A Touch of Death by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

main room, with a wood-burning kitchen stove and some cupboards in the rear and a cot and some chairs and a table up front. The door on the right led into a storeroom that was cluttered with a hundred or so old beat-up duck decoys, parts of outboard motors, some oars, and a welter of fishing tackle.
    The other one, on the left, was closed. I pushed it open and carried the lamp in. It was the bedroom. It held two built-in bunks, one above the other, and a double bed against the front wall. The bed was spread with an Army blanket. I put the lamp down on a small table and went back out to the car.
    I carried her in and put her on the bed. Her face was waxen white in the lamplight and her hair was a dark mist across the pillow. She must have been at least thirty, she was a passed-out drunk, but she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I stood looking down at her for a minute. The whole thing was a lousy mess. Then I shrugged and picked up the lamp. I wasn’t her mother. And it was a rough world, any way you looked at it.
    I built a fire in the cookstove and went up to the spring for a couple of buckets of water. It was full light now, and lovely, with bluish-gray smoke curling out of the stovepipe above the old shake roof and going off into the sky through the trees. I moved the car into the old shed on the far side of the house and closed the doors. Then I took an inventory of the food supply. Bill always kept the kitchen well stocked. There were a couple of boxes of canned stuff in the storeroom and some flour and miscellaneous staples in the cupboards. I opened a fresh can of coffee and put on the coffeepot.
    I sat down and smoked a cigarette, listening to the crackle of the fire and realizing I felt tired after being on the run all night. Drawing a hand across my face, I felt the rasp of beard stubble, and went over to the mirror hanging on the rear wall. I looked like a thug. My eyebrows and hair are blond, but when the beard comes out it’s ginger-colored and dirty.
    I rooted around in the storeroom until I found somebody’s duffel bag with a toilet kit in it. It held a safety razor and some blades, but no shaving soap. I used hand soap to lather up, and shaved. Then I put the shirt and tie back on. It was a little better.
    The coffee had started to boil. It smelled good. I poured a cup and sat down to smoke another cigarette. The sun was coming up now. I thought of all that had happened since this time yesterday morning. Everything had changed.
    I no longer worried about the fact that I was breaking laws as fast as they could set them up in the gallery. My only concern was that what I was doing was dangerous as hell and if I was caught I was ruined. But it was not even that which caused the chill goose flesh across my shoulders.
    It was the thought of that money, more money than I could earn in a lifetime. It lay somewhere just beyond the reach of my fingers, and I could feel the fingers itching as they stretched out toward it. Mrs. Butler knew where it was.
    And I had Mrs. Butler.
    It was nearly two hours before I heard her move on the bed in the other room. She was coming around.
    I’d better be good now. I had to be good to make this stick. I picked up the bottle of whisky and a glass, and went in.

Chapter Fiv e
    She was sitting up on the bed with her hands on each side of her face, the fingers running up into her hair. It was the first time I had ever seen her eyes, and I could see what Diana James had meant when she said they were big and smoky-looking.
    She stared at me.
    “Good morning,” I said. I poured a drink into the glass.
    “Who are you?” she demanded. She looked around the
    room. “And what am I doing in this place?”
    “Better take a little of this,” I said. “Or if you’d rather have it, we’ve got black coffee.” I knew damn well which she’d rather have, but I threw in the coffee just to keep talking.
    She took the drink. I corked the bottle and went out into the other room