At the house, Higgins was detached from the young trooper, whose relief was evident. (He’d have even less pleasant experiences as time went on, if he stayed in the business, Heimrich thought.) After consultation with Scott Bromwell and since there was no cell in the house—Heimrich would not have been intolerably surprised if there had been—Higgins was tucked away in an upstairs room and a key was turned on him. He protested this, and his entire innocence of everything, but did not seem as worried as he had seemed, particularly after he had been promised sandwiches and coffee. He still needed a handkerchief, but nobody thought to offer him that.
Heimrich, who had made his arrangements while he stood in the hall, had beckoned Forniss and was starting for the library, when someone knocked on the front door and almost at once opened it. The man who knocked was one of the troopers and he had another man with him—a tall, tanned man, hatless and with black hair.
“This man says—” the trooper began and then Lucretia Bromwell spoke from the door to the West Room.
“Mr. Haas,” Lucretia Bromwell said, “we did not expect you.”
And, Captain Heimrich found himself thinking, we are not amused. His second thought was less automatic. It was that “we” were not, by a wide margin, prostrate with grief. To the loss of her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lucretia Bromwell was, Heimrich thought, even this quickly quite reconciled.
He motioned to Forniss again and the two solid men went down the hall toward the library. Inside it, Heimrich listened and Forniss, who had been busy, talked.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, 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 © 1948 by Richard and Frances Lockridge
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5042-5
This 2018 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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