Miss Withers Regrets by Stuart Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

salt water he’d have—”
    Jed Nicolet waved at him to shut up.
    “I do believe he’s coming round,” Miss Withers admitted. “I’m grateful to you, Mr. Nicolet, although of course I understand perfectly why you did it. All the same, I’ll have to listen to your friend’s story.”
    Suddenly given the floor, Pat couldn’t think of anything to say. How was he going to tell his tale to this acidulous old maid? How could he explain to her about Helen and everything?
    “The last time I saw her,” he said, “we had been out dancing somewhere, and she wore a white dress or maybe it was a suit. It was daylight when I brought her home, and she came out on the little balcony outside her father’s apartment to wave down at me. Somehow she’s still waving at me—time stopped still that night—and she’ll go on waving until I see her again. But I guess you wouldn’t understand.”
    “Don’t be so sure,” the schoolteacher snapped. “Believe it or not, but I’ve had my chances. Go on.”
    “It seemed like fate,” Pat said. “I read in the paper that Helen was living out here in Shoreham and that she was giving a housewarming. I thought maybe I’d crash the party. At least I could see her and find out if she was happy and hear it from her own lips if it had to be good-bye.” He talked on and on and finally stopped.
    Miss Withers sighed. “It is one of the saddest things in this life,” she said, “that two people rarely fall out of love at the same time.”
    Pat insisted doggedly that he didn’t believe Helen had ever fallen out of love with him. Her father and especially her sister had been after her to marry Cairns, that fat, hairy little kewpie of a man. He’d been away in camp, and something went wrong with the letters and telegrams he sent, but that must have been Lawn Abbott’s work.
    “The Wicked Sister, eh?” Miss Withers smiled faintly. “All the rest of it seems like an unfortunate coincidence, with the gardener leaping to an erroneous but very natural conclusion. I don’t see that you have very much to worry about. Contrary to public opinion, the police do not want to pin crimes on innocent bystanders.” Then suddenly she was silent. “Just a minute, young man. Did I understand you to say that Huntley Cairns was fat ?”
    Both Pat and Nicolet admitted that Cairns was a tub of a man, not over five feet six and weighing around two hundred pounds. Miss Withers nodded. “And when you saw the body it was at the bottom of the deep end of the swimming pool?”
    Pat Montague nodded.
    “Excuse me just a minute,” said the schoolteacher. “I must make a telephone call.” She went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and then for a few moments busied herself by fluttering the pages of a number of extremely thick and solid volumes. She found what she wanted, nodded slowly, and then picked up the phone.
    In the living room Jed Nicolet was reassuring his client. “It’s going over big. She’s on our side, and the police won’t be so quick to try to hang a murder rap on you—”
    Then the door opened and Miss Withers appeared. “Before we go any further, gentleman, there is something you ought to know.”
    The two young men looked up at her wonderingly. “It’s only this,” the schoolteacher announced. “I just called up the Shoreham police and reported your presence here.”

Chapter Five
    J ERKED TO THEIR FEET, both Montague and Jed Nicolet goggled at her. “Oh, you’re quite free to escape,” Miss Withers advised them. “If the police arrive and find you gone they will understand that one poor weak woman couldn’t hold anybody by force. But honestly, I don’t think you’d get very far if you made a run for it, Mr. Montague. The police may have their limitations, but they are very efficient about such things as dragnets and manhunts.”
    There was no compassion in her. “It serves you right, of course,” she told Pat Montague, “for trying to take me in with a