4 - Stranger Room: Ike Schwartz Mystery 4 Read Online Free Page A
Author: Frederick Ramsay
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Mystery, Police Procedural, _rt_yes, tpl, Open Epub
container with the other clock paraphernalia.” Lydell retrieved the device and dropped it in his pocket.
“Tell me about the door. You said it was locked and the key was still in on the inside?”
“Yes. It had been turned enough to throw the bolt but not enough to be free in the slot. Otherwise, I could have pushed it through, and then unlocked the door with the spare key.”
“Why is the key, the one you were using, so long?”
Lydell withdrew a linen handkerchief from his pocket and noisily blew his nose. “You see, the locks in these old houses were attached to the door proper, not set into the door. You needed a long shafted key to cover the distance from the outside key plate through the door and then into the lock. That door is pretty thick.”
“And the key on the inside—”
“That one could be shorter. It only had to be inserted into the lock proper.”
“So, even if you wanted to, you couldn’t have inserted a pair of pliers, like these,” Ike picked up a pair of rusted needle nosed pliers, “and turned the key?”
“Unfortunately, no. The distance to the tip of the key, which is what you would have to grab onto, is too great. You might be able to reach it, but not open the jaws and grasp the end and then turn it, you see.”
Ike shook his head. “Nothing is ever easy, is it? Tell me about the murdered man.”
“Tell? There’s nothing to tell. I never met the man before, had nothing to say to him. He collected his key and went to his room.”
“That’s it?”
“He was from up north somewhere I think he said.”
Ike didn’t know why he’d dragged Lydell down into the basement, except to give Karl some private time with Henry Sutherlin. And then there were some things about locks and keys he wanted to remember and he thought if he looked at a few they might surface.
“No trapdoor,” he repeated.
“No trapdoor, no secret passages, no ‘priest’s hole,’ nothing, sorry. Are we finished here?”
“For now, but don’t remove anything.”
Chapter 4
Ruth Harris stared through her office window at newly mown grass. Her freshly polished nails tapped out the hesitant beat to Memories as she contemplated time—the passage of time to be precise. Outside, spring tiptoed into the Shenandoah Valley. New growth pushed out from early buds, birds sang their courting songs, and gray squirrels cavorted across the lawn. Soon Callend College’s signature wisteria with its lavender panicles would be in full bloom and the postcard appearance of the campus would be complete. Greenup time. A time for new beginnings, new…new what?
Agnes Ewalt, her secretary, stood across the desk and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Finally, her patience apparently exhausted, she snapped open her dictation book, poised a freshly sharpened pencil and said, “Dr. Harris, you wanted me?”
Ruth surfaced from her reverie. Agnes, dictation pad, work.
“Yes, and you won’t need that, Agnes. I just want you to go down to the library, please, and find out whatever you can on Jonathan Lydell—the current one who lives over in Bolton. I believe there may be multiple Jonathan Lydells, certainly there were in the past because he’s a ‘fourth.’ At any rate, I want the one who wrote this.” She pushed a letter across the desk to Agnes who picked it up and glanced at its contents.
Agnes had already read it and her expression confirmed it to be one she’d seen, and not one that might have slipped by her or Ruth had received at home. She refolded it and slipped it into her dictation book.
“Are you sure the college library will have something on Mr. Lydell?”
“I think maybe…no, certainly. He donated half a dozen books recently and if I remember correctly, they were Lydell family history, things like that. I think he must want to teach or something. I can’t be sure.”
Callend College, in spite of persistent and quite inaccurate rumors about an industrial park to be built in the
“Tell me about the door. You said it was locked and the key was still in on the inside?”
“Yes. It had been turned enough to throw the bolt but not enough to be free in the slot. Otherwise, I could have pushed it through, and then unlocked the door with the spare key.”
“Why is the key, the one you were using, so long?”
Lydell withdrew a linen handkerchief from his pocket and noisily blew his nose. “You see, the locks in these old houses were attached to the door proper, not set into the door. You needed a long shafted key to cover the distance from the outside key plate through the door and then into the lock. That door is pretty thick.”
“And the key on the inside—”
“That one could be shorter. It only had to be inserted into the lock proper.”
“So, even if you wanted to, you couldn’t have inserted a pair of pliers, like these,” Ike picked up a pair of rusted needle nosed pliers, “and turned the key?”
“Unfortunately, no. The distance to the tip of the key, which is what you would have to grab onto, is too great. You might be able to reach it, but not open the jaws and grasp the end and then turn it, you see.”
Ike shook his head. “Nothing is ever easy, is it? Tell me about the murdered man.”
“Tell? There’s nothing to tell. I never met the man before, had nothing to say to him. He collected his key and went to his room.”
“That’s it?”
“He was from up north somewhere I think he said.”
Ike didn’t know why he’d dragged Lydell down into the basement, except to give Karl some private time with Henry Sutherlin. And then there were some things about locks and keys he wanted to remember and he thought if he looked at a few they might surface.
“No trapdoor,” he repeated.
“No trapdoor, no secret passages, no ‘priest’s hole,’ nothing, sorry. Are we finished here?”
“For now, but don’t remove anything.”
Chapter 4
Ruth Harris stared through her office window at newly mown grass. Her freshly polished nails tapped out the hesitant beat to Memories as she contemplated time—the passage of time to be precise. Outside, spring tiptoed into the Shenandoah Valley. New growth pushed out from early buds, birds sang their courting songs, and gray squirrels cavorted across the lawn. Soon Callend College’s signature wisteria with its lavender panicles would be in full bloom and the postcard appearance of the campus would be complete. Greenup time. A time for new beginnings, new…new what?
Agnes Ewalt, her secretary, stood across the desk and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Finally, her patience apparently exhausted, she snapped open her dictation book, poised a freshly sharpened pencil and said, “Dr. Harris, you wanted me?”
Ruth surfaced from her reverie. Agnes, dictation pad, work.
“Yes, and you won’t need that, Agnes. I just want you to go down to the library, please, and find out whatever you can on Jonathan Lydell—the current one who lives over in Bolton. I believe there may be multiple Jonathan Lydells, certainly there were in the past because he’s a ‘fourth.’ At any rate, I want the one who wrote this.” She pushed a letter across the desk to Agnes who picked it up and glanced at its contents.
Agnes had already read it and her expression confirmed it to be one she’d seen, and not one that might have slipped by her or Ruth had received at home. She refolded it and slipped it into her dictation book.
“Are you sure the college library will have something on Mr. Lydell?”
“I think maybe…no, certainly. He donated half a dozen books recently and if I remember correctly, they were Lydell family history, things like that. I think he must want to teach or something. I can’t be sure.”
Callend College, in spite of persistent and quite inaccurate rumors about an industrial park to be built in the