Date for Murder by Louis Trimble Page B

pleading. “Do we have to rake up past muck because a—someone like Link was killed?”
    Mark said gently, “I’m afraid so, Idell. If it fits at all.” He wanted to reach out and touch her. What he really wanted to do was kiss her, very gently, as he would kiss a tired child. “The police will find out sooner or later anyway,” he added.
    “We got to look at every angle,” the Chief said.
    “Believe me,” she assured him, “it had nothing to do with this. I can’t see any connection between the Major’s death and Link’s murder.”
    “He had no business troubles?” Mark suggested. “No financial worries?” He wondered if she would take the out he was offering. He felt rather than saw the Chief’s scowl.
    “Uncle Frank would know more about that,” she said, ignoring Mark’s hint. “But I think not.”
    “Well, then—” the Chief began. A soft knock on the door cut him short. “Yeah?” he called.
    The Queen opened the door. “A phone call for Chief Rourke,” she said. “You want it in here?” She was in a blue seersucker robe with a white cotton nightgown sticking out from the bottom. She looked entirely different from the way Mark remembered her from early morning. Nor was she haggard and weary as he had expected. Rather she was determined. The way she looked at the Chief and the way she touched Idell’s shoulder was a blunt warning that he had better not try any tricks on the Manders family. She moved away from Idell, carrying a handset phone in one hand. She plugged it into the wall and handed the receiver to the Chief.
    “Yeah,” he said. “Sure, send ‘em right up.” He hung up. “Sheriff’s men from Riverside,” he said to Mark. “Fingerprint guy and the photographer. And that butcher hoping to muscle in on Doc, I guees. About time they got here.”
    He said nothing more until the Queen had closed the door behind herself. Then he turned to Idell. “Now, Miss Manders, what’s this I hear about you getting shot at, huh?” He had evidently forgotten her father’s death altogether.
    Idell looked relieved. “I don’t know, really,” she said. “I was chased from Riverside, and once a bullet struck the top of the car. I can’t imagine what it was all about.”
    “It was Link’s car you were driving?”
    “Yes.”
    “You got an idea who might want him killed?” “None.”
    “What was his business, huh?”
    “I’m afraid I don’t know,” she confessed. “He never discussed business with me.”
    The Chief spit contemplatively into the fireplace and held his silence for some time. Idell lit a cigaret. She half rose before the Chief spoke again.
    “Miss Manders,” he said abruptly, “who around here uses cyanide, huh?”

Chapter
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    I DELL shook her head. “No one that I know of,” she said. “Oh, wait! There is a cyanide spray in the gardener’s shed. We use it on the shrubs and plants.”
    “Probably that’s it,” the Chief said.
    “Who is familiar enough with the place to know where to find cyanide?” Mark demanded.
    Idell shrugged. “That’s hard to say. Everyone has been here three days, as I told you; anyone might have found out just wandering around.”
    The Chief said, “Okay, lemme talk to Miss Farman, huh?”
    Idell went out, and in a few moments Maybelle Farman slipped through the door. She looked fresher than any of them. Her dark eyes were clear, and there was none of the blotch of sleep on her tanned skin. She smiled at Mark, nodded gravely to the Chief and sat down.
    “Your room is next to your cousin’s, huh?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “What did you hear after you went to bed?” She hesitated, and the Chief said, “We know about the gun and everything.”
    She flushed a little. To Mark she seemed intensely quiet and self-contained. But they were separate and distinct things. Her quietness was that either of fear or deliberate evasion, he could not be sure which. Her self-containment was simply natural.
    “The shouts from the hall