The Haunted Lady

The Haunted Lady

A Hilda Adams Mystery

Mary Roberts Rinehart

Chapter 1

Hilda Adams was going through her usual routine after coming off a case. She had taken a long bath, using plenty of bath salts, shampooed her short, slightly graying hair, examined her feet and cut her toenails, and was now carefully rubbing hand lotion into her small but capable hands.

Sitting there in her nightgown she looked rather like a thirty-eight-year-old cherub. Her skin was rosy, her eyes clear, almost childish. That appearance of hers was her stock in trade, as Inspector Fuller had said to the new commissioner that same day.

“She looks as though she still thought the stork brought babies,” he said. “That’s something for a woman who has been a trained nurse for fifteen years. But she can see more with those blue eyes of hers than most of us could with a microscope. What’s more, people confide in her. She’s not the talking sort, so they think she’s safe. She sits and knits and tells them about her canary bird at home, and pretty soon they’re pouring out all they know. It’s a gift.”

“Pretty useful, eh?”

“Useful! I’ll say. What’s the first thing the first families think of when there’s trouble? A trained nurse. Somebody cracks, and there you are. Or there she is.”

“I shouldn’t think the first families would have that kind of trouble.”

The inspector looked at the new commissioner with a faintly patronizing smile.

“You’d be surprised,” he said. “They have money, and money breeds trouble. Not only that. Sometimes they have bats.”

He grinned. The new commissioner stared at him suspiciously.

“Fact,” said the inspector. “Had an old woman in this afternoon who says she gets bats in her bedroom. Everything closed up, but bats just the same. Also a rat now and then, and a sparrow or two.”

The commissioner raised his eyebrows.

“No giant panda?” he inquired. “No elephants?”

“Not so far. Hears queer noises, too.”

“Sounds haunted,” said the commissioner. “Old women get funny sometimes. My wife’s mother used to think she saw her dead husband. She’d never liked him. Threw things at him.”

The inspector smiled politely.

“Maybe. Maybe not. She had her granddaughter with her. The girl said it was true. I gathered that the granddaughter made her come.”

“What was the general idea?”

“The girl wanted an officer in the grounds at night. It’s the Fairbanks place. Maybe you know it. She seemed to think somebody gets in the house at night and lets in the menagerie. The old lady said that was nonsense; that the trouble was in the house itself.”

The commissioner looked astounded.

“You’re not talking about Eliza Fairbanks?”