"Campbell, J - Called To Witness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell J)

= CALLED TO WITNESS
By J. Campbell


The police chief came in person to see Allison. That was very gratifying to her. The Ryder name did still mean something in this town, even if the last survivor was an old maid of eighty-three. Secretly, Allison had been afraid that she had been in the backwater of age for so long that most people had decided that she must be long since dead--assuming that they thought about her at all, that is.

The chief, Everett Barkley, was tall and well built, with little sign of the paunch that so many men his age have allowed to develop.

Barkley helped himself to her father's big leather chair, slumping comfortably to accommodate his frame to its rump-sprung curves. Allison started toward a straight-backed chair suited to the erect posture of her generation, then yielded to the pleading of well-aged bones and lowered herself carefully into her familiar upholstered armchair.

The chief surveyed the pie-crust table at his elbow, laden with silver-framed photographs. Gingerly he reached out and picked up Charity's picture.

"Mrs. Patrick. She must have been very young when this was taken"

"Nineteen. She sat for that four years ago." And Allison had watched, not an hour ago, as Charity was brought to the ambulance with a blanket over her face and body.

"Did you know her well? As you probably know, I've been in town less than a year and I had never seen her before the... before this morning."

Allison shuddered slightly. Automatically her hand went to her lap to caress Snowball, to seek comfort in the warm, silky fur and the gentle purrs. With a start, she remembered that she had let him out in the early hours of the morning, and he hadn't yet returned.

"Charity came toddling up my front steps one day when she was about two, and we'd been fast friends ever since. At that time she lived just up the hill in the next block."

"And since they were married they've lived next door to you?"

"That's right."

"Miss Ryder..." The chief shifted his position, slightly ill at ease. "Would you tell me something about Charity? Anything you like. Just your mental picture of her."

Allison reached to take the photograph from him. "This shows her spirit well, those laughing, sparkling eyes. She was a happy girl. She used to come up running-and she looked so full of life. Vital is the word that comes to mind. Dancing, tennis, swimming, golf, singing--that was Charity."

Allison looked down at the gray old hands that held the picture, at the knotted veins and liver spots; Charity had been her youth all over again.

"I can see her right now, sitting on the porch railing, swinging those long tanned legs. 'Frank finally asked me to the dance, Miss Ryder,' she told me. She was leaning so far out to look down the street that I was afraid she'd fall into my rose garden. 'Here he comes now. Bye. See you soon.' And the next thing you know she was gone laughing and waving to him."

She had been pleased about Charity and Frank, Allison remembered. She'd known Frank Patrick only as a dark, good-looking boy with a quick grin and a cheery wave. His charm swept up people like hit dance music. How could she have known he was one of those helpless, hopeless creatures that fed on hurt?

Allison handed the picture back to Barkley. Carefully he placed it back among the dozen or so others that crowned the little table.
"Nieces and nephews and their children," Allison remarked. "I even have one great," she told him, with visible pride. "But Charity was closer to me than any of them."

The policeman shifted his cap between his fingers in a broken, shuffling motion as if he were saying a rosary on it.

"Miss Ryder," he said, lifting his eyes to meet hers, "it'll be out soon, so I might as well tell you, the doctor is almost certain that it was an overdose, probably of sleeping pills. We'll know for sure after the autopsy. What I'm trying to do now is get a picture of her, of her husband, of her new life. Now the Patrick house and yours are very close, can't be more than fifteen, twenty feet apart, and their bedroom is on this side. I noticed the window was open about eight inches at the bottom. Knowing how easily sound travels on these warm summer nights, I wonder..." He paused, hoping Allison would finish the sentence. She was wearing a look of polite attention, but said nothing.

"Well," he continued, "I just thought you might have heard something."

Absently Allison reached again for Snowball's head. Where could he be? She had heard him yowling on the back fence at about three this morning, so she knew he was near home. Then she shook herself mentally and returned her attention to the officer.

"My bedroom is on the far side of the house from the Patricks'. I'm afraid I can be of no help to you, Captain... Barkley isn't it?"

Allison half expected a bolt of chastening lightning from above but she hadn't lied, she decided. Her bedroom was indeed on the far side. She needn't tell him that most nights she didn't sleep well, and it was cooler out on the screened porch, practically outside Charity's open window.