Anatomy of a Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

wondering what had happened to Maida and my twenty bucks when I heard a knock on the door. It couldn’t have been Maida because she would have characteristically railed and shouted and pounded or else used her key. It would doubtless be some thoughtless character who’d lurked all day in some tavern, polishing his nose, and then come to gloat over the fading D.A. Lord, it would be good to at last get away from that servitude, the thoughtless headlong rush of the great aggrieved multitude … . Well, I’d show him what an alert on-the-ball public servant he was losing. I moved over and opened the door.
    There stood my old Irish friend, Parnell McCarthy, another Chip pewa lawyer, covered with snow and gently drunk. He was holding a damp brown paper bag, top and bottom, balancing it delicately, as though it contained a piece of priceless statuary. With his bulbous red nose and twinkling gray eyes he looked faintly like an erring Santa Claus. He also smelled very good.
    â€œAh, good afternoon, Paul,” he said gravely in his wheezy voice, with its trace of Irish accent, in which the “Paul” rhymed faintly with “awl.” He moved into the room with his bumpy dignified walk, talking all the while. “I come as courier, not a Greek bearing gifts. Met Miss Maida at the foot of the stairs just as I was coming up. She asked me to deliver this—this here now package to you.” He studied the bag. “Haven’t the foggiest notion what it might contain, that I have not.” He shook the bag and listened. “Though some mild curiosity, you will observe.” He blinked his eyes and shook it again, smiling craftily. “Well, now maybe I’ve got a dark suspicion. Or perhaps a wee intuition. There,” he said, placing the bottle on the blotter in the middle of my desk, his plump hands hovering solicitously. “Always glad to be of service to an attractive young woman.” He surveyed the paper bag and shook his head. “Perhaps a farewell token of esteem from one of your desolated constituents,” he ventured. “And then again, perhaps a cabbage, who knows.”
    I grunted. “Suppose the courier takes a peek in the bag, Parn, while I go get some water and glasses. And whatever you find, uncork it.” As I stood at the corner washstand in Maida’s room letting
the water run cold I heard old Parnell rattling the bag; his squeals of simulated surprise and his sighs of wild delight, which I suspected were not quite so simulated. “Oops! My oh my … . May the Lord save us … . ‘Tis a bottle of spirits, that it is … . What a remarkable coincidence … . An’ me just after cravin’ a little snort … . What a fine gleamin’ thing it is, too, an’ old Parnell McCarthy just in time to have a ceremonial drop with his old friend and colleague, Paul Biegler … . Ah, ’tis a small world, that it is, so full of delightful surprises …”
    â€œThe old boy is really wound up,” I thought as I stood in Maida’s doorway silently watching him. He was holding the bottle up to the light, now, humming the “Kerry Dance,” executing a few steps of a grave little dance, chuckling softly to himself. At that moment I envied the man. For Parnell McCarthy possessed that rarest and most precious of human talents, a talent so elusive that it receded only the faster before those who wooed it with more gadgets and toys: the capacity for participation and joy, the enviable ability to draw vast pleasure and enjoyment from small occasions and simple things. For all the old man’s show of cynicism, he possessed the sense of wonder and soaring innocence of a small boy flying a kite.
    â€œReady or not, Parn, here I come,” I said.
    I filled the jiggers, making a highball out of mine, while old Parnell stood watching the proceedings as rapt as a child on Christmas morning. He took his jigger in one hand