Murder on Wheels Read Online Free Page B

containing musty volumes which looked as if they had never been opened. The chair in which Miss Withers seated herself, like everything else in the room, was dark and heavy and old … and vaguely uncomfortable.
    The Inspector introduced himself, and pointed out Miss Withers as his assistant.
    Lew Stait nodded. “About my obituary …?”
    The Inspector was still staring at the smooth, unmarked throat of the young man who faced them. The words brought him up with a jerk.
    “There seems to be some mistake here,” he said slowly. “There was an accident about an hour ago on Fifth Avenue. The body of a young man in a camel’s-hair overcoat was found not far from a wrecked Chrysler roadster, and identified as that of a Lew Stait. We traced the auto registration and got this address. All I have to say is this, that your double, the closest double I’ve ever seen, lies down in the autopsy room of the City Morgue at this moment.”
    Their host lost his aplomb for a second, and his eyes widened. Then by an obvious effort he regained his savoir faire. “Not my double, Inspector. It must be—it’s my twin brother Laurie!”
    “Your twin?”
    The boy nodded, his face white as death. “We’re what they call identical twins. It only happens once in a thousand cases of twins that both are exactly the same in physical characteristics, I’ve heard. So it isn’t strange that whoever saw Laurie’s—Laurie’s body after the auto wreck might mistake it for mine. You see, he was driving my car, and he’d slipped into my camel’s-hair coat because of the storm. And now, you say he’s … he’s dead?”
    “He’s dead,” agreed the Inspector. “But not in an auto crash. He was strangled. We don’t just know how, but it looks like murder.”
    The boy was gripping the edge of his chair, but somehow Miss Withers felt that he wasn’t really as surprised as he tried to be. Perhaps it was because of the countless inhibitions of his inbred, overcivilized stock, but he was too deeply entrenched behind his barriers to seem genuinely shocked.
    “Murder!” He repeated the word several times, tasting it.
    The Inspector nodded. “In a few minutes I want you to go down to the Morgue with me or one of my men, and formally identify the body of your brother. But first, I must ask you some questions, just as a matter of routine.”
    “But who did it? What happened? I don’t understand!”
    “You don’t need to. Just answer these questions. First, when did you last see your brother Laurie alive?”
    The boy swallowed, and considered for a moment “It was about tea-time this afternoon, I should say. Perhaps four-thirty, perhaps a little before. It was right here in this room. He came to get the key to my roadster. The car, you see, is mine, but we both used it a good deal. And now he won’t ever use it again!”
    “Do you know where he was driving? Any idea of why he wanted the use of the car?”
    Lew Stait shook his head. “No—no, I don’t know. Why should I know? He used it whenever he wanted it. He considered he had a right to, because there was only the one car. Gran gave it to me, but actually it was as much his as mine.”
    Miss Withers was jotting all this down in her little notebook, a fact that seemed to make Lew Stait vaguely uncomfortable.
    “Would you mind telling me just who are the members of this household?”
    “Not at all. First, there’s Gran. My grandmother, you know. Mrs. Roscoe Stait. Gran is well over ninety, and she hardly ever comes downstairs. The attic has been done over for her. But all the same, she’s the commanding officer in this family, and don’t you forget it. You can order the rest of us around, but your badge won’t mean a thing to Gran.”
    “Yes? And then, besides Gran?”
    “Well, there’s Aunt Abbie. She’s a younger sister of my mother … my mother and father, you see, are dead. Aunt Abbie isn’t a Stait, but she’s been sort of in charge of our bringing up since father and