The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories
- Автор: Пауэлл Тэлмидж
- Год: 2015
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Mrs. Lominac bore her losses bravely. If she wept, it was in the privacy of a familiar, high-ceilinged room. She closed off parts of the house as the years eroded her strength. At last she resided in three pleasantly antiquated rooms on the ground floor, with southern exposure. They were all she cared to housekeep, but whatever she did, she did well, with thoroughness. The rooms reflected a quaint, story-bookish comfort, with the brass fire tongs polished, the lace curtains snowy, the heavy furniture (over which an antique collector would have drooled) gleaming from the years-long ritual of anointment with lemon oil.
Making do comfortably on the modest income left by her husband, little Mrs. Lominac gradually curtailed herself, as she had done with her house. She literally hated the moments when she gave up another motion of living. Even more, she would have despised the humiliation of having a red-faced, throat-clearing deacon or committee chairman tell her in a polite, roundabout way that they’d have to get along without her.
She knew the generations had come and gone. Nobody had to tell her. She knew what she was, a cobwebby old woman who lived in a spooky relic of the past. She hardly talked the language of the young people today who made up the church visiting committee, which she had once headed. She was too gray now for the hospital Gray Ladies. Her visage seemed to frighten the tykes at the orthopedic home more than the stories she read amused them when she creaked out there of a Wednesday afternoon.
Each time she retired from this or that with a brief speech or letter, the deacon or committeeman protested, “But, Mrs. Lominac, it won’t be the same — how can we ever get along without you?”... and each time she sensed the relief inside the committeeman when her firm little smile convinced him that she really meant it. The kind and gentle little old anachronism was actually getting out from underfoot.
She would return to her house a bit slower each time, feeling the years, the loss of another particle of herself. The day she gave up the story hour at the orthopedic home, to be replaced by a glowingly healthy college girl with huge glasses and apple cheeks, Mrs. Lominac opened the brass-bound chest in her bedroom and placed the storybook beside her husband’s Croix de Guerre and her son’s Silver Star.
She wondered later if that was the night the unknown visitor had come for the first time. She had no way of knowing for sure. He came as silently and invisibly as the years themselves.
She discovered the first evidence of his presence the next morning. Nothing nerve-shattering announced that she’d had a visitor, no broken window or forced lock, no muddy boot prints. The day dawned like a thousand other winter days, clear and cold, brittling the inch-deep dusting of snow that had fallen the day before.
Mrs. Lominac, almost an elfin impression in the massive poster bed, clung to the warmth of her comforters after her eyes slowly opened. She looked at her window and the ice-laced oak outside... the earth seemed very silent and empty. A lassitude came over her. There wasn’t a reason on earth for her to get up, when you came right down to it. A relic... unneeded... unwanted... a husk enduring beyond its period of usefulness. Then her lips firmed. She threw back the covers and hopped out of bed in her white, ankle-length muslin gown as if she had half a dozen appointments to keep today.
Slipping into a plaid woolen robe and felt slippers, she padded to the kitchen, put water on to boil for tea, and turned on the radio to catch a newscast.
It was when she opened the breadbox that the first question stirred in her mind. In that moment, it was a question relating to herself. Was her memory starting to go? She was certain this fresh loaf had been unopened when she retired last night. She’d bought it along with a few other things on her way from the orthopedic home, put it in the breadbox, and had a leftover corn muffin with her dinner last night.
Yet here the loaf was now, with the end of the plastic wrapper ripped open and a third of the slices gone.
She stood in momentary quandary. Was it possible she had got up, had a night snack, and forgotten?
The thought was scary; until this moment she’d believed her mental faculties were as clear as they were thirty years ago.
As the thought crossed her mind, her gaze drifted to the sink. Her frown, parallel crevices in the maze of lines and cracks and shallower ravines, deepened. Slowly, she extended her hand and picked up the case knife from the bottom of the sink. It simply wasn’t like her to leave a dirty dish or piece of cutlery when the after-dinner chores were over. She always put things away.
She squinted at the brown smear on the knife blade, lifted it to her nose and sniffed. Looked like the residue of peanut butter. Smelled like it. She stripped her finger along the knife and lifted her finger to her mouth. Tasted like peanut butter, too.
Opening the overhead cabinet, she lifted out the peanut butter jar and unscrewed its cap. Staring inside the empty jar, she felt her breath binding. Now who would do a thing like that? Slip in and gobble up all the peanut butter?
The teakettle whistled at her now. She turned it off, bunched the front of her housecoat to keep it from binding about her ankles, and toured her apartment, eyes searching every detail.
Nothing had been touched, nothing taken — except the bread and peanut butter.
Surely there had to be a simple and harmless answer. A youngster, hiking through the woods, perhaps chasing rabbits across the snowy fields, had felt drawn by the haunted aspect of the old Lominac house. In her absence, he’d sneaked in, heart hammering a little, bug eyes exploring. The nerve of the cocky little rascal, Mrs. Lominac chuckled to herself.
Her busy day passed quickly. She cooked, cleaned, filled the bird-feeder in the side yard, washed, ironed, worked needlepoint, watched TV in the evening. It wasn’t until the next morning, early, that her uneasy subconscious mind disgorged the fallacy in her reasoning.
She snapped awake in the gray wintry dawn. The thought was full-blown: I didn’t go out again after I brought the bread home. It means the intruder helped himself in my kitchen while I lay in here asleep...
A faint shiver tugged at her thin muscles. She drew rigidly to a half-sitting position, staring at the closed door of the bedroom, listening to the silence throughout the cavernous old house.
She slipped out of bed, donned slippers and robe, and padded to the kitchen. She looked about carefully. Nothing seemed amiss.
She turned, opened a door, and stepped into a part of the house where she hadn’t been for days. She toured the silent, deserted dining room, the large, vaulted living-room, the library-study, the almost forgotten sun parlor where dust lay on the windowsills. In the gray light, the furniture loomed spectrally with its white muslin dust covers. Out here, the old-fashioned steam radiators had long since been turned off. The chill seeped through her robe and muslin gown. Her breath made faint gray puffs as Mrs. Lominac went from window to window, door to door.
Everything was locked, snug, secure. She paused in the gloomy rear hall, her wrinkles pinched in a pattern of thought. Turning, she opened the basement door. She clicked on a light and went down slowly. The narrow wooden steps creaked a sound of decay even under her slight weight. The faint mustiness of old and dampish concrete, bricks and mortar seeped into her nostrils.
The basement was barren, uncluttered. The fuel oil burner clicked on in obedience to the thermostat in her apartment... the sound was inordinately loud in the silence.
At the rear, a portion of the basement was above ground level. Four small steel-casement windows, widely spaced, admitted dust-filled light from the back yard. At the first of these, the window nearest the north corner, Mrs. Lominac found her answer. She fingered the thin tongue-and-sleeve latch that had rusted through. A person had only to push the window from outside, swing it up, and wriggle into the basement.