Nipped in the Bud by Stuart Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

man who could never bear to throw anything away.
    “My name is Withers,” she said. “I didn’t expect to find you living here!”
    “It isn’t so strange, really,” Ruth Fagan was saying. “A gal has to live somewhere. This was my late husband’s apartment and after his death it came to me so I stayed on, the housing shortage being what it is.”
    There was really no arguing that. “But you were divorced, were you not?”
    “Not really. Only the interlocutory.” Ruth’s gesture indicated that interlocutories were accidents that could happen in the best-regulated marriages.
    “An interlocutory—in Reno? Come, come.”
    “Oh, I didn’t go through with the Nevada thing. I changed my mind. I’d been to Reno once before and it’s grim. But later I got my decree back East, because Tony insisted. He even got some girl to be photographed with him in her nightgown in a hotel room—I don’t mean that, I mean she was in her nightgown. I never wanted the divorce, but Tony was very difficult sometimes. These artists—”
    “Difficult how, Mrs. Fagan?”
    “Well,” said Ruth bluntly, “there were other women. That wasn’t so bad, but finally it settled down to just one other woman.”
    “Who?”
    “I never knew, and never wanted to.”
    “Was it the girl who played corespondent in the nightgown?”
    Ruth shrugged. “I really have no idea. She gave her name as Jane Doe, they say.”
    “I see. Naturally you felt very bitter about this?”
    Ruth looked at her cuticle. “I was hurt. But I knew he’d come back to me when things went wrong. Just as he eventually did. But then I failed him when he needed me most. If only I’d been more tolerant and understanding that night! But I had expected to be here alone with him, and I couldn’t stand watching those girls putting their arms around him and calling him Darling. And dancing with him when I was playing our song on the combination! So I took a drop too much, and topped it off with the allonal tablets, so I was dead to the world when he needed me most.”
    “I heard about that,” admitted Miss Withers. “I understand that you heard nothing of the fight that preceded the actual murder?”
    The woman hesitated. “Not exactly. But I seem to remember bad dreams, very frightening dreams. I didn’t quite wake up—of course there were two closed doors and the entire length of the apartment between. But I’ll never forgive myself for not waking. If I’d got up and come in …”
    “You might easily have been murdered, too,” the schoolteacher comforted her. “But I still fail to understand one thing. Even though you were divorced, was Mr. Fagan’s will still in your favor?”
    “There was no will. Tony was too much in love with life to ever believe he would die. But, you see, we had what they call a decree nisi —a decree unless. Unless there was a reconciliation during the twelve months before the decree became final. Our spending the night in the same apartment constituted just that little thing. You see, his bed hadn’t been slept in!” There was a definite note of triumph in Ruth Fagan’s tone, even as she reached for a lacy handkerchief and dabbed at her prominent, pale-blue eyes. It had all, she seemed to feel, worked out for the best.
    “Mrs. Fagan,” said the schoolteacher soberly, “are you satisfied—do you agree with the police that Gault is guilty?”
    “ What? ” Ruth’s voice was flat and gritty. “But of course. Who else? I was watching television that night, and I saw Tony’s show. He got carried away—he always hated sponsors anyway. He did needle Mr. Gault, but I only hope that the jury doesn’t take that as sufficient provocation and let that awful man get away with life imprisonment. He deserves to die.”
    “It would certainly seem so,” admitted Miss Withers. “I’m sorry to have to bring up painful memories, but in my work—” She sighed. “I have no official standing, of course, but I understand that there