Murder by the Book by Frances and Richard Lockridge Read Free Book Online

all.”
    â€œLet’s go over this morning once more,” Jefferson said. “Be sure we’ve got things in order.”
    Pam, then Jerry, went over the morning, getting it in order. It was, Pam thought, in the same order it had been before—the same ugly order.
    Jefferson thanked them; he said it was all pretty clear. He said he hoped he wouldn’t have to bother them again. He said, “Staying long?” and when Jerry said, “About two weeks,” he nodded his head. He said the weather was almost always fine this time of year. He went across the lobby and out onto the porch.
    Jerry said, “Well,” and the Norths stood up. It was Pam who said, “Let’s see what they’re doing”; she led the way to the porch.
    They could see the end of the pier; men were clustered there. Deputy Sheriff Jefferson was walking toward the pier. A uniformed man stood at the shore end of the pier, doing nothing, yet cutting off the activity there from the slowly increasing activity of the hotel—from Larry Saunders, dragging his brush across the tennis courts; from the beach boy raking at the seaweed the tide had left on the beach.
    A tall, lithe young man stood on the diving board of the pool, bouncing his preparation; in the pool a girl in a white bathing cap looked up at him in evident admiration. The little girl in the yellow dress was dipping her feet in the flat pan of disinfectant solution at pool’s edge. All at once, dress and everything, she sat down in it. “Goodness,” Pam North said. The young man quit bouncing on the diving board and knifed into the pool. One of the gardeners came, a little wearily, along a path, dragging a hose reel. He coupled the hose to a spigot set into the lawn, and dragged the reel away again, the hose unwinding.
    There was nothing to see, except the hotel’s life stirring. The Norths went back into the hotel.
    * The Norths Meet Murder (1940).

4
    The Norths went in to breakfast. They were not especially cheered by Deputy Sheriff Jefferson’s question concerning the probable length of their stay. Pam had, she said, got the feeling that he didn’t want them hurrying off. Jerry admitted to the same feeling.
    â€œHe’s got a very suspicious mind,” Pam said. “Merely because I find poor Dr. Piersal, and could have made an appointment to meet him there—because of the pelicans, of course—and there was nobody else around, and I suppose anybody could have stabbed him if he wasn’t expecting it—where was I?”
    â€œClearing yourself,” Jerry told her, and wrote orange juice and coffee and other things on the breakfast slip. “Just one egg,” Pam said. “Not one order.”
    Jerry knew. Pam is a one-egg person. One order is for two eggs; the ritual is inviolate. Jerry wrote, “One single egg, three minutes,” and underlined the word “single.” Pam would get two eggs. It would serve no purpose to tell her that she had to eat but one. It was, for reasons rather obscure to Gerald North, the principle of the thing.
    The Norths did not hurry breakfast. Absentmindedly, Pam ate both her eggs. They bought the Sunday Miami Herald , divided it for portage, and bore it to the porch. From where they sat, they could see the end of the pier. There was nobody there, but halfway toward shore a bellman—probably the unhappy Jimmy—stood as sentinel, waiting to tell people that the pier, but only temporarily, was unsafe. There was no sign anywhere of Deputy Sheriff Jefferson. The state police seemed to have vanished. But then two men went out onto the pier, and they both carried buckets, and one of them carried a heavy brush.
    â€œAll right, Pam,” Jerry said, and put a hand on one of hers.
    â€œâ€˜Who would have thought’”—Pam began, a little unsteadily, to quote and he said, “No, Pam. Don’t. Quit thinking about it. Read some more