Scott O’Hara - Mad About Murder

“We’ll have to go to the police, Mr. Hannon. Right now. We’ll have to tell them, you know. Your story and mine.”

Hannon looked shocked. “Police? Has something happened to Bertha?”

“Oh, come now!” Forrester said.

Hannon narrowed his eyes. “If you killed her, young man, don’t bring me into it.”

“We’ll both go and tell our stories, Mr. Hannon. When she fell she dragged most of the stuff off the shelf over the sink. There was a lipstick there. As she died, she wrote on the floor with it. She wrote your name. That’s how I found you.”

Hannon’s firm face crumpled. He looked beyond Forrester. He said softly, “No. No. Too quick.”

“People have different tolerances, Hannon,” Forrester said.

The desk drawer rattled and the gun came out. Hannon’s mouth trembled but the round eye of the automatic didn’t waver. There was a discreet tapping at the door. Forrester saw the thick finger whiten where it touched the trigger.

“Come in,” Forrester called. He held his belly muscles rigid. He closed his eyes.

He heard the door swing open, and the sound of the small automatic was like the breaking of a very brittle stick. Yet there was no hot smash of lead at him.

The girl in the harlequin glasses screamed. Not loud.

Forrester opened his eyes. Hannon still sat erect, but his face was curiously bloated. Like an idiot child he sucked loosely on the blued barrel, the smoke curling from one comer of his mouth. He sagged slowly forward and laid his head almost gently on the desk.

The girl screamed again.

She sagged against the door frame. As Forrester reached her, she sprawled limply across the sill. Forrester stepped over her and went to the phone on her desk.

John Forrester sat in his comfortable living room and read the paper. It wasn’t until he had actually finished the account that he realized that the police to whom he had talked had made good on their promise. There was no mention of him.

The account merely said that Mr. E. Mills Hannon was being blackmailed by a Miss Bertha Lewis and that E. Mills Hannon, through his business contacts, had been able to obtain some crystals of potassium cyanide. He had inserted these crystals in the toothpaste used by Miss Lewis. She had met instantaneous death when she had used the toothpaste.

Though there was actually very little evidence to connect Mr. Hannon with the murder, he had somehow become convinced that the police had proof and had committed suicide in his office.

The police had said they could shut up the girl in the office by telling her that Forrester was from the police…

He put the paper aside and listened to the busy sounds of Ellen in the kitchen. The days of nightmare were over, and by some chance he had been unharmed. He knew that his guilt was great and that he did not deserve to come out unscathed. When he tried to remember Bertha’s face, he could see only the bluish distortion, the foam on purpled lips. He shuddered.

Ellen herded the children toward the bathroom to wash up for dinner. She came to him, sat on the hassock and held his hand in both of hers. She looked at him for long moments. He was shocked to hear her say:

“Whatever it was, it’s over, isn’t it, darling?”

He fought back the temptation to deny that anything had existed. “All over,” he murmured.

For a moment her eyes betrayed the deepness of her hurt. “Don’t ever tell me about it, darling,” she whispered. “Ever.” She walked quietly out of the room.

And John Forrester knew that he was not unscathed, that he had lost a portion of something that was very precious, and of great rarity.