She Died a Lady Read Online Free

tell me I’m drunk?’
    No. Not now. But you polish off a pint of whisky every night before you go to bed, and if you don’t stop it –’
    Once more Alec looked out to sea. Folding his hands, he smoothed the baggy skin across the backs of them. He kept clearing his throat. But his tone changed: he sounded less hazy and muddled.
    ‘It hasn’t been easy, you know,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been easy.’
    ‘What hasn’t been easy?’
    ‘Things,’ answered Alec. He struggled with himself. ‘Financial things. Among others. I had a lot of French securities. Never mind. We can’t put the clock back to …’ Here Alec sat up, galvanized. ‘I almost forgot. Watch: I’ve left my watch back home. Do you happen to know what time it is?’
    ‘It can’t be much past twelve.’
    ‘Twelve! Good lord, I’ve got to get back! The news, you know. One o’clock news. Mustn’t miss the news.’
    His anxiety was so infectious that my own fingers shook when I took my watch out of my pocket.
    ‘But, man, it’s only five minutes past noon! You’ve got all the time in the world!’
    Alec shook his head.
    ‘Mustn’t risk missing the news,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve got my car, of course. Left it down the road a way when I came for a stroll. But I have to walk at a snail’s pace to get to the car. Stiff joints. Look here, you won’t forget about tonight?’ Getting up from the bench, he wrung my hand and looked at me earnestly out of the once-sharp grey eyes. ‘I’m not very entertaining company, I’m afraid. But I’ll try. Maybe we’ll do some puzzles. Both Rita and Barry are fond of puzzles. Tonight. Eight o’clock. Don’t forget.’
    I tried to hold him back.
    ‘Just a minute! Does Rita know about this financial trouble of yours?’
    ‘No, no, no!’ Alec was shocked. ‘I wouldn’t worry a woman about a thing like that. You mustn’t mention it to her. I haven’t told anybody but you. In fact, Dr Croxley, you’re just about the only friend I’ve got.’
    And he stumped away.
    I walked back to the village, feeling a little heavier weight of trouble on my shoulders. I wished the rain would fall and get it over with. The sky was lead-coloured; the water dark blue; the headlands, at bare patches in their green, like the colours of a child’s modelling-clay run together.
    In the High Street I noticed Molly Grange. Alec had said she wouldn’t be coming back from Barnstaple that weekend – Molly owns and manages a typewriting bureau there – but presumably Rita had been mistaken. Molly smiled at me over her shoulder as she turned in at her father’s gate.
    It wasn’t a pleasant day. Tom dashed in for a very late tea just after six. He was doing a post-mortem for the police at Lynton on a somewhat messy suicide; he gave me all the details as he wolfed down bread and butter and jam, and hardly heard what I had to tell him. It had gone eight o’clock, and the sky was darkening, when I drove out the four miles to ‘Mon Repos’.
    It would not be black-out time until past nine o’clock. Yet no lights showed in the house. That in itself inspired a feeling of disquiet.
    ‘Mon Repos’ had originally been a handsome bungalow, large and low-built, with a slanting tiled roof and leaded-paned windows against mellow red brick. Most trees won’t thrive in sea air, and the grass of the lawn was sparse. But a tall yew hedge screened it from the road. There were two sanded drives, one to the front door and one to the garage at the left. Beside the garage was a tennis court. A creeper-hung summer-house stood on the lawn at the right.
    Now, however, the whole place had gone faintly to seed. Nothing very noticeable, nothing greatly to remark. The hedge was just beginning to need trimming. Somebody had left bright-coloured beach-chairs out in the rain. One of the shutters had a loose hinge, which the handyman – if there was a handyman – had not bothered to repair. It was present less in tangible details than in an