Any Shape or Form by Elizabeth Daly Read Free Book Online

minutes past five. The shot had been fired at least two minutes earlier. He got out his handkerchief and covered the dead woman’s face; then he walked down the flagged steps and out on the lawn.
    There was not a soul in sight, and hardly a sound except the sawing of the crickets. The greens were vivid in this waning light, and every leaf and twig of the hedges picked out as if by an old-fashioned artist with an eye for detail. He went into the rose garden. Yes: there, in the left-hand corner, lay the rifle; and beside it the garden gloves that he had seen in the basket a few minutes before. There also was the weeding spud; it lay near a heap of piled turf—small, neat squares that had very recently been removed from their bed.
    They were lying at different levels, and when he stepped carefully around them, bent sideways, and peered through the vines, he saw that they were exactly beneath the area through which the muzzle of the rifle must have been pushed and aimed. He could see the big birch.
    But he couldn’t swear to Vega’s exact position against it, and the bullet hadn’t come out through the back of her head and marked the spot where she had stood. An inch to right or left—that would make a difference here. The murderer’s mind had worked furiously, but it had worked accurately. Time had been taken before the murder to pile these squares of sod so that no expert would be able to determine the exact line of fire, and from it the height of the marksman.
    The killer had known that a bullet from a .22 probably wouldn’t emerge from the back of a human skull.
    Gamadge bent over the heaps of sod; Drummond, Malcolm or himself might have fired from ground level, to the right or left. Blanche might have fired from one level, Redfield or Cora Malcolm from two, Abigail from the third. If they were all tested, any fractional discrepancy would be accounted for by the personal idiosyncrasy of each—under strain—in holding the gun.
    And unless the garden gloves had been available the murder probably wouldn’t have been committed. There would not only be lack of time after the murder to rub off fingerprints, but all these people knew that the hand that fires a rifle may show evidence of having done so. Blanche Drummond already wore gloves, and had fired the rifle while wearing them; she would use these large cotton things over her own to widen the field of suspicion. Malcolm’s hands might be stained; but he would certainly have used the gloves, for the same reason.
    Gamadge went out of the enclosure, to see Walter Drummond coming through the gate in the tall hedge that cut off the flower garden from the lawn.
    â€œHello,” called Drummond. “Johnny’s dahlias are dead.” He carried a great bunch of russet-brown button chrysanthemums.
    Gamadge asked: “Where’s Miss Malcolm? Not with you?”
    â€œShe only stayed with me a few minutes. She was saying something about croquet.”
    â€œI remember.”
    â€œThere’s a sporting layout down in the orchard.”
    He jerked his head backwards.
    â€œIs she in the orchard?” asked Gamadge.
    â€œNo, she went up to the tool house where the set is. She didn’t come through again.” He added: “What have you done with the old lady?”
    â€œAbigail?”
    Drummond, looking shocked, said of course not. Mrs. Malcolm. He added with a laugh: “If that was a reconciliation party this afternoon, give me w-war to the knife.” He stammered a little when he was nervous. “Kids won’t get their money,” he said, “if they go on like that.”
    â€œAnybody pass through the flower garden while you were there? After your wife and Malcolm came up with the crows?”
    â€œI didn’t even see them. I was behind that bank of cosmos at the other end.”
    â€œBehind the cosmos for half an hour?” Gamadge looked at his watch. “You left the house before