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BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY ERNEST DUDLEY
The Amazing Martin Brett: Classic Crime Stories
Department of Spooks: Stories of Suspense and Mystery
More Cases of a Private Eye: Classic Crime Stories
The Private Eye: Classic Crime Stories
The Return of Sherlock Holmes: A Classic Crime Tale
THE DR. MORELLE CLASSIC CRIME SERIES
Dr. Morelle and the Doll: A Classic Crime Novel
Dr. Morelle at Midnight: A Classic Crime Novel
Dr. Morelle Investigates: Two Classic Crime Tales
Dr. Morelle Meets Murder: Classic Crime Stories
The Mind of Dr. Morelle: A Classic Crime Novel
New Cases for Dr. Morelle: Classic Crime Stories
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1960 by Ernest Dudley
Special thanks to Heather and Dave Datta
for scanning this book.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
For Susan
CHAPTER ONE
Helen Hafferty stood by the window staring out at the last glimmer of daylight fading from the garden. The trees in the orchard were vague shadows.
He is late, she thought. He had never been late like this before. A vague uneasiness stirred in her and she turned away from the window, letting the heavy velvet curtain fall back into place.
The others were waiting; Helen Hafferty, conscious that she was separated from them by the wall of middle age, watched them grouped round the fire in the wide fireplace with the bookshelves on either side. They were all here, except Nicky her youngest son, and he was unpredictable and moody; but there was Charles, nine years older, and her only daughter, Olivia.
Helen Hafferty’s eyes went to Charles’ wife, Marie, sitting in the low armchair. Again a sense of uneasiness assailed her.
Marie suddenly looked up and caught her mother-in-law’s eye.
‘Tod’s very late,’ she said abruptly. ‘Hadn’t we better start tea?’
Olivia glanced at her mother. ‘I think we ought to wait a while longer,’ she said. She got up from her chair by the fire and came over to Helen Hafferty. ‘You’ll get chilly here.’
Her mother let herself be persuaded to sit near the fire. Olivia’s husband, Bill Parker made a polite gesture of offering his chair but Helen Hafferty didn’t seem to see him. Instead she sat where Olivia had been sitting.
Bill Parker shrugged and relaxed again. When Olivia came and sat on his knee he began to smooth her thigh with his hand. Her eyes darkened in her thin, once-pretty face and she pushed his hand away. Parker smiled maliciously across at Marie Hafferty, as if expecting his sister-in-law to be amused, but she turned her head away.
Parker sighed. ‘I’m not waiting much longer,’ he said a little irritably. ‘I’ve a lot of work to get through before tomorrow.’
‘Really, Bill,’ Olivia said petulantly, ‘on a Saturday evening?’
Parker shrugged and his face went mutinous. ‘I can’t help it if people are queuing up to buy houses. You ought to be pleased. It means money in the bank.’
‘Especially,’ Olivia added, as if she hadn’t heard him, ‘after spending all afternoon in the office.’
‘He did?’ Marie Hafferty looked incredulous.
‘Had a whole list of new properties come in,’ Parker said, ‘just before we left. I had to prepare them for circulation. The sooner our clients know about them, the sooner we’re likely to sell.’
Charles grinned his slow grin. ‘How you chaps make a living out of buying and selling houses beats me.’
Marie Hafferty said: ‘There’s a lot goes on between one chap wanting to sell a house and another mug wanting to buy it. Isn’t there, Bill?’
Parker gave her an amiable smile. ‘That’s one way of putting it, Marie, darling.’
Helen Hafferty’s voice broke in. ‘I can’t think where Tod can be. Perhaps we had better start tea without him.’
‘I’ll tell Bess,’ Olivia said, and she went across to the door. She called down the hall. ‘We’ll have tea now, please.’ A slow, muttered reply reached the others as Olivia came back into the room, and turned to her brother. ‘Charles, I think you ought to go out and look for Tod.’
He glanced at her in surprise.
‘He could have caught his foot in a rabbit-hole or something,’ Olivia said, her thin face worried. ‘He’d never be able to get home.’
‘There’s no way of knowing where he is,’ Charles said. ‘It’d take over an hour to walk the whole way.’
‘You’re making a fuss about nothing,’ Parker said to his wife. He looked at his watch. ‘He must have gone off somewhere. He might have called in to talk to Major Kelly.’
He turned sharply as Marie laughed. ‘Come off it; Tod and Kelly? They’re poison to each other.’
Charles said slowly: ‘She’s right though. Tod would never call in on the Kellys. And there’s no one else around here he’d be likely to call on.’
‘Of course he hasn’t gone to see anyone,’ Olivia Hafferty said, her face taut with anxiety, as she gave a look towards her mother. ‘It’s too bad of you, Charles, arguing, when he might be lying hurt somewhere.’
The other threw down the magazine he’d been reading and pulled himself out of his chair. ‘All right. Where d’you want me to start?’
‘You’ll have to go the same way Tod always goes. Through the orchard and then through Asshe Woods and down to the road, back here. Full circle.’
Charles groaned. ‘It’s a long way. And it’ll be dark in ten minutes.’
‘You’d hear him if he was calling out,’ Olivia said. ‘Anyway you can take a torch.’
Marie said to her husband: ‘Want me to come with you?’
He shook his head. He threw a grin at Helen Hafferty. ‘If he turns up while I’m looking for him,’ he said, ‘you’d better send him out again to look for me.’
His mother said nothing as she watched him go out of the room. Marie looked at her, then at Bill Parker, his hand straying over his wife’s leg again. He might have gone with Charles, Marie Hafferty thought. She stared back into the fire. And where was Nicky, she wondered? He was always grumbling about his father but he would have gone out to look for him. Or would he?
Thoughts of Nicky made her heart beat faster. The fire was hot against her eyelids. The door opened and Bess was there, pushing the tea-trolley in front of her. Moon-faced Bess Pinner’s eyes were like little bright marbles behind their convex lenses, her thin white hair scragged back, showing pink scalp on top of her head.
She said: ‘Will that be all, Mrs. Hafferty?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Helen said. ‘We’re starting tea without Mr. Hafferty.’
‘Mr. Charles has gone to look for him,’ Olivia said.
The convex lenses turned to her. ‘Why, d’you think he’s gone and got himself lost?’ And without waiting for an answer Bess went out, closing the door behind her.
Helen Hafferty shrugged, switched on the big standard-lamp in the corner, and turned to the tea-trolley. The elegant china glimmered, as she arranged the cups and saucers. There