A Death on Crooked Lane by Robert W. Gregg

Author:Robert W. Gregg [Gregg, Robert W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7414-6942-7
Publisher: Infinity Publishing
Published: 2006-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

On the day following Sheriff Kelleher’s discovery that a stranger in town had been looking for John Britingham just days before his death, Kevin Whitman embarked on a series of casual conversations with his neighbors. The urge to do so was born of his chat with the young Keyser boys and his own impromptu lecture to George Morgan on the value of speaking truth to the sheriff. By Friday afternoon, he had abandoned all pretense of working on the article he had been writing on Puccini’s treatment of his operatic heroines. The Britingham case had become priority number one.

Kevin approached Grace Hess with trepidation, but he was determined to be direct about the dog. If she was surprised to see him at the door, she didn’t show it.

“Mr. Whitman, I presume. The man who found our murder victim. Please come in.”

He was ushered into the log cabin he had admired so often from afar, most recently on Tuesday morning, roughly half an hour before his discovery of Britingham’s body on his dock. They spent a minute or two in the obligatory dialogue about the elegant furnishings, but Grace soon brought him back to the more immediate reason for his visit.

“Has the sheriff been camped on your doorstep ever since you discovered the deceased? She probably wonders why you were swimming at such an hour.”

“We’ve talked quite a bit, yes. Is my swim really that notorious?”

“Oh, yes.” She emphasized the point and waved him to a chair on which he was reluctant to sit. It was like sitting on a Hepplewhite in one of the great English country houses, and it made him nervous.

If Grace Hess was conscious of his discomfort, she didn’t show it.

“You should be enjoying your instant celebrity, Mr. Whitman. It won’t last. Did you know the man?”

“No, I didn’t. Did you?”

“Too well. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but it’s hard to muster any sympathy, isn’t it?”

Kevin marveled at her strong face and strong voice. Had he been wrong about the woman’s age?

“My feelings were mostly shock, disbelief,” he said. “Who would ever expect to find a dead man in circumstances like that? Do you have any idea who might have done it?”

“None at all. I’m not sure I want to know.”

“What puzzles me is how he got onto my dock. He sure wasn’t there when I went swimming; yet there he was when I got back. And he’d obviously been dead for hours.”

Grace Hess looked mildly surprised, and then broke into a smile, which rearranged the lines in her face in an altogether pleasing way.

“Is that so? How did you know? Or maybe I should ask where you heard that?”

Sheriff Kelleher had not wanted Kevin to spread the news of the results of the autopsy, so he tried to find a formula that would permit him to pursue his conversation with Mrs. Hess without violating the letter of the sheriff’s injunction.

“I’m no medical doctor, but it was clear even to me that Britingham had been dead for some time.

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