Read A Pint of Murder for Free Online Page B

the Tuesday Club to hound the marshal out of office for spreading scandal about her family. Olson would never get another car to fix. He’d have to move away somewhere and start over. Fred was too old a man for that. And Bert Wadman wouldn’t be any too popular, either.
    “I’ll tell you what,” the marshal went on, “you leave that jar with me. I’ll go through Hank’s files an’ see if I can’t put my hand on that report about Mrs. Treadway, eh? Then I’ll send this jar to the same place. If they tell me it’s spoiled like the first one, an’ if the doctor thinks there’s somethin’ funny about that hole in Hank’s head like you say, I’ll have some justification for gettin’ ’em in here.”
    The Royal Canadian Mounted Police would come if Fred asked them, no doubt about that. Any local law-enforcement official had a right to call on them for help with a problem that was beyond his resources to solve. But to have the Mounties in would be to acknowledge publicly that something was very wrong indeed, and the righteous folk of Pitcherville would envision the finger of scorn and derision being pointed at their village from Saint Stephen to Dalhousie. They wouldn’t like that one bit, and they’d like it a great deal less if the whole case fizzled out and left nothing but a mighty stink behind. Much as Janet hated to admit it, Fred Olson was showing more common sense than she had, up to now.

CHAPTER 4
    B REAKING THE NEWS TO the doctor’s widow was less of an ordeal than Janet had anticipated. Mrs. Druffitt only said, “Oh Janet!” in a shocked whisper, then sank back in a chair and shut her eyes. At once the other ladies clustered around and Janet edged toward the door. Except for Mrs. Potts, who naturally took a professional interest in the details of the demise, nobody even noticed her leaving.
    It was a relief to get into the car. She only wished she could get away from her thoughts so easily. She’d been a fool not to consider the consequences before she came charging down here with that jar of string beans. If it hadn’t been for her interference, Henry Druffitt might still be alive.
    And if it hadn’t been for somebody else’s interference, Agatha Treadway might also be alive. What was a person supposed to do?
    One thing she probably ought to have done was track down Gilly Bascom and tell her about her father before she got the news third- or fourth-hand from old Ma Fewter or somebody. Janet would have gone back and done it if not for that sneaking suspicion about Gilly’s maybe knowing already.
    It would have been so easy. There were two doors to the doctor’s office: one from the waiting room and the other from the back hallway. The windows weren’t far from the ground, and Mrs. Druffitt had let the hedges grow up high to keep the riffraff from peeking in. Moving the body around that polished floor couldn’t have been any great job. That had been a clever blow, though, or else a lucky one, not to draw any blood and leave stains in the wrong place.
    By the time Janet got home she was shivering. She made herself a cup of tea, but it didn’t seem to help. When Bert came in from the barn, he immediately said, “What’s the matter, Jen? You look like the skin of a nightmare dragged over a gatepost.”
    “I had sort of a bad experience this afternoon.” She might as well tell him before somebody else did. “I went down to see Dr. Druffitt and found him dead in his office.”
    “For God’s sake! What happened?”
    “It appeared he’d slipped on one of those dinky little mats Mrs. Druffitt keeps strewn around, and cracked his skull on the edge of the desk.”
    She wasn’t lying. That was how it had appeared.
    “Can you beat that? Cripes, that’s enough to take a rise out of anybody.”
    Bert shook his head. He had brown hair like hers, only less fine in texture and less apt to crimp up in the damp. The family resemblance was obvious although Bert was so much the elder, a full head