Murder at cambridge, p.21
Murder at Cambridge,
p.21
“Gosh, man, you were lucky you didn’t get a knife in your ribs,” I cried. “She must have had one with her. She probably took the Kaffir dagger from Baumann’s room that night and afterwards used it to kill Hank. You’d better be careful how you kiss strange females in the dark in the future, Stuart.”
He ran a hand through his hair, half smiling, half abashed.
“I’m not altogether sure it wouldn’t have been worth it,” he muttered. “What a perfectly ripping death! In the middle of a long ling-g-gering kiss. Um-ah!”
“Stuart, you really are rather repulsive,” I said smiling, “but you have at least cleared up what, for me, was the most baffling part of the whole business. The way she seemed to disappear that night was positively spooky. And coming on top of that creepy yarn about your Marlborough friend! Incidentally, now that you’ve solved my little mystery, I wish you would tell me the end of that one. It was a darn good story.”
Somerville grinned. “I’m afraid the actual denouement is a bit of a flop. The wretched lad ought to have died on his eighteenth birthday by rights—but he didn’t do anything so sweet and simple. What he actually did was to lose all his hair and he woke up next morning as bald as the jolly old curate’s egg.
“And incidentally, he’s up at Oxford now, poor devil—going to be a parson, too! He might just as well have pipped it at the proper time and given the story a decent ending. However, as far as I know, there’s been no return of that particular nightmare.”
I looked at my watch.
“Well, and let’s hope our little nightmare is over, too. And now I’ve got to run along. I want to—er—see a jeweller about a ring.”
“Before the hot water runs cold, eh?” There was a momentary return to the mocking, moviesque accent. “Well, I reckon that’s a cute chick you picked.”
“Quit calling my babe a chick,” I parried in what at Cambridge still passed for jive talk.
“Hit the road, Frog.”
And with this utterly British slang malapropism we turned to rejoin the others.
The End
About the Author
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick, and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966), Martha Mott Kelley (1906–2005), and Mary Louise White Aswell (1902–1984) wrote detective fiction. Most of the stories were written together by Webb and Wheeler, or by Wheeler alone. Their best-known creation is amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1933 by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc
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ISBN: 978-1-4976-9694-5
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Q. Patrick, Murder at Cambridge
