Widow's Web by Ursula Curtiss

Author:Ursula Curtiss [Curtiss, Ursula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

There was a police car parked outside Mrs. Watts’ small yellow house.

Torrant gave it a braced look; better here, he thought, than Mrs. Judd’s. He walked up the short path between thrusting lilac branches, knocked, and was presently answered at the door by a tall boy with a forelock, whom he remembered having been introduced to as a nephew. The boy stood silently aside and Torrant entered the tiny front hall with a murmured apology.

He hadn’t noticed his surroundings on his previous visit here. Linoleum-treaded stairs rose directly ahead of him, on his right the varnished brown door of the kitchen was closing after the boy who had let him in. To his left, in what was obviously the parlor, a low murmur of voices only brushed the hush, the peculiar halted life of a house just visited by shock.

Torrant turned quietly into the partly open doorway. Among a profusion of piecrust tables and stiff wing chairs and whatnots and potted plants, Mrs. Watts and a policeman sat in diminishing profile. They evidently assumed that the boy had dispatched the caller, because neither head turned.

The policeman said with an air of nearing the end of his routine, “Your sister hadn’t been living here in town, Mrs. Watts?”

“No, not for over a month. Another sister of mine in Connecticut lest her husband, and Sarah went to help out and decided to stay.”

Some disturbance of light or a breaking of pattern caught her attention then; she turned her head and saw Torrant in the doorway. He thought with a faint and unreasonable surprise that she looked exactly the same: mournful melted-candle face, lightless dark eyes, folded lips and hands as rigid as though she were sitting for her portrait.

The single moment before she moved seemed like the calm before hysterics, or at the very least a pointing finger and a shrieked accusation. Torrant braced himself, waiting, and Mrs. Watts said with reluctance, “Oh, Mr. Torrant,” and when the policeman stood up inquiringly, “This is Sergeant Hilary.”

Mechanical greetings followed. The sergeant resumed his seat. Torrant sat down uninvited, reflecting bleakly that Mrs. Watts was building up to her own moment of triumph.

Sergeant Hilary said sympathetically, “It’s pretty clear what happened, I guess, Mrs. Watts. Your sister was walking past the pond and it’s pretty dark up there, she didn’t realize how slippery it was. Maybe if she hadn’t struck her head when she fell . . .” He stopped, shrugging.

A grandfather clock in the corner behind Mrs. Watts suspended its ticking, groaned faintly and began to strike. Sergeant Hilary waited for it to conclude as deferentially as though it were another person. He said, “There was a return ticket to Lynnfield and thirty dollars in cash in Mrs. Partridge’s bag. She was on her way here for a visit, was she?”

Torrant’s fingers stopped on his unlit cigarette.

His first amazement at the sergeant’s credulity was gone; looked at in one light, the circumstances of Mrs. Partridge’s death dovetailed neatly into accident. Given the real reason for her return to Chauncy, the same circumstances were the framework of murder—and Mrs.

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