In the Still of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

disarray.
    Bud picked them up, shuffled them around until they were in order and handed them back with a cheerful, “Here you are, sir. Now, remember, you’re under orders to be nice and gracious to these people.”

    Miss Addie Jonson stopped in Fishkill to see if she could find a sandwich with her name on it. She parked her Jordan roadster on a side street. It was the kind of car she’d always wanted, but couldn’t afford until the owner, the headmistress of her school, had a minor accident and vowed never to drive again. She’d sold it to Addie at a price Addie couldn’t resist, and Addie loved her little car and the freedom it gave her. She drove it skillfully, but cautiously enough to seriously annoy many drivers who got trapped behind her on narrow roads.
    Addie was excited to get to Voorburg-on-Hudson and se e Lily again and meet Julian West. But she’d started too early and didn’t want to impose herself on Lily for an extra, unplanned meal. She was one of the few people Lily had confided in about the Brewsters’ dire financial circumstances and it broke her heart. The Depression, as people were calling it now, hadn’t hurt her.
    Addie had been teaching for a long time now at a school that paid better than most. She had been very frugal with her money from the time she took the job and had invested it in some small pieces of property, prim little houses around the school itself, which in turn she rented to the school for visiting parents, professors, guest speakers and short-time travelers. As she had no husband, children or parents to care for, her financial responsibilities were to herself alone.
    She bought most of her clothes from secondhand stores because she didn’t give a damn about fashion, cropped her curly hair short so she had no hairdressing costs, and served as a dorm mother to earn a little extra and save paying rent to someone else. On school vacations, she stayed in whichever of her properties was vacant.
    She was a tall, rangy, long-striding woman with a voice that was usually pitched to the back row of girls. Lily Brewster had been one of her favorite students because she was bright and worked hard at her studies in spite of not having to be anything after she completed her education but an ornament to society. Lily had developed a schoolgirl crush on Addie—why did so many of the girls do that, silly geese?—which had later developed into a real friendship with only a touch of heroine worship on Lily’s side.
    Addie had visited Lily once at the dreadful tenement and had been appalled at the circumstances to which the young woman and her brother were reduced. Addie had assured her that with her brains and capacity for hard work, things would eventually look up for her, though Addie wasn’t sure it was the truth. Then a year later, she’d gotten a letter from Lily explaining that she and Robert had inherited, in a manner of speaking, a large house, but no money, and would Addie please be so kind as to loan her books. The small town library had such a tiny selection of good fiction and she couldn’t afford to buy any, but would find a way to pay the postage both ways.
    Addie suspected that’s why she had been invited to the house party. The common love of books and all of them that Addie had happily sent along at her own expense. Now she believed her own prediction. Lily would survive, maybe thrive, and Ad-die was happy to spend some of her hoarded money to help Lily and get to meet one of her literary idols.
    She was striding down the main street when the smell of food made her remember her destination. She barged into a small cafe, spotted a waitress and called across the room in her school-mistress voice, “Could you toss together a meat loaf sandwich? Lots of mustard, if you please.”

    * * *

    Cecil Hoornart sat down on one of the railroad benches and fished around in his rucksack for his hiking shoes. He’d gotten off the train one stop before Voorburg early in order to walk