Read Online Hanged for a Sheep by Frances Lockridge - Free Book Online Page B

had for breakfast that day. What day was it, by the way? Exactly?”
    â€œTwo weeks ago Monday,” Aunt Flora said. “And I had the usual.”
    â€œWhich was?” Weigand prompted.
    â€œWell,” Aunt Flora said, “first the citrate salts, of course. Then prunes. I have to eat prunes every day. And take the salts.”
    â€œRight,” Weigand said, again hurriedly. “And afterward?”
    Afterward, Aunt Flora said, had come the usual breakfast food—hot because it was winter. And some pancakes with a little bacon. And an egg—“no, I always allow myself two eggs on Monday.”
    â€œWhy?” said Pam, involuntarily.
    â€œBecause it’s Monday,” Aunt Flora told her. “Starts the week, dearie. You need it for Mondays.”
    There was a slight pause, during which everybody looked a little puzzled. Weigand aroused himself.
    â€œRight,” he said. “And toast, I suppose?” Pam listened for irony, but heard none. Neither did Aunt Flora, who nodded.
    â€œObviously,” she said. “And coffee, of course. Oh—and a little honey to go with the toast, of course.”
    â€œOf course,” Bill Weigand said. “It—it gives the poisoner—well, opportunity. Plenty to choose from.”
    â€œListen, young man,” Aunt Flora said, her yellow wig bobbing a little. “Call that breakfast?”
    â€œYes,” said Bill Weigand.
    Aunt Flora looked at him.
    â€œNourishment,” she said. “That’s what you need, young man. Pickers!”
    It took time to get things out of Aunt Flora, but, with breakfast out of the way, Bill Weigand persevered. Ben Craig had been in to see her that morning, before breakfast. The girls had looked in while she was eating, sitting on the bed and nibbling toast. The major had come in, too, before she had finished and taken the girls away when he left. Harry was down to tell her they needed new fuses and to get the money to buy them. Harry? Harry Perkins, obviously. And who, while they were on the subject, was Harry Perkins.
    â€œHarry?” Aunt Flora repeated, as if the question were absurd. “Harry’s just—an old man. Don’t try to make a mystery about Harry.”
    Weigand was patient. They were not trying to make mysteries. On the contrary. Who was Harry?
    â€œAn old friend of my husband,” Aunt Flora said. It did not clarify.
    â€œWhich, Aunt Flora?” Pam said. “Which husband.”
    â€œMy husband, dearie,” Aunt Flora said. “I only had one husband . What you’d call a husband. The major, dearie.”
    She consented, although obviously thinking it of small import, to explain. Many years before—half a century before—Harry Perkins and Alden Buddie had been young men together and devoted friends. Harry Perkins then had been in business, successfully. But something happened—something vague and misty with years and not, it was clear, any too well understood by Aunt Flora even at that distant time. And Harry, suddenly pathetic and beaten, had gone desperately west and found Major Buddie there—a very young major, since things were moving rapidly in the army in the west in those days, and a confident one; a man of assured future, who saw no reason not to take his battered friend in charge, and as a responsibility. And Buddie had money even then, although not as much as inheritances made it before he died a few years later. And Harry—well, Harry was, in some obscure manner, part of Aunt Flora’s inheritance from her young husband. Perhaps he was somehow a remembrance.
    â€œA keepsake,” Pam said, suddenly. Aunt Flora looked surprised and then nodded her head and torso, so that the yellow wig slipped a little.
    â€œThat’s it, dearie,” she said. “A keepsake. I’ve—well, kept him ever since. I suppose it’s strange, but I never thought about it. It just seemed natural to keep