Meet Me at the Morgue Read Free

shaking hand, she raised the cup to her pale unpainted lips. Some of the water spilled down the front of her dress. She gulped the rest of it and crushed the cup in her fist. Her knuckles were red and cracked from housework.
    “Now tell Mr. Cross what you told me,” Ann prompted her.
    “I’ll try.” She made an effort to be calm. Above the square-cut collar of her dress, the cords in her neck bulged taut like thin ropes. “You saw my husband this morning? He said he was coming here to talk to Mr. Linebarge.”
    “He was here. Mr. Linebarge wasn’t, but I talked to him.”
    “Did he look to you like he was planning a crime? Did he? Is that the way he looked?”
    I felt a repetition of the qualms I had had that morning, talking to Fred. “Perhaps I’d better ask the questions, Mrs. Miner. You say your husband’s been accused of kidnapping Jamie Johnson. Who accused him?”
    “Mr. Johnson.”
    “On what grounds?”
    “No grounds at all. It’s a plot.” The stiff movement of her jaws gave her speech an oddly ventriloquial effect.
    “You’ve said that. Can’t you tell me anything more definite? I take it they’re both gone.”
    “Both of them, vanished like smoke.” One of her hands flipped up in an involuntary gesture. She returned it, clenched, to her lap. “It doesn’t mean my Fred is guilty. It means the opposite. It means foul play.”
    “Nobody knows where they are?”
    “Somebody knows. I don’t, but somebody knows. Whoever it is behind all this, they know.” Her mouth was tight and hissing. Her eyes glared like brown glass.
    “Who do you have in mind?”
    “A conspiracy,” she said, “that’s what it is.”
    Ann and I looked at each other. I was half inclined to agree with her that Mrs. Miner had been unbalanced by the shock of events.
    “He’s got a big black mark against him,” she was saying, “and
they
know that. It’s a criminal conspiracy to put the blame on him, for stealing the child.”
    “Has Jamie really been kidnapped?”
    “I’m telling the truth,” she said fiercely. “What do you think?”
    “I think you may be exaggerating a little.” I looked at my wrist-watch. “It’s twenty to twelve now. I saw the boywith Fred less than three hours ago. There was no trouble then.”
    She leaned towards me, her thin face avid for any kind of hope. “I knew it. Fred loved the boy like his own son. I knew there couldn’t be trouble between them, only Mr. Johnson won’t take my word for it. He’s blaming Fred. They’re all down on him now, even Mr. Johnson. He said he made a terrible mistake when he saved Fred from going to prison.”
    Ann said in surprise: “Does Mr. Johnson think his son has been kidnapped?”
    “He knows it.”
    “How can he know it?” I said. “The boy’s only been gone since nine o’clock. Fred told me he had orders to take him for a drive.”
    “I don’t know about that.” The authority of special information had restored some of her self-control. “All I know is, I saw the ransom letter with my own eyes. It came in the mail this morning. I took it up to the main house myself. I was there when Mr. Johnson opened it.”
    Ann and I looked at each other in silence. The first stroke of the three-quarter-hour fell from the courthouse tower like a bomb of sound, a giant exclamation-mark at the end of the woman’s statement. Between the first stroke and the third the situation changed palpably. Even the familiar room altered in appearance.
    I echoed stupidly: “A ransom letter?”
    “Yes. It came in the mail this morning.”
    “Did it mention Fred?”
    “Of course it didn’t. He’s got nothing to do with this, can’t you believe me? It gave instructions like for paying the money. It wasn’t even signed.”
    “How much, Mrs. Miner?”
    “Fifty thousand dollars.”
    Ann whistled. Fifty thousand dollars would pay her salary for nearly twenty years, and mine for nearly ten.
    “He called the police, I hope.”
    “No. He didn’t. He was