The Follower Read Online Free PDF Page A

arrived. She might know something of Ellie’s whereabouts. He prepared coffee and put the percolator on the stove. Ingeborg still hadn’t come by the time he finished breakfast. In the bedroom he found the maid’s number in Ellie’s telephone book. A woman’s voice, heavily accented, answered his ring. No, it wasn’t Ingeborg; it was her sister. Ingeborg was in Atlantic City. Hadn’t Mrs Liddon told Mr Liddon that she had given Ingeborg two weeks off for Christmas? Hadn’t Mrs Liddon told Mr Liddon that she was going away?
    ‘Going away?’ echoed Mark.
    ‘Yas. She tell Ingeborg she oughtta take a vacation too, have a good time for Christmas.’
    ‘When did this happen?’
    ‘Since two days. Since two days Ingeborg is in Atlantic City.’
    ‘Two days ago. Did Mrs Liddon go away two days ago too?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Know where she went?’
    ‘Ingeborg don’t know. She says Mrs Liddon just says she’s going away.’ The voice added anxiously: ‘You want I should tell you Ingeborg’s address? You want she should come back?’
    ‘No. No, thanks.’
    ‘If you want I should tell …’
    ‘No. It’s okay.’
    ‘Okay, then. Merry Christmas, Mr Liddon.’
    ‘Merry Christmas.’
    Mark put down the receiver. Ellie had sent Ingeborg away two days ago and had said she was going away too. Why shouldn’t it be true? She hadn’t expected him for two weeks.
    Knowing Ellie, it was fantastic to suppose that she would have planned to spend Christmas in a lonely apartment. For the first time, he thought that perhaps his wife hadn’t killed Corey Lathrop. He was too cautious to give hope full rein, but the dark pall was lifting.
    Maybe he had invented a nightmare for Ellie and himself which had never really existed. If she’d gone away two days ago, she was definitely in the clear. She could have lent Corey the apartment in her absence. Corey, as a parole officer, could have run into trouble with one of his pet redeemed convicts. Yes, it might have easily happened that way.
    His spirits soared. But he wasn’t going to let optimism run away with him. Perhaps Ellie had left two days ago. But he would still have to find her and make sure everything was all right before he could think about going to the police.
    And finding her, even if she were innocently off on a trip, would not be easy. She had as many ‘favorite’ places as she had ‘favorite’ friends — Palm Beach, La Jolla, Sun Valley. Distance didn’t exist for her. She would jump a plane to Hawaii if she felt in the mood.
    He thought of asking around in the apartment house — the elevator boy, the doormen. But he decided against it. Until he knew more than he did now it might be risky.
    Perhaps her parents would know something, although it wasn’t likely. Ellie had turned her back on the Rosses and all they stood for some years ago, and ever since their contemptuous rejection of Mark as a son-in-law she’d been hardly on speaking terms with them. But, unwelcome though he would be at Gramercy Park, it was the most obvious place to try first.
    From the taxi window, on his way downtown, he watched the snow-heavy Christmas trees pass by. Somewhere, at Corey’s apartment or at the Ross Steel Products Company, people would be starting to wonder about Corey. A maid, perhaps, had found his bed unslept in and was speculating idly as to why Mr Lathrop hadn’t told her he was spending the night out. Soon a secretary at the office would be thinking: ‘Mr Lathrop’s late this morning.’ An attendant at the garage might be wondering whether he’d remembered to drain the radiator of that station wagon he had blocked up for the winter a while ago.
    Since yesterday the whole face of the city had changed. It wasn’t just a town any more. Both for himself and for Ellie wherever she was — it was becoming a trap.
    Outside the Rosses’ apartment house in Gramercy Park, snow clung to the iron railing which surrounded the gardens and sat in white puffs on the