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:
“Not without cause, I can see. I happen to know a few tricks myself, in case you’re interested. I don’t think I’d better engage in a conspiracy with you, however.”
“Why not? It would be our secret.”
“Well, I’ll think about it, but I’m sure that you will think of something better yourself.”
She finished her apple, and now she threw away the core and balanced the salt cellar on one knee, which she had drawn up in front of her. Her eyes were bright with excitement, but at the same time they seemed to retain an analytical detachment that survived excitement or anger or any emotion whatever.
“You want me to make Cory leave Mother, don’t you? That will make it possible for Mother to get an enormous settlement that will make everything much better when you marry her later. You are planning to marry Mother, aren’t you?”
“How would you feel about it?” He suddenly felt something himself that was very close to fear. “If you hate Cory for marrying your mother, wouldn’t you hate me as much?”
“Not at all.” She laughed and snatched the salt cellar from her knee and shook her hair back from her eyes. “You’re different from Cory. It might be quite entertaining to have you in the family.”
“I’m glad you think so.” He arose from his heels and settled his feet flat on the soft earth. “Keep me posted on developments, will you?”
“Yes, I shall.” She laughed again with a kind of childish delight, anticipating a trick on Cory. “And now you had better go up to the house and see Mother. Cory isn’t home, so you don’t have to worry. No one will see you kiss her. Not even me.”
He found Stella at the rear of the house, in a sunny room with sliding glass doors that opened onto a wide terrace of colored flagstones. She was standing at the doors looking out across the terrace. She turned, hearing him behind her, and started toward him. She was wearing a white sheath and white sandals, and her skin had been exposed to the sun in controlled baths that had given it the shade and sheen of butterscotch candy. She was holding a cigarette in one hand and in the other, he was happy to see, a thin-stemmed glass with an olive in it. No one saw him kiss her. Not even Nettie.
“Darling,” she said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“My ego is greatly stimulated, I must say. You are the second beautiful woman who has told me that within the last half hour.”
“I’m jealous of the other one.”
“You needn’t be. I’ve been talking with your precocious daughter in the orchard.”
“Nettie? The girl’s becoming quite impossible. What on earth was she doing in the orchard?”
“As I said, waiting for me. Also eating a green apple.”
“Nettie likes you, I think, and it’s rarely that she likes anyone at all. It must be your irresistible charm. I’m having an early martini. Will you have one?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“They’re in the pitcher on the table there. I remembered the ratio exactly. Four to one.”
“Good. Will you have another one with me?”
“Later, darling. Four-to-one martinis shouldn’t be rushed, especially when they get an early start.”
“You’re right. They are good for you, like green apples, in moderation. If you doubt me, ask Nettie. She’s my authority.”
She sat down on a white leather sofa, drawing her legs up under her, while he went to the table and poured a martini from the pitcher. After adding an olive, he went and sat beside her on the sofa, half-turned to face her directly.
“What did Nettie want, exactly?” she asked.
“I got the impression that she wanted to accuse me of making things difficult in your little family.”
“That’s absurd. Cory doesn’t suspect a thing. You’re just a good neighbor, darling.”
“Oh, it apparently has nothing to do with you and me. It’s strictly between Cory and Nettie. She hates him, you know.”
“I know. But how are you involved?”
“I’m not really. Nettie only thinks I am. She has a wild notion that I have somehow contributed to the hostility.”
“I’ve sometimes felt myself that you incite Nettie to be a little more intractable than she might otherwise be.”
“Not intentionally, I assure you. If I’m an innocent but unfortunate catalyst of some kind, perhaps the solution would be for me to stay away. Is that what you want?”
“No. I couldn’t bear that. The truth is, I should never have married Cory.”
“Of course you shouldn’t have. You should have waited and married me.”
“Darling, I hope you don’t mind being next.”
“Not I. I’m planning on it. First, however, there’s the small matter of a divorce. Preferably obtained by you on favorable grounds.”
She leaned over and kissed him, and he patted one of her exposed butterscotch knees and continued to cup it intimately in his hand after the kiss was finished.
“I don’t think that will be a prolonged problem,” she said. “Nettie’s taking care of it.”
“Is the feeling between Nettie and Cory actually so strong?”
“Stronger. She hates him intensely, and he, for his part, is afraid of her.”
“Afraid of a child? You must be exaggerating.”
“I’m not. She threatened to kill him the other night.”
“When I was a kid, as I recall, I threatened to kill several people at various times. It’s merely a manner of expression.”
“Nettie is no ordinary child. If she made her threats in a fit of hysterical anger, you could discount them. But she doesn’t. She is perfectly calm and deadly. It’s quite frightening, really, and I can’t say that I blame Cory for being impressed. He wants to send her off to school.”
“Will you permit it?”
“No. Cory and I have had an ugly scene about it.”
“I still say that there’s something ludicrous about a man being afraid of a young girl.”
“Nevertheless, the relationship between them has become almost intolerable. Be patient a little longer, darling. Nettie will solve our problem for us in good time.”
“You think she’ll force a separation?”
“Yes. And a divorce will follow. No one can blame a mother for refusing to desert her child.”
“Where is Cory now?”
“He drove into the village. He should be back any moment.”
“Too bad. I was hoping for a little more free time. Oh, well, everything in its own time and place, I suppose. How about another martini now?”
She held out her glass, and he carried it and his over to the table. Bending slightly over the pitcher as he poured, his eyes had a speculative expression, as if he were considering an idea hitherto neglected.
There was a knock on the door of her room, and Stella, without turning away from her reflection in the mirror of her dressing table, called out an invitation to enter. In the glass, she watched the door open and Cory come in. He closed the door and leaned against it, both hands clutching the knob behind him. He was a small man with fine blond hair brushed neatly from the side across a thin spot on the crown. In her year of marriage to him, Stella had learned that he was, although generous and kind, a man of precarious disposition, subject to a kind of irrational and free-floating anxiety. In his eyes now, as he looked across the room to intercept in glass her reflected observation of him, there were shadows of worry.
“Come in, darling,” she said, still not turning. “I’ve been having a nap. Is it getting quite late?”
“Not late.” He left the door and came over to sit on the edge of the bed, her eyes following him in the mirror. “About five.”
“That’s all right, then. Dinner’s early tonight, but we’ll have plenty of time for cocktails.”