Death Walks on Cat Feet by Dolores Hitchens

Author:Dolores Hitchens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

“I know nothing at all about any large sum of money,” said Ruth Rand. She was seated bolt upright on a chair in Miss Rachel’s parlor. She wore well-fitted dark slacks, a pink silk shirt, a gray wool sweater tossed across her shoulders. Her hair was somewhat ruffled as if by the fast drive she had made here. It was past seven. The Misses Murdock had just finished a hasty dinner after returning from the track. “If Lila possessed any such amount as that jotted on the back of the snapshot, she must have inherited it from her father or my sister. And just didn’t tell Dad or me anything about it.”

“What were her parents’ circumstances?”

“Very ordinary.” Ruth’s gaze was suddenly thoughtful. “However, my sister Sheila didn’t have to work during the years she survived Graham. I took for granted that he had left her some small annuity. She was most careful with expenses. Lila continued with her music and dancing lessons, of course. But they lived modestly.” Her tone had grown quiet, as though some speculations of long ago were being re-examined. “Graham was a mining engineer. He used to buy small amounts of stock in some of the companies he prospected for, if he thought there might be a profit. It has just occurred to me, Lila might have realized something on those old stocks. Perhaps new discoveries have been made. Something like uranium. After she had come out here, perhaps, or even after she had married Bax. So that she felt it wasn’t any of our business.” Ruth nodded slowly. “Yes, if Lila had banked anything like twenty-five thousand dollars, it must have been the result of some such stroke of luck.”

“Or, since Mr. Bonnevain is a gambling man—”

Ruth seized on it. “She was fooling him,” she cried with a sudden glitter in her eyes. “Don’t you see how it all fits in with my suspicions?”

“I do indeed. It is what you would expect if Lila had begun to see her husband as you see him.”

“He caught on and followed her,” Ruth rushed on. “He took the snapshot to confront her with it. At the end there was a terrific argument, Lila refused to hand over the money, and he killed her. It’s the only explanation possible!”

“It’s one answer,” Miss Rachel agreed. “Not the sole one, I think. Since the Sutters had a copy of the snapshot and have kept it these three years, they may be involved in some way. Perhaps one of them took the picture. Perhaps in doing so they were acting for Bonnevain—or for themselves.”

“I don’t follow you!”

“We don’t know enough about the snapshot to draw conclusions about it. To shut away other possibilities besides the one you want to believe. One thing’s certain. By now the police have reconstructed the torn picture and have interviewed the people at the bank. Undoubtedly, soon Lieutenant Shaw will question you about it.”

Ruth said sulkily, “You might have told me what you’d found in that box.

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