HKM12 - Dead as a Dodo by Langton Jane

Author:Langton, Jane [Langton, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cThriller, epub-transfer-done
ISBN: 9780140247954
Amazon: 0140247955
Published: 2011-04-23T14:42:37+00:00

The room was very small with Mrs. Lucky in it. Mary found a plastic chair, and Helen sat down beside Mrs. Lucky on the bed. "Because she told me," went on Mrs. Lucky, "she said there was a couple of people who could have cut that young man's throat, that poor young clergyman! Imagine that! What's the world coming to, when a man of God isn't safe from being cut down in his prime? She told me, she said, 'Isabel, I hope never to see such a sight again in my whole entire life.' She said—"

"Wait," said Mary, "did you say two people might have killed Oliver Clare?"

She glanced meaningfully at Helen, who loyally chimed in, "But the paper only mentioned one, Mrs. Lucky, somebody called Hal." "Oh, the paper." Mrs. Lucky threw up one arm in rejection of the Oxford Mail, bouncing Helen up and down on the bed. "My friend Mrs. Jarvis doesn't tell them everything." I, however, am her intimate friend. She tells me all.

Mary leaned forward in her plastic chair. "But who was the other one? Can you tell us, Mrs. Lucky? Because we're just so interested in this case."

"Oh, yes, we are," breathed Helen, rising and falling on the bed. Mrs. Lucky laughed with satisfaction. Glorying in her role, she too leaned forward until her enormous bosom lay in her lap. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, "The other one was a young thing, cute as a button. She came late, it must have been two in the morning, long after Dorothy returned from her book club, but Dorothy sleeps light as a cat, and she heard her unlock the door—the girl had a key of her own!" Mrs. Lucky widened her eyes. "You know what that means. And a clergyman, too, with his collar turned round. Can you imagine, a pretty young girl in the street in the middle of the night? But Dorothy could tell by the way the girl talked that she was uppah clawss." Mrs. Lucky made a funny face and tossed her hand with a silly flourish. "Well, I don't know, do you? Society is as society does, that's what I think."

Mary said softly, "What did she look like, did Mrs. Jarvis say?" Mrs. Lucky bounced up and down in her excitement. "Dark hair, cut short all round, trim little figure. Dorothy got a good look at her. She was like this, Dorothy said." Mrs. Lucky's vast amiable face drooped in a facsimile of Mrs. Jarvis's imitation of Freddy Dubchick's melancholy expression.

Helen was seasick. Gripping the edge of the bed, she said, "Could Mrs. Jarvis hear them talking?" "Oh, no, I mean she couldn't make out what they were saying, just their voices going on and on."

"You're sure of that, Mrs. Lucky?" said Mary. "This was the middle of the night, after the man called Hal came and went away again?" Mrs. Lucky nodded wisely. "Oh, yes, he'd been gone for two hours when the girl came." Mary was bewildered.

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