Death in Lilac Time by Frances Crane

Author:Frances Crane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: A Pat and Jean Abbott Mystery
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

Seth was on one knee beside the nurse. Her color for the first time had a rosy tinge. She had that look of being naturally asleep which comes from cyanide poisoning. Her body was still warm from the last swift unnatural surge of red blood. We stood in a shocked speechless group near the door from the breakfast room. Jane Mallory. Uncle Victor. Bart Wayne. Mrs. Rollo. Patrick. Me.

King strode in and pushed us aside as Seth Godwin stood up. His face was stiff with horror.

The lieutenant stopped short, looked at the dead woman and the dish of almond sponge on the table.

“Me and my big mouth!” he grunted. He whirled on us. “Who did this?”

Silence was tremendous. Nobody took a breath even.

King spoke respectfully to Seth Godwin.

“Is she gone, Doc?”

“Yes.”

King stooped to examine her himself. He straightened up and said, in the quiet professional voice he had used in the beginning of the inquiry, “Leave the room, all of you. Stay together in the sitting room. Stay out of that parlor.” His face was solemn but gentle. His sneering period was over.

We filed out, all but Patrick and Bart Wayne, and in a moment they stopped by the living room door.

“King has given us permission to put the parlor in order,” Patrick said. “Jean, will you step outside and find Deputy Hollister, please? Lieutenant King needs him in the kitchen.”

I didn’t much care to step outside alone. Yet I knew that I was in no real danger. I left the house by the dining room exit. I stood for a moment on the porch and then walked under the arching white lilacs. The night was rich with their scent and heavy with the stillness of midnight. I couldn’t hear or see anything of Deputy Hollister. I walked out onto the drive of crushed white stone. The stars wheeled above, brilliant in the night, and out of the silence the whippoorwill again sounded his strange lonely refrain. Whippoorwill. Whippoorwill. Whippoorwill.

I shivered and walked a little way along the drive, hating to speak aloud and have my voice shatter the stillness, which was exaggerated when the bird called high in the darkness.

The house stood there, with its lights on, not outside now but inside, only showing here and there because of the heavily curtained windows. The long rectangle of light in the north bay of the parlor vanished as the fallen curtain was replaced. I could picture Bart Wayne and Patrick moving about, putting the room back into its precise order. Bart always brought a semblance of order whenever he turned up in this fretted household. It was a strange place. Jane Mallory was orderly, too. Yet pliant. The mess in the parlor, the fighting men, had stirred her sense of humor. Patrick had felt the same way. The lieutenant had asked for that fight. In Seth’s place Patrick would have landed on him because he was a man who had grossly insulted him, never bothering to think that he was a law enforcement officer on a job.

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