What Dread Hand? Read Online Free PDF

terrible to me too—and it always has done. But—well, of course I had only Bill’s picture of the situation, the picture of an ailing old man who would want a—a nurse rather than a wife… And when I found out differently—well, once again, you don’t know Bill. What Bill says, you have to do. And I did nurse her: she was dying, I couldn’t make any difference to that, but I did nurse her and care for her—almost her last words were of gratitude to me. When she died, I could hardly bear it. I rang up Bill in America and told him I couldn’t go through with it. But… Well, he just said—’
    ‘He said you must go through with it: and came over here himself, to make sure that you did?’
    ‘To make sure of that—and of something else?’ she said, faintly.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, thinking it over. ‘Of something else too. Because he’s still in love with you, Elizabeth, in his own way. And he might drive you to the altar with a horrible old man; but he would never let you get as far as the old man’s bed.’
    And in that determination, he had found unexpected allies. ‘I suppose, Inspector, he may have meant to do it himself—God knows, he never to me breathed a word of such a thing. As I say, back in the States, he was visualising this old-man-and-nurse relationship. But anyway, he’s a gambler, here was this chance and nothing must stand in the way of it. Then he came over here and saw me again: and saw me with his stepfather… And then, perhaps, finding how the other two felt about it, I suppose he roped them in. Another gambler’s chance: so typical of Bill. Only this one will come off for a change, because in this way the law can’t do anything to them?’
    ‘How do you mean?—can’t do anything?’
    ‘Well, but—who has committed any crime? Bill has bought a tin of stuff for killing wasps: there’s nothing wrong in that? Theo has bought a bottle of peaches—nothing wrong in that either? The doctor—well, I suppose he did put the finger-stall down Cyrus’s throat. But he didn’t poison it. None of them has actually done one wrong action. They can’t even be put in prison?’
    ‘Only for a very short time,’ acknowledged Cockie.
    ‘For a short time?’ she said, startled.
    ‘Till they’re taken out and hanged,’ said Inspector Cockrill.
    ‘You don’t truly mean that? All three of them could be—executed?’
    ‘All three,’ said Cockie. ‘For being concerned in a murder: that’s the law. The flight of the queen, Elizabeth— at certain times of the year the drones sit around eating —well, we saw them do that— and gazing with huge eyes upon the virgin queen —well, we saw them do that too. And then, the mass flight after the queen: and that also we’ve seen. But here something goes wrong with the comparison; because only one succeeds in the mating; and therefore—only one dies.’
    ‘You mean that these three—?’
    ‘I mean that these three are not going to die. It would be too inartistic an ending to the metaphor.’
    ‘What can save them?’ said Elizabeth, beginning to tremble.
    ‘Words can save them: and will save them.’
    ‘Words?’
    ‘A dozen words: carelessly spoken, hardly listened to, attended to not at all. Except by me when later I remembered them. Your husband saying, “Why couldn’t I have had smoked salmon?” and you replying, “We got what was easiest.”’ A plain-clothes man who had all this time sat quietly on a chair by the front door, got up, as quietly, and came forward; and Inspector Cockrill shot out a hand and circled, with steely hard fingers, her narrow wrist. ‘Why should oysters have been easier than smoked salmon, Elizabeth?’ he said.
    A very elaborate, long-thought-out, deep-laid, absolutely sure-fire plan…
    The ugly collusion between husband and wife, to implant in the household of the dying mother, a new bride for the rich widower soon to be. On the husband’s part, probably nothing more—nothing worse intended than an