The Case of the Innocent Victims by John Creasey

Author:John Creasey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

Chapter Fourteen

Third Victim?

Little Alice Graham was a very different type in every way from Hilda Maddison, although she came from the same background. She was so small and looked so young that many people found it difficult to believe that she was the mother of three children, one of them seven years old, the last a two-month old girl. Alice Graham was a bright, vivacious, hard-working and good-natured woman, her mind as sharp as a needle. Apart from running her home, bringing up the children and looking after her husband – a man crippled two years before by poliomyelitis – she helped to run the small carpentry business which George Graham had operated for years before his disaster. She had kept the business together while he had been away for nearly a year; had kept on the workmen; and, now that he was back and working from his wheelchair, she did all the clerical work, answered the telephone, booked the orders, and generally behaved as a woman-of-all-work. She was one of the happiest women alive.

That night she was humming to herself while darning the older boy’s socks. The radio was on. Television was a dream to come when they were prosperous, because neither parent was prepared to buy anything on the hire-purchase system. All the children were upstairs in the three-bedroomed house on the borders of Acton and Ealing. George was still at the workshop, and would probably not be home until after eleven o’clock; it was now half-past nine.

She had the radio tuned in very low, and every now and again she would get up, go to the door and listen to the silence. After the last trip, she went to the dresser drawer in the small living-room cum kitchen, opened it to get out her sewing box, and saw the silver paper which had been torn when the children had shared half of a large slab of chocolate that afternoon. She hesitated, looking elfin-young, and her eyes were glowing. She put her head on one side, said: “I shouldn’t,” and then picked up what was left of the slab, broke a small piece off and popped it into her mouth. She gave a comical little grimace, took out the box and slammed the drawer, and went back to her chair. It was a rocking chair with a restricted movement, and she swayed to and fro in it. The radio music stopped, and a man began to talk about education. She listened to this with one ear, hummed to herself and, after ten minutes, got up again and went to the passage door. It was still silent outside.

Coming back, she glanced at the chocolate drawer, shook her head firmly, went to a chair – and then thought that she heard a sound. She stood quite still, looking round at the door. Had it been one of the children she would have known at once, but this was a kind of click, and she felt sure that it had not been from the radio.

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