Free Any Shape or Form by Elizabeth Daly

hearth, and on the other, facing him, sat Mr. Ellsworth Mosson, State’s Attorney of Rivertown.
    The studio was a splendid room, with a big rounded window along its south wall, and casement windows to the east and west. Redfield said that it was the only studio on earth which had no north light, but then his work could be done in any light; he seldom used color. There was color, though, in a delightful flower piece, done in opaque tints on gray paper, that hung over the mantel. Bold and stylized without being too mannered, it was Redfield at his best.
    He had at first intended the studio to be neutral in tone, and its decorative scheme was based on an arrangement of black, white, and silver; but when it came to furnishings his earlier taste for color had triumphed. The curtains and upholstery had somehow ended by blooming with big red roses, while one interesting note was struck by a large armchair in violent blue.
    There were small tables in front of the fire, one holding a bottle of whisky, a siphon, and a bowl of ice, besides Mr. Mosson’s highball. The other stood at Gamadge’s elbow, and upon it stood his highball. Redfield’s glass was in his hand. Lieutenant Griggs refused to drink while investigating a case on the premises.
    He said, looking at his clasped hands, “It ought to be an accident. I wish it was an accident. But it wasn’t, Mr. Redfield. That bullet came out of that twenty-two, and Mr. Gamadge was right about where it was fired from. He was right about those piled turfs, too; they were fresh out of the ground. Any of the people there could have fired that shot, but we can leave Miss Ryder out of it. Unless”—he smiled gloomily—“our men do find any of those red berries on the place nearer than where you all say she picked them.”
    â€œThey don’t grow on her little place down the hill,” said Gamadge, also smiling a little. “And I don’t in any case think she brought them along with her in her pocket.”
    â€œThank goodness,” said Mosson, who was a lank, tow-headed, normally cheerful man without illusions of any kind. “The thought of Abby Ryder as a murder suspect really is not bearable.”
    â€œShe’d play up,” said Gamadge. “And so will I, if you like.”
    â€œOh, for mercy’s sake stay—out of it,” said Mosson. “We have too many people in it now. Unless you’re secretly developing homicidal mania? No? Then stay out of it. How about you, Redfield?” He cast a faintly incredulous look at the figure supine on the couch under the east windows. “Any chance of leaving you out?”
    â€œNo,” said Redfield with his eyes shut. “There isn’t. Even I could have shot my aunt Josephine with that Winchester—forty yards is practically point-blank range. I’ve shot crows. And I had a financial motive, too. I’m her residuary legatee, at least I was the last I heard of it. She’s made a new will, lately, I understand, leaving some money to some astrological society or other—perhaps as a sop to their sensibilities; she was losing interest in them. But I don’t think she’d leave them much. I don’t get a cent of the Malcolm money, of course; but last spring she had about seven thousand in the bank, and since she’s been here she’s had two income installments—early in July and early in October. They amount to about twelve thousand apiece. So I may now come in for something like thirty thousand gross, say, and perhaps I needed it. You never can tell. I’m not conscious of needing it as badly as all that, but you can check up on me. I do most of my business with the old Chemists in New York, but I keep a pretty good balance at Old Bridge. You can check up on me for blackmail or the double life. And I paid out a mysterious little aggregate of forty-seven dollars last spring; it went to my bookie, if you must