Free Murder Most Strange by Dell Shannon

coming—yes?" The door was opened
halfway, suspiciously. She was a stout elderly woman with frizzy
white hair. He explained. She was alarmed, outraged, indignant. "Why,
that's just terrible! To think of that poor man— No, I just knew
him to speak to, but he'd lived here a long time, of course—such a
respectable man, too— But this has always been such a quiet street,
I don't recall we've ever had a burglary or even any vandalism along
here, but these days . . ." Her name was Helen Lewis, and she
was a widow who lived alone. “I haven't heard a thing all day, it's
been a very quiet day. I was in the kitchen a good part of the
morning, mixing up that casserole, and I always take a little nap
after lunch—"
    Hackett joined Palliser. "Couple in the
seventies there— Mr. and Mrs. Sadler. They were doing yard work in
the back all morning. He's a little deaf."
    "Helpful," said Hackett.
    "Well, there's only seven more houses up to the
cross street." The lab truck had arrived, and Waring gone back
on tour.
    They proceeded on. Hackett talked to a youngish
husband and wife named Anderson, who had been refinishing furniture
in their garage and hadn't heard or seen anything unusual. To a stout
spinster named Spooner who had been reading in her bedroom all day.
To another middle-aged couple named Trask who had been watching old
movies on TV. They were all horrified and alarmed at the news, asked
questions and exclaimed, but none of them had any scrap of
information to offer, and none of them had known Parmenter except by
sight; he hadn't been very neighborly, they said.
    At the other end of the street he pushed the last
doorbell. The door opened suddenly and he faced a large man with a
cheerful Irish-looking bulldog face. Hackett recited the tale again.
"For God's sake!" said the man. "Old Parmenter? I'll
be damned!"
    "If you happened to notice a strange car around,
anything unusual, Mr.—"
    "Branagan, Terence. I haven't noticed a damned
thing, Sergeant," he said regretfully. "Fact is, I'm
usually bushed on Sunday. I walk a damned long mail route, and come
Sunday I just want to relax. My wife took the kids over to her
mother's, and I've been half asleep in front of the tube, tell the
truth. And all the time a thing like that going on." He went on
to ask eager questions, and Hackett cut him off, walked across to
join Palliser.
    "One young couple named Jepson," said
Palliser, "who say the baby kept them awake all night and when
they got her settled down they went back to bed again, about ten A.M.
He's got enough muscles to beat anybody to death, he drives a cab for
Yellow and looks like a prizefighter, but I don't suppose he's our
boy. Another couple about thirty-five, the Kellers, who've been
painting a back bedroom all day. And a deaf widower named Weekes."
    "Oh, for God's sake," said Hackett. A
deathly hush lay over the little street; it was so quiet that they
could hear a couple of mourning doves in the old elm tree in front of
Parmenter's house the length of the street away. The morgue wagon was
there now. "Well, the only answer is, he must have been knocked
unconscious right away, didn't have a chance to fight back or make
any noise."
    "Yes," said Palliser. "I suppose we'd
better have a look through the house. There may be some lead to
whoever hated him enough for that."
    There wasn't. Marx and Fisher were in the house now,
being thorough, but it was the barest house Hackett had ever seen.
There was a minimum of furniture, linen, dishes, a meagerly stocked
refrigerator: not a book in the place, no desk, no visible
correspondence. "He was a hermit," said Palliser.
    "There may be something at the store," said
Hackett. "Some people must have known him, John."
    "Somebody knew him well enough to want him
dead."
    It was nearly the end of
shift. They had Parmenter's keys from his pants pocket, and told the
lab men to lock up after themselves.
    * * *
    Late Sunday afternoon, as Mendoza was reading in a
corner of the living room, he