to speak with her if I could. I'm just as anxious as you to get to the bottom of this."

"She's pretty much in shock right now. Doc Quinn thought—"

"I'm her doctor, Sheriff."

I could see him torn between duty and friendship, perhaps regretting now that he hadn't called me at once. "All right, come along," he said.

As I was leaving, I turned to May. "Don't worry," I reassured her. "No one thinks you were involved." "Thank you, Doctor Sam."

It developed that Doc Quinn had brought Bruna into Pilgrim Memorial to have her shoulder X-rayed. We found her in the treatment room not a hundred yards from my office. She was huddled in a blanket while Quinn examined the X-ray. "Hello, Sam," he said. "I didn't mean to intrude on your patient like this, but the sheriff phoned me and said—"

"It's all right, I understand." I turned to Bruna. "I'm terribly sorry about

Hank."

"It was her—your nurse, May Russo! She killed Hank!"

"Try to calm down." I glanced over Quinn's shoulder at the X-ray. "Anything broken?"

"No. As I suspected, it's just a bad bruise. She tried to protect her husband and got hit with the hammer."

"May was trying to kill me, too," the woman insisted.

I sat down next to her. "Tell me everything that happened, Bruna."

Her face hardened at the memory of it. "The storm started around twenty minutes to three. What time is it now?"

"Nearly five."

"Only two hours! It seems like a day."

When she didn't continue, I prompted, "The storm—"

"Yes. It came up bad, out of the west. Hank and I weren't really afraid, but we went to the thunder room as we often do during storms. There are no windows and with the door closed we can barely hear the thunder. After a few minutes, there was a noise downstairs—Hank said it sounded like the front door slamming."

"Was it locked?"

"Heavens, no! Who locks their doors around here in the daytime?"

"Go on."

"After a minute or two there was a terrible crash of thunder. We could hear it right through the door. Hank thought lightning might have hit the barn and he opened the door to go look. And May Russo was standing just outside the door with a hammer in her hand and a wild look in her eyes! Her hair was straight and wet from the rain and her clothes were drenched.

She never said a word."

"What was she wearing?"

"A green dress with a black belt. She had a black jacket over it, but it didn't protect her from the rain."

I turned to Sheriff Lens. "Satisfied, Sheriff? May's wearing a blue sweater and black skirt today. I've never seen her in a green dress. And you saw— her clothes were perfectly dry."

"It was her!" Bruna Foster insisted. "She hit Hank twice on the head with that hammer. When I tried to grab it from her, she hit me. I ducked and she caught my shoulder. It was her!"

"Could it have been someone disguised as May, wearing a wig?"

She thought about it and then shook her head. "As she hit me, I yanked at her hair. It was no wig."

"What happened then?"

"I fell to the floor and I thought she was going to swing at me again—kill me as she had Hank. But the storm was letting up by then and she seemed to just change her mind. She ran out of the room and down the stairs. I heard the front door slam and then I dragged myself to the phone and called the sheriff."

"Did you hear a car?"

"No."

While Doc Quinn continued his examination, I took Sheriff Lens aside. "What do you think?" he asked. "She certainly sounds like she's telling the truth."

"But she can't be, Sheriff! Either she's mistaken or she's deliberately lying. There's no third possibility."

"How do we find out?"

I considered that for a moment. "We need a sort of lineup, like the city police use. Bruna only met May that one time at her house. She might have her mixed up with someone else. I'll find a couple of blonde nurses and put May in a white coat so they look pretty much alike. Then I'll walk them

past this door and see if she recognizes May." "Sounds okay to me," Sheriff Lens agreed.

I was certain it would put a quick end to the entire business. The nurses were eager to cooperate and donned identical lab coats over the uniforms. Then I got May and told her about it. I walked the nurses past first, one at a time, while Bruna Foster watched. Then I walked May by the door.

"That's her!" Bruna gasped, pointing a shaky finger. "She's the one who killed my Hank!"

That evening, I followed May in my car to the apartment she'd rented over Main Drugs and went up to chat with her for a while. "The woman's lying," I said. "It's as simple as that."

"It's not as simple as that! Why would she invent such a story in the first place? If she killed her husband, she could have said the intruder was some unknown prowler. Why say it was me?" "I don't know," I admitted.

"I really black out for a few minutes when I get these spells, Dr. Sam. Maybe I did go there and kill that poor man without knowing it."

"You think you changed your clothes twice, drove both ways, and even dried your hair in those fifteen minutes?"

"I don't know, maybe I flew over there! —I told you about my dream of the hammer."

"Yes." I'd been trying to put that out of my mind. I didn't believe in the supernatural, and I didn't believe in people flying through space without an airplane.

"If she's telling the truth, what other explanation is there?"

"I don't know. Do you have a twin sister?"

"No." She gave a faint smile. "I can't imagine two of us, can you?"

She urged me to stay for dinner and I did. She was a good cook, fixing pork chops to simmer while we both relaxed with cocktails. It wasn't the sort of treatment I'd come to expect in Northmont.

We'd just finished dinner when Sheriff Lens arrived. He seemed distressed to find me there. "Gosh, Doc, I'm real sorry." I saw the frightened look on May's face.

"About what?" I asked.

"I'm goin' to have to arrest you, May. We've got a confirming witness."

"What?"

"Rex Stapleton was out in that field near the Foster place moving those junked cars when the storm hit. He says he saw you come runnin' out of the Foster house just before three o'clock, as the storm was lettin' up. He says you were carryin' a hammer, May."

Her face contorted and she turned her back to us, bracing herself on a table. "It's not true," she said. "I didn't kill him. I didn't."

"Of course you didn't," I told her. "Sheriff—"

"I'm sorry, Doc. You give her a strong alibi, but I've got two other people who swear she was out there. I'll have to hold her, at least overnight." "I'm going to see Stapleton," I decided.

I found him at the garage, working late. He glanced up from the motor of a late-model Oldsmobile and said, "How are you, Doc? Be with you in a minute."

"Rex, why did you lie about seeing May Russo out at the Foster place today?"

"Huh? It wasn't a lie. She was there." He straightened. "I'm damn sorry about it, Doc, but as soon as I heard what happened I went right to the sheriff."

"She was with me at the time of the killing, she couldn't have been out there. Nobody can be in two places at once."

"I don't know about that, Doc. All I know is what I saw. I heard the door slam and I looked over toward the house and seen her come running off the porch. She had something in her hand. I could see it was a hammer." "Which way did she go?"

"Back across the field toward the creek. She disappeared into the trees. I thought it was pretty strange at the time, but I didn't hear about the killing till I got back to town."

"You couldn't have been mistaken?"

"Hell, it was her, Doc . . ."

I slept restlessly that night, confronted by the impossibility of it. Every possible theory ran through my mind. Toward morning I'd even conjured up a love affair between Rex Stapleton and Bruna, in which he killed her husband and they'd both lied about it. But if that was the case I was faced with the same dilemma—why were they trying to pin the crime on May, a most unlikely killer?

I arrived at the office early and puttered around until nine o'clock. I found myself waiting for May's arrival, then remembered she was in jail.

What if Bruna and Rex weren't lying?

What if May hadn't told me everything?

I put in a call to the registrar's office at Radcliffe College up in Cambridge. When I had the woman on the phone I told her who I was and asked about May Russo. "She would have graduated in 1930," I said.

"Yes, Doctor, I remember May. A charming young woman."

"Did she have a twin sister?"

"No, I'm quite sure she didn't. But she was the only member of her family to attend Radcliffe. Her grades were outstanding."

"Do you have a home address where I might reach her parents? It's very important."

"Her parents? Didn't you know? Her parents were both murdered while she was a senior here."

"What?" I caught the edge of the desk, trying to keep the room from spinning. "What did you say?"

"Her parents were murdered. Someone got into their house and killed them with a hammer. They never found out who did it."

I took a deep breath and asked, "Was there any suspicion of May?"

"Oh, no. She was here in her dorm when it happened."

I thanked the woman for the information and hung up. The next thing was to have Sheriff Lens check on the previous crime and learn the exact circumstances. I didn't really need that, though. I was sure he'd find that May's mother and father had been killed in the thunder room at their house, during a storm.

How could such a thing happen twice in one life? Did May possess some sort of split personality that enabled her to be in two places at once? Whatever the answer, I knew I had to see her. I'd confront her with this new information and force the truth from her.

I drove to the jail and hurried into the sheriff's office. "I have to see May," I told him.

"You're too late, Doc. A lawyer showed up from somewhere first thing this morning and got her released. I had no choice. She's free till the case goes before a county grand jury."

"A lawyer? Where did she go?"

"Back to her apartment, I suppose. Didn't she call you?"

"Come on, Sheriff. We have to find her."

"What's goin' on?"

"I'll tell you on the way. We'll take my car."

As I drove the Mercedes down Main Street and told the sheriff of my phone call to Radcliffe, I had the feeling of events closing in on me. It wasn't just the glowering sky, which might be hinting at another thunderstorm later in the day, but a terrible urgency that I sensed but couldn't explain. Then, as we came in sight of May's apartment over the drugstore, I saw the familiar yellow Duesenberg round the corner like an animal breaking from cover. May was at the wheel. She gave a startled backward glance at us and floored the accelerator.

"Hang on, Sheriff!" I shouted.

"Where's she goin'?"

"We'll find out."

The Duesenberg streaked down Main Street, gathering speed as it went. I stayed close behind, gradually narrowing the gap between us. Once we hit the county road outside of town I saw my opportunity to pull alongside her, but as I did she turned her head toward me, a wild look in her eyes, and swerved violently to the left.

"She's mad!" Sheriff Lens shouted. "She's trying to ram us!"

She was, and a sudden jolt and scrape of metal told me she'd succeeded. My Mercedes shuddered and almost left the road. I picked up speed, passing her and trying to cut her off. That was a mistake. She slammed the Duesenberg into my broadside, almost tipping us over. With steam coming from the radiator, Sheriff Lens and I jumped out. May backed up about fifty feet and I thought she was going to drive around us. It was the sheriff who

first realized her true intent. "Doc, she's tryin' to kill us!"

The Duesenberg came straight at me, picking up speed. I tried to run, but the stalled Mercedes had me penned in. I saw the face of a madwoman bearing down on me and thought it would be the last thing I ever saw.

Then Sheriff Lens fired his revolver and the Duesenberg's windshield shattered under the impact of the bullet.

I heard a terrible scream as the car went out of control, barely missing me, clipping the rear fender of the Mercedes and smashing head-on into a tree.

Then we were both running toward the car. The sheriff still had his gun out, but it was clear he wouldn't need it. There was blood everywhere, and when I listened for a heartbeat I knew it was already too late.

"There's your murderer, Sheriff," I told him. "But there won't be any trial now."

"It was May Russo, after all! But why, Doc? And how did she manage to do it?"

"Not May Russo," I corrected him. "This is her twin brother, and you had him locked up for the past month without knowing it."

We found May back at her apartment, tied to the bed and gagged. As soon as she was free she asked me, "Where's Martin?"

"Is that your brother?"

She nodded. "I should have told you about him."

We told her what had happened and she cried a little, but not much.

"He killed your parents, didn't he?"

She nodded, wiping her eyes. "I didn't know for sure until Hank Foster was killed. The crimes were too similar to be a coincidence. That's why I was so upset. When he got out of jail, he came to see me and I happened to mention fainting when I saw the Fosters' thunder room because it reminded me of our parents' murder. He went out there during the storm

and it was the first crime all over again. That's when I knew."

"He was dressed in your clothes."

"I can't explain it," she said, shaking her head. "I know now that he was terribly sick."

"What's all this about him bein' in my jail?" Sheriff Lens demanded.

May sighed. "I was driving through here with Martin a month ago when we had our accident. He was acting crazy that day, trying to grab the wheel from me, when I went into the ditch—"

"You said you were distracted," I pointed out, "but you never explained it further. You also said you lost some of your clothes in the accident. I wondered how that was possible. There was no fire and little damage to the car. How would you lose clothes under those circumstances unless they were stolen?"

She nodded. "After we went into the ditch, he grabbed one of my suitcases and ran off into the woods. He had a couple of shirts in there, but they were mostly my things. I suppose he ran away because he thought I'd be angry about the accident. And I was—it was all his fault."

I interrupted to take up the story. "May denied having a twin sister but she never mentioned a brother. I knew she had one because she'd told April about him. During the chase this morning, when I saw how May was handling the car she loved so much, slamming it into mine, I was certain of one thing—this wasn't the May I knew. Either it was a different personality or an entirely different person. A split personality didn't explain how she could be in two places at once, but two different persons explained everything. Both May and the woman I phoned in Cambridge assured me she had no twin sister, but what about that brother? Could he be a twin?

"I thought about the month between her arrival and Hank Foster's murder and tried to remember if I'd seen anyone resembling her. He had to be short, of course, with long blonde hair—because Bruna Foster told us she'd yanked at the hair and it wasn't a wig."

Sheriff Lens snapped his fingers. "That hobo I released the day you were at my office!"

"Exactly. He also had a beard at the time, so I didn't realize he looked like May. You probably arrested him in the first place because of his long hair and beard."

"He looked like a bum to me. He sure didn't belong around here."

"He had a suitcase with him that you had to return when you let him go after four weeks. I don't know too many hobos that lug suitcases around with them."

"He came to see me when you let him go," May said. "I thought he'd been gone for weeks. I asked about the suitcase but he said he'd lost it. You probably noticed how edgy I was all week after seeing him, Dr. Sam. Then when I heard about the Foster killing, it was all clear to me—he'd murdered our parents and now he'd acted out the crime again. But I just couldn't say anything."

"Everything fit," I told her. "Without the beard, he looked like you, and Bruna said the killer never spoke. She wasn't lying—she really thought he was you."

She nodded and waited until she could find her voice again. "He called a lawyer to get me released this morning and he was waiting at my apartment. He was wearing one of my dresses. It was insane. When I tried to reason with him, to tell him he needed medical help, he tied me up and took the car."

"It's a wonder he didn't kill you, too," Sheriff Lens said.

"I don't think so," May told him, the tears spilling over. "It would have been like killing himself."

"I hoped that May's nightmares about her parents' deaths were over for good," Dr. Sam concluded, "but she decided to return to Boston for psychiatric help, anyway. I was sorry to see her go.

"The following Christmas, she wrote me she was feeling well and had met a nice young man. Her Duesenberg was beyond repair, but Rex fixed my Mercedes up as good as new. That still left me without a nurse, but I found another and her name wasn't June. Next time I'll tell you how she helped solve a mystery that really had me stumped."