Read Online Death Under the Lilacs by Richard; Forrest - Free Book Online Page A

Continuing to go over the endless lists of names was impossible; it was time to do something. He lifted the phone again and dialed the Murphysville Police Headquarters and asked for Jamie Martin.
    â€œGood morning, Mr. Wentworth,” Jamie answered with a sense of relief in his voice. “For a minute I was afraid it was another housewife who wanted to be locked up.”
    â€œI need an unlisted phone number. The name is Robert Traxis; he lives in Wessex.”
    â€œIs it a police matter?”
    â€œSomething Rocco wanted me to follow up on.”
    Lyon could sense the officer’s hesitation, but then he said, “I’ll get it from the phone company and call you back.”
    Bea Wentworth watched the sputtering Coleman lantern in horrified anticipation. It was running out of fuel, and there wasn’t any more in the small stock of provisions remaining. In minutes she would be in total blackness.
    She couldn’t turn away from the failing lantern. She could put up with almost anything, including her imprisonment, but not the total dark.
    How long had he been gone? She glanced down at the small diamond-chip watch Lyon had given her last Christmas. It read 2:23. Day or night? Good God, she couldn’t be sure, and now she was uncertain as to how long she had been held here.
    She had once read of an American prisoner of war who had spent a good deal of time in solitary confinement. In order not to go mad, he had spent the time mentally building a dream house.
    That was what she would do. She would rebuild Nutmeg Hill from the beginning.
    Bea closed her eyes and recalled the first day she and Lyon had stumbled across the boarded house. She relived the day of the closing and that afternoon when they had entered the house knowing it was theirs.
    The house had been a shambles. Over the years the boarded windows had developed chinks, and an assortment of debris had forced itself through tiny apertures. The hardwood floors were deeply rutted, as if teams of cleated sportsmen had performed complicated folk dances on them. Bea would have cried at the condition if she hadn’t been so happy to have possession of their white elephant.
    Just as they had started with the long center room, now their living room, so did Bea begin in the darkness the slow, methodical task of mentally refurbishing Nutmeg Hill.
    Wessex was only a twenty-minute drive from Murphysville, and Lyon would have been stopped for speeding if any state troopers had clocked him. He slowed as he approached the village and down-shifted as the car turned into Main Street and the center of town.
    One of the oldest towns in the state, Wessex had once been a small but thriving seaport located a few miles above the mouth of the Connecticut River. The town had slept from the demise of whaling until after World War II, when it had been “discovered.” Due to the combination of the passing time and a vigorous historical society, the original nineteenth-century facade of the village center had been preserved.
    Wessex differed from most New England towns in that it was not centered around a green, but radiated from the small harbor that had once been its hub.
    He parked in front of the Captain’s House that was the Traxis address. The house itself was a freshly painted white with a widow’s walk on its slate roof. Its long leaded glass windows were shrouded from the inside by lined draperies. Around the corner of the house Lyon saw a well-kept lawn that led down to the water at the edge of the harbor.
    He left the car, walked the few steps to the door, and pressed the doorbell. A chime rang in the interior of the house.
    He thought back to the last time he had seen Robert Traxis.
    In order to gain popular support for the controversial passage of a bill increasing welfare benefits, Bea Wentworth had her committee hold public hearings in various parts of the state. One of those meetings had been held at the Wessex Junior-Senior High