Read Online The Judge Is Reversed by Frances Lockridge - Free Book Online Page B

appellations would have died with childhood. The girl was—what? In her quite early twenties, probably.
    â€œAnything you can tell us,” Bill Weigand said. “About the key, then?”
    Since her father—“Graham Latham?” She looked from one to the other, apparently for some sign that the name was recognized. She got none. Anyway—
    When her father had retired, about five years before, they had given up the apartment they had in Manhattan, and now lived all year around in the Southampton house. She had started to say, now did say, that there, in Southampton, before Mrs. Blanchard died, the Blanchards had had a house “next door.” Anyway—
    Her father and mother came into New York infrequently. Now and then, for a week or two in the winter, they came in and stayed at a hotel and went to the theater. But she came in much more frequently and when she did usually stayed in John Blanchard’s apartment. The key was so that she could come and go when she wished, whether he was there or not.
    â€œThere’s room there for half a dozen,” Hilda said. “I could just pop in, and not even bother him. Just tell Mrs. Sandys—” She broke off. “They weren’t there today?” she said. “The Sandyses?”
    â€œNo,” Bill told her. “Apparently they had the weekend off.”
    â€œBecause of the tournament,” Hilda said, and nodded her head so that the deep red hair swirled around her face. “He’d be there—” Again she broke off. “Would have expected to be there,” she said, “most of the weekend. Umpiring—filling in on the lines. It’s hard to find linesmen sometimes and—”
    She shrugged slim shoulders, suggesting that she had wandered far from anything which would be found interesting, which would help. “Anyway,” she said, “that’s why he let Mr. and Mrs. Sandys off, I expect. If they’d been there—was it somebody who broke in? A burglar?”
    â€œConceivably,” Bill said. “Only—the door wasn’t forced. And, nothing was disturbed. There’s nothing to indicate that Mr. Blanchard surprised somebody ransacking the apartment. You just happened to be in town today, Miss Latham? Or were you in last night? Stay at the apartment?”
    She hesitated for a moment. Then she shook her head, and again the red hair swirled.
    â€œNo,” she said. “I came to see if John was—all right. I was home last night. Most of this morning.”
    They waited.
    â€œI was going to have lunch with him,” she said. “At the inn at Forest Hills. I drove in from Southampton to have lunch with him. He—he didn’t come. I tried to get him on the telephone and then—then asked people at the club. He’d been going to umpire a mixed doubles match and hadn’t showed up there, either. I tried again a couple of times on the phone and then watched the finals—the men’s finals. Then—well, then I drove in to see if he was all right. I said he’d asked me to come in for a drink but that was—just something to say. The first thing that came into my mind.”
    That didn’t matter, Bill Weigand told her. Had she any particular reason to worry about John Blanchard?
    She was quick on that. He’d invited her to lunch. He had agreed to umpire a match. He had kept neither appointment. Which was unlike him.
    It was only that? Nothing more specific?
    Greenish-blue eyes went very wide open. Specific? What did Captain Weigand mean, specific?
    â€œI don’t know,” Bill said. “Were you afraid he’d been taken suddenly ill? A heart attack—something like that?”
    â€œI didn’t know what to think,” she said. “Of course—I’ve said I was worried. That that’s why I came in. When nobody answered the telephone—not John or Sandys or anybody—of course I was