Free Crime is Murder by Helen Nielsen

since I took over management of the Cornish estate! It’s a wonder you haven’t told Nydia that I wanted old Hubbard to die. It’s a wonder you haven’t suggested that I made off with his damned medicine.”
    It was such an interesting conversation, and so careless of Lisa to become so engrossed in it that she failed to notice where she was putting her walking stick. At the worst possible instant—in the little silence after Tod’s outburst—the cat screamed. Cats had a way of doing that, when sticks were pressed on their tails, but not for no reason at all. Lisa restrained her own cry of surprise and leaned back into the shadows under the stair. Already footsteps had sounded in the upper hall.
    “Miss Pratt?”
    Tod called, but no one answered. No one but the offended cat nursing her wounds at the bottom of the stairs.
    “That damned cat! Let’s get done with this business, Stanley. I want those checks signed so I can get out of here.”
    Tod’s voice faded and then was gone. He must have closed the board room door after him. It was just as well. Lisa had heard more than she could assimilate anyway. But she didn’t turn back. This was a public museum, after all. Even if Tod found her she would have good reason to be here.
    Good reason. How many suitors had Marta Cornish lost? Two? One down and one to go. Puzzled and shaken, Lisa returned to the mantel in the museum room. Martin Cornish looked down on her with brooding eyes; Nydia watched with a marble face. But in between the portraits was a bronze plaque inscribed with names. Lisa counted … seven, eight. This year would be the ninth, then. The ninth festival and the ninth winner of the Cornish Award. But the unknown name of the ninth winner wasn’t what she’d come to ponder. It was the seventh: the year before last year’s drama.
    She was right. A half-remembered inscription had meaning now. The winner of the seventh annual Cornish Award was Howard Gleason.

CHAPTER 7
    “So that’s the answer,” Johnny said. “Suicide. But was Howard Gleason suitor number one or number two?”
    “And what happened to the other one?” Lisa asked.
    Masterson House was a good place to brood over the puzzle. It was beginning to be more livable now; the last crate had been opened and cleared away, and enough furniture had been uncovered and shifted about to make the rooms in use comfortable if not luxurious.
    But Johnny still didn’t like it.
    “I can’t sleep nights,” she complained. “You aren’t sleeping well, either. I can hear you moving about.”
    “The nights have been warm,” Lisa said.
    “Then why don’t you move to another room? We certainly have plenty of them. I’ve never understood why you picked that little cubbyhole next to the playroom. It was probably meant for a nurse or a governess.”
    Lisa didn’t answer; her mind was busy with many things. Howard Gleason had shot himself. Why? A suicide always raised speculation, and whether or not that cute little girl reporter knew what she was talking about when she insisted that Gleason and Marta Cornish had been engaged, the fact remained that a young musician of enough merit to win the Cornish Award one year had ended his life in a most dramatic fashion the next. That left one very interesting year to be explained.
    “You might ask the professor,” Johnny suggested. “He must have known Gleason if they both taught at the high school.”
    “Ask the professor?” Lisa smiled at the thought. “Professor Dawes poses questions; he doesn’t answer them. What’s more, he used to teach at a university.”
    Johnny looked puzzled. “I suppose you mean something by that remark, but I don’t get it,” she said.
    “I don’t either. Why the demotion?”
    “Maybe he got fired.” And then Johnny’s puzzlement gave way to a mild form of shock. “You’re not suggesting that
he’s
unbalanced?”
    “ ‘All the world’s mad, sister, save thee and me,’” Lisa murmured. Then she laughed. “No,