The Grindle Nightmare by Q. Patrick

Author:Q. Patrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter X

For the next few days the snow remained impenetrable. Consequently, Toni and I stayed on at the hospital, leaving Lucinda in sole command of the farm house. Except for the inquest on Polly Baines which I was subpoenaed to attend, I was entirely cut off from inside developments in our local mystery. The inquest itself brought to light very little that was new. The pathologist’s findings were such as to shock even the hard-boiled country jurors, and after a verdict of willful murder had been passed, the coroner characterized the crime as the most outrageous and fiendish in the annals of Cotuit County. In view of the latest facts, he added, it was obvious that Jo Baines, too, had been the victim of willful murder. The same day a verdict was returned to that effect, and the killer in Grindle had two deaths officially to his credit.

After having lived in the very midst of the crimes, sleeping, eating and drinking them, as it were, it was curious to find oneself on the outside, depending entirely upon the newspapers for information. It was curious, too, and a little disconcerting to realize what a difference Gerald Alstone’s disappearance had made in arousing public interest. There is, apparently, nothing of particular significance in the strange death of an obscure gardener and his little daughter. A small paragraph on a middle page was all that it had rated in the minds of the newspaper editors. With the intrusion of Mr. Alstone’s grandson, however, the affairs in Grindle suddenly became headline news, and the less reputable tabloids made the day hideous with their lurid accounts of “the dread events that were taking their grim toll in the terror-stricken vale.” Hourly, it seemed, the news-stands fed, to the public, papers black with “Mystery Slayer Still Loose in Small Rural Area.”

… “Is Steel-Magnate’s Missing Grandson Next Victim?” … “Appalling Atrocities Inaugurate Reign of Terror.” … “Blood under Bridge Hints of More Horror to Come.”

During the following weeks any ambitious Dillinger with a yen for publicity would have been disappointed to find his latest killing relegated to the second page. A famous radio crooner who selected that particular moment to get divorced, had to be satisfied with his photograph ignominiously placed beneath those of Polly Baines, Gerald Alstone and Roberta Tailford-Jones.

Fot Roberta had been enjoying herself thoroughly in print. Posing as a distinguished society leader, she gave interviews and described in a spirited and vivid journalese her reactions to the descent of Polly Baines’ coipse from the tree. There was, however, very little of Polly in these narrations and a great deal of Roberta. She hinted that, owing to police incompetence, she felt it as a “sacred debt to society” to take the matter in hand personally, and threw out a few dark remarks about “suspicions which I do not yet feel justified in bringing to the public’s notice.” Which, I supposed, meant me, although at that stage she did not actually have the effrontery to name names.

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