Who wanted Dory Anthony Dead? by Austin Mitchell-An Excerpt

               Who wanted Dory Anthony Dead?

by

Austin Mitchell

Chapter One

         Dory Anthony was dead. The woman he was going to marry was dead. He had plans of getting engaged to her in June and then marry her a year later.

             Dalton Ferguson sat looking into the Sergeant’s face.

            “You said that you and the young woman were due to be engaged later on this year. So why did you bash her head in?”

            Sergeant Bingham was quetioning Dalton in his duty office at the Duhaney Park police station.

            “Don’t tell me. I know the answer. She spurned your proposal and you got angry. I know how you young men nowadays behave. You can’t have the woman, then nobody else will.”

            “I’m not saying anything more to you until my lawyer gets here.”

            “Your fingerprints are all over the piece of iron pipe. You must have slipped and fell after you killed her. You were lying beside her unconscious and holding the murder weapon in your hand.”

“I could prosecute this case myself. I’ve never seen anything so clear cut. It’s a pity they’ve stopped hanging murderers.”
            “I didn’t kill her, that’s all I can say,” Dalton replied.

“Why did you kill her, Ferguson? Did she confess that she had another lover and you in a jealous rage, bashed her head in?”

Dalton remained mum.

***

          “How long did you know this young lady, Ferguson?” Barton Reed, Dalton’s newly appointed lawyer, asked him.

            “About two years.”

            “Was everything all right with the relationship? I mean were you intimate? These are questions the prosecution is going to ask.”

            “Everything was okay with the relationship and we were pretty intimate.”

            “Okay, so the two of you were there in her living room  Sunday evening. Then you woke up with a headache and saw that your girlfriend had been murdered.”

            The murder had taken place in Dory’s rented two bedrom flat in Duhaney Park.

            “That’s about it.”

            “What did you do when you realized that she was dead”

            “I called the police.”

            “How long did they taken to respond to your call?”

            “They came almost immediately.”

            “The police believe that they have an open and shut case. They’re just about to charge you with murder and they believe they can make it stick.”

            Dalton’s head was bowed.

            “Did she ever mention any former boyfriends?”

            Dalton remembered her telling him about a boyfriend, whom she had broken up with a year before they met.

            “Yes, but I can’t remember a name.”

            “Okay, tell you what, I know a former detective. He runs a private detective agency. If you agree, then we can hire his services to probe into this woman’s background some more.”

            “Why should we do that?”

            “Unless you aren’t telling me the truth. You woke up beside a dead woman with your fingerprints all over the murder weapon.”

            Dalton didn’t want to be reminded about that.

            “Okay, but aren’t his fees high?”

            “Pretty much so, but he normally does a good job and in as short a time as possible.”

 From a collection of short stories "Better Days are Coming" by Austin Mitchell