Free The Christmas Night Murder by Lee Harris

my cousin Gene gave me when we were children and that had stuck until fairly recently. “Who could it be besides her father?”
    “I don’t know. I’m going to have to find him—if he’s still alive.” If he wasn’t, I had a very big problem on my hands. “Angela, Joseph told me the whole story last night, at least a great deal of it. Since Julia Farragut obviouslyliked you and confided in you, you should be a good judge of her behavior. The way Joseph described it, she went from erratic outbursts to appearing quite normal, so that a decision to send her away at night could easily be changed the next morning almost as though she’d had a bad dream that disappeared with the darkness.”
    “That’s just the way it was. When we talked, we were two young women with common interests and goals. I knew a little more about the workings of the convent than she did, so I was a source of information. We even gossiped—I remember once confessing to Hudson that I had spoken maliciously about one of the nuns.” She looked pained at the memory. “It was just one of those things that tumbled out in one of our conversations and I knew as I heard myself say it that I shouldn’t have.”
    “We all do it, Angela. But what you’re telling me is that to you Julia seemed a normal young person.”
    “Absolutely. If she was having problems, she kept them to herself. Perhaps I should have been more astute when she talked about her mother, but at the time I wasn’t. No family is perfect. There’s a skeleton in every family’s closet, even mine. It wouldn’t have been kind or fair of me to jump to conclusions when it was clear this girl needed a confidante.”
    “Your judgment was right, Angela. No one could have foreseen what was coming.”
    An insistent buzzer sounded and Angela swiveled toward the switchboard. “Good morning, St. Stephen’s Convent.” She turned to me and pointed. “She’s right here, Jack. Hold on and I’ll transfer you to another line.”
    “Thanks,” I said, standing. “Where to?”
    “Try the kitchen. It should be empty by now.”
    I ran off to get my call. The last nun in the cleanup squad was just leaving and waved as I came in.
    “What’s the story?” Jack asked as I answered.
    “It’s too long to go into, but I’ll give you the relevant details.” I told him briefly about Julia Farragut, finishing with her suicide and where Hudson’s car had been found.
    “Wow. That’s some story. Look, I’ve got the phone number of the state-police officer that we talked to theother day. Let me give him a call and ask some questions. When did the Farragut girl kill herself?”
    “It was Christmas, Jack.”
    “So it looks like someone with a long memory waited seven years to even a score.”
    “It does look that way. And I have nothing at all to go on except the father. I’m going to try to locate him through his sale of the house. Then I’ll see if I can find someone to give me some names of Julia’s friends. The schools are all closed, so it’s not going to be easy.”
    “Nothing is when you start, honey. But I have to admit, there doesn’t seem to be much to go on here.”
    We talked a little about other things and then Jack said, “If I come up with something and you’re not around, can I trust the nuns to get a message to you?”
    “Joseph told them to speak freely to me about everything. And I’ve just gotten an apology from Angela because she stonewalled you the day after Christmas. I think you can trust them all today.”
    “Then I’ll talk to you later.”
    —
    It was still early in the morning, but I wanted as early a start as possible. There was someone at St. Stephen’s I needed to talk to, but that could wait. According to Joseph, the Farraguts’ former home was about twenty miles from there, and I wanted to be present when the real-estate agents opened for business. I went back to the switchboard room and thanked Angela for her help. She had nothing to add except, she