The Cases of Susan Dare Read Online Free PDF Page B

could see, prepared to be kind. He expected her, then, to fail.
    “Well,” he said gently, “have you discovered the murderer?”
    “Yes,” said Susan Dare.
    Jim Byrne sat down quite suddenly.
    “I know who killed him,” she said simply, “but I don’t know why.”
    Jim Byrne reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and dabbed it lightly to his forehead. “Suppose,” he suggested in a hushed way, “you tell all.”
    “Randy will be here in a moment,” said Susan. “But it’s all very simple. You see, the final clue was only the proof. I knew Christabel couldn’t have killed him, for two reasons: one is, she’s inherently incapable of killing anything; the other is—she loved him still. And I knew it wasn’t Michela, because she is, actually, cowardly; and then, too, Michela had an alibi.”
    “Alibi?”
    “She really was in the pine woods for a long time that morning. Waiting, I think, for Randy, who slept late. I know she was there, because she was simply chewed by jiggers, and they are only in the pine woods.”
    “Maybe she was there the day before?”
    Susan shook her head decidedly.
    “No, I know jiggers. If it had been during the previous day they’d have stopped itching by the time she came to me. And it wasn’t during the afternoon, for no one went in the pine woods then except the sheriff’s men.”
    “That would leave, then, Randy and Tryon Welles.”
    “Yes,” said Susan. Now that it had come to doing it, she felt ill and weak; would it be her evidence, her words, that would send a fellow creature over that long and ignominious road that ends so tragically?
    Jim Byrne knew what she was thinking.
    “Remember Christabel,” he said quietly.
    “Oh, I know,” said Susan sadly. She locked her fingers together, and there were quick footsteps on the porch.
    “You want me, Susan?” said Randy.
    “Yes, Randy,” said Susan. “I want you to tell me if you owed Joe Bromfel anything. Money—or—or anything.”
    “How did you know?” said Randy.
    “Did you give him a note—anything?”
    “Yes.”
    “What was your collateral?”
    “The house—it’s all mine—”
    “When was it dated? Answer me, Randy.”
    He flung up his head.
    “I suppose you’ve been talking to Tryon,” he said defiantly. “Well, it was dated before Tryon got his note. I couldn’t help it. I’d got some stocks on margin. I had to have—”
    “So the house actually belonged to Joe Bromfel?” Susan was curiously cold. Christabel’s house. Christabel’s brother.
    “Well, yes—if you want to put it like that.”
    Jim Byrne had risen quietly.
    “And after Joe Bromfel, to Michela, if she knows of this and claims it?” pressed Susan.
    “I don’t know,” said Randy. “I never thought of that.”
    Jim Byrne started to speak, but Susan silenced him.
    “No, he really didn’t think of it,” she said wearily. “And I knew it wasn’t Randy who killed him because he didn’t, really, care enough for Michela to do that. It was—Tryon Welles who killed Joe Bromfel. He had to. For he had to silence Joe and then secure the note and, probably, destroy it, in order to have a clear title to the house, himself. Randy—did Joe have the note here with him?”
    “Yes.”
    “It was not found upon his body?”
    It was Jim Byrne who answered: “Nothing of the kind was found anywhere.”
    “Then,” said Susan, “after the murder was discovered and before the sheriff arrived and the search began, only you and Tryon Welles were upstairs and had the opportunity to search Joe’s room and find the note and destroy it. Was it you who did that, Randy?”
    “ No—no !” The color rose in his face.
    “Then it must have been then that Tryon Welles found and destroyed it.” She frowned. “Somehow, he must have known it was there. I don’t know how—perhaps he had had words with Joe about it before he shot him and Joe inadvertently told him where it was. There was no time for him to search the body. But he