Free The Late Clara Beame by Taylor Caldwell Page A

He paused to light a cigarette.
    Alice stared at the fire. “At any rate, the intruder’s gone,” Henry remarked. “I think I’ll take a look at Laura. I wish to God the phone was all right; I’d call the police.”
    David came back into the room, half laughing. “One mystery solved. Mrs. Daley said she shook a bedroom rug out of the hall window half an hour before that shot was fired. So, she’s the one who disturbed the snow. Now we have only one mystery left.”
    In the kitchen, Mrs. Daley spoke to her niece in a low voice: “Not a word out of you, ever, my girl. To nobody. If you do — ”
    Edith whimpered. “I’m frightened. I don’t like to get into such things.”
    “Keep quiet, and you won’t,” her aunt told her. “People only get into trouble when they talk too much. A long tongue is a long rope, for hanging.”
    Laura awoke in the cold gray twilight of her room, with a sense of foreboding. She huddled under the heavy blankets, reluctant to get up. If only she had listened to Henry when he had quoted Benjamin Franklin to her: “Guests, like fish, stink after three days.” It was much too long for people who are really strangers to be together.
    David and Alice provided problems enough, but now there was John Carr.
    And here I lie, Laura thought, quivering like jelly, and it’s my house, and they’re my guests. Her head swam from the sedative, and she groaned as she remembered that the lines were down, and the telephone out. If only none of them had come, there would be peace. She tried to get up the courage to dress and go downstairs and be the bright hostess and pretend that all this had not happened.
    The gale was worse. The stone house was like a ship on a sea: waves of snow roared around it and hissed against the windows.
    Laura tried to shake off the questions Alice had asked, but they returned to her. Had she seen or heard anyone? No, only David, that night. Only David.
    But, had there been only David? The memories were painful but she couldn’t help reliving in her mind that whole terrible night. They had all gone to bed a little after midnight. Alice had slept at once, but Laura, missing her husband, had not fallen asleep immediately, and had awaked a few hours later. Why? There was something —
    Yes, now, a year later, she remembered. Footsteps. Soft footsteps in the hall outside the bedroom door. Stealthy footsteps. But, she had told herself, it must have been one of the men on his way to the bathroom. Moving so as not to disturb the others. She had half fallen asleep again — she remembered now — and in that semiconscious state she had heard something. A voice? Voices? The sound of something falling or rolling? No, she had been dreaming. Still, she had gotten up, and had been thirsty. The room had been dark. She had heard the distant murmur of traffic. She had lost her way in the room and had found herself in the hall. Then all had been as she had told Alice this morning.
    Not one person, not even herself, had admitted to the police that they had been up during the night. She had forgotten. Had the others forgotten, too? It was possible. But what had she heard?
    The bedroom door opened and Henry came in, carrying the little oil stove that heated the dining room.
    “Awake?” he called cheerfully. “I brought the stove so you won’t freeze while you dress. How are you, darling?”
    “Close the door,” she whispered. “And don’t light the candle yet. I’ve got to talk to you. Sit beside me on the bed. Henry, who do you think tried to kill you today?”
    “Nobody did. We — investigated. It was a spent bullet from somewhere, probably shot from a mile away or something.” He had asked the others not to tell Laura about the intruder, for she was too easily frightened.
    “A hunter?”
    “Who else?” he laughed. “Do you think Dave or John or Mrs. Daley or Edith wants to kill me? Be sensible, honey. And Alice didn’t leave your room. You see how ridiculous it