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

anything that costs money. And artificial eyelashes do, plenty, this far from Broadway. The only place I ever strewed that box was in the top drawer of my dressing table. So what do you think of that?”
    Having no desire to argue with her ilk, I walked on, my nose appreciably elevated, but I glanced back as I entered my suite and saw that Hilda Anthony was still regarding the tin box with a baffled frown between her thinly plucked eyebrows.
    Our game starts promptly at two and ends on the stroke of five, no matter who is losing. It has been my experience that with stakes up, if only a quarter, one has to have ironclad rules. Nothing so sharpens the disposition as anything which touches on the pocketbook - or so I have observed. I have learned things I would never have dreamed about human nature at the bridge table.
    Ella Trotter is my best friend and I myself am not a good loser, but nobody has ever bid to suit Ella or led to please her. She would win every hand in every rubber if she could. She might give you the quarter after the game is over, but during it she would as soon claw your eyes out as donate you a trick. There have been times during a session at bridge when relations between Ella and me have been strained to the breaking point. However, she is a good sort at heart.
    I had no more than walked into my sitting room that day when Ella telephoned me. “My sister-in-law’s coming by late this afternoon. She has a stocking-mending machine. Bring down any you have with runs, Adelaide. I’ll get her to fix them.”
    “Thanks, Ella,” I said.
    “Don’t mention it.”
    After she hung up I went through my laundry bag and collected a couple of pairs of hose which needed mending. Nothing nowadays, I reflected, has the wearing quality it used to have. That reminded me of my knitted bag. I have had it since I was twentyish. I distinctly remember that I made it the winter Father’s asthma was so bad and I was shut up in the house with him for months. It helped to while away the long tedious days to have something to do with my hands.
    The bag is now out of date. Beside the smart envelope purses of today, it looks huge and clumsy with its dark green roses on a sapphire background and its heavy green glass handles. Nevertheless, though I seldom carry it any more, I have a sentimental attachment for the old relic, and on one of the capacious sides the stitches had broken.
    “I’ll ask Ella’s sister-in-law if she can do something about that,” I said, laying the handbag on my bedside table.
    Someone knocked at the door and called out, “Miss Adams! Could I see you a minute?” I frowned. It was Lottie Mosby. My face must have worn a forbidding expression, for she glanced at me in a feverishly apologetic way when I let her in.
    “I hate to bother you,” she cried, the words tumbling over themselves in her haste. “I know you don’t like me. But...” She drew a long breath. “If I had anyone else to go to! But I haven’t.”
    “You have a husband,” I reminded her.
    As I have said, I had nothing in common with either of the Mosbys, although of the two I preferred the wife, scatter-brained as she was.
    “Yes,” she said, her pretty, common little face going bleak, “I have a husband. That’s why...” She paused abruptly.
    “Yes?” I asked.
    Again she drew a long breath. “Dan’s the last person on earth I could go to in a jam.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “In that case, it might be a good idea to stay out of jams.”
    “But if you’re in, you can’t stay out. You just get in deeper and deeper,” she cried and added wildly, “It’s a vicious circle!”
    “You read too many trashy novels,” I snapped.
    She sighed. “I didn’t think you’d help me. I know, to a lady like you, I must seem impossible.”
    She turned toward the door, her narrow shoulders sagging. In spite of her cheap rouge and her skimpy skirt, she suddenly seemed to me more like a scared, hopeless child than anything.
    “What did