Never Walk Alone by Rufus King

Author:Rufus King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, crime, detective, sleuth, murder
ISBN: 9781479402779
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Mrs. Giles paused at Kent’s door on the way to her rooms. She opened it quietly and looked in. He still slept. It did not seem to her that he had even moved. She shut the door and went on to her living room.

It was half-past four. She sat down in a chair at a window and tried to think of nothing at all. It was impossible. A barrage of involvements spattered her. She resigned herself to the one requiring the interment of the blue silk wrapper.

A fork spade would be best, from the shed near the stable where Hopkins kept the garden tools. During some hour of the night when all would sleep. One hoped. Somewhere among the delphiniums. It would disturb the tulip bulbs—but then… Could the surface mat of weeds be replaced? It would have to be. Nothing must show.

The telephone rang at five.

“Russell Stedman, Mrs. Giles,” Stedman said when she answered it.

“Oh yes, Mr. Stedman?”

“I found several reports waiting for me at the office just now. Most of them deal with your roomers. I thought I’d relieve your mind. They’re all right. The police have finished checking their records out at the plant as well as doing some telephone verification on their own hook.”

“That is most kind. I appreciate it very much.”

“Smith, Wade, and Parling pass with flying colors. Miss Ashley introduces the only fly in the ointment, and it’s a very small one.”

Mrs. Giles thought swiftly: If it were only to ease my mind about having these people in the house the police would have been satisfied by their check of the records at the plant. But the police went in for further telephonic verification of their own. It is more than my peace of mind they are interested in. It’s the murder. And Miss Ashley…

“Would you explain about Miss Ashley, Mr. Stedman?”

“As I say, it isn’t much. Her records at the Collins plant are perfectly straight. It is simply that she had been rooming with a Mrs. Aldershot before she moved to you. When she left there she gave Buffalo to Mrs. Aldershot as a forwarding address.”

“How queer.”

“Well, the police did think so for a while until they asked Miss Ashley about it. Her explanation was perfectly satisfactory. Some man had been annoying her, trying to date her up, and she decided to shake him off by giving Buffalo as a forwarding address to Mrs. Aldershot instead of your house. Her mother said Miss Ashley was frequently troubled like that.”

“Mother?”

Mrs. Giles had never envisioned Miss Ashley as having a mother. In the usual having-a-mother sense, that is. Nor any sort of family. Such spies and adventuresses were always without family ties: lone women cruising the globe in solitude while in lethal pursuit of their prey. Somehow this mother touch made her think almost kindly of Miss Ashley for a moment.

“Yes,” Stedman was saying, “her mother is a widow. Lives out in Cleveland. She’s down on Miss Ashley’s dossier as the next of kin. When the boys phoned her, Mrs.

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