The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!
- Автор: Флора Флетчер
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 978-1479436668
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!». Краткое содержание книги:
On the side street, he turned his car into the alley and stopped behind the Bellmar. Still moving swiftly and with the blind assurance that precluded in his mind the possibility of detection, he dragged Foresman’s body from behind the shrubbery and onto the rear floor of the car. Behind the wheel, he drove on down the alley, emerging on the side street at the far end and turning back onto Northeast Boulevard.
Behind the lodge, he stopped beside a weathered plank shed and went inside. Fumbling in almost total darkness, he found a spade and a pick-ax and carried them out to the car. He leaned the tools against the car and turned his attention to the rear seat. Under persuasion, the beginning of the last that he would be subjected to, Dr. Norton Foresman slipped out.
The body was cumbersome and elusive, a monstrous burden that bore down upon him with terrible weight and threatened with every step to slip from his shoulder. Climbing the slope against which the lodge was built was grueling labor, but after that, beyond the crest, it was easier going, downgrade a short distance into a dry gulch. In the gulch he dropped the body with a dull, sodden thud and stood for a minute with his chest heaving, gulping the cold night air. Then he returned to the car for the tools.
Chapter 10
He went into the lounge of the hotel that had been designated and looked around for an empty booth or table, but there wasn’t any, so he sat instead at the bar on a stool with a vacancy on the left. He could see the entrance from the lobby reflected in the bar mirror, and after about ten minutes spent with a bourbon and water he could see Etta in the entrance. The vacancy still existed on the left, and she came across and filled it.
“Darling,” she said, “I thought it would take forever.”
“There was a lot to do. Assets to liquidate, debts to pay. The old man had a lot of debts. I didn’t dream he owed so much.”
“I told you that. Remember? I said we’d need the insurance.”
“Well, we’ve got it. A hundred grand.”
“I considered getting in touch with you, but I didn’t think it would be wise.”
“It’s just as well you didn’t.”
“Will they ever find him?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sure of it.”
“You did it well, darling. I’m proud of you.”
He drained his glass and waited again for the bartender’s bit. Then he said, “Well, it’s over now. All over and done.”
“The bad part. The good part just beginning. Are you free to go away?”
“Yes. Everything’s been taken care of.”
“Good. I’ll take a plane south tomorrow. You follow in a couple of weeks. You know where to meet me.”
“I know.”
Then he lifted his fresh drink and looked up into the reflected, red-rimmed eyes of the fat little man named Smalley.
“Good-afternoon, Mr. Roche,” Smalley said. “I don’t believe I’ve met your stepmother.”
Peter looked at Etta and felt for a second a thrill that could not be sustained and died almost instantly. She was sitting very upright on the stool with her chin lifted and her cheeks burning with color. Her eyes, focused unwaveringly on Smalley’s reflection, were shining with a bright, hot light. Unable to bear the sight of her terrible excitement, he turned his own eyes down to the untasted drink before him and said dully, “So you’ve known all along.”
Smalley looked startled and shook his head. “On the contrary. I haven’t been very smart in this business, Mr. Roche. I didn’t suspect a thing until after Dr. Foresman disappeared.” He sighed and drew the fingers of one hand across his eyes. “It’s no credit to me that I know anything now. It was really Dr. Foresman himself who put me straight. You see, we went through his office files when he disappeared, and we found a certain dental chart there. A kind of map of a person’s teeth, you know. It was clearly labeled as being Mrs. Roche’s, and it was not identical with that of the woman who died in the accident at all. Not even similar. That tore it, of course, and a child could have reconstructed what had actually happened. That was lucky, I guess, because otherwise I’d probably never have been able to do it. Naturally, we kept quiet until you got around to leading us to your collaborator. Which you have. And now if you could see your way clear to leading us to Dr. Foresman’s body, it would wrap things up nicely, and we’d appreciate it greatly.”
Again Peter looked at Etta, and she hadn’t moved, and he realized with a kind of incredulous, weary wonder that she was already thinking beyond the moment of ruin and planning the moves and countermoves of the final deadly game still to be played with the gathering forces of retribution, and his submission was completed by the evidence of her strength.
“He’s buried in the hills,” Peter said dully. “I’ll take you there.”
Trespasser
Originally published in Manhunt, September 1957.
She was beautiful in black. Even climbing the hotel stairs, flight after long flight upward, she moved with ease and ineffable grace. Anyone seeing her might have wondered, however, why she bothered to climb the stairs at all. Why she did not, that is, take the elevator. But no one saw her. She was very careful that no one did.
On the floor to which she was climbing, which happened to be the twelfth, she walked with assurance to the numbered door which was her objective. She knocked without hesitation, and the door was opened after only the slightest delay. The man who opened it was neither particularly young nor particularly old, having reached that interim span of years which has, in certain instances, a charm superior to its past or future. He smiled graciously and bowed slightly, bending ever so briefly from the hips. He was extremely handsome, she noted at once, his black hair and thin black mustache neatly trimmed and meticulously groomed, his white teeth flashing in his face. Together, she and he, they made a striking pair.
“Mr. Agnew?” she said.
“You’re an hour early, Mrs. Fenimore,” he said, nodding. “But it’s unimportant. Won’t you come in, please?”
“Thank you.”
She walked past him through a short hall into the sitting room of a small suite, simply and expensively furnished. She could look at an angle through an open door into a corner of the bedroom, and she thought that the rental on the suite, though not exorbitant, was certainly substantial.
“You’re living quite comfortably,” she said. “I understood from our conversation over the telephone that you were desperately in need of funds. Practically destitute.”
She turned to face him as she spoke with a dry inflection of irony, remarking with a faint feeling of admiration, which did not show or significantly modify her predisposition toward him, that he was not in the least disconcerted. He smiled again, ruefully, rather like a philosophical delinquent caught out of hand in mischief.
“I’m anticipating an improvement in my financial condition. A quite considerable sum of cash, to be exact.”
“Really? Isn’t it rather risky to obligate yourself on the strength of a possibility?”
“I’d say that this is somewhat more than a possibility. Probability, I’d say. The truth is, I consider it a certainty. I’m so confident that I’ve even obligated myself for a bottle of very fine brandy. May I offer you some?”
“No, thanks. I’m not particularly fond of brandy.”
“Too bad. A cocktail, then?”
“A cocktail would be pleasant. A martini if you have it.”
“Of course. I hardly ever drink martinis myself, but I’m aware of your partiality to them. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Fenimore, I know quite a great deal about you in general. But we’ll get to that in good time. Won’t you sit down while I mix the drinks?”