Fear to Tread Read Online Free Page B

He looks ten years older than when I saw him last – you must know what I mean. If you think,” he added with belated caution, “that it’s none of my business, say so. But I’ve known you all for a very long time, and if it’s just that he’s had a row with his wife, or something like that, and there’s anything I can do to help—”
    “It’s not a row, Mr. Wetherall. She’s dead.”
    “Good heavens,” said Wetherall stupidly. “I am sorry. I’d no idea. Of course, that explains it. What a pity. Such a nice girl.”
    He found that Peggy was looking at him, in the steady way that her brother had done. He felt a growing sense of embarrassment.
    “Silly of me,” he said, “jumping to conclusions. You must forgive me. What happened to her? It was very sudden, wasn’t it?”
    “She didn’t just die,” said Peggy slowly. “She was killed.”
    “Killed?” Mr. Wetherall was really startled.
    “I don’t think there’s any reason I shouldn’t tell you about it. It was in the papers. You know they had one of the houses in Lower Marsh. Some men broke in one night. I expect they knew Patsy was away on duty. Doris was alone in the house. They tied her up and gagged her with a towel. They bust the home up. They didn’t take much. Just some papers and a little money.”
    Peggy stopped, and Mr. Wetherall tried to say something, but failed. The truth was that the idea of violence frightened him. At second hand it made him feel rather sick.
    “They tied the towel over her mouth too tight. She was suffocated. She was dead when Patsy got home to her.”
    “How horrible. How absolutely horrible. Did they catch the people who did it?”
    “They haven’t caught them yet.”
    “Have they any idea—?”
    “Patsy says he knows who it was. But he can’t prove it. You know his job is something to do with stealing from the railways, and the long distance lorries—”
    “If he knows,” said Mr. Wetherall, very much distressed. “If he knows, surely—”
    “Knowing isn’t proving. There was one particular lot he was mixed up with. He didn’t say much about it. He’d been pretending to take bribes, and they thought he was bought and sold so they got talking a bit freely in front of him. What they did was meant as a sort of warning to him not to pass it on – they never meant to kill Doris.”
    “It was murder, whether they meant to kill her or not.”
    “I suppose it was,” said Peggy. She seemed unexcited about this aspect of it. For a moment Mr. Wetherall wondered if she might have been making the story up. He dismissed that thought. Nobody could have made up a thing like that.
    “Has he told anyone about his suspicions?? If the police only knew, surely they could do something. It would give them a line to go on.”
    “They had an inspector from Scotland Yard on it. He didn’t get very far.”
    “You’re not answering my question,” said Mr. Wetherall testily. “Did Patsy tell them what he suspected – what you’ve just told me?”
    “He couldn’t, Mr. Wetherall. Really, it was just suspicions.”
    “So he didn’t say.”
    “No.”
    “Somebody ought to.”
    Peggy looked up in alarm.
    “I don’t think Patsy would like that.”
    Mr. Wetherall could hardly fail to recognise it. He had heard it twice that morning. It was the red signal. It was the notice which said: “Keep Out. Trespassers will get hurt”. The dullest man, and Mr. Wetherall was far from dull, cannot live his life in south London without becoming aware of certain facts. He was not a romantic. He was well past the age when one considered crime to be an adventure, or a puzzle, or a joke. He recognised it for what it was; a pathological growth, bred of poverty, rooting and flourishing in the weak and diseased cells of the body. He had been to too many dingy police courts to speak a word for the adolescent victim in the dock, had attended too many tearful mornings after the brave nights before, to think of crime as anything but