The Killer Touch by Ellery Queen

burned; he supposed it included Mrs. Keener’s sweepings. He got a stick and poked through it. Several wads of lipsticked tissue. Funny, there were two different shades, one the dark red he’d seen in the purse, the other a pale orange. Mmm. Maybe women changed their lipstick according to mood. Here was a mass of tangled, knotted hair, filled with lint as though it had been cleaned from a comb. He pulled an end loose and examined it. A pale wavy hair, ash blonde. Not Rolf Keener’s, too long for that. Possibly from a woman guest who predated Mrs. Keener, fallen in a corner and swept out only recently. Have to ask Joss. He looked for something to keep the hair in. All the paper was charred and soggy; ah, here was one, wadded up into a tight little ball like a piece of popcorn. He smoothed it and found that there were two sheets of thin airmail stationery. It had been burned carelessly, and much of the writing remained legible. The salutation caught his eye:
    r Rolf,
    Three nights on this island
    away from you have given me a
    nk about all that has
    ce I married you and
    So, it was written by Mrs. Keener in a blunt vertical script totally without flourishes. He had not expected her to write in such a near-masculine hand. He spread out the second sheet and found only one and a half sentences intact:
    no point in going on
    dreading every tomorrow and regretting each
    A coldness grew at the back of his neck. He’d read many suicide notes, and this had the ring of authenticity. Funny, he thought, folding the letter and shoving it into the pocket of his shorts; this was written by a quietly desperate woman who had decided to end her marriage, perhaps even her life. He couldn’t picture Mrs. Keener in that part at all.
    Well, that settled one thing. He had to get inside. He circled the cabin again and saw that the bathroom was roofed with corrugated tin. Probably it had once been thatched, but moisture had rotted the grass. A ladder led up to a platform which held a barrel of water for the shower. Burt climbed up and found that the roofing had merely been laid in place and covered with heavy stones to keep it from blowing away. He moved the stones, propped the sheeting open with a stick, and crawled inside. Standing on the low stand which held the basin, he pulled out the stick and lowered the roof back in place.
    Inside, he noticed that Mrs. Keener had the same habit of untidiness he’d found in many otherwise attractive women. Her robe hung on the bathroom door and a pair of black panties were draped over the shower head. He touched his fingers to the transparent, chiffon-like fabric. Little red lips were embroidered around the bottom. It was the kind of lingerie teenagers order from the little ads at the backs of true confession magazines.
    And what did that prove about Mrs. Keener? Simply that she took pride in her sexuality and liked to adorn it as well as possible. All of which fit the woman he had—met was too weak a word: encountered, maybe, or engaged. Such a woman would hardly consider suicide; if she did, she would write a fiery renunciation of the world, then reconsider and seek renewed life in an affair with a new man.
    He froze at the entrance to the bedroom. Had a window blown open or … what was that breath of coldness? All the windows were closed. Burt didn’t have Joss’s blind faith in the supernatural, but he’d run into things which couldn’t be explained any other way. There was a feeling which often came to him in a scent of past violence; it had been present in the jewelry store, it was here now. A residue of fear or pain, like an invisible mist weighting the air.
    He shook off the feeling and made a quick, thorough search of the room. More feminine clothing and inexpensive jewelry—in rather garish taste, he thought—but only one overnight case which held male clothing. Inside the case was a box of thirty-eight caliber ammunition. He catalogued the fact