Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

twin beds in Mary’s bedroom.
    “No,” I murmured dryly, “one’s neckwear doesn’t have wings.”
    Mary’s lips trembled, and I put out my hand and took hers.
    “Why don’t you send the child away for a while?” I asked. “Give her a chance to find her feet again in a new environment. A summer camp for girls or a cruise, say.”
    Mary’s fingers were cold in my grasp and she looked at me with such despair, I started and dropped my handbag.
    “On what?” she demanded.
    I stared at her. “You can’t be financially embarrassed, Mary!” I exclaimed incredulously.
    She released my hand as if it burned her. “No. No, of course not!” she stammered, but her eyes refused to meet mine.
    “If I can help...” I began, only Mary with a queer choked sound had gone into her room and closed the door behind her.
    I was puzzled and disturbed. So, apparently, was old Laura, whom I came upon halfway down the hall muttering to herself and shaking her kinky grizzled head from side to side.
    “I ain’t no thief. I ain’t never stole nothing,” she was mumbling. “What would old thing like me want wid trick eyelashes?”
    “What on earth are you quarrelling about, Laura?” I demanded.
    She pouted her thick pale lips. “That fancy woman in 409 claim I stole something of her’n.”
    Privately, I had the same opinion of Hilda Anthony, but one has to maintain one’s dignity. “Are you referring to Mrs Anthony?” I inquired sternly.
    “I ain’t seen no eyelashes. I ain’t seen no little red tin box. I ain’t had nothing to do with it,” muttered Laura, rolling her eyes till they were all whites in her wrinkled face. “I ain’t no thief!”
    “I can guarantee that,” I said soothingly. “If the lady has accused you of taking something of hers, she’s mistaken. Probably she’s mislaid it.”
    “Is that so?” demanded a metallic voice.
    I had not till that moment realized that we were standing practically outside Room 409 and that the door was slightly ajar. Sweeping it wide open, the Anthony woman confronted us, her yellow eyes blazing, looking more like a tawny tigress than ever in a cloth of gold negligee wrapped tightly about her body. Not until then had I fully understood the meaning of the word voluptuous.
    “You may think it’s your privilege to poke your nose into everybody else’s business in this house,” Hilda Anthony informed me, “only I warn you, keep out of mine.”
    “My dear woman ...” I began with, I’ll confess, considerable heat.
    “Don’t bother to dear woman me,” she snapped. “Just stay out of my affairs, all of them.”
    “In my opinion neither you nor your affairs would bear investigation,” I snapped.
    “Is that so?” she repeated and whipped the train of the negligee about her like a cat lashing its tail. “Well, let me tell you, you...”
    What had all the earmarks of a nasty scene was at that minute averted by a faint wail behind me. “You mustn’t quarrel! Oh dear, please don’t.”
    I turned sharply. Kathleen Adair’s mother was standing on the threshold of her room next door.
    “Mother can’t bear for people to be mean to each other,” explained Kathleen Adair in a breathless voice.
    She came out into the hall, as if she meant if necessary to step between me and the Anthony woman.
    “I ain’t stole no red tin box,” contributed Laura abruptly, swishing her mop about and glaring at us.
    The Adair girl stooped swiftly and came up with something.
    “Could this possibly be what you are looking for?” she asked and held out a small shiny scarlet box, labelled in gold with the name of a famous beautician on Park Avenue in New York.
    The Anthony woman opened it, looked inside. “Nothing’s missing,” she said in an odd voice.
    “If you are in the habit of strewing your belongings all over the place, you should be careful about accusing people of theft,” I said.
    She gave me a baleful look. “Is that so? Well, I’m not careless, see? Not of