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:
“If you saw your mother fall,” he said, “why didn’t you come out to help her?”
“I don’t know. I was afraid, I guess. It was so sudden and so terrible that it frightened me. I don’t know why. Then you came down, and I heard you calling the doctor, and so I just went out the back way and sat in the mulberry tree.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” The investigator shrugged at Mr. Etheridge. “Kids are odd little animals.”
“Yes,” Mr. Etheridge said, “they are, indeed. Now you will please return to your room, Francis. Thank you for speaking up.”
“You’re welcome,” Francis said.
He went back into his room and closed the door and sat on the floor in a swath of sunlight. There was a large book there that he had been looking at earlier, and he began now to look at it again. It contained thousands of colored pictures of almost every imaginable thing, and Francis was still looking at the pictures about a quarter of an hour later when his father opened the door and came into the room and stood staring down at him.
“What are you looking at, Francis?” Mr. Etheridge said.
Francis looked up from the bright pictures to his father’s gray stone face. His pale blue eyes had a kind of soft sheen on them. The sunlight gathered and caught fire in his pale hair.
“It’s a catalog,” he said. “There are so many beautiful things in the catalog that I’ve always wanted. Are we going to get a lot of money from the insurance company? If we are, maybe we could get some of the things. Maybe even a piano that I could take lessons on.
The soft sheen gave to his eyes a look of blindness. He did not seem to see his father at all.
“Yes,” Mr. Etheridge said. “Maybe even a piano.”
For Money Received
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1964.
The rain came straight down into the alley, and I sat with my back to my desk and watched the rain. It was not an afternoon for being out and doing something. Besides, I had nowhere to go and nothing to do. If I had somewhere to go more often, and something to do when I got there, I would be able to watch the rain come down past a front window instead of a back, into a street instead of an alley. Provided, of course, that I went where I went and did what I did for clients who paid me a great deal more than my clients usually paid.
My name is Percy Hand, and I’m a private detective. My privacy is rarely invaded. This makes the rent a problem, but it gives me plenty of time to watch the rain come down into the alley on rainy days.
Someone was coming down the hall. My ears are big and my hearing is acute, so I tried to establish certain facts, just for fun, about the person approaching. It was apparent from the sharp, quick rhythm of the steps that the person was a woman, probably young. I decided from a more esoteric suggestion in the sound that this woman, whoever she was exactly, was a woman of pride and even arrogance. In her purse, moreover, was a checkbook in which she could write, if she chose, a withdrawal of six figures. To the left, I mean, of the decimal point. These last two deductions were wholly unwarranted by the evidence, and probably explain why I am not the best detective in the world, although not the worst. They assumed, that is, that poor women cannot be proud, which is palpably untrue. Anyhow, if she was rich, chances were a hundred to one that she was not coming to see me.
But I was wrong. My reception room door from the hall opened and closed, releasing between the opening and the closing a brief, angry exclamation from a buzzer. The buzzer is cheaper than a receptionist, even though it is not as amusing, especially on rainy days. I got around my desk and out there in a hurry, before this client had time to walk out.
She was wearing a belted raincoat and holding in one hand a matching hat. Her hair was black and short and curling in the damp. She could look over a short man’s head and a tall man’s shoulder, excluding basketball players. At the end of nice legs was a pair of sensible brown shoes with flat heels. Inasmuch as I had heard her clearly in the hall, the shoes had to have leather heels.
“Are you Mr. Percy Hand?” she asked.
Her voice was modulated and musical, now with a quality of calculated coolness that could instantly change, I suspected, to calculated warmth or coldness as the occasion required.
After admitting that I was Percy Hand, I asked, “What can I do for you?” I scrutinized her curiously.
“I’m not certain.” She looked around the shabby little room with obvious reservations. “I expected something different. Do all private detectives have offices like this?”
“Some do, some don’t. It depends on how much money they make.”
“I don’t know that I like that. It must mean that you don’t have many clients, and there is surely a reason. Why aren’t you more successful?” She pointedly questioned.
“Happiness comes before success, I always say.”
“It’s a nice philosophy if you can afford it. On the other hand, you may be unsuccessful because you’re honest. I have a notion that private detectives, in general, are not very reliable. Can you tell me if that is so?”
“Professional ethics prevents my answering.”
“I heard that about you. That you’re honest. Someone told me.”
“My thanks to someone. Who, precisely?”
“I don’t think I’ll tell you. It doesn’t matter. A woman I know for whom you did something. She said that you were perfectly reliable, although not brilliant.”
“My thanks is now qualified. I maintain that, properly motivated, I can be brilliant for short periods.”
“Well, I’m not especially concerned about that. What I need is someone, on whose discretion I can rely, to do a simple job.”
“I’m your man. Simple, discreet jobs are those at which I’m best.”
“In that case, I’d better stay and tell you about it.”
She began to unbuckle her belt, and I stepped forward, like a discreet and reliable gentleman, to help her off with her raincoat. Then I gestured toward the door to my office, and she went through the door ahead of me and helped herself to the chair at the end of the desk. She was wearing a simple brown wool dress that verified my intuitive conclusion that she was, if not actually rich, at least substantially endowed. She crossed her legs and showed her knees, and I saw, just before sinking into my own chair behind the desk, that the knees were good.
“And now,” I asked, “what is it that you want me to do, discreetly and simply?”
“First, I’d better tell you who I am. I haven’t told you, have I?”
“You haven’t.”
“I’m Mrs. Benedict Coon. The third. My Christian name is Dulce, if it matters.”
“It doesn’t. Not yet. Chances are, it never will.”
“My husband and I live at 15 Corning Place. Do you know who the Coons are?”
“Canned food for dogs and cats?”
“They’re the ones. Isn’t it absurd?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m very hesitant about criticizing anything so profitable.”
“Well, never mind. It’s true that too much money, from whatever source, can cause one to do foolish things and get one into a great deal of trouble. That’s why I’m here. My husband has been seeing another woman, and I want you to find out who she is and where she lives.”
“Excuse me.” I was already parting sadly from a fee that might have been fat. “I don’t do divorce work. I can refer you to another operator, if you like.”
She laughed softly. “Such admirable scruples! No wonder you’re so poor. But you misunderstand me. I have no wish for a divorce. I’m far too fond of being Mrs. Benedict Coon III. Do you think for a moment that I would voluntarily give up my position because of a ridiculous peccadillo on the part of my husband?”