Free Murder by Reflection by H. F. Heard Page B

almost out of breath. He waited for Kermit to catch up. Kermit was following and reflecting. It was, of course, a conventional tension—the “triangle up on end.” But, true enough, in a place like this its breakup might make an awkward noise.
    â€œWhat’s Mrs. Heron’s age?” he asked.
    â€œOh, she’s anywhere in the ‘F’s.’ Sometimes she looks every day of fifty-nine—other days I’ve seen her look as though with a successful rear action she’d temporarily recaptured some of the forties.”
    â€œAnyhow, she’s in the dangerous ages. And the son?”
    â€œHe’s almost as difficult to place as she. I’ve thought once or twice he could be her son, a son who’d taken after his father, for they’re not a bit like in face; though good lookers and homely can be like each other, these aren’t. But then at other times they look, he so faded and she so dominant, as if there wasn’t ten years between them.”
    â€œWell, we can’t touch the two women’s sides of the problem—that’s clear. The man facet, that must be our approach.”
    â€œThat’s true. Wonder, Hal, whether you’d see him?”
    â€œYou docs say, don’t you, ‘never diagnose without seeing the patient’? All right; I will.”
    Doc rose; he was pleased and hopeful at once. “I believe that may do it. After all, perhaps all he’s needing is some company. And, maybe, you could be the bridge for making the old woman come out of her big vacuum shell she’s built for herself. You’re a recluse, and like takes to like.” Already in Doc’s mind all the difficulties were melting away. He was not made to brood on disaster. “I’ll find a chance of asking him whether he’d like to see your work. Somehow seem to remember hearing that he had some interest in radio, and that’s near enough the stuff you’re working on here. Guess it was one of the men working up at the place when they first took it who told me.”
    They rose and went across the little patio to its rim. Soon Doc was back patrolling his beloved streets, feeling that he’d done a good day’s work and could now devote himself again to mail and general conversation.

Chapter VI
    Arnoldo made one more effort to be frank with Irene. She gave him an opening by complaining that he was out more than ever.
    â€œI need the exercise,” he said.
    â€œDo you walk by yourself?” Her tone was, neutral—not suspicious but not friendly.
    â€œFew people here seem to like walking,” he began. “I sometimes come across Miss Gayton going for a stroll after school.”
    Suddenly she lost her control. “You’re concealing it from me.” Her voice was a bitter scold. “Because I wouldn’t ask that little schoolmistress here again, you’re meeting her on the sly. I’ve made this place for you. I’ve done everything possible to make you happy in it; I’ve asked you to be the center of it and to entertain in it as it deserves to be used. I found you dreaming away your life in a cramped, wretched way and I’ve taken you out and made your dream come true and given you a chance which would have made the ordinary man of taste which you claimed to be happy, content, grateful. And now you steal out at the back ways to consort …” Her attack gave out, but the wave returned. “No doubt you’ve told her that you have fine prospects and not too far in the distance.”
    Her resentment and her self-pity suddenly checked each other and she had a chance to hear her own voice. As suddenly as the storm had burst, she swept it aside. She could stop herself speaking but she could not find words to fill the silence in which what she had said still seemed to be echoing. She lay back. Her face was gray now, with curious leaden shadows in its folds.
    Arnoldo looked at her fixedly in