Rosemarie got up slowly. She was sure she’d heard a sound. She had been on the floor. Sleeping. She had been so tired she remembered. She tried to peep through the heavy drapes. It was midnight and late by village standards. Not a leaf stirred outside. It was a warm and balmy night and the moon beamed down in a steady stream .She could see no one. Yet she’d heard a soft thud. Who could be about at this hour? There had been no one when she let herself in. She was sure. She knew no one in the village and no one knew her. Why, she didn’t even know where the village was, or if there was one at all.

She had come into the cottage through the back .Through the kitchen. There was no one in it. She knew. She had checked. The cottage had stood in silver splendor lonely and forlorn. Isolated and unlived, in the middle of nowhere. Inviting.

 No one had seen her either. She was certain.

She heard it again .She could swear it was the distinct squeak of the gate. She quickly looked towards it. The glimmering shadows had lengthened. But the gate stood unmovingly closed. It was bolted .Hadn’t she seen off that irritating dog and bolted it herself when she had come in? But that was a few hours ago. Could the dog have come back? Could some one have jumped over? Could they have followed her?

 No. How could they? Nobody knew she was there. No one knew who she was. Did anybody? She didn’t. They told her at the hospital she’d get her memory back. Soon. It was just a matter of time. A temporary loss. It was the shock, the trauma. Of having killed somebody. But she couldn’t have. Could she ? Why would she? They couldn’t tell her. They didn’t know.

It must have been in self defense. She was no killer. Some elusive feeling told her so. They could be wrong. They had to be wrong .Oh! Why was it that she couldn’t remember? She didn’t know.

She was going to be taken away, the nurses told her. In a few minutes. They were just looking for the cuffs. Cuffs?

 She knew then that she needed to get away. Go somewhere safe. Till she was able to remember. She had escaped while their attention had been diverted and had run, walked, stumbled and found her way to this secluded cottage. Miles away. She hoped. The darkness had been a good friend. And the moon an able navigator. She had picked open the simple lock,  shooed the sniveling dog away and had collapsed on the musty carpet.

 There it was again. That shuffling sound. Now was that a shadow? Why was her head hurting so? Fear, her now nagging companion engulfed her completely. When would it ever leave her? She was no killer. She couldn’t be. The soft thud was no longer a soft thud. It was a definite sound. Almost a muffled bang.

 She groped for …wait a minute- was that a gun in her hand? Was she a murderess after all? Her blood ran cold. Maybe, but she wasn’t going to be captured without a fight. She got to her feet hitting out wildly. And then the world erupted.

 The gun hit the door. Strangely it looked like a golf club. Dorothy Myer’s “Escape from Murder’ fell to the floor with a big thud. And she found herself all tangled up on the carpet wrestling with the door knob.

Memory returned. Ah! She had been reading it before dropping off last night. She had fallen off the sofa and cracked her head too.

And there was her husband’s pained look of shocked surprise while fending off his prized club.

 It would appear she had cracked his head too.

He had been quietly negotiating the door so as not to wake her. Trying to get in after a late night shift at the hospital.

The relief was enormous. Her intuition had been right .She wasn’t a murderess after all. Or was she? For her husband was now lying prone on the ground. To all intents and purposes dead to the world!

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