LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

H. PEDLOW FOUND DEAD IN HOME

      Julie scowled at that for a moment until she realized that Charles H. Pedlow was Harvey’s Uncle Charley. Then her startled eyes quickly scanned the story, picking out significant details of the report.

      The police suspected foul play.… Someone had tinkered with the lock of Mr. Pedlow’s front door.… A bruise on the side of Mr. Pedlow’s head where his assailant had struck him.… Mr. Pedlow had fallen near the front door and a doorstep had penetrated the frontal part of his skull, resulting in his death.… Coroner Michel placed the time of death at sometime Monday night.…

      Julie looked away from the paper, her lips parted. Something that was pretty close to a scream ached in her throat. No, it couldn’t be! She hadn’t killed Uncle Charley!

      Her frantic eyes returned to the paper. That bruise on the side of Uncle Charley’s head. Why, it was from her purse, of course. But it—it wasn’t murder. Uncle Charley had fallen, but she couldn’t remember seeing a doorstep that he might have fallen against. However, if the doorstep had actually entered Uncle Charley’s forehead, wouldn’t she have seen it?

      She hadn’t moved him, hadn’t turned him over. She had simply felt for a pulse in that pressure point on Uncle Charley’s neck, just as her first aid course had instructed her to do. She had taken off her glove—

      That was another thing which filled her with sudden terror, left her muscles weak and trembling. She had left the house with one glove off and one on. To save her life, she couldn’t think whether she had handled the doorknob with her gloved hand or bare hand.

      Fingerprints! They could trap her, seal her doom as a murderess! Again she consulted the newspaper for any mention of fingerprints, for any incriminating evidence.

      Mr. Pedlow was well known as a lover of animals, cats in particular.… He is survived by a nephew, Harvey E. Enders, of this city.

      No, nothing about prints. Not that it mattered. The police, suspecting murder, would come here first of all. Harvey was Uncle Charley’s only relative and probably his only heir. And the whole town knew about Harvey needing money.

      Immediately she was wishing Harvey was here to tell her what to do. She hadn’t actually murdered Uncle Charley. She had struck in self defense. Julie dropped the paper and pressed both hands to her pounding head.

      She’d have to control herself. She’d have to keep everything a secret. No one had seen what had happened except the seven cats. Cats didn’t talk. They stared at you, but they didn’t talk. No one had seen her go to Uncle Charley’s house—

      Wait! What about that shadowy figure she had seen standing beside the door?

      The doorbell rang. Julie got out of her chair, gave the door a quick glance. Mrs. Palet’s frizzled hair was visible through the glass lights at the top of the panel. Julie took just a moment to see what her own face was like in the mirror above the fireplace before coming under Mrs. Palet’s critical glance.

      Mrs. Palet came into the room, rattling her newspaper in front of her. Her protruding eyes found new fascination in Julie who was now a relative, if only by marriage, of a murder victim.

      “Of course, you’ve seen the papers, Julie, but then you haven’t seen what Doctor saw.” Mrs. Palet always referred to her husband as ‘Doctor’. She said, “You know Doctor is a friend of Michel’s, the coroner. Doctor went with Michel to the Pedlow house after the corpse had been discovered.”

      Mrs. Palet’s red hands fluttered over her ample bosom as though looking for a pin. Actually, this seemed to help her get her breath.

      “You see, Doctor talked with the policeman who broke into the house after the neighbors decided there must be something wrong with Mr. Pedlow.

      “The first thing that happened when the patrolman opened the door, was the cats. They came out in a streak—all seven of them. You see, they’d been shut up with the corpse ever since Monday night, and they were all half wild with hunger.”

      Mrs. Palet’s eyes rolled horribly.

      “It wasn’t a pleasant sight, as my husband put it to me. Mr. Pedlow’s body had been in the house for almost three days, slowly putrefying. Doctor said the odor inside was nauseating—”

      Julie felt her head start to swim. Mrs. Palet rushed forward.

      “Oh, my dear! You’re not going to faint? You’re not going to keel over, are you?”

      Julie had gripped the back of a chair for support, and she wasn’t at all sure that she wasn’t going to keel over, as Mrs. Palet put it. She allowed the doctor’s wife to help her sit down.

      “Well, Julie, you just mustn’t look on the black side of it, dear,” Mrs. Palet said, going toward the door. “After all, your husband Harvey is a mighty lucky man, especially now that Harvey’s money has all been moving one way—out. Don’t you think?”

      Julie couldn’t speak. She just waved toward the door.

      “Harvey is the only possible heir, isn’t he?” Mrs. Palet persisted. “And that’s what you’ve got to think of, because Mr. Pedlow certain wasn’t anything to you, and you can always use money.”

      “Mrs. Palet,” Julie faltered, “will you please just go?”

      “Of course, dearie. I do have to get supper, don’t I?”

      After the door had closed on Mrs. Palet, the telephone rang. It proved to be a call from the telegraph office, which had received a wire for her from Harvey. It stated that he had seen a newspaper dispatch about his uncle’s death but would be unable to come for the funeral because of the importance of his negotiations in Washington.

      Julie was disappointed, and the knowledge that she would be alone for several more days heightened her uneasiness. She wanted to cry but the tears wouldn’t come. She moved wearily into the bedroom, sat down in front of her dressing table, and absently removed her makeup. And then, with methodical care, she put it back on again.

      She knew she was behind the eight ball, and there wasn’t much she could do to get around it except look beautiful. She couldn’t think her way out, for her mind was a riotous tumult of nagging thoughts and impressions.

      The doorbell rang again. Julie knew instinctively the police were outside. She had to decide instantly whether to tell the unbelievable truth or to pretend ignorance of the whole thing.

      “In a minute!” she called sweetly to whoever it was at the door.

      Bending close to her mirror, she picked up her lipstick with steady fingers. She couldn’t tell the truth. She couldn’t because of the twenty thousand wagging tongues that would be saying the same things that Mrs. Palet had said.

      Twenty thousand people would be jumping at the same conclusion, supplying the same motive for murder. She couldn’t hope to convince anybody that she had struck Uncle Charley in self defense when there was such a perfect motive for deliberate murder.

      Julie blotted off surplus lip rouge on a cleansing tissue. Then she walked unhurriedly into the living room and opened the door for a stout, gray-haired man in police uniform.

      He mumbled his name in his embarrassment, but Julie immediately forgot it. However, she did hear him state that he was the chief of the force.

      “I won’t bother you long,” he promised before bothering her at all. “I just want to know when you expect your husband home.”

      She answered that readily enough. And the chief wanted to know if Harvey would realize anything from his uncle’s will. Julie couldn’t say. She just didn’t know anything about it, but probably if there was a will Harvey would be mentioned.

      The chief meditated on that for a while and concluded that he’d have to get a court order and have a look at the will himself. Then he took out of his pocket a pair of slim-nosed pliers. Radio nippers, he called them.

      “The

Скачать книгу