Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) by Anita Blackmon Page A

Warren savagely. “He proceeds to accuse you of the most impossible things, and when you deny it he merely smiles cynically and goes on to something else.”
    I pursed my lips. “He seems to have acquired an astounding amount of information about us all in an incredibly brief time.”
    Howard glared at Pinkney Dodge, who was slumped down in a chair between the desk and the telephone booth, staring unhappily at the floor, his eyes red-rimmed from loss of sleep. Pinky usually went to bed as soon as he was relieved by Letty Jones at seven in the morning. I supposed, like the rest of us, he was too excited to retire. Now I know he was afraid, hideously, horribly afraid, poor Pinky!
    “It isn’t difficult to guess where the inspector gets his information with a male old woman camping at the switchboard,” said Howard crossly.
    Pinky flinched and gave us a pleading, almost tearful look.
    “He-he’s clever; he-he worms things out of you,” he admitted in a shaking voice.
    I felt sorry for him; I always had. I could well imagine that Pinkney, who had been successfully browbeaten for years, was no match for the inspector or anyone else with the authority to ask questions and demand an answer.
    “No one can blame you, Pinkney, for telling the truth,” I said. “The police are entitled to it.”
    “Thanks, Miss Adelaide,” he said gratefully.
    Howard flushed. “Pinky has no right to put his own interpretation on things which do not concern him.” He again glared at the shrinking night clerk. “What if I did ask Miss Adelaide to take in a movie with me? Maybe it was the first time I ever invited her out, and perhaps I did try to persuade her that she didn’t need a coat. That doesn’t prove I was trying, for reasons of my own, to keep her from discovering the murder.”
    “Of course not,” I faltered with a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach.
    Pinkney made a little humble gesture. “I didn’t say any such thing to the inspector, Mr Warren. I swear it. If-if he put that interpretation on your conversation with Miss Adelaide, it’s his own idea.”
    Howard looked a little ashamed of himself. “All right, all right,” he said. “Skip it. Only if I were you, Pinky, I’d not forget that one man has already paid with his life for dabbling in other people’s affairs in this house.”
    Pinky shrank back, and his hands began to tremble. “I don’t want to make trouble for anybody and-and I can’t afford to get into trouble. My-my mother... If anything happened to me I don’t know what would become of her.”
    “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Pinkney,” I said soothingly, “or to anybody else, let’s hope.”
    “Yes, Miss Adelaide,” stammered Pinky without conviction.
    A stocky policeman approached and stood stiffly at attention.
    “The inspector would like to see you, Mr Warren, in the parlour.”
    “Again!” groaned Howard and, his face set and white, turned toward the stair, kicking at a chair on his way.
    There is no denying all our nerves were on edge that morning. Being forcibly detained in any one place is in itself sufficient to make the average person feverishly eager to be elsewhere, and the inspector had prepared a list which one of his henchmen passed around. The people on that list were not to leave the house until further notice. We were, or so it said, to hold ourselves in readiness for further examination by the police.
    “As if we were on the chain gang!” growled Dan Mosby, pacing the lobby floor.
    At least he had not been drinking. For the first time in months I was able to regard him with something like approval. In his cups he was undoubtedly a bore. Sober, he struck me as a fairly decent chap, making allowances for his obvious lack of breeding, which, as I reflected, was quite probably his parents’ fault.
    His wife spent the morning, except for a brief trip to the parlour, huddled in one of the big chairs at the front of the lobby, her small common little face tragically