The Punch & Judy Murders

Author:John Dickson Carr [Carr, John Dickson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Dickson Carr
Published: 2010-03-14T18:30:00+00:00

To have shouted, to have made a violent gesture of any sort, might have made her lose her grip on that window; for it is not to be denied that she was very pale, and that her long-lashed eyes looked enormous, almost ghostly, behind the glass. But for her to get that window up would mean the fall of the knife across her fingers, like a paper-cutting block in a newspaper office. The devil was playing his fish on a long line tonight, and I don't doubt he enjoyed it. But it was the worst moment in the affair. I don't suppose I could have shouted even if I had wished to. I moved over slowly, blotting out the sight of the dead man and trying to hold her eye. Someone kept repeating steadily and monotonously:"The other window. Take your hands off that window. Go to the other window. The other window. Take your hands off that window. The other -"

She understood. She disappeared. In two seconds more I was hauling her across the sill of the other window, yanking her through in a way that must have bruised her knees. She was in her stocking feet for that journey; and, though she seemed a trifle out of breath, she was calm enough to smile.

"Sorry, Ken," she said quietly. "But I couldn't stay there. You were so long. You were so long I thought something must have hap -"

"It has. Are you all right?"

"Quite. Except that we're both filthy dirty. I say, you're hurting my hands! Not so hard, old boy: what's the matter: there's nothing wrong with my hands?"

No, there was not. I had never loved her more than at that moment, although I could not have said so, and, anyway, this was hardly what you could call the proper place for the amenities of courtship. She looked round the corner of my arm.

"Who-who is it, Ken?"

"Unless I've gone completely off my chump, it's Hogenauer.'

"But that's ----'

"I know."

She looked again. "But he's got hair," she burst out, in a curious tone. "You said Hogenauer was bald. He's got hair. I saw it through the window; I was looking at the back of him. It was all sticking out under that cap." After a pause she added: "Something must have given you rather a ghastly turn, Ken. That can't be Hogenauer. But I don't think we need to be afraid that Keppel will catch us now."

Something like this is often required to put a man's wits back into line. I know that it cleared my head. As 1 walked over to where the little corpse sat grinning, I remembered what Bowers had said earlier to-night. What's Dr. Keppel like? "Something like the governor, little and thin....

The face, of course, was pulled and colored out of recognition by the strychnine. But 'this man,' despite his red fez, did not wear a smoking-jacket like Hogenauer; he had on an ordinary dark coat, with a prim white collar and a string tie. I

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