The Uncomplaining Corpses by Brett Halliday Read Free Book Online Page A

moment he was alone in the room. Then he heard the sound of heavy breathing coming from a divan set against the wall near the fireplace.
    As he turned his eyes in that direction a trickle of resin gurgled out of the burning log and yellow flame spurted up. In the wavering light he saw two figures on the divan. The girl was sitting at the end next to the fireplace, legs stretched out in front of her. A slim-bodied young man in evening clothes lay full length on the divan with his head in the girl’s lap. His face was toward her and he was breathing loudly.
    Her head was bent forward and she appeared to be staring down at him intently. Brown hair that was bobbed long enough to comb hung down, shrouding her face from Shayne’s gaze. Shayne was certain that they were both unaware of his presence in the room. He wondered if the young man in evening clothes was asleep, passed out, or neither. He wondered if they were brother and sister.
    He said, “Hello,” and stepped toward them.
    The girl jerked her head and the longish strands of hair were flung back from her face. Her eyes looked perfectly round and they glittered in the light from the leaping yellow flame. The young man’s head came up a second later, like a released spring. He swung his legs off the end of the divan and sat up beside the girl. His face looked yellower in this light than it had out in the hall when the cop led him away from his stepmother’s room. His mouth began opening and shutting again, but, as before, no words came out. It gave him the appearance of idiocy.
    The girl smoothed her negligee and asked angrily, “What are you doing, sneaking in here? The police said we wouldn’t be disturbed.”
    Her eyes were actually almost as round as they had looked from across the room. Her lashes were colorless and didn’t show drawn back tightly against whitish eyebrows. The effect was, extraordinarily, that of naked amber marbles set into the flesh above high cheekbones. Her cheeks were concave. Her nose and chin were narrow and pointed, giving her the look of a vixen.
    Shayne dropped into a chair a few feet in front of the divan. He said, “I’m not sneaking. The policeman just happened to be mistaken.” He looked at the young man and asked sharply, “What’s the matter with him? Can’t he talk?”
    “Of course he can talk,” the girl snapped. She nudged the young man with her elbow. “Say something, Ernst. He gets that way when he’s badly upset,” she explained more calmly.
    Ernst gulped and smacked his lips loudly. He stopped staring at Shayne and asked, “What shall I say, Dot?”
    “That’s enough,” Shayne grunted. “I just wanted to be sure you were human.” He transferred his attention to the girl. “You’re Dorothy Thrip , I suppose, and this is your brother Ernst.”
    She nodded ungraciously. “We’ve both told the police everything we know. Now get out and leave us alone.”
    “After a while,” Shayne promised, “you can be alone all you want. Right now I’m asking questions. I’m not the police. I’m just the fall guy who happens to be plenty on the spot because of the merry goings-on in this house tonight.”
    “Then you haven’t any right to question us if you’re not a policeman. Get out before—”
    “Shut up,” Shayne said. His eyes were murky with anger. He hunched forward a little, his big hands hanging loosely between his legs.
    “There’s something screwy around here and I don’t mean only you two. Were both of you at home tonight when the killings were pulled off?”
    Dorothy hesitated, then said, “Yes,” sullenly. “That is, Ernst was just coming upstairs when Dad shot the man.”
    “And you were in here?”
    “I was in my bedroom.” She gestured to the door behind her with a thumb as pointed and nearly as long as her forefinger.
    “Alone?”
    She bobbed her head. “I was undressing.”
    “Was Carl Meldrum with you?” Shayne asked the question casually and she seemed wholly unaware that it