Hanged for a Sheep Read Free Page B

complicated because Aunt Flora’s family was apt to prove intricate.
    â€œI’m the simplest,” Pam thought. “Just a niece, child of a sister. After that—.” Pam sighed and washed her face, absently.
    It was a little simpler if you started with the Buddies, since Aunt Flora had now formally declared herself again a Buddie and since, after all, the Buddies represented the senior branch. Flora Pickering had started with the Buddies when she was a rounded, pretty girl and was visiting relatives in the Indian Territory long before it became Oklahoma. Then she had met Major Alden Buddie, of the New York Buddies, on post in country still not tame, and married him quickly and lived with him very happily until he died when they were both still young. And he had left her what must then have seemed all the money in the world and was still, Pam suspected, a good deal of it.
    Of the Buddies, extant and in the house, there was first a second Alden, now also a major, and his daughters, Clem who was eighteen and Judy who was two years older. Clem and Judy, Pam gathered, were staying with their grandmother during an undetermined interim, its length eventually to be decided by the final army assignment of their father, who was now majoring at a nearby army post. In New Jersey, that was it. It was a bad time to predict the future of an army major and his daughters. The major himself stayed at Aunt Flora’s when he was in the city, which apparently was often.
    That evening, at any rate, there would be a fourth Buddie—Christopher. He was another grandchild, the son of Dr. Wesley Buddie, who was the second son of the first Major Buddie and Aunt Flora. All that Pam could remember about him was that he was going to be a playwright.
    â€œIf it kills him,” Pam added to herself, swabbing.
    That did for the Buddies immediately under foot.
    â€œI can widen it later if I have to,” Pam thought, and sighed.
    After Major Buddie, Aunt Flora had married Robert McClelland, who later became a chief of police, and was now happily divorced. By him, Aunt Flora had one son named Something or Other McClelland and Something or Other had had, in turn, a son named Bruce, whom Pam knew rather well and liked, and who was reporting on a morning newspaper.
    â€œAnd who isn’t around,” she said to herself, thankfully. “Not tonight, anyway. But I don’t know about arsenic day.”
    After Mr. McClelland there came, surprisingly, a baseball player, named Craig and from him another son to Aunt Flora. She ran to sons, Pam decided. This son was Benjamin Craig, who lived staidly at home with his mother and who staidly managed a branch bank. He was vague in Pam’s mind, but he would be there at dinner time. There would be a good many to dinner. Reluctantly, Pam emerged from warm water and towelled. Remembering Jerry’s letter briefly, she regarded herself in the long mirror set into the door. She surprised herself by blushing slightly and went into the bedroom, which was chilly enough to make her dress quickly.
    In a long, dark-blue dinner dress, Pam sat in front of the dressing table mirror and regarded herself. She nodded to herself, in reasonable contentment and again wished Jerry were there.
    â€œParticularly,” she thought, “if there are going to be murders. But I don’t suppose there are, really. It wouldn’t be like Aunt Flora to be poisoned.”
    She slipped through the door carefully, but Toughy was too quick for her. He bounced past her into the hall, galloped to the head of the stairflight, and stared down. Then he bristled, and the hall—the hall and the whole stair well and probably the whole house—was filled with indignant barking. Toughy snarled and bristled and a young voice said, indignantly, “Oh!”
    A brown cocker was pulling up the stairs, restrained by a green leather leash. At the other end of the leash was a slender girl. She was hatless and