“What about the ashtray?”
Mr. Collins was tugging at Marvia’s hands. “The ashtray, the ashtray,” he whispered. “It was the monsters. Both of the monsters. Both of them!”
“I don’t understand, Mr. Collins. What monsters are those?” If the old man was delusional, seeing monsters in ashtrays, he might have thought that Smithton was one of them. He would have picked up the ashtray.…
Could Collins have picked up the ashtray at all? Marvia wondered. The aged man with his pipe-stem arms, his thin, fragile bones and withered muscles? It was heavy glass, it must have weighed the better part of ten pounds.
But if he was panicked by his imagined monsters, he might have found the strength to lift the heavy glass implement and bring it down just once, its sharp corner colliding with Smithton’s thin
