The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

murder on the Isle of Shoals. A fisherman who had been considered a family friend for years rowed across the bay in the dead of winter, murdered two defenceless women with an axe in the middle of the night, chased another into the snow, and when captured at last, tried to put the blame for the murder onto two completely innocent men who were out fishing at the time, and were in fact the husband and the brother of one of the murdered women. It was a wild melodrama with a Gothic background and it gave me glorious nightmares.”
    “I confess to a weakness for crimes committed by professors and love university settings. Perhaps that’s why I’ve got my eye on South Sutton,” Fredericka put in.
    “Oh, you mean those stuffy Oxford dons who get all mixed up with keys and times,” Peter said.
    “Yes, those, and true cases like the Webster one, the classic example of murder in Harvard University.”
    “That’s a beauty,” Thane said enthusiastically. “Do you know it, Mohun? Dr. George Parkman murdered by Professor Webster who owed him money. No one dreamt of suspecting such an eminently respectable old guy but the janitor spied on him, and, oh boy, what did he see? The old professor dissecting the corpse and burning it in the college furnace!”
    “Yes, I agree, a beauty. And didn’t Oliver Wendell Holmes act as witness?”
    “That’s right. Good old New England, the perfect seat of perfect crimes,” Carey said, laughing.
    Margie, who had been listening with paralysed intentness, now said in a very loud voice: “All right then, why don’t you start searching for the body of Catherine Clay who disappeared after lunch, no one knows where, and hasn’t been seen since? Not that anyone would care if she had been done in,” she added bitterly, but in an undertone.
    “My dear Margie,” Peter turned to her, “has that woman ever come back from anywhere when she was expected to?”
    “No-o. All the same, if you’re wanting to have a murder mystery in South Sutton, it’s a good beginning.”
    “Wrong again,” Thane said. “Unless there’s some pressing reason we begin with the body, not with the search for it.”
    “Just like the police,” Margie roared. “Perhaps there wouldn’t be any dead bodies if you paid attention to signs and portents.”
    Thane, Fredericka, Peter and Connie all turned to look at the girl’s white face, now startlingly blotched with crimson. “Good God, she’s serious,” Thane said, jumping up. “Hey, kid, what are you driving at?” But before anyone could stop her, Margie had jumped to her feet and run off through the open door into the darkness of the summer night.
    “Let her go, Carey,” Peter said. “It’s just what her mother calls her ‘theatrics.’ Nothing she likes better than to get a good rise out of an unsuspecting audience. And she’s got a score to settle with Catherine so she’s wishing her dead.”
    After a moment the chief of police sat down and went back to his strawberry shortcake. “She’s mad, then,” he muttered a little shamefacedly. And then they talked of other things until the great moment when all the paper plates had been cleared away, a hymn sung, and a few words appropriate to the occasion said by the minister, whose name, Peter whispered to Fredericka, was the Reverend Archibald Williams. Then, at last, the long awaited raffle of the quilt.
    “Thirty-five,” the minister’s wife announced in a very loud voice, as she drew the slip from the hat.
    “Why—why—that’s one of mine ,” Fredericka gasped, “and I—I asked for it because of my birthday. I mean—oh dear—what do I do now?”
    “Rise and claim your prize, my dear,” Peter said gravely.
    * * * *
    And that was how Fredericka happened to be carrying a beautiful patchwork quilt when she unlocked her door half an hour later, and how she happened to go into the kitchen before she went up to bed.
    When Peter said good night on the front porch, she asked him to come in, but he refused.
    “I’m sorry, Fredericka, but tonight I have a report to make out and will be working late in my office. You can see the beacon light from here no doubt.”
    Fredericka swallowed her disappointment and went into the house with her quilt, which she at once took upstairs and spread out on her bed for further inspection. Then she decided that it might look even better hung on a wall, but the only wall not covered with books was the one in the kitchen.
    She went to get the steps under