Kiss and Kill by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page B

back from a second-story window. There was an apartment-for-rent sign on the corner of the weathered building. He entered and started climbing. On the second landing a latch clicked as he passed a door: he glanced back and saw a glittering eye spying from the crack, then blank out as the door closed. Barney climbed on to the next floor.
    He knocked on the door of the Johns woman’s apartment. Waiting, he noticed that a new lock had been installed; there were shiny hinges and some cracks in the wood. It looked as if the door had recently been battered in, then repaired. Barney knocked again, waited five minutes, and went back downstairs. The door on the second-floor landing opened again, full this time; he saw a head of black shoe-polish hair and a face mapped with wrinkles. The shoe-button eyes were laughing as if the old woman was enjoying a joke.
    â€œLooking for Ingrid?” she asked eagerly.
    â€œYes. She seems to be out.”
    â€œShe’s dead,” said the old woman with satisfaction.
    Barney realized that he had been expecting just that. Unconsciously he had added up the smashed door and the apartment-for-rent sign and reached the dreary conclusion.
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œThree nights ago.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œYou can think what you like.” The old nut started to close her door.
    â€œWait. How do you think?”
    Barney caught the mingled odor of gin and lilacs from the old woman’s apartment.
    â€œShe was murdered, that’s how.”
    The door closed for good this time; Barney heard the bolt click into place. He knocked, waited, then shrugged and left the building.
    At the car he said to Ed Tollman, “Ingrid Johns is dead. There’s an old crock of a woman up there who claims she was knocked off. From anyone else, especially from what we’ve been running into, I’d believe it in a shot. From her …” He shook his head. “We’d better check.”
    He drove to a gas station and from an outdoor booth phoned the police. It was true that Ingrid Johns was dead. She had been asphyxiated by gas from her stove. The official verdict had been accident or possible suicide. The Johns woman had lived alone; she seemed to have few friends and no family; these things happened all the time.
    â€œA neighbor woman said it was murder,” said Barney to the officer on the line.
    â€œWhat’s her name?”
    â€œI don’t know. She lives downstairs.”
    â€œOne minute.” The man was gone for five. When he came back on, he said, “I’ve got the report here. We took a statement from the neighbor but couldn’t make much sense out of it. She’s a gin rummy. Something about a cat, and a dog barking.”
    Barney had to make a conscious effort to control his voice. “A dog? What kind of dog?”
    â€œWe don’t even know if there was a dog. We certainly didn’t find any sign of one. Look, the woman was dead without a mark. The oven gas was on and the flame was out. There was nothing taken from her apartment as far as we could tell. There was not a single sign of forced entry or violence. Just no evidence of murder.”
    â€œBut the neighbor downstairs—”
    â€œIs she a beady-eyed old gal with shiny dyed-black hair and a face like a pickled prune?”
    â€œThat’s the one.”
    â€œHell, that old woman calls us at least once a week,” the precinct man said with disgust. “Either she’s being followed home from the bus by a suspicious character, or she’s seen a face at her window—on the second floor!—all sorts of fairy tales. You can waste your time if you like, Burgess, but we’ve got too damn many other things to do.”
    Barney hung up and returned to the car. “Let’s go back and talk to the old woman. They’ve got her on the crank list, but she said one thing that made sense.”
    The old woman refused to let them in, or even to discuss