A Room to Die In Read Online Free Page A

business
enterprises; there were three or four tree-shrouded back lanes lined with
spacious old dwellings. At the edge of town Tarr turned right, into Neville
Road, which after a turn or two led down the middle of a long, wooded valley.
    Tarr pointed
ahead to a ranch-style house overpowered by four massive oaks. “That’s where
your father lived.”
    Ann, suddenly
aware of an unpleasant sensation—expectancy? tension? oppression?—had nothing
to say.
    Tarr turned into
the driveway and parked under the largest of the oaks. Ann got out slowly, the
unpleasantness becoming ever more acute. She shut out of her mind the
recollection of her father’s dead face and, forcing herself to relax, looked
around her. The house was neat and innocuously modern, quite devoid of
character; it might have been a transplant from one of the tracts near San
Rafael. The front wall was dark brown board-and-batten, the side walls bisque
stucco. There was a shake roof, a used-brick chimney. The garden consisted of a
straggling laurel hedge, a patch of lawn, and a line of new rosebushes. In the
garage stood a battered green car, evidently the 1954 Plymouth of the ownership
certificate.
    If Tarr was
aware of Ann’s state of mind, he ignored it. Matter-of-factly he took several
keys from his pocket, sorted through the labels, selected one, unlocked the
front door, and stood aside for Ann to enter. She marched into the house,
prepared for . . . what? The odor of death?
    The air was
fresh.
    Cautiously Ann
relaxed. Her apprehensions were overfanciful. This was only a house, a sorry,
ordinary house lacking even the echo of her father’s personality. She looked
around the living room. It seemed a trifle stuffed. The furniture, like the
house itself, was impersonal and characterless, except for a large bookcase
crammed with obviously expensive books. At one end of the room, beside the
bookcase, a door led into another room, evidently the study where Roland Nelson
had died. This was on her right hand. To her left were the dining area and
kitchen; in the wall opposite, a sliding glass door opened onto the patio;
behind her, a hall led to bedrooms.
    Ann said
tentatively, “It’s not the house I’d expect to find my father living in.”
    “It’s a pretty
big place for one man,” Tarr agreed. “I guess he liked plenty of room.” He
walked into the study. Ann followed gingerly.
    The study was
not large, the longest dimension corresponding to the width of the living room.
To the left stood a brick fireplace. The single window, opposite the door,
consisted of a pair of aluminum casements, each with six panes, each equipped
with a detachable screen. One of the panes had been broken and the screen slit:
the means Tarr had employed to gain entry. The wall separating the study from
the living room was finished in mahogany paneling; the other three walls were
textured plasterboard. A large bookcase stood back to back with, Ann judged,
the bookcase in the living room, and was equally heavy with luxurious books.
The other furnishings were an inexpensive metal desk on which sat a portable
typewriter, two chairs, and a pair of card tables against the right hand wall
supporting four chessboards with games in various stages of development.
    Ann asked, “Where
was my father when you found him?”
    Tarr indicated
the chair behind the desk. “The gun was on the floor.”
    Ann turned,
closed the door, opened it, closed it again. It fitted the frame on all sides
snugly. She said grudgingly, “I’ll have to admit there’s no conceivable way a
string or wire or metal strip could have been worked through a crack.”
    Tarr looked at
her quizzically. “Why do you say that?”
    “I’m not
convinced that Roland killed himself.”
    Tarr closed the
door, shot a heavy bolt into place, and locked the bolt in place with an old-fashioned
harness snap. “This is how I discovered the door. I can swear to it, and so can
Sergeant Ryan, who was with me. Notice the bolt. It’s