Read Online More Deaths Than One by Marjorie Eccles - Free Book Online

never would have.”
    â€œHow do you account for your shotgun being in his possession?”
    â€œI can’t, I’ve just told you. If you’re right and it is mine, I can only assume he must have stolen it, somehow. That would’ve appealed to his warped sense of humour, to have it traced back to me.”
    â€œWould it have been possible for it to have been taken, without your knowing?”
    Culver thought about it, drawing on his pipe. “Yes, I suppose it might. I don’t lock my door during the day.”
    â€œRather unwise, sir, surely?”
    â€œWhen my housekeeper’s not here, I’m never far away. And anything of value I keep in the bank. If anybody wants to go to the trouble of stealing what I’ve got around here, they’re welcome to it.”
    Culver’s attitude was one of dry ironic detachment, as if he were humouring them, which Mayo guessed might be natural to him, but Kite was becoming wooden, in the way he did with people who rubbed him up the wrong way, and Mayo felt he’d better take over. “That’s an original point of view, Mr. Culver. You feel the same way about your guns?”
    â€œThe gun room is the one place that’s always kept locked.”
    â€œAnd the key?”
    There was a short silence while Culver busied himself applying another match to his pipe, and the rich aroma of pipe tobacco was filling the room before he answered. “Ah, you can’t fault me there. I keep my key with me, always.”
    â€œJust remind me again, when did you last check your guns?”
    â€œOn Sunday afternoon, like I always do.”
    â€œAnd not since then?”
    The old man lifted his shoulders. “No need.”
    â€œWhat were you doing on Monday evening, Mr. Culver?”
    â€œWhat I usually do. Having my supper, watching a bit of television, reading till late. I don’t go to bed early these days, if I do I find myself wide awake halfway through the night.”
    â€œWhat time did you lock up?”
    â€œWhen I went to bed – and before you ask me, I couldn’t say exactly what time that was. But it’s generally well after midnight when I go up.”
    â€œSo you would have heard anyone trying to break in?”
    â€œ I might not, if they were quiet about it. I don’t hear as well as I used to, but Minty surely would. This dog sleeps with one eye open, don’t you, girl?”
    They all looked at the dog on the hearthrug, apparently intent on demonstrating this phenomenon. The one open eye was amber-coloured. It reminded Mayo of Georgina Fleming’s tiger eyes. He stood up. “I’d like to see where you keep your guns, please.”
    â€œYou’re welcome. The room’s at the back.”
    They followed the old man along a flagged passage which ran draughtily from front to back of the house, glimpsing gloomy rooms stuffed with ancestral furniture, presumably of Pauling inheritance, until they came to a door which Culver unlocked with a key from a small bunch taken from his trouser pocket. The room was to the right of the passage, near the back door, with a window which looked onto a small, high-walled kitchen garden, beyond which the tree-covered hill rose to the skyline.
    It’d be a doddle, Kite thought, getting over that wall, and if the back door was open ... He never ceased to be amazed at folks’ carelessness, and bent to examine the lock on the door. A Yale type which didn’t, however, show any signs of being forced.
    The room wasn’t very big, probably once a pantry of some sort, flagged with the same large stones as the passage, carpeted with a worn square in the middle. On the wall opposite the windows – two small ones, neither big enough for anyone to get through – was a battered desk with a telephone, a portable typewriter and a stone jar holding pencils. To the right of the windows stood a large old-fashioned safe and on the left were the guns,