Murder Twice Told by Donald Hamilton

Author:Donald Hamilton [Hamilton, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: mystery, murder, crime, suspense, hardboiled, intrigue, espionage
Publisher: Dell
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IV

Shaving, he had explained to Janice, was something a man liked to do the same way every time. He preferred, he had said, to keep the brush on the right-hand side of the medicine cabinet and the bowl on the left-hand side. If she insisted, he would keep the bowl to the right and the brush to the left. He did not, however, he had informed her, take kindly to the idea of finding them now one way and now the other. But what earthly difference can it make, baby? she had protested. It isn’t as if you used them up there. You always have to take them down, anyway, don’t you?

He opened the window beside him and looked out. Outside, the early morning sun was gradually taking the dampness out of the air and shortening the shadows under the trees. The bay was quite calm, what he could see of it, and a little smoky with mist. He felt a great deal better than he had the day before. He had slept all afternoon, grabbed a bottle of beer and a sandwich, and slept all night, dreamlessly; a fact that rather disturbed him. It seemed a little disloyal to be able to sleep like that.

He looked at the brush in his hand. In spite of what she had said, she had never put it back wrong since the day he mentioned it; she would remember something like that when you least expected her to. But it had been wrong this morning. He lathered his chin and began to shave. The coffee began to bubble in the Silex in the kitchen and he ran out to rescue it. Standing there in his pajama trousers with the razor in his hand he took careful stock of the kitchen, and the bread-knife was in the knife-rack where it should have belonged and didn’t; and the extra paring knife they kept in the rack in the bread-knife slot, because it was sharp, was in the open table drawer where they usually kept the bread-knife. And yet, a hundred and twenty dollar gold watch lay untouched on top of the refrigerator, as if to give the lie to the idea that somebody had been through the house.

He went back to the bathroom and finished shaving. When he reached for a pair of slacks in the closet, they were hanging on a wooden hanger, while his good sports coat hung on a metal wire article. He always kept the coat on the wooden hanger to keep the shoulders from breaking down. He dressed and went into the kitchen and fried himself a pair of eggs sunnyside up while the toast was making. He thought the salt and pepper shakers above the stove were reversed, but he could not be sure. He was reasonably certain that the allspice had been at the right end of the shelf. He remembered the torn label. The allspice was now in the middle.

He ate hungrily and had a cigarette before doing the dishes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.