Read Online Give Up the Body by Louis Trimble - Free Book Online Page A

the river beating at their ears and then, finally, coming across what they sought—and dreaded to find. In quick sympathy I touched his hand.
    Instead of being grateful, he looked sourly at me. “I’m appreciative of your help, Miss O’Hara, but we don’t want any more publicity than necessary.” He didn’t say it but the idea was: Scram.
    “I already phoned a story to The Press,” I told him. “Besides, with the sheriff’s men here the newspapers will send reporters down like vultures. No policeman ever hid his light, Mr. Hilton.”
    He was glaring at me. I went on, “So, you give me a break and I’ll try to give you one. That’s fair enough.” He seemed to waver, and I said, “Don’t forget that I’m a local product. I know a lot of gossip. And there is plenty of it in a place the size of Teneskium. And Mr. Delhart is our best topic.”
    The idea got over. Hilton shifted his weight in the chair and picked up the cup of coffee Mrs. Larson had set before him. She was silent, standing by the stove but looking toward us. I smiled at her. She had always been a special friend of mine. When I was a kid she was the one I could run to for an afternoon cookie or for a lap to sob out my troubles in.
    She didn’t smile back. She looked worried and anxious. I thought, so many people have looked just that way recently. All of these people connected with Delhart. Worried and anxious or worried and frightened, but never at ease. None of them. The scene I had tumbled into by the river yesterday afternoon had not been a beginning. It had started before that, before I had been aware of the existence of most of them.
    Hilton was speaking. “We hope you will cooperate the best way possible, Miss O’Hara.”
    “I’m still working for the Press,” I reminded him.
    “Naturally.”
    Since we seemed to have reached an understanding, I went to work. I said, “Did Jocko Bedford come personally?”
    “The sheriff, yes,” Hilton said. He was being precise and secretarial again. He sat straighter in his chair and did very well at looking less tired and more efficient. “He’s questioning the men now.” He indicated the living room with a nod of his head.
    “Questioning?”
    Hilton looked at me oddly, and compressed his lips. “The sheriff is quite certain there has been a murder.”
    It was an ugly word. I had thought of it, Hilton and I together had thought of it without saying it, I had said it aloud to the night editor of The Press. But hearing it spoken—at me—so baldly I could feel the brutality that Hilton felt when he spoke. The shock went clear to my shoes. I was not flattered because Jocko Bedford had the same hunch as I. Secretly, I was wishing for something less ghastly, something closer to the normal that I knew.
    I said hastily, “Where did you find Mr. Delhart?”
    “A quarter of a mile downstream,” Hilton said. “The current carried him until a fallen tree caught him.”
    I knew now. He was trying to be blunt and brutal, trying to nauseate me, a mere woman, into running away from the story. It was a man’s way.
    “And he was dead then?”
    “Yes,” Hilton said. “He was dead. We left him and came for the police.”
    That meant they had not wanted to touch the body, I thought. That meant Hilton or one of the others had admitted his belief that it was not an accident. “How was he killed?” I asked. I could be blunt too. I could be the calm reporter and take whatever he had to offer. So I thought.
    Hilton leaned toward me. His expression was cold. “He was slashed. He was slashed with a heavy knife. He was nearly cut in two.”
    I couldn’t take it. If I hadn’t been sitting I would have fallen. As it was I could feel the blood leave my face in a rush. Nausea took a good grip on my stomach. I could see it so clearly. I remembered those huge splotches of drying blood so well.
    I must have been white to my hairline. Mrs. Larson stepped to me quickly and put an arm around me. “There, dear,”