Free The Golden Goose by Ellery Queen

restored order by indicating Prin. “You were the one who found Mr. O’Shea dead.”
    Prin kept looking at him with interest.
    â€œI asked you—”
    â€œNo, Lieutenant, you told me. But if you’re asking, the answer is: Yes, I was, for the umpteenth time.”
    â€œHow come?”
    â€œHow come what?”
    â€œThat you,” cried Grundy, “were the one who found him!”
    â€œI went up to call him to dinner.”
    â€œSuspected something was wrong, is that it?”
    â€œOf course not. We just thought Uncle Slater mightn’t have wakened from his afternoon nap.”
    â€œOh, he took a nap every afternoon?”
    â€œWell, he went up to his room every afternoon, so presumably it was for a nap.”
    â€œFor a nip nap, you might say,” said Twig.
    â€œI’ll get to you,” said Grundy; “but until I do I’ll thank you not to interrupt. Miss O’Shea, how long did your uncle usually stay in his room when he went up for these so-called nips—I mean naps?”
    â€œAn hour or so,” said Prin, fighting an impulse to giggle.
    â€œAnd you didn’t think it queer that he stayed so much longer in his room today?”
    â€œWe didn’t think about it at all till Mrs. Dolan—that’s the cook—announced that dinner was ready. When Mrs. Dolan says dinner is ready, people jump around here. We were all down but Uncle Slater, and somebody asked where he was, and somebody else said he was probably still in his room, so I went up to see.”
    â€œDid you see your uncle before he went upstairs?”
    â€œI saw him on his way upstairs, which is a little different, I think. He’d been out somewhere, and when he got home about two o’clock he went straight to his room. I was sitting in here alone listening to Till , and I saw Uncle Slater going up the stairs. I waved to him and he waved back to me and that was it.”
    â€œWho’s Till?” asked Grundy suspiciously.
    â€œTill Eulenspiegel . That’s a tone poem by Richard Strauss.”
    â€œPoetry, huh?” Grundy’s tone disposed of that . Prin wondered what the doughty lieutenant would have said if his range of general information had embraced the even more deplorable fact that a tone poem was a form of music. “How was Mr. O’Shea acting when you saw him go upstairs?”
    â€œPerfectly natural.”
    â€œNot mad or upset or anything like that?”
    â€œNo. He smiled and waved and was in the best of spirits, as far as I could tell—”
    â€œHe wasn’t in the best of spirits, if I knew Uncle Slater,” said Cousin Twig involuntarily. “The best of spirits was in him.”
    Over the lieutenant’s glare at Twig, Prin said, “Well, yes. He was very cheerful-looking. I guess he was carrying a load of sorts at that.”
    â€œDrinking.”
    â€œIsn’t that what I said, Lieutenant?”
    â€œNo. You said he was perfectly natural.”
    â€œUncle Slater was perfectly natural when he was drinking. It was when he wasn’t that he wasn’t.”
    Grundy’s head during this phase of the interrogation had been lolling to the left. Now he brought it erect with an appearance of great effort, but he brought it over too far, and it immediately lolled to the right.
    â€œAll right . So you went up to get him for dinner. Did you just walk into his room?”
    â€œOf course not. Do I look like the sort of person who goes around just walking into other people’s bedrooms? I knocked. When he didn’t answer I opened the door and peeped in. And saw him lying on the floor, near his bed. At first I thought he’d fainted or something, but when I went in and took a closer look I knew he was dead.”
    â€œDid you touch him?”
    â€œI don’t think so. He was so definitely dead.”
    â€œWhat made you so sure, Miss O’Shea?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know. It