Going Out in Style Read Online Free Page A

Whitaker. You’ll be hearing from us if we have any more questions.”
    Detective Janovy ran Mrs. MacGregor to earth in the big old drafty stone-walled kitchen. The room was cold and damp, and MacGregor was mopping the floor with a lugubrious expression. At the big wooden table in themiddle of the room, someone who Janovy realized could only be Great-aunt Etta stood rolling dough around and around in her floury hands.
    “Mrs. MacGregor?”
    Mrs. MacGregor grudgingly stopped what she was doing and leaned on her mop. “Yes?”
    “I wonder whether you would mind answering some questions about last night.”
    Mrs. MacGregor looked more sour than ever and said she didn’t know. She cocked an unfriendly eye at him and said she didn’t cotton to having police in the house, if he got her meaning.
    Janovy said yes, he did, but if she could only answer a few questions—
    MacGregor announced that it wasn’t a matter of whether she
could
answer his questions; it was more a matter of whether she
would
, if he took her meaning.
    Janovy said yes, but—
    “Go ahead and talk to the man, MacGregor,” said Etta Pinsky with sudden vigor. “You’ve been dying to talk to the police all day.”
    MacGregor was offended. That wasn’t true. She was just doing her job—
    “She’s been talking about nothing else,” Great-aunt Etta said dryly. “Go ahead, MacGregor. Here’s your big chance.”
    Detective Janovy said that he was very interested in finding out who might have come into the house the previous evening—say, around seven-fifteen or perhaps later? Was Mrs. MacGregor in the house then?
    MacGregor gave a loud sniff and said she was not, she was home by that hour, as every decent soul would be. She had left the house a little after six-thirty. Although now that he mentioned it …
    “Yes?”
    MacGregor cast a sly look at Etta Pinsky, who was busily rolling the dough back and forth. Well, she had been in the back of the house, MacGregor said. In the kitchen, where they were now. And just before she left, she had heard the front door open and close.
    “What time would that be?”
    MacGregor looked sour and said she didn’t know. Around six-fifteen or six-twenty, maybe. Just before she left. But when she went out into the front hall to get her coat, there was no one there.
    So the murderer came in earlier, thought Janovy. He or she came in and waited somewhere for Bella Whitaker to leave. “Did you leave by the front or the back door, Mrs. MacGregor?”
    MacGregor looked upset and had to be calmed down before she would continue with the questioning. The back door, indeed! Who did he think he was, implying that she would sneak in and out the back door like—like a
servant
! Why, she had been here nearly ten years now.… She was like a member of the family. How
dare
he?
    “I’m sorry,” said Janovy hastily. “So you left, naturally, by the
front
door. Did you notice anything wrong with the door, or the lock?”
    MacGregor pondered this and said no. Everything was as usual.
    “Who else besides yourself has a key to the house?”
    Just the family, said Mrs. MacGregor. Mrs. Whitaker and her two children.
    “Did anyone come into the house yesterday afternoon or evening that you know of—anyone at all?”
    MacGregor was firm on this topic. No one, she said. No one at all. She and Mrs. Whitaker were the only onesin the house, as far as she knew, and Mrs. Whitaker had spent most of the afternoon upstairs in her room.
    “Would you be sure to hear if someone came in the front door—as you did around six-fifteen?”
    MacGregor replied that she couldn’t be sure exactly. If she was in the laundry room or working hard in the kitchen (at this point Great-aunt Etta gave a muffled snort), she might not hear. It was a long way from the kitchen to the front door. If she was washing dishes, for instance, she might not hear.
    “One more question, Mrs. MacGregor. When you left, you locked the door from the outside?”
    MacGregor gave