Free Miss Withers Regrets by Stuart Palmer

that. I want to meddle in this particular case because so many people have made it clear that they don’t want me to. And especially because a young man appealed to me for help last night and I let him down. But don’t look so long-faced, Oscar. It’s that swimming-pool murder out at Shoreham, so it won’t be in your territory and I won’t be in your way.”
    The wiry little Irishman stood up suddenly, turning to address a large photograph of ex-Mayor La Guardia which somebody had forgotten to remove from the wall. “She says she won’t be getting in my way!” he cried. “This I have got to see!”
    “Now, Oscar!”
    “Don’t you now-Oscar me! For your information, I just got word from the commissioner. Sheriff Vinge, out at Shoreham, feels that he is getting a little over his depth and has requested help from the department. Guess who is the lucky boy?”
    “Oh, dear!” murmured Miss Hildegarde Withers. Then an elfish smile illuminated her long, horsy face. “Hold on to your hat, Oscar. Here we go again!”

Chapter Six
    “W HEN I MAKE A mistake,” remarked Miss Hildegarde Withers to the blurred panorama of Long Island’s ash dumps which flitted past her train window, “I make a beaut!”
    A mile or so farther along the way she added: “But after all, it’s the murderer who can’t afford to make a mistake. He has only to be wrong once for us to succeed—we have only to be right once.”
    And as she left the train at Shoreham Station and waited for a taxicab she concluded: “However, I’ve certainly proved to myself once more that a little information, like a little learning, is a dangerous thing. I must find out what really happened at that cocktail party.”
    But where, exactly, to begin? The schoolteacher knew that a direct frontal attack, today at least, was out of the question. The Cairns house would be by now completely taken over by the police. The inspector, together with the car and driver supplied him by the department, would be there by now, and he was not in a mood to put up with her being underfoot.
    Besides, he knew his business. The machine was unimaginative but thorough. There would be no clues passed over, no statements unchecked. It would be her problem to milk the inspector dry of whatever information he dug up, but that could come later. In the meantime …
    “Go roundabout!” had been Peer Gynt’s counsel from the Boyg. Miss Withers was not at all sure what a Boyg was, but the advice seemed sound. She would sneak up on this murder from the side. At this point in her reveries one of the town’s two taxicabs arrived, emblazoned with the “Busted Duck” insignia of the honorably discharged veteran, and she told the driver approximately where she wanted to go.
    He brightened on learning that it was to be a rather longer haul than usual. At the end of the ride he leaned back to open the door, indicating the second house from the corner. “That’s it,” he advised her. “One of Mame Boad’s old firetraps. Richest woman in this town. I used to work for her before I got drafted—she keeps her dog kennels in fine shape, but her tenants can make their own repairs.”
    Miss Withers agreed that there should be a special level of hell’s hottest corner reserved for the nation’s landlords and asked the young man to wait. As she went up the walk she noticed that the lawn needed cutting and saw that there was a small convertible parked in the driveway with one front wheel in a bed of nasturtiums.
    Upstairs in the front bedroom Adele Beale lay snoring, with her face buried deep in a down pillow. A familiar, insistent voice tugged her back to life.
    “Wake up, will you? Wa-a-a-ake up!”
    The pillow was forcibly removed, and Midge Beale stared down critically at the wife of his bosom, who had retired last night without removing her war paint or doing up her hair and who now looked like something special in the way of hags. “Go away and let me die in peace,” she moaned. “I