“Because that is our unpleasant duty.” Skinner met her gaze. “Because we are confronted by evidence that your brother’s death was not accidental. Evidence, in fact, that he was murdered.”
There was dead silence. Good and dead.
Skinner and Cramer were taking in faces, and I took them in too. I was close enough to April so that when her lips moved I caught the whispered breath of the two syllables, “Curtain,” but her pallor and her staring eyes told me that she wasn’t aware she had breathed at all.
Chapter 4
Wolfe heaved a deep sigh. Prescott got to his feet, opened his mouth, shut it again, and sat down. Osric Stauffer emitted a sound suggestive of shocked and indignant disbelief, which went unnoticed.
June, her eyes still piercing Skinner, said, “That’s impossible.” Her voice went a little higher: “Quite impossible!”
“I wish it were, Mrs. Dunn,” he declared. “I sincerely do. No one realizes better than I do what this will mean to all of you — your husband and your sisters — all the regrettable aspects of it — and it was with the greatest reluctance — almost unconquerable reluctance—”
“That’s a lie.” The voice came from May Hawthorne, but it was a new one. It snapped like a whip. “Let’s take this as it is, Mr. Skinner. Don’t snivel about reluctance. We know the smell of politics. This means it has been decided that you can use my brother’s death to finish off my brother-in-law. Perhaps you can. Go ahead and try, but spare us the cant.”
Skinner, looking at her and letting her finish, said with composure, “You’re wrong, Miss Hawthorne. I assure you it was with deep and genuine reluctance—”
“Do you deny that for the past two months your crowd has been spreading calumny regarding my brother-in-law and his relations with my brother?”