Lay Her Among The Lilies by James Hadley Chase Read Free Book Online Page B

the chairs and floor, were dirty saucepans, crockery and glasses. The trash bin was crammed with empty bottles of gin and whisky. A frying-pan full of burnt grease and bluebottle flies leered up at me from the sink. There was a nicely blended smell of decay, dirt and sour milk hanging in the air. Not the way I should like to live, but then tastes differ.

    I crossed the kitchen, opened the door and peered into the small, untidy hall. The doors opened on to the hall— presumably the living-room and the dining-room. I gumshoed to the right-hand door, peered into more untidiness, more dust, more slipshod living. Eudora wasn't in there; nor was she in the dining-room. That left the upstairs rooms. I mounted the stairs quietly, wondering if she might be having a bath, and that was the reason why she hadn't answered my ring, but decided it was unlikely. She wasn't the type to take sudden baths.

    She was in the front bedroom. Big Boy had made a thorough job of it, and she had done her best to protect herself. She lay across the tumbled bed, her legs sprawled out, her blouse ripped off her back. Knotted around her throat was a blue and red silk scarf—probably hers. Her eyes glared out of her blue-black face; her tongue lay in a little bed of foamy froth. She wasn't a pretty sight, nor had death come to her easily.

    I shifted my eyes away from her, and looked around the room. Nothing had been disturbed. It was as untidy and as dusty as the other rooms, and reeked of stale perfume.

    I stepped quietly to the door, not looking at the bed again, and moved out of the room and into the passage. I was careful not to touch anything, and on my way downstairs I rubbed the banister rail with my handkerchief. I went into the smelly, silent little kitchen, pushed open the screen door that had swung to in the hot breeze, on down the garden path to the gate, and walked without haste to where Paula was waiting.

Chapter II

I

    Captain of the Police Brandon sat behind his desk and glowered at me. He was a man around the wrong side of fifty, short, inclined to fat, with a lot of thick hair as white as a fresh fall of snow, and eyes that were as hard and as friendly and as expressionless as beerstoppers.

    We made an interesting quartet. There was Paula, looking cool and unruffled, seated in the background. There was Tim Mifflin, leaning against the wall, motionless, thoughtful, and as quiet as a centenarian taking a nap. There was me in the guest of honour's chair before the desk, and, of course, there was Captain of the Police Brandon.

    The room was big and airy and well furnished. There was a nice Turkey carpet on the floor, several easy chairs and one or two reproductions of Van Gogh's country scenes on the walls. The big desk stood in the corner of the room between two windows that overlooked the business section of the city.

    I had been in this room before, and I had still memories of the little unpleasantness that had occurred then. Brandon liked me as much as Hiroshima liked the atomic bomb, and I was expecting unpleasantness again.

    The interview hadn't begun well, and it wasn't improving. Already Brandon was fiddling with a cigar: a trick that denoted his displeasure.

    "All right," he said in a thin, exasperated voice, "let's start from the beginning again. You had this letter. . ." He leaned forward to peer at Janet Crosby's letter as if it had been infected with tetanus. He was careful not to touch it. "Dated May 15th, 1948."

    Well, at least that showed he could read. I didn't say anything.

    "With this letter were five one-hundred-dollar bills. Right?"

    "Check," I said.

    "You received the letter on May 16th, but put it unopened in a coat pocket and forgot about it. It was only when you gave the coat away the letter was found. Right?"

    "Check."

    He scowled down at the cigar, then rested his broad fat nose on it.

    "A pretty smart way to run a business."

    "These things happen," I said shortly. "I remember during the Tetzi