Free Good Year For Murder by A.E. Eddenden Page B

roof.
    â€œJezuz!” Tretheway said.
    It was overflowing, partly because of the wet weather and partly because of Ingird Tommerup.
    â€œJake. You’d better come here.”
    Jake appeared, carrying a large, wicked-looking crooked stick instead of his revolver which he had left in his desk. Ammerman and a groggy Red Rounders were right behind him. They crowded around Tretheway and stared in the rain barrel.
    â€œGawd!” Jake said. Ammerman’s jaw moved soundlessly up and down. Red Rounders sat down again on the wet grass. His hat fell off.
    The bare, hairy, muscular legs of Ingird Tommerup, knees locked, stuck straight out of the full rain barrel. She wore scruffy yellow bowling shoes. Her thick navy blue bloomers were visible just below the surface of the water.
    â€œLet’s get her out of there.” Tretheway grabbed a leg. Jake, hesitating only for a moment, grabbed the other. They struggled with her, cold and stiff and slippery from the rain, until finally Ingird lay on the ground, her long flaxen hair, heavy with water, stretched out behind her.
    â€œIs she …?” Jake started.
    â€œYes,” Tretheway said. “Hours ago, I’d say.” He froze suddenly. “Jake.”
    â€œMm?”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Tretheway pointed to a reddish mark on the fleshy part of Ingird’s thigh. Jake forced himself to look closely. The weak daylight picked up an indentation in the skin: a perfectly formed cross about an inch and a half square.
    â€œI don’t know,” Jake answered. “Looks like an emblem of some sort.”
    â€œA cross.”
    â€œThat’s right. A Maltese cross.”
    â€œPeculiar.” Tretheway straightened up. “We’ll just keep this to ourselves. At least, ‘till Wan Ho gets here.”
    Jake agreed.
    â€œAnd get something to cover her up.”
    Red Rounders pushed himself to his feet. “There’s a tarp in my car.” He recovered his hat and shook the rain from it. “I’ll get it.”
    â€œYou’d better look for a phone, Jake,” Tretheway said. “Try down the street.”
    Jake jogged the two hundred yards to the nearest neighbour and phoned in. In the fifteen to twenty minutes it took the Fort York police to arrive—plus all the necessary ancillary groups—Tretheway and Jake searched the cottage and grounds. First, Tretheway took Ammerman inside the cottage out of the rain.
    â€œMake some tea or something,” Tretheway said.
    â€œTea,” Ammerman said, neither question nor answer, but a simple repetition. It was the first word he had managed since he had seen the rain barrel.
    In the cottage Tretheway found little to enlighten him. It was untidy, but not in disarray. Miss Tommerup’s purse lay on the kitchen table full of money, two expensive fur coats hung in the front hall and one of her dresser drawers, which Tretheway quickly shut, held a week’s supply of clean navy blue bloomers. He raised his eyebrows at the man’s safety razor in the medicine cabinet.
    Outside, even with Jake’s help (Red Rounders was guarding the body and tarpaulin), Tretheway found no helpful clues. The grass around the rain barrel was thick and springy, hardly ideal material for footprints, and the muddy areas around the puddles had either been avoided or unvisited. By the time the first police arrived, allthat Tretheway and Jake had found between them were seven arrowheads.
    Sergeant Charlie Wan Ho was in the first car with four other detectives. He made straight for Tretheway.
    â€œHi, Inspector.” He smiled at Jake.
    â€œHello, Charlie,” Tretheway said. Jake smiled back.
    â€œPlease don’t say it’s another murder.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œDamn! Is it Miss Tommerup?”
    Tretheway nodded.
    In the many years Sergeant Wan Ho had been on the force, he had tried to develop a hard-nosed, indifferent, professional attitude