Dell Shannon - Extra Kill

And he gave her his one-sided smile, caught her hand as she passed and kissed it. "Sorry, querida, it's routine to me, sometimes I forget it isn't to everybody. I'll be nice to her."

But she hadn't taken another step before the phone rang, and it was Hackett…

Angel looked a little better for the rest, with her face scrubbed, her hair combed. She sat erect on the edge of the couch like a child in school, with Alison beside her, and only gradually relaxed under their quiet voices, their reassuring phrases.

"It was," said Hackett, "a picture made before you were born, so you wouldn't know anything about it. But what startled me was that there's a scene of her shooting-target-shooting-and the way it was taken, I don't see how it could have been faked. She was doing it, not someone doubling for her-and she wasn't missing a shot. Quite a little exhibition."

"I don't know anything about the picture. But I can tell you a little about that, I guess-" She stopped, looked stricken again, and again Mendoza was patient.

"Miss Carstairs, I'm not lying when I say we'd get all this elsewhere if not from you. There's only a few little things I want to ask you right now. I knew about your mother this morning, when I looked at that coat and saw it was brand-new, and heard her trying to convince us all that it was yours, and that you'd had it for some time. You're not betraying her in any sense, believe me-you're only filling in a little for us that we could learn from others."

"I see that," she whispered. "I-I don't like it, but you'd only-find out anyway, and I don't suppose-this'll be as bad as-if there's a trial and so on." She stiffened her shoulders, took a deep breath. "Mr. Horwitz could probably tell you more about it. I know I was awfully surprised when he mentioned it once-it was the first I'd ever heard of it-it must have been that picture he meant. He said everybody had been surprised to-to find she was a second Annie Oakley. You see, she was brought up on a farm, or anyway a very small town, I'm not sure which, in South Dakota, and she used to go out hunting with her father. She got to be quite a good shot. Later on she-I think she felt it was unwomanly, you know-she never mentioned it or did it any more. My father-I've heard Mr. Horwitz say-was a sportsman, he liked to hunt, and I don't know but maybe she used to go with him then. But that'd be twenty-five years ago, and so far as I know since then she's never- But Brooke wasn't shot, was he?"

"Not Brooke," said Mendoza. He took the old Winchester revolver out of his pocket and laid it on the coffee table. "Have you ever seen this before, Miss Carstairs?"

She looked at it for a long moment. "I-why, yes, I think-I think that's the gun Brooke stole… She wasn't really angry about it, just a little put out. She never could have refused him anything, you know," and faint contempt was in her tone. "She was terribly silly about him. I knew-even I knew-he just fawned on her, flattered her, because she-gave him presents, and I think she used to pay too, when they went to some awfully expensive place. I-it was shameful. I wouldn't have liked him anyway but when he did that-"

"Yes. He stole this gun?"

"He called it borrowed. He was going to be in some play where they had to have a gun," she said dully. "I said my f-father liked to hunt, he had some guns, and two or three of them she never sold. This was one of them. It's not the kind you hunt with, of course-the others are rifles-but she kept this on account of burglars. She said. He saw it one day, it was in the den with the others in a case, and he took it. She said he should have asked, of course she'd have lent it to him. He never gave it back-I don't know if she asked, or maybe gave it to him to keep. I do know it was loaded when he took it, she always kept it loaded. In case she needed it in a hurry, she said, if someone broke in."

"Twenty-five years," said Hackett to Mendoza, meditatively.

"I don't know, it's a thing you don't lose entirely. If you've had a lot of practice. You'd get rusty, sure, but-in an emergency-you'd instinctively do what old experience told you."

"Probably. A great help, anyway-the old experience-in that particular target shot."

“ Claro estd. Miss Carstairs, I've got just two more questions to ask, and then we're going to see that you're settled in a hotel. Miss Weir'll go along and I expect lend you whatever you need, and we'll stop bothering you for a while. Can you tell me anything about Miss Janet Kent?"

Angel's eyes hardened a little. "Yes, I can," she said steadily. "She was a-a sort of nurse-supervisor for me for about ten years, from the time I was five. I don't think she meant to be-unkind, but she was awfully-oh, strict and old-fashioned, and crotchety. She was old then, and looking back now, I can see she used to-to fawn on her and pretend to admire her so much, because she was afraid of losing her job, not being able to get another. But-she-swallowed it all whole, you never can give her too much flattery, she never sees through it. And when I got too old for Miss Kent, she gave her a sort of pension, just because it makes her feel magnanimous to have someone dependent on her that way. I-I feel sorry for Miss Kent now-once in a while she'd get me to go with her there, you know, and it's just sickening-to me anyway-the way Miss Kent kowtows to her, you almost expect her to say ‘my lady' and curtsey-oh, you know what I mean-like a whipped dog-because she's old, nearly eighty, and she hasn't got anyone or any money, and if she ever stopped giving her this little bit to live on, Miss Kent'd have to go on the county. She just revels in it, of course, the funny thing is she thinks Miss Kent really means it-"

"Yes. Now I want you to take your time and think about this one," said Mendoza. "You know, of course, that your mother has made a very inept effort to cast suspicion on you. She didn't choose you deliberately, but when we found the body, you see-which hadn't been intended-and began finding out a few things close to home, she got nervous. She had a few things she hadn't got rid of, to link her with it, and now she was afraid to try to dispose of them, that we might see her doing that. So it had to be someone in the same house, in case of a search warrant. And that meant you. You know about the coat. There's something else. Something about two feet long or a bit more. Fairly heavy, but partly flexible. Is there anywhere in that house where she could put such a thing, where it would be definitely connected with you and still you wouldn't come across it right away‘?"

She didn't think twenty seconds; she said simply, instantly, "Why, of course. My old trunk. That is, it's-it was my father's, there were some old family pictures in it and odds and ends. She was going to throw it away once when I was about seven, and I begged to have it. I-I never knew anybody in either of their families, you see, my grandparents or aunts and uncles-and it made it seem I had more of a family somehow, those old pictures. I used to t-tell myself stories about them… I keep it way at the back of my closet, it's locked, and there are things in it I expect it's silly to keep, but the kind of things you don't throw away. My high school graduation dress, and the school yearbooks-and a c-couple of letters-things like that. I don't open it once in six months, now."

"Locked," said Mendoza. "Where do you keep the key?"

"In the top drawer of my dresser."

"And where were you from six o'clock on last evening? At home?"

"Why, no-for once I wasn't," she said without bitterness. "I felt I had to get out-away-I went to a movie by myself… No, of course I haven't looked in the trunk since."

"Thank you very much," said Mendoza smiling. "That's all for now."

And as they waited for Alison to pack an overnight bag for the girl, over Angel's protests, Mendoza suddenly asked, "You didn't pick up a traffic ticket on your perambulations today, by any chance?"