She Died a Lady by John Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online

only images of Rita crowding back on both of us.
    He seemed to be holding up well, despite his physical condition. It was not until we were out in the front hall, on our way to the car, that he collapsed beside the hat-stand in a dead faint. The little key, engraved with the name Margarita and the true-love knot, dropped out of his hand and fell on the hardwood floor. I had never guessed how very much he loved Rita, but I guessed then. I picked up the little key and put it in my waistcoat pocket. Then I set about the task of getting Alec upstairs.
    *
    The bodies of Rita Wainright and Barry Sullivan were recovered two days later. They were washed up on a shingle beach a few miles down the coast, and some small boys ran to fetch the police. But it wasn’t until the post-mortem that we learned how they had really died.

FIVE
    T HAT was the day I first met Sir Henry Merrivale, under circumstances that will long be remembered in Lyncombe.
    War or no war, the village could talk of little but the suicide pact of Rita Wainright and Barry Sullivan. It angered me. Very little sympathy was expressed for either of them, especially Rita. The general trend of it was: ‘Wouldn’t you know she would do a damn silly theatrical thing like that?’
    On the other hand, Alec got no great shakes of sympathy himself.
    ‘’E ought to ’ave walloped ’er,’ said Harry Pierce at the ‘Coach and Horses’. ‘Then she wouldn’t ’a’ done it.’
    I failed to see the logic of this. Besides, too much talk of walloping wives is done by those who would never have the nerve to utter a large-sized boo to their own particular spouses: as, for example, Mr and Mrs Pierce. It was all the more irritating because Alec’s collapse had been rather more serious than I had feared. A trained nurse was with him day and night, and Tom went out to see him twice a day.
    On Monday morning before lunch, having been confined to the premises by strict orders of Tom, I was taking the sun in our back garden when Molly Grange came round to see me. She walked down the path between the tall blue delphiniums, to the open space under the tree where the wicker chairs stand.
    ‘How are you feeling, Dr Luke?’
    ‘I’m perfectly fit, thanks. What has that idiotic son of mine been telling you?’
    ‘That you’ve been – exerting yourself.’
    ‘Nonsense!’
    Molly sat down in a wicker chair opposite me.
    ‘Dr Luke. It’s a dreadful business, isn’t it?’
    ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘You knew Barry Sullivan, didn’t you? In fact, you were the one who introduced him to …’
    I bit my tongue, hoping there were no unpleasant memories. But Molly did not seem to mind. People at first glance seldom realized how attractive Molly was. Like most fair-haired, blue-eyed girls who do not apply make-up so that their faces may be known, like ships, by their markings, Molly seemed ordinary.
    ‘I didn’t know him very well. Only slightly,’ she said. She lifted one slim hand and examined the fingers. ‘But it’s a horrible affair just the same. Dr Luke – you don’t mind talking about it?’
    ‘No, not at all.’
    ‘Well,’ said Molly, sitting up straight, ‘what happened ?’
    ‘Didn’t Tom tell you?’
    ‘Tom’s not an awfully good story-teller. Then he just says: “Hell, woman, don’t you understand plain English?”’ She smiled, but her face grew grave again. ‘So far as I can gather, you and Mr Wainright were starting out towards the car, to go for the police, when Mr Wainright collapsed.’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘You dragged him upstairs and put him to bed …’
    ‘That didn’t hurt me.’
    ‘Tom says it might have. Anyway, what I can’t understand is this. Tom says you walked from “Mon Repos” to here. You walked four miles and more in the dark –’
    ‘It wasn’t completely dark. The stars came out when the rain cleared.’
    Molly waved this aside.
    ‘And came back here,’ she said, ‘to telephone the police at Lynton. You didn’t