A Choice of Murders by Dorothy Salisbury Davis (ed)

Author:Dorothy Salisbury Davis (ed) [Davis, Dorothy Salisbury]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mystery Writers of America
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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EDITOR’S NOTE: There have not been many MWA anthologies to which Robert Arthur has not contributed. He is a writer in the classic tradition; “The Glass Bridge” is a lovely variation of the “locked room” situation.

Blood Will Tell

Anthony Gilbert

The house stood in a hollow some distance from the road, looking like some immense packing case someone had jettisoned long since and forgotten. Only a light in an upper window betrayed its occupation; behind the lighted window, the fugitives could discern the shadow of a woman silhouetted against the old-fashioned yellow linen blind. She seemed to be wearing a bodice that left her arms bare, and she was rubbing them vigorously with a cloth. Her hair was tied up in a handkerchief, with tweaked ends like the shadow-toy you make for a child.

The two men had come a long way with fear at their heels. The older and leader might have been eight or nine and thirty, a tall dark figure with two days’ stubble growth on his chin; the boy was young enough to be his son, slender and fair, with eyes as blue as the sea and the mind of a child.

When he espied the house, its light gleaming through the loneliness of the trees, Maggs said, “This is it. Curly, this is the house we been looking for. No neighbors, no ’phone, and no kids.”

“I like kids,” said Curly in peaceable tones.

“Not when you’re wearing our shoes,” was his companion’s grim retort. “Kids yell. We don’t want no one to hear…”

“Hear what?”

“Anything. Folks ain’t always reasonable.”

The boy caught the man’s arm. “No violence, Maggs,” he urged. “You promised. No violence. Not like last time.”

“Have some sense,” Maggs told him in an impatient voice. “This ain’t a mail van driver without the brain to know what was good for him. This is a lady.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t intrude. Maggs, you got a gun?”

“D’you think guns grow on trees?”

“I didn’t know Harry had a gun last time,” whimpered the boy. “I thought that driver was goin’ to die.”

“Lucky for us he didn’t, or we’d ha’ been on a murder rap. You can still get the rope for shooting. Now then. Curly, you leave this to me, see. Unless you aim to go back to that nice cosy little cell of yours, with the walls so high you can’t see nothing beyond them.”

The boy’s slender form shook. “No, Maggs, no. If on’y they’d of put me to work outside somewhere, sweeping leaves, anything. Even as a kid I couldn’t stand being shut in.”

“Then you do as I say.”

But still he hung back. “Lady can’t open the door if she’s washing herself,” he pleaded.

“She can put on a dressing-gown, can’t she? Not that I’d have any objection. More’n a year since I saw a woman…”

He stormed down the path, skirting the dark barn, and hammered on the door.

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