A Touch of Death Read Free Page A

the money and the other woman, while she held still for the disgrace. What would she do? Help him pack his bag, to be sure he had plenty of handkerchiefs?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “What about her?”
    She shrugged and gestured with the cigarette. “Who knows who’s capable of murder? Maybe anybody is, under the right pressure. But I can tell you a little about her. This is probably an odd thing to say, but she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Brunette, with a magnolia complexion and big, smoky-looking eyes. And a bitch right out of the book. Old-family sort of thing; the house is really hers. She also drinks like a fish.”
    “You didn’t miss much while you were up there.”
    “You mean the drinking? It was one of those hushed-up secrets everybody knows.”
    “Then,” I said, “your idea is she killed Butler? And that
    the money’s still there in the house?”
    “Right.”
    “Didn’t the police shake it down?”
    “After a fashion. But why would they make much of a search, when he’d obviously got away to Sanport and then disappeared?”
    “I see what you mean,” I said. “But there’s another angle. You say he was a big guy. If she killed him, how did she dispose of his body? She couldn’t very well call the piano movers.”
    She shook her head. “That I don’t know. I haven’t been able to figure it. But maybe she had a boyfriend. She still had to get back from Sanport, too, after she ditched the car. And, naturally, she couldn’t come on the bus. Somebody’d remember it. A boyfriend fits.”
    “I can see Mrs. Butler rates, in your book,” I said. “So far, she’s only a lush, a murderer, and a tramp. What’d she do? Dig up your flower beds?”
    “Opinions are beside the point. This is for money. What we’re trying to get at is facts!”
    “And all we’ve got is a string of guesses. Anyway, what’s your idea?”
    “That we search the house. Tear it apart, if necessary, until we find the money, or some evidence as to what became of Butler, or something.”
    “With her in it? Think again.”
    “No,” she said. “That’s why it takes two of us. She’s here in town now, attending a meeting of some historical society. I’ll hunt her up, get her plastered, and keep her
    that way. For days, if necessary. You’ll have time to dismantle the house and put it back together before she sobers up enough to go home.”
    “What you’re really looking for,” I said, “is a patsy. If something goes wrong, you’re all right, but I’m a dead duck.”
    “Don’t be silly. The house is in the middle of an estate that’d cover a city block, with big hedges and trees around it. There’s one servant, who goes home as soon as she’s out of sight. You could take an orchestra with you, and nobody’d ever know you were in there. The police may check the place once a night when nobody’s home, but you don’t have to tear off a door and leave it lying on the lawn for them, just to get in. The drapes and curtains will all be drawn. There’ll be food in the kitchen. You could set up housekeeping. How about it?”
    “It sounds safe enough, for the price,” I said. I got up and walked across the room. “But I still don’t see it. All that stuff about her leaving there in the car doesn’t prove anything. Hell, maybe she was in it with him, and was just covering for him by ditching the car while he got out of town some other way.”
    She shook her head. “No. I tell you he’s dead. And she killed him. That money’s still there.”
    “I can’t see why you’re so sure,” I said.
    “Then you don’t believe I’m right?” she said. “You don’t want to tackle it?”
    I thought about the money. A hundred and twenty thousand. You couldn’t get hold of it all at once. It was too big. It had to grow on you.
    I let it grow.
    But, hell. She was crazy. In that whole story of hers there wasn’t one shred of evidence that Butler hadn’t got away with it. A lot of