The Best Crime Stories Ever Told by Dorothy L. Sayers Read Free Book Online Page B

suddenly.
    “Suggest nothing to me,” remarked Selby. “But you have a look at them.” He turned the little bag out upon the table, “Here you are—handkerchief, powder-box and puff, mirror, nail-file, hairpins—”
    “Of course,” Trent murmured, “hair-pins.” He took them in his hand, “Four hair-pins—quite new, I should say. Do they tell a story, Selby?”
    “I don’t see how. They’re just ordinary black hair-pins—as you say, they look too fresh and bright to have been used.”
    “And that last thing?”
    “This is a box of Ixtil, the anti-seasick stuff. Two doses are gone, I believe it’s very good.”
    “I didn’t know,” Trent remarked, idly, turning the box about, “that you could buy it abroad.”
    “I was with Lady Aviemore when she bought it at Brindisi, just before going on board.”
    “Did she buy anything else?”
    “I really can’t tell you,” Selby replied, with a touch of pique. Trent seemed to be asking aimless questions while he stared at the capsules in their tiny box. “She went shopping for an hour or so before dinner, but she was alone, and I didn’t see her again until she came down to dinner.”
    “And so you noticed nothing curious at all,” mused Trent, “except this about the paper, and the note having been prepared in advance—which is certainly queer enough. Just cast your mind back beyond the last day. All through the time you were with them nothing came under your notice that seemed strange in the circumstances?”
    Selby fingered his chin. “If you put it like that, I can remember a rather funny thing that I never thought of again until now. But I can’t see how it could possibly—”
    “Yes, I know. But you asked me here to consider the case in my own way, didn’t you?”
    “You are so jolly professional, Trent,” Selby complained. “It was simply this. Two or three days before we left Taormina I was standing in the hotel office when the mail arrived. As I was waiting to see if there was anything for me, the porter put down on the counter a rather smart-looking package that had just come—done up the way they do it at a really first-class shop, if you know what I mean. It looked like a biggish book, or box of chocolates, or something—about twelve inches by ten, at a guess—and it had French stamps on it, but the postmark I didn’t notice. And this, I saw, was addressed to Mile. Maria Krogh, if you please—Lady Aviemore’s Norwegian maid, about the plainest and stodgiest-looking girl in the world, I should say. Well, Maria was there waiting, too, and presently the man handed it to her. She showed no surprise, but went off with it, and just then her mistress came down the big stairs. She saw the parcel and just held out her hand for it as if it was a matter of course; and Maria handed it over in the same way, and the Countess went upstairs with it. But her name wasn’t on the parcel, that I’ll swear; and Maria hadn’t even cut the string. I thought it was quaint, but I forgot it almost at once, because Lady Aviemore decided that evening to leave the place, and I had plenty to attend to. And if you want to know,” added Selby, with a hint of irritation, as Trent opened his lips to speak, “where Maria Krogh is, all I can tell you is that I took her ticket for her in London to Christiansand, where her home is, because she was too much upset to do things for herself; and I never thought of her again until we sent her the fifty pounds that was left her, which she acknowledged. Now, then!”
    Trent laughed at the solicitor’s tone, and Selby laughed also. His friend walked to the fireplace and pensively adjusted his tie. “Well, I must be off,” he announced, suddenly. “What do you say to dining with me on Friday? If by that time I’ve anything to suggest about this thing, I will tell you then. You will? That’s splendid.” And he hastened away.
    But on Friday, Trent seemed to have nothing to suggest. He was so reluctant to approach