Read Online Miss Withers Regrets by Stuart Palmer - Free Book Online Page A

might, Miss Withers could nowhere catch a glimpse of the flash of glowing, living light which should have been in its mate. Perhaps it was sulking.
    Then with a start of horror she caught sight of a spot of grisly activity in the rear of the tank behind the red rock. A midget skeleton moved erratically on the sand, whirling end over end.
    Two busy Japanese snails and a spotted eel-like king dojo were fulfilling their ghoulish task of cleaning up the tank. The dead fish was disposed of, all except skull and spine. As Miss Withers turned away, feeling faintly ill, the doorbell summoned her once more.
    “Botheration!” muttered the schoolteacher. She thought that she might just let it go on ringing. But curiosity was her besetting sin, and she could no more have refrained from seeing who this visitor was than she could have stopped breathing.
    This time a womanish girl in black stood in the doorway, a full-bosomed girl with soft brown hair and deep aquamarine eyes, soot-bordered now from sleeplessness. Behind her, fidgeting slightly and out of breath, was a much older man. He reminded Miss Withers of the “men of distinction” in the whiskey advertisements, and smelled as she imagined they would smell.
    “Are you Miss Hildegarde Withers?” Thurlow Abbott began, his voice a harsh, croaking whisper.
    “That is I,” answered the schoolteacher.
    “We owe you an apology for breaking in on you like this—”
    “Oh, stop it, Father!” The girl in black was coldly angry. “We want to know what my sister has been saying to you! What lies has she been telling now? Don’t try to deny it; we know that Lawn was just here.” She subsided, on the verge of hysteria.
    “You must be Helen Cairns,” Miss Withers said. “Please come in and sit down.”
    Helen shook her head. “My father and I can’t stop. We have to get back. But we want to know what Lawn said to you.”
    “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Cairns, but—”
    “As if we didn’t know already!” Helen exploded. “She wanted to make my husband’s death look like murder, didn’t she? She’s got the idea that you have some sort of connection with the police, and she’s trying to frame poor Pat, who never hurt any one in his whole life! Can’t you see?”
    “You don’t know me, Mrs. Cairns,” Miss Withers said, with a sniff, “but I am not a person easily used. Tell me, why should your sister Lawn try to do all these things?”
    Father and daughter exchanged a long look. “My daughter Lawn’s motives have always been a complete mystery to me,” Thurlow Abbott said hoarsely. “This will sound strange to you, coming from a father, but sometimes I have thought that, just as some girls have a vocation for the Church, Lawn has a vocation for evil !”
    The schoolteacher’s eyebrows went up. Then she turned back to Helen. “Mrs. Cairns, did you know that Pat Montague telephoned you twice last week from the separation center at Camp Nivens?”
    Helen shook her head slowly. “I didn’t know until last night that Pat was within two thousand miles of here. Lawn must have answered the phone, because Beulah would have taken a message or at least told me that someone called.”
    “But couldn’t Mr. Montague have told the difference between the maid’s voice and your sister’s?”
    Helen shook her head wearily. “Not if Lawn answered the phone in a stage colored accent, the way she does sometimes, with a ‘Mistah Cyains’s res’dence.’ ”
    “Lawn has a most peculiar sense of humor at times,” Thurlow Abbott explained.
    Miss Withers frowned. “Suppose we leave, just for a moment, the subject of the Wicked Sister,” she said. “Just who, Mrs. Cairns, do you think killed your husband—if it wasn’t Pat Montague?”
    There was nothing but silence in answer to that shot, so the schoolteacher went blithely on: “You’re not, of course, trying to suggest that Lawn herself might have done it?”
    Helen Cairns suddenly broke into laughter, thin, clear,