A Dismal Thing To Do Read Online Free PDF

matter now anyway because Mrs. Rhys said the place was derelict and there’d been nobody else inside.
    She didn’t say anything else till the driver had turned his car around in the melted-out circle that had been left from the burning truck and they were passing the smoldering remains of the barn. Then she remarked rather offhandedly, “I’m in there.”
    “What?” Madoc was jolted. “Jenny, are you—”
    “I mean they thought I was. That’s why they burned it. The man who stole my car claimed he kicked—I tried to dry my boots but the stove wasn’t—and then they pushed it over.”
    “We’ll have you home soon.” Madoc had never before in his life felt so totally useless.
    “Delayed reaction,” said the archangel in charge of biscuits. “She’ll be okay once you get home. You warm enough, Mrs. Rhys? Want me to turn up the heater?”
    “I think she’s asleep.”
    Madoc thought perhaps he was, too. The driver began a long and confusing conversation with the dispatcher about how to get out of wherever they were. Eventually they achieved a meeting of the minds, then there was no more talk until the car drew up in front of the right house. That set off a bustle of explanations and cups of tea and hot soup and sandwiches—Muriel knew how to find her way around a kitchen well enough—and at last Janet was in bed with her boots off and her nightgown on and her short hair still damp from a hot bath. Her gown was respectably hidden by a fancy blue bedjacket Grandma Dupree had crocheted, no doubt with visions of Janet’s cutting a dash in a maternity ward. She put on the prim and proper expression Madoc liked to tease her about and said, “Now I expect you’d like me to make a statement.”
    “Ayuh,” said Arthur. That was the constable’s name, Madoc had remembered at last. Good man, Arthur. Maybe they’d name their first son Arthur. He still felt a little woozy himself, but Janet appeared to be in full possession of her faculties, thank God.
    “Muriel, I never did find that place with the washstand.”
    It was a beginning, anyway. Janet picked up steam once she got going. Madoc was trying to take notes and keep his arm around her at the same time, perhaps so she wouldn’t take a notion to go back for the washstand. He was joggling her sore ribs, so she had to protest.
    “For goodness’ sake, Madoc, either let go of me or leave the note taking to Arthur.”
    Janet settled the matter for him by taking the pencil out of his hand and hanging on to the other arm so he couldn’t take it away. “Anyhow, I got mixed up somewhere along the line and there I was, out on this long, empty road when I met a truck coming toward me over the top of the hill. I was wondering how on earth we were going to squeeze past each other when all of a sudden the truck tipped over.”
    “How do you mean it tipped over, Jenny?” Madoc was still a detective, come what might. “Did it skid and jack-knife?”
    “No, it wasn’t that kind of truck, more like what your father would call a pantechnicon. A big box on wheels. It didn’t do anything that I could see, just flopped over on its side in the snow and lay there with its wheels spinning.”
    “I’ll be darned!” exclaimed Muriel, who naturally wasn’t about to be excluded from the denouement when she’d been, so to speak, the author of the drama. “Whatever did you do?”
    “Stopped the car and sat there like a lump. The truck was all across the road. There was no way to get around it and no place to turn back. Then it came to me I’d better try to do something about getting the driver out.”
    “Could you see him, Jenny?” Madoc asked.
    “No, I couldn’t. The truck was over on its left side, with the cab half-buried in a drift. He’d have been on the down side. I thought he might have bumped his head and got knocked unconscious or something. Anyway, I got out to have a look, but the truck was so high and I’m so short I couldn’t figure out how to climb