Read Online The Late Clara Beame by Taylor Caldwell - Free Book Online Page B

screamed, and Henry ran to his wife and caught her in his arms. Mrs. Daley and Edith appeared from the back of the house, their eyes wide. “What’s the matter?” Mrs. Daley asked. “What’s wrong with Mrs. Frazier?”
    David turned to her quickly. “Did you see anyone outside except Mr. Frazier and Evelyn?”
    “Lord, no,” Mrs. Daley replied. “No one can walk in that snow. Was that a shot we heard?”
    “It was,” John Carr told her. “You’d have seen anyone if there had been anyone to see? The shot was fired from close range.”
    “I’d have seen anyone.” Mrs. Daley was thoughtful for a moment. “In fact, I was looking out the window at my feeding shelf for birds, and the woodshed is right there, thirty feet away. Then Edith said something from the stove, and I turned my head, and the bang came. I sort of thought it was hunters from the village, though it isn’t the season.”
    David and John Carr exchanged a glance. Henry had finally calmed Laura. “She’s all shaken up. I’m going to take her back to bed.” He did not look at the others as he and Laura climbed the stairs.
    “It’s all right; it probably was some fool of a hunter,” David commented. “Alice? John? Let’s go into the living room.”
    But Alice caught his arm. “I want to talk to you.” John Carr nodded, then left them alone. “David. Laura saw you — that morning. At four o’clock. She just told me.”
    David glanced around quickly.
    “Of course she did.” Then he frowned at his sister. “How did she happen to tell you?”
    She was silent. “Keep out of this!” he warned her. “You do your part; I’ll do mine.”
    When Henry came downstairs a little later, he was still pale. “I’ve given her a sedative. We’ll let her sleep.” He reached for his pipe. “There’s only one other window facing the woodshed side. The hall window, upstairs. And there are no tracks in the snow except mine and Evelyn’s.”
    “Then who fired the shot?” John Carr asked anxiously.
    Henry filled his pipe and lit it. His audience waited tensely.
    “I wouldn’t know,” he answered in a slow voice. “Does anyone here have any ideas?”
    “How could a hunter get up here so far, in the snow?” David asked incredulously. “It must be six feet deep in some places. And the village is miles away; he couldn’t have driven.”
    “That’s what I figured out all by myself.” Henry’s tone was sarcastic.
    “Unless,” John Carr pointed out, “it was a stray shot, a spent bullet.”
    “Those mostly come from rifles. I don’t think that bullet was a rifle shot. In fact, even though only the end is sticking out, I’d say it was a forty-five.” Henry looked slowly from David to John. “That shot wasn’t fooling. It struck hardly a foot from my head. Somebody tried to kill me.”
    “Or,” John Carr said softly, “warn you.”
    There was silence in the room. The smoke curled up slowly from Henry’s pipe. He leaned against the fireplace.
    “Now, who would want to kill me or warn me?” He looked at the two men. “Another thing,” Henry went on, “the only place from which that shot could have come is this house. No tracks in the snow for forty feet or more around, except Evelyn’s and mine. So, either the shot was fired from the kitchen door, which would make the criminal Mrs. Daley or Edith, and that’s damn silly, or it was fired from the upstairs window in the hall, which is the only window facing the woodshed besides the kitchen window.”
    Again, he looked at each of them. “And the window’s been opened. The snow’s disturbed. So who in this room, dear friends, tried to kill me? Which one of you?”
    Alice’s smile was hollow. “I was with Laura.”
    “So it narrows down to you, Dave, or you, John.”
    “Are you serious?” David exclaimed.
    “I am. John?”
    “Why in God’s name should I try to kill a comparative stranger?” John Carr’s expression was no longer pleasant. “What could be my motive? I