Rim of the Pit by Hake Talbot

Author:Hake Talbot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penzler Publishers
Published: 2023-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

I’m so wretched, Frank darling. I haven’t forgotten what you said the last time I made you angry and I know you’ll never forgive me again. I suppose I can’t blame you, but I do love you so. I couldn’t stand a divorce. This is the only way out. It will be better for you. Please don’t think too hard of me.

Your

Irene

“I put it in my pocket without saying anything,” Sherry explained. “I was fond of her in a way, truly I was, and I didn’t want anyone else to see what she’d written. It was like leaving her naked for strangers to stare at. I didn’t think it had anything to do with what’s happened. She hadn’t killed herself, and I wasn’t even certain it was a suicide note. You couldn’t be—not when it was from Irene. She’s written wilder things than that when she forgot to order mint sauce for the lamb.”

“She was crying when she wrote this,” Rogan said. “You can see little round blurs where the teardrops blotted the ink.”

“She would have cried over the mint sauce, too.” The girl began to sob again. “I’m being a beast tonight. I don’t seem able to stop.”

“When she tried suicide before, what did she use?”

“Veronal, or something like that. People do die of an overdose sometimes, but it isn’t terribly dangerous. Irene just stayed asleep longer than usual. It never got her any sympathy from Frank, only made him mad, but the poor dear never learned.”

Rogan tapped the note. “You believe this means she might have taken an extra dose of veronal tonight, and that anyone could have gone into her room without waking her?”

Sherry nodded. She dried her eyes and began to dress.

“If you think Ambler killed your stepmother,” Rogan went on, “you must have some idea about the motive.”

“I have. I think they were lovers—not now, but a long time ago. All that white hair makes the professor look ancient, but he’s really only about fifty. According to Jeff, the professor is almost a legend around Charlottesville. They say that back in 1920 every petticoat in Virginia fluttered at the sound of his name. Irene used to be a bit of a girl in her youth, too.”

“Just because they both shared the same taste doesn’t mean they indulged it together.”

“She was afraid of him,” Sherry insisted. “We got here Monday. Frank went on to Quebec. There wasn’t any man in the house, so Luke came over. At dinner that night he told us he was having a friend up for the shooting—one of Jeff’s professors at the University, a man named Ambler. I happened to be looking at Irene at the time. She went white as her napkin. I admit it didn’t take much to make Irene turn pale, and even the stoutest-hearted matron is entitled to a qualm or two when an ex-bedfellow shows up.”

A sound caught the girl’s ear and she stiffened.

“I heard a man’s voice!”

“It’s Ambler coming back with Barbara.”

“I’m afraid of everything tonight,” Sherry lamented.

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