Murder Takes No Holiday Read Online Free PDF Page A

down. You must be tired.”
    He took her to the bed. She kicked off her shoes and sat back against the stacked pillows. “You can be so sweet, Paul. What did I do with my cigarette?”
    He retrieved it and looked for a match.
    “You really are getting absent-minded,” she said gaily. “You let another cigarette go out on the table. Before we go looking for your philanthropist, I’m going to break you of the habit of putting a cigarette down wherever you happen to be.”
    He muttered something. She leaned forward for the light, holding the cigarette between two fingers. Her nostrils flared slightly.
    “Aren’t you using a new after-shaving lotion, darling?” She sniffed again and said judiciously, “I don’t know if I approve or not. It’s pretty strong for a man.”
    “Just trying it out,” Slater said, leaning forward so she couldn’t see his face. His hands felt damp, and he wiped them on his shorts.
    She put the tip of one finger against a mark on his neck, inside the open collar of the sports shirt. There were several slightly irregular indentations there, that might have been made by teeth. Again her nostrils flared. She was frowning slightly.
    Airplane engines were throbbing high in the sky. Slater looked nervously at his watch.
    “That must be the plane from Miami,” he said. “It’s late.”

 
3
     
    Getting down from the horse-drawn carriage that had brought him from the airport, Michael Shayne was greeted by a small English lady who could have been any age between thirty and fifty. She wore a long-sleeved print dress, buttoned to the neck.
    “You will be Mr. Shayne,” she said firmly. “How d’you do? I am Miss Trivers, your hostess. Welcome to Hibiscus Lodge.”
    She put her small hand briefly in Shayne’s. He found her grip surprisingly strong.
    “I’m delighted you decided to come to us, Mr. Shayne,” she continued, “and I do hope we can make your stay pleasant. If you will come with me I’ll show you your cottage.”
    She took him through a well-kept garden, along a path that led to the pink stucco cottage Lucy had picked out from a portfolio of pictures in the Miami Beach travel agency. It was pleasantly situated on a rise overlooking a crescent of beach. There were other cottages near it, each with its own patch of lawn and its own garden screening it from the others. The sand below was very white, dotted with clumps of low-growing palms.
    The Englishwoman showed him around the cottage, ending where they had begun, in the living room.
    “Fine, fine,” Shayne told her. “All as advertised.”
    The carriage driver had put the redhead’s battered suitcase in the bedroom. Shayne pulled out a handful of the British coins he had been given at the airport and held them out to Miss Trivers, who sorted out the proper amount for the fare. The driver was dissatisfied with the size of the tip, but Miss Trivers gave him a crisp nod and he went back down the path, grumbling.
    “Now let me see,” she said. “What else should I tell you? Dinner’s at seven. After you get settled in, why don’t you come up to the Lodge and let me give you tea?”
    Shayne grinned. “Tea’s never been my favorite drink. I think I’ll skip it, thanks. I may want to go out fishing in the morning. Wouldn’t your local paper have a list of charter outfits?”
    “Right here, Mr. Shayne.”
    The current issue of the Island Times was laid out on the coffee table, alongside fresh copies of the popular U. S. weeklies. Miss Trivers, picking it up, glanced at the front-page headline and made a clicking sound with her tongue. She turned the pages until she found the charter-boat ads.
    “These are all quite reliable, I believe,” she said. “I am not a sportswoman myself.”
    Shayne took the paper. “I see you people have had a murder.”
    “Well,” she said grudgingly, “yes, we have. But I hope you won’t think such a thing is an everyday occurrence with us. It’s anything but.”
    “That’s all