1949 - You're Lonely When You Dead by James Hadley Chase Page A

go up on the roof,’ I said. ‘We might be able to spot him through the telescope.’
    ‘That’s a hot idea,’ Benny said. ‘We might be able to spot something else besides old Snoopy.’
    We entered the cabin, climbed the rickety stairs to the second floor. On the landing was a ladder that led to a trapdoor and the roof.
    I mounted the three rungs of the ladder, heaved on the trapdoor and it went up with a crash. Hot sunlight poured down on me as I swung myself up the rest of the ladder to the roof. Benny followed mc.
    We stood motionless, looking at the big telescope on its brass-wheeled stand. There was a wooden box for a seat set behind the apparatus, and a crate of bee and a lot of empty bottles close by. It was hot up there, and a great swarm of flies buzzed angrily away from us, swarmed above us and then went back to their gruesome meal.
    Leadbetter lay flat on his back. There was a hole in the middle of his forehead like the hole you make in a sheet of asbestos if you hit it hard with a hammer. He had bled a lot, and the blood was only just beginning to clot. One thing was certain, he wouldn’t peep at any more courting couples through his telescope: not ever again.
    ‘Gawd!’ Benny said and clutched hold of my arm.

     

chapter four
     

     
    I
     
    T he clock on my desk showed ten past five. Sunblinds making the office dim and airless were drawn against the sun that sizzled the sidewalks in an unexpected and premature taste of the coming summer.
    While I wandered about the room, my jacket off, my collar undone and my tie hanging loose, Paula sat at her desk and looked as cool as a block of ice.
    ‘There was no sign of him,’ I said, moving to the climax of my story, ‘so we went up on the roof. He was there all right.’
    I paused to mop the back of my neck, pausing by the window to look into the hot street below. ‘He had been shot through the head with a .45 as he was looking through his telescope. The slug made a hole about an inch wide in his skull and I’d say he’d been dead about twenty minutes - not more.’
    Paula didn’t get excited. She held her lower lip between finger and thumb and pulled gently: a sure sign she didn’t like what I was telling her.
    ‘There’s a big clump of mangroves near the house’ I went on. ‘I reckon the killer hid there, waiting for Leadbetter to show himself and then shot him. It was nice shooting. The slug’s still in his head. It’s my bet they’ll find it’s the same gun that killed Dana.’ I stubbed out my cigarette, yawned and rubbed my eyes. ‘Well that’s about all. We came away quick. There was no one to see us. I’m sure of that.’
    Paula gave me a long worried stare, reached for a cigarette, lit it and flicked the match into the ashtray.
    ‘I don’t like it, Vic,’ she said. ‘Maybe we could have prevented this killing if we’d opened up to Brandon about the Cerfs.’
    ‘Maybe, but I doubt it,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Leadbetter had it coming to him. He could have told the cops what he knew; he could have told Jack, but he didn’t. He preferred to deal with the killer. I bet he thought he would make himself a little money, only he stopped a slug instead.’
    Paula nodded.
    ‘That could be it.’ She twisted around in her chair and looked through the slots in the sunblinds, thinking. ‘Brandon will turn on the heat when the news breaks. We’re going to be right in the middle of the squeeze.’ She brooded for a long minute, then shrugged, turned to face me. ‘What now, Vic?’
    ‘I’ve sent Benny to Frisco to see if he can dig up anything about Anita. It certainly looks as if she was on the scene of the murder. My next move is to have a talk with Barclay.’
    ‘You have a tricky job there,’ she pointed out. That suit of Dana’s was evidence only so long as it was in the cupboard. Taking it puts Barclay in the clear. He can always deny knowing anything about it.’
    ‘Sure, but it was a risk I had to take. I was hoping we