Unexpected Guest Read Online Free PDF Page B

her.
    Sounding dazed, she murmured, ‘I feel–stupid–I–I can’t think.’
    â€˜You don’t have to think,’ Starkwedder told her. ‘You’ve just got to obey orders. Now then, here’s the blueprint. First, have you got a furnace of any kind in the house?’
    â€˜A furnace?’ Laura thought, and then replied, ‘Well, there’s the water boiler.’
    â€˜Good.’ He went to the desk, took the newspaper, and rolled up the scraps of paper in it. Returning to Laura, he handed her the bundle. ‘Now then,’ he instructed her, ‘the first thing you do is to go into the kitchen and put this in the boiler. Then you go upstairs, get out of your clothes and into a dressing-gown–ornegligée, or what-have-you.’ He paused. ‘Have you got any aspirin?’
    Puzzled, Laura replied, ‘Yes.’
    As though thinking and planning as he spoke, Starkwedder continued, ‘Well–empty the bottle down the loo. Then go along to someone–your mother-in-law, or Miss–what is it–Bennett?–and say you’ve got a headache and want some aspirin. Then, while you’re with whoever it is–leave the door open, by the way–you’ll hear the shot.’
    â€˜What shot?’ asked Laura, staring at him.
    Without replying, Starkwedder crossed to the table by the wheelchair and picked up the gun. ‘Yes, yes,’ he murmured absently, ‘I’ll attend to that.’ He examined the gun. ‘Hm. Looks foreign to me–war souvenir, is it?’
    Laura rose from the stool. ‘I don’t know,’ she told him. ‘Richard had several foreign makes of pistol.’
    â€˜I wonder if it’s registered,’ Starkwedder said, almost to himself, still holding the gun.
    Laura sat on the sofa. ‘Richard had a licence–if that’s what you call it–a permit for his collection,’ she said.
    â€˜Yes, I suppose he would have. But that doesn’t mean that they would all be registered in his name. In practice, people are often rather careless about that kind of thing. Is there anyone who’d be likely to know definitely?’
    â€˜Angell might,’ said Laura. ‘Does it matter?’
    Starkwedder moved about the room as he replied. ‘Well, the way we’re building this up, old MacThing–the father of the child Richard ran over–is more likely to come bursting in, breathing blood and thunder and revenge, with his own weapon at the ready. But one could, after all, make out quite a plausible case the other way. This man–whoever he is–bursts in. Richard, only half awake, snatches up his gun. The other fellow wrenches it away from him, and shoots. I admit it sounds a bit far-fetched, but it’ll have to do. We’ve got to take some risks, it just can’t be avoided.’
    He placed the gun on the table by the wheelchair, and approached her. ‘Now then,’ he continued, ‘have we thought of everything? I hope so. The fact that he was shot a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes earlier won’t be apparent by the time the police get here. Driving along these roads in this fog won’t be easy for them.’ He went over to the curtain by the french windows, lifted it, and looked at the bullet holes in the wall. ‘“RW”. Very nice. I’ll try to add a full stop.’
    Replacing the curtain, he came back to her. ‘When you hear the shot,’ he instructed Laura, ‘what you do is register alarm, and bring Miss Bennett–or anyone else you can collect–down here. Your story is that you don’t know anything. You went to bed, you wokeup with a violent headache, you went along to look for aspirin–and that’s all you know. Understand?’
    Laura nodded.
    â€˜Good,’ said Starkwedder. ‘All the rest you leave to me. Are you feeling all right now?’
    â€˜Yes, I think so,’