You Can't Kill a Corpse by Louis Trimble Read Free Book Online

light in the room. He put out one gloved hand and turned the door latch. The door opened easily under pressure and he moved inside.
    He closed the door softly behind him and let his eyes adjust themselves to the dancing, uncertain light. A large log had almost died in the fireplace; only a few small flames were left. Clane turned and looked around the book-lined study, his eyes following the wall until they reached a wide, paper-littered desk at his extreme right. Anthony Wicket was seated there, his body relaxed in a chair, one hand on the desk top. A cigar was smoldering in an ashtray.
    Clane said, “All right, Wickett. It’s cold enough for a drink.”
    He took a few steps forward. Now he could see better. A warning chill started at the base of his spine and ran upward, prickling the hairs at the base of his neck. He felt a little foolish, talking that way to a dead man.
    He went around the desk until he stood over Wickett. He could see the bullet hole in the side of the man’s head. There was a look of sardonic amusement on Wickett’s face and he had died before it could fade. Clane noted again his relaxation and the natural way his hand rested on the desk top. Except for the hole in his head and the accentuated immobility of his features he could have been sleeping.
    Or resting, Clane thought. Or thinking up further ways to stop Clane. This was one way. A very good way unless Clane could think fast and act faster. He held no delusions. Particularly if he were caught there, with Wickett’s body, would the police jump to a natural conclusion.
    He glared at Wickett. The sardonic expression did not change. Evidently the bullet had come from a door inside the house, across the rom and at right angles to the front of the desk. It had caught Wickett by surprise. That the publisher could have held a gun to his temple and shot himself Clane did not believe. Wickett had not impressed him as a man faintly contemplating suicide.
    From the size of the hole Clane judge the gun to have been no larger than a thirty-two.
    Clane felt the stillness of the room creep over him and mingle with the scent of the cigar smoke. That cigar puzzled him. Tentatively he pushed a gloved finger at it. The ash was short and it fell from the cigar tip into the ashtray. The mouth end of the cigar was not quite dry. It had been lit only a few minutes before. And from the appearance of the wound Clane estimated Wickett had been dead close to half an hour.
    He let his mind linger on that. He had left Thorne’s place a little before ten. In the intervening hour he had driven to a drug store and looked up Wickett’s address and then had spent the remainder of the time cursing the short, curved streets of the Hill. That was a fine alibi for the cops, for a man like the belligerent Day.
    Clane wondered who was in the house and if anyone had heard the shot. He began to feel impatient with the darkness and he reached out his hand, snapping on a desk study lamp. It was powerful and threw light against the polished desk top and back, pushing aside the flicker of firelight and filling one corner of the room. Clane blinked a little and then looked around. Behind him, within reach of the man at the desk, he saw an Ediphone machine. The cover was on it but was bunched and setting askew. As if, Clane thought, someone had jammed it there in a hurry. He removed the cover gingerly and glanced at the machine. There was no record in it. He shrugged and replaced the cover, not bothering to set it neatly.
    Outside of the machine, there was nothing near Wickett’s desk. It sat almost in a corner with a door behind it and one directly across the room. A large heavily curtained window was at one side and a little to the rear of the desk. Behind it and to the left of the door was the fireplace, taking up almost all of the rear wall. Clane turned so his back was to Wickett’s side and walked a direct line toward the door at the side of the room.