Murders for Sale. Andre NortonЧитать онлайн книгу.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

www.wildsidebooks.com

Chapter 1

Fredericka Wing looked at her watch for the second time in ten minutes. If she didn’t get to South Sutton before noon she might miss Miss Hartwell, and that would be disastrous.

The sun burned through the back of her linen dress, and her stockings felt sticky behind her knees. July in New England could be hot, as she had reason to know from her own childhood. But the country should be better than New York.

She looked a third time at her watch and then, with a frown of annoyance, picked up her suitcase and sought the shelter of the station platform. She walked around to the track side of the one-room building where the words SUTTON JUNCTION were inscribed in Gothic capitals, once gilt, now tarnished and barely decipherable. A large man in shirt sleeves sat on a packing case near the door, chewing noisily and spitting at regular intervals in the general direction of the tracks.

“Train late?” Fredericka asked, trying to keep the note of impatience from her voice.

The man did not answer. He continued to chew steadily and for a moment, she thought he must be deaf. Then he took a plug of tobacco from his pocket and opened his knife with his pudgy right hand and said slowly: “Reckon Cy’s doin’ his shoppin’. Usually do on Sat’day mornin’s. Be long soon now, I wouldn’t wonder. Train for Worcester’s not due in fer another quarter hour.”

Fredericka sat down on the other end of the packing case.

“Cy is the engineer, I suppose,” she said.

“Yep. Don’t make no difference Sat’day forenoon. Ain’t nobody to speak of come from New York till the a’ternoon train.”

It was obvious to Fredericka that being a stranger, not the fact that she was the only passenger, made her “nobody to speak of.” She was contemplating a suitable answer when, with a hoot of surprise, the midget engine and its single car charged out of the woods as if by magic.

The fat man lumbered to his feet and Cy climbed down from his cab. A moment later a man in a light suit hurried from the train and stopped near Fredericka to bend over and fasten the strap of his brief case. Then he straightened up and, for a moment, looked intently at Fredericka, who returned his appraisal and then dropped her eyes in sudden embarrassment. But she had had time to see that the man’s gray eyes really were what novelists describe as “steely,” the face set in stern lines and the forehead high. His hair was graying at the temples and his body had lost the leanness of first youth.

Forties, Fredericka thought, and I’m blushing as though I were in my teens instead of a safe thirty-five.

“Hi, Colonel.” The low rumbling sound came from Fredericka’s friend, the fat baggage man, who now stood behind her to rest from the great effort of drawing a half-filled mail bag across the platform.

“Hi yourself, Willy,” the man called Colonel answered. He unfolded a neatly rolled newspaper and sat down on the packing case. Fredericka, having no excuse to linger, now walked purposefully across the track to her waiting train.

A twenty-minute wait for a ten-minute journey, she thought as she settled herself on the dusty plush seat. And now most likely another ten minutes to add to it. But even as she thought this, the engine gave its warning toot and began to push itself backwards out of the station. Except for Fredericka, the car was empty and, in spite of herself, she couldn’t resist the temptation to go across the aisle and look out of the window. The man called Colonel had put aside his paper and now seemed to be looking directly at her own peering face. She ducked quickly and returned at once to her seat as, again, she felt her cheeks burn hotly.

“Now whatever possessed me to do that?” she asked aloud, and then: “Behaving like a schoolgirl.” But the intent gray eyes followed Fredericka all the short journey to South Sutton and were only forgotten when the excitement of arrival and settling in to her new job put every other thought from her mind.

When Fredericka climbed down from the train at South Sutton Station she felt hotter than ever but, as she looked round her, she was reassured. Here, at last, there was an air of midsummer peace that soothed her tired spirit. Fields dotted with bright black-eyed Susans and white clover rolled up to the track and even struggled through the floor boards of the platform. Beyond the fields there was a line of dark firs and a few low rooftops.

If only Cy would stop the snorting of his dragon, I could probably hear crickets, Fredericka thought. Now I wonder what I do next and where—

“Are you Miss Wing?” a pleasant voice asked. Fredericka turned, startled, to find a woman standing directly behind her.

“Yes, I’m Fredericka Wing. But wherever did you come from? There wasn’t anyone else on the train.”

The woman laughed and Fredericka observed that the face which had at first glance seemed plain now became attractive. She was shorter than Fredericka and less angular. She was wearing a sleeveless linen dress which looked clean and cool and her short dark hair had just been combed. She made Fredericka feel travel-worn and dusty.

“I came across the fields, from the other side of the train. But I must introduce myself. I am Philippine Sutton and I have come to meet you because Miss Hartwell, she is so very busy.” She spoke slowly with a hint of a foreign accent. Her th’s became z’s and her r’s were rich and throaty.

Fredericka put down her case and shook the proffered hand which felt small and soft in hers. French, Fredericka decided. “You seem to have the right name for anyone living in this town,” she remarked, and then: “It was good of you to bother to meet me.”

“I wanted to come to the station anyway. I had a shipment coming in—things for my laboratory which I have at the farm. But I forgot—of course you don’t know anything about us yet. And I, I don’t know anything about you either.”

“No. We’ll have to explain ourselves, but first I want to see about my baggage.” As always Fredericka now became fussed by the tiresome details of life from which she never seemed able to escape. New England her friends at college had called it. “I sent my trunk on in advance. Oh, good, I think that’s it on the platform.”

“I’ll wait here,” Philippine said. “Then we can walk—my jeep’s laid up at the garage for the moment, but it isn’t far and I can show you the sights—or some of them. Miss Hartwell’s man, Chris, will collect your trunk and that bag too, if it’s heavy. There’s not much fuss about life in South Sutton,” she added, seeing Fredericka’s obvious concern.

“No, thanks, I’ll manage this case. It’s got a change of clothes and all the necessary articles for a badly needed bath.”

In a few moments the two women were walking along a wide country road edged with elderly spruce trees. Their feet scuffed up a fine cloud of dust that settled on the grass and clover struggling to grow along the roadside.

“This,” announced Philippine, “is rightly named ‘Spruce Street’. If we had turned left it would take us out to the farm belonging to my aunt, Mrs. Sutton. Yes—a direct descendant of the Lucius Edward Sutton who founded the town in 1814 and the college six years later. The family place, we call it ‘the Farm,’ is where Mrs. Sutton and I do a business in herbs, and I have my lab. It’s about a mile out of town. It won’t take you long to learn the lie of the land since the whole of South Sutton is nothing but a crossroads. Those gates on the left and those impressive buildings you can just see through the trees are Sutton College.”

Fredericka looked around her. The air was heavy with the warm scent of hay and the more subtle perfume of the spruce trees.

“I love New England,” she said simply, “and this seems exactly as it should be.”

“Yes. I love it, too,” Philippine said. “I can work here in peace—and forget the other life.” She hesitated. “I mean France,

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