Holland grinned back without embarrassment. “Where’d you get the drink?”
“Mrs. Allenby. I helped her upstairs and she made me do the honors.” His grin broadened. “I think she’s beginning to like me.”
Tracy proved that she was all right by the way she asked the next question. “Have they—heard anything yet?”
“No.” Crombie examined his glass. “According to Carver they’ll never find the boat—unless they drag the bottom—and maybe not her. For once,” he added quietly, “Frances had a real good idea and she knew what to do with it. She was kind of crazy about some things, but she was no coward.”
He leaned against the desk, cocking his head. “Say. Did you know it was Frances when you came up here? When did you tumble?” he pressed when Holland shook his head.
“When we were talking in the car on the way up,” Holland said. “When we decided why Vanning and Drake had been killed we narrowed it down to Baldwin, Carver, and Frances.”
“So?”
“So by that time I was ready to believe the porch climber was the one we wanted. Those vines broke with me when I tried them. They would have pulled away entirely if I hadn’t let go and dropped the last few feet.” He hesitated. “I weigh about one-seventy stripped. Baldwin must weigh one-ninety and Carver over two hundred.”
“Ahh—” Crombie sipped his drink.
“When I got that far I really began to think. The porch climber wore black. Frances wore pajamas that night in the kitchen so I thought I’d look. When I found the black ones and the stocking-cap I remembered something else I should have considered before.”
He thought a moment and said, “The night the landing-float fell on me I thought it was done by the man who threw the gun away. Later, Frances said she hadn’t seen anything. But when I said I’d go get my robe and slippers she said she’d get them for me. The question I should have asked myself then—and didn’t—was how would she know how to find the robe—a maroon one that would be hard to see in the dark—and slippers at night if she hadn’t seen me take them off and leave them out on the rocks.” He grunted softly, a disparaging sound. “She even gave me a motive that night when she talked about herself and Tracy. The trouble was it meant nothing at the time.”
Crombie pushed away from the desk and finished his drink. “You did all right,” he said. He was watching Tracy, and Holland got the impression that Crombie wanted to keep things going as lightly as possible so she would not have time to think. “On account of how you cracked this thing instead of me you don’t even have to buy me the dinner. I could use a refill,” he said. “How about you?”
Holland rose, and Tracy held his hand as she stood next to him. “Yes,” she said. “I’d love one.”
Crombie gave Holland the empty glass. “You get them,” he said. “I want Tracy to show me where she tossed my gun. The idea when I loaned it to you was that I was going to get it back, remember?”
He winked at Holland and took Tracy’s arm in his big hand. She smiled up at him and they started along the hall while Holland grinned after them proudly, because Tracy was his girl and Crombie his friend. When they had gone, he wheeled and walked toward the dining-room, his step almost jaunty and his weariness temporarily forgotten. Somehow the cares and troubles that had been with him so continuously the past days were gone. He did not bother to wonder why. He only knew that in some sudden and miraculous fashion he felt like a new man. He felt wonderful.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1950 by George Harmon Coxe
copyright renewed 1978 by George Harmon Coxe
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Head of Zeus
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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The Frightened Fianc?e Page 21
