Hanged for a Sheep Read Free Page A

you looked on the outer world as through a key-hole.
    Pam’s room was in front, two flights up from the entrance foyer. It was wider and deeper and higher than was altogether convenient in a bedroom. Its windows were so tall and wide that it was impossible to open them for merely a little air, so that one had to choose between the resident air and a chilling hurricane. It was at a fine level to collect street noises and street dust and it had only one smallish closet, opening in the wall opposite the windows and next the door leading to the bathroom, which had a ventilator down which a peculiar, oily dust descended, when the wind was wrong, and from which the dust fell into the bathtub. But the room had dignity.
    â€œOf course,” Pam said, in a rather lonely voice, since Toughy had now joined his sister in smelling the room, “you can’t have everything.”
    At the moment, she thought again, it would be nice to have Jerry. She had read his most recent letter hurriedly when she left the apartment to spend a dutiful few days with Aunt Flora—and to avoid looking at Jerry’s empty bed at nights—and now she took it out of her purse to read again. Jerry said it was cold in Texas. He said it in an aggrieved tone since, being a New Yorker, he had supposed that Texas was warm, even in January. He was about a third of the way through the book, and was afraid that it was very like “Gone With the Wind.” He missed her.
    Pam curled up at one end of the big bed when she reached this part and read it carefully. He missed her very much. He was explicit to a degree and in terms which made Pam feel deliciously unlike an accepted and familiar wife.
    â€œWow!” Pam said, softly, and read part of the letter again. It would be very nice to have Jerry home. It would also be nice to find a secure place in which to sequester the letter. Pam looked around, shook her head and put the letter back in her purse. She looked at the little ball watch dangling from a chain around her neck. She dismissed Jerry from her thoughts, went to the bathroom, wiped part of the oily dust from the tub and turned on the hot water. It ran slowly, but it ran hot. The cats followed her into the bathroom and Ruffy put forepaws on the edge of the tub and peered at the water. She was about to get in to investigate when Pam caught her.
    The tub was full, finally, and the cats shut out. Pam ignored their protests at this arrangement and relaxed. She wiggled her toes and regarded them. She really should, she decided, have polish put on again. But then, in the winter, what was really the point? Jerry hadn’t mentioned her toes.
    â€œNow,” Pam told herself, “to get to Aunt Flora and arsenic.” To start somewhere, you could start with the people in the house. So—. She went over what Aunt Flora had told her while they finished their second cocktail in front of the fire. Take the servants. Sand, the butler; the new maid, Alice Something; the cook, not new, Something Jensen—Clara, that was it. Mrs. Clara Jensen. There must be a lot of work for Alice Something in a house as big as this if Sand only butlered and Mrs. Jensen only cooked. And then there was Harry.
    Where you put Harry, Pam found it hard to say. He was not a servant, certainly, although often he puttered around the house, putting in fuses, pasting down loose flaps of wall-paper, putting knobs back on drawers. It had never been easy to place Harry—Harry Jenkins, that was it. He lived on the top floor, and he was almost as old as Aunt Flora and much thinner and it had always been a question in Pam’s mind whether he went with the house or with Aunt Flora. Probably, she decided, squeezing water out of a sponge and letting it flow in again, he went with Aunt Flora. Probably he was something out of Aunt Flora’s past. If things were really to be investigated, that would have to be found out.
    Now you came to family. And things became