Read Online Death of a Sunday Writer by Eric Wright - Free Book Online

What happened next?”
    â€œI came to the office right away, and there he was, dead. I called the cops.”
    â€œYou didn’t touch anything?”
    â€œI switched off the light and pulled the curtains so no one could see. All the windows across the street were full of people looking.”
    â€œWhere was he lying?”
    â€œRight here.” Tse pointed to the floor by the desk. “I’ll show you.” He lay down beside the desk. “See?”
    â€œWas there any blood? Were his clothes torn?”
    â€œHe fell down dead. A heart attack. He just came to work. He had a cup of coffee on his desk.”
    â€œAll right. Now I have to see the police.”
    â€œLucy, David was your cousin, right? Why is it you haven’t seen him for twenty years?”
    â€œThe two families lost touch, I guess. You know?”
    â€œNo. My family gets together. We like each other. How come Anglo families don’t like each other?”
    She turned to look at him and saw that he was teasing her. “We do, really. It’s just that we don’t like anybody much. Now leave me alone. I have to get ready for the police.”
    Her first stop was the morgue to pick up her cousin’s personal effects. She asked the attendant to get rid of David’s clothes, taking with her only the envelope of valuables — a billfold with seventeen dollars and two credit cards, a plastic wallet-sized lens for reading the small print in telephone books, a watch, and a pair of hornrimmed bifocals. From the morgue, she went to the police headquarters on College Street where she tracked down the sergeant who had investigated Trimble’s death. He listened to her questions, tapped at a computer, found what he wanted, and read it to her. “David Trimble died of naturalcauses. A massive coronary. There was an autopsy. No sign of foul play. Take a look.”
    Lucy leaned over to read the screen. “There was an abrasion on his cheek,” she pointed out.
    â€œI did notice that at the time,” the sergeant said. He pressed a key. “Read my report.”
    The abrasion was noted. It was consistent, the sergeant’s report said, with having hit his head on the desk as he fell. Lucy opened her mouth to speak.
    â€œRead on.”
    Next came the laboratory report. The technicians had found a trace of David’s skin on the metal edge of the desk.
    â€œI see.” She thought about it. “Could he have been threatened, frightened by someone who knew he had a bad heart? I know of several cases like that.”
    â€œIn Toronto?”
    â€œNot in Toronto, no.” One was on the Balkan Express in 1936; two others were in England, one in a vicarage, the other at the University of Oxbridge. “But if someone did that, wouldn’t it constitute a kind of assault?”
    â€œThere was no evidence of anyone else in the room, except the landlord who found him. The room was locked. No break-ins, nothing disturbed. It was natural causes, Mrs. Brenner. He was practically an invalid according to the pathologist. Anything could have brought it on, or nothing.”
    â€œBut what about this break-in?”
    This was news to the sergeant. Lucy told him what had been happening.
    The sergeant listened, then explained. “Queen and Egerton is kind of cosmopolitan. When the word got out that your cousin had died, there’d be any number of localcitizens who might decide they’d take a look, pick up anything that’s loose.”
    â€œBut they didn’t steal anything.”
    â€œMaybe they were looking for money.”
    â€œQuite a coincidence.”
    â€œIt isn’t a coincidence, is it? A coincidence has to be surprising. Talk to the Break-and-Enter squad. They’ll tell you that there were a hundred and eighteen breakins in the Queen and Bathurst area last year.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œI don’t. I’m making it all up. But that would be