Laura (Femmes Fatales) Read Online Free PDF

me, and now she’s too proud to say so. That’s why she had to take it out on me this morning.”
    They stood in the burning sunlight. Both were anxious to get away, yet both hesitated. The scene was unfinished, Mark had not learned enough, Shelby had not told all he wanted Mark to know.
    When, after a brief pause devoted to a final struggle with his limping memory, Mark cleared his throat, Shelby started as if he had been roused from the remoteness of a dream. Both smiled mechanically.
    “Tell me,” Mark commanded, “where have I seen you before?”
    Shelby couldn’t imagine. “But I’ve been around. Parties and all that. One sees people at bars and restaurants. Sometimes a stranger’s face is more familiar than your best friend’s.”
    Mark shook his head. “Cocktail bars aren’t in my line.”
    “You’ll remember when you’re thinking of something else. That’s how it always is.” Then, without changing his tone, Shelby added, “You know, Mr. McPherson, that I was beneficiary of Laura’s insurance, don’t you?”
    Mark nodded.
    “I wanted to tell you myself. Otherwise you might think . . . well . . . it’s only natural in your work to—” Shelby chose the word tactfully “—suspect every motive. Laura carried an annuity, you know, and there was a twenty-five-thousand-dollar death benefit. She’d had it in her sister’s name, but after we decided to get married she insisted upon making it out to me.”
    “I’ll remember that you told me,” Mark promised.
    Shelby offered his hand. Mark took it. They hesitated while the sun smote their uncovered heads.
    “I hope you don’t think I’m completely a heel, Mr. McPherson,” Shelby said ruefully. “I never liked borrowing from a woman.”

Chapter 4
    When, at precisely twelve minutes past four by the ormolu clock on my mantel, the telephone interrupted, I was deep in the Sunday papers. Laura had become a Manhattan legend. Scarlet-minded headline artists had named her tragedy The Bachelor Girl Murder and one example of Sunday edition belles-lettres was tantalizingly titled Seek Romeo in East Side Love-Killing . By the necromancy of modern journalism, a gracious young woman had been transformed into a dangerous siren who practiced her wiles in that fascinating neighborhood where Park Avenue meets Bohemia. Her generous way of life had become an uninterrupted orgy of drunkenness, lust, and deceit, as titillating to the masses as it was profitable to the publishers. At this very hour, I reflected as I lumbered to the telephone, men were bandying her name in pool parlors and women shouting her secrets from tenement windows.
    I heard Mark McPherson’s voice on the wire. “Mr. Lydecker, I was just wondering if you could help me. There are several questions I’d like to ask you.”
    “And what of the baseball game?” I inquired.
    Self-conscious laughter vibrated the diaphragm and tickled my ear. “It was too late. I’d have missed the first couple of innings. Can you come over?”
    “Where?”
    “The apartment. Miss Hunt’s place.”
    “I don’t want to come up there. It’s cruel of you to ask me.”
    “Sorry,” he said after a moment of cold silence. “Perhaps Shelby Carpenter can help me. I’ll try to get in touch with him.”
    “Never mind. I’ll come.”
    Ten minutes later I stood beside him in the bay window of Laura’s living room. East Sixty-Second Street had yielded to the spirit of carnival. Popcorn vendors and pushcart peddlers, sensing the profit in disaster, offered ice-cream sandwiches, pickles, and nickel franks to buzzards who battened on excitement. Sunday’s sweethearts had deserted the green pastures of Central Park to stroll arm-in-arm past her house, gaping at daisies which had been watered by the hands of a murder victim. Fathers pushed perambulators and mothers scolded the brats who tortured the cops who guarded the door of a house in which a bachelor girl had been slain.
    “Coney Island moved to the Platinum