The Talmage Powell Crime Megapack

by Talmage Powell

Clete and Cousin Melanie exchanged helloes.

  “Cousin Melly.” Perky said, “has an artistic interest.”

  “How nice,” Clete murmured through cold lips. “How very nice.”

  “I act a bit,” she confessed with a smile. “Too often I have to buy a play to find a vehicle, which indicates, I’m afraid, that I’m a very bad actress. But if one has the money, I say, one should make use of it oneself.”

  “I’m sure one should,” Clete said coolly.

  Clete’s tone brought a briefly worried look from Perky. But Cousin Melanie and Clete were both ignoring him, and Perky drifted with backward glances toward his other guests.

  “Tell me about it,” Clete suggested.

  Cousin Melanie laughed, joining Clete as he seated himself on a redwood bench beneath a multi-colored umbrella.

  “There isn’t much to tell, really,” she said. “In Italy, Spain, France you can always find money-hungry producers. I enjoy acting, even if I am—lousy, as you would say on this side of the Atlantic.”

  Clete sat as if hypnotized by the hollow of her throat “You seem to have a rare honesty,” he murmured.

  “Why not? If I get a certain satisfaction from my avocation, who gets hurt? No one. On the contrary, each little play in each little theater makes work for a number of people.”

  Clete picked up her hands, turning them slowly, looking at them. Then his gaze returned to her neck.

  “I’m going to paint you,” he said.

  She was poised for a moment, her pulse beating like a bird’s as she tried to study his face, fathom his eyes. Then she relaxed and smiled. “Are you?”

  “A portrait” Clete said, “head and shoulders. A real work, nothing like the atrocity Perky has hanging in his living room.”

  “And what is your commission for such a work?”

  He pushed her hands away almost roughly. “No commission. I thought you would understand.”

  She was silent a moment. Then she half lifted her hand. “I’m sorry. I am very sorry. When would you like me to begin sitting?”

  “Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. I live several miles down the beach. Perky will tell you how to get there.”

  Clete got up, walked directly to his car, and drove away.

  * * * *

  The next morning at ten, red-eyed and pale. Clete looked as if he had substituted small, continual nips of Scotch for sleep during the whole of the night. His mass of beard and hair obscured much of the evidence, and his nerveless control did the rest Cousin Melanie blithely entered the cottage without noticing the clues to his mental state. Instead, the unbelievable disarray of the cottage captured her immediate attention.

  “You,” she said with a laugh, “have created a room straight from the left bank, here on the sunny shores of Florida.”

  Clete reached behind himself, flipping the latch, locking the door. “Sit there, please.”

  She gave him the grin of a gamin on a lark, crossed to a straight chair, and sat down. She was silent as Clete walked around her slowly, three times.

  “I didn’t believe it at first,” he said. “It simply wasn’t reasonable. All night long I wrestled with the problem of it.”

  She began to frown. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “It was as if my artistic senses had gone haywire,” he said. “My genius was playing me false. But no! My perceptions are still true.”

  She came out of the chair slowly. “I think we had better postpone this, or cancel the idea entirely. Perhaps we can discuss it sometime when you haven’t been drinking.”

  “Who are you?” Clete asked.

  “I’ve no earthly idea what you’re talking about. Let me pass, please.”

  “Who are you?” Clete shouted.

  Real fright flared in her eyes. She ducked around him and made for the door. Clete caught her before she could reach it. He grabbed her arm and spun her about.

  She had an unusual resistance to panic. “You’d better think what you’re doing,” she said. “Release me and open the door this instant and I won’t report you. Otherwise, it will go hard for…”

  Clete made an animal sound in his throat, suddenly and without warning twisted her arm. She was wheeled into a helpless position, frozen in a hammerlock. With his free hand, Clete scooped the hair from the side of her face.

  “Only a tiny, threadlike scar,” he said. “The plastic surgeon didn’t have to do much, did he?”

  “You’re mad!” she gasped. “You shall pay for this!”

  He jerked her away from the door and shoved her across the room. She half fell on the protesting daybed and remained there, supporting herself with her hands on the edge of the railing.

  “I don’t suppose I need to ask you a third time,” he said. He loomed over her, hands on hips. “You were probably an understudy, a double to begin with, searched out with her money, through the talent agencies of Europe. Then later, a bit of plastic surgery and you were her identical twin—except for one thing. So the question now is: What happened to the real Melanie Sutton, the rich old babe with the theater bug? How did you kill her? What did you do with her?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Move aside or I’ll start screaming.”

  “Go ahead and scream,” he said relentlessly, “and we’ll tell the whole world why. I’ll give you three safe seconds in which to scream.”

  He waited. Both remained silent, the woman crouching on the edge of the daybed.

  “Where is the real Melanie Sutton?” he insisted. “At the bottom of an Alpine crevasse? Feeding the fish off the south of France?”

  She stirred, finally, “How did you know?”

  “Your neck. The conniving, money-hungry plastic surgeon could not very well change the length of your neck, so it is far too short”

  “My neck…” she raised her hand slowly to her throat.

  “Possibly no one else in all the world would ever have noticed,” Clete said. “But I labored over the depicted image of Melanie Sutton for endless hours. When I saw you, I knew instantly, even though it took me all night to believe it, to admit it.”

  “I should never have come here,” she said, “but I had to. The corporation lawyers in New York were faintly puzzled by a thing or two I said and did. I was playing the role of ever-loving elder cousin. They would have become downright suspicious if I’d refused the opportunity to drop by and see my closest surviving relative, Perky boy and his wife. So I had to come. I believed I could carry it off here as well as I did in New York. I’d studied Melanie Sutton and her affairs from close range for a long time. I knew everything there was to know about her—except that her cousin had you for a friend.”

  “Now I shall live and paint,” Clete said, “away from all this. I am now a painter with a liberal patroness.”

  She came to her feet almost shyly. “And if I am to be your patroness, how do I know I can trust you?”

  “You’ll simply have to take my word.”

  “Your word—yes, I suppose I must. You wish me to mail you your first check today?”

  “And once a month thereafter,” Clete said, “for so long as you live. A thousand a month will do nicely.”

  * * * *

  The woman was quite composed when she stopped her car in the Bersom driveway. Perky came bouncing out to meet her.

  “How did it go, Cousin Melly?”

  “Not too badly, but I decided not to sit for any more portraits. “ She remained behind the wheel of the car, giving him such a sudden, intent look that the smile eased from his lips.

  “Perky, I know this isn’t talked in polite family circles, but I want an honest confidential answer, just between the two of us. In an acute crisis, to what lengths would you go to insure your eventual inheritance of my fortune?”

  The thing in her eyes got through to Perky. His playboy aura seemed to fall away. He became bone and sinew, with the eyes of a hungry, prowling cougar. “I think I would even murder,” he said with cool honesty.


  The woman behind the wheel looked far down the beach. Then she turned, got out of the car. “My dear boy,” she said fondly, “your answer couldn’t have pleased me more…”

  MIND THE POSIES

  Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, June 1965.

  No believer in miracles, Mrs. Hester Bennett could not fully account for her husband’s new interest in life.

  Claude’s heart attack had been severe, and without any prior warning. He had been coming up the front walk late one afternoon, an old man with iron gray hair who still retained some of his earthy, brutish handsomeness. He’d staggered, clutched his chest, crumpled, looked as if he’d died instantly.

  But he hadn’t. Not quite. For endlessly long hours Claude’s life had been measured by the successive weak pulse beats which never quite stopped.

  Hester had remained at Claude’s hospital bedside, never taking her eyes for very long from the gray face canopied by the clear plastic oxygen tent, until the doctor told her the crisis was finally past. A man steeped in bitter solitude had come home, shuffling and looking about the solidly comfortable house as if everything were new and strange to him.

  To Hester’s queries he gave the same, short answer, “I’m fine!” He took his prescribed rests with the secretive inner rebellion of a small boy. He ate the flat salt-free food stolidly, cramming it into his mouth as if he had a strange sort of derision and loathing for himself.

  The rapport built by thirty-five years of marriage was broken. Unable to communicate with Claude, Hester mechanically continued her routine of flower gardening and conscientious housekeeping.

  Once, as she was arranging a vase of yellow roses, Claude had entered the living room unknown to her. His voice had startled her. “Why do you bother?” he said. “They’ll only die.”

  He’d turned and left the room without waiting for her answer. And she’d bit her lip, feeling the emptiness and desolation of the house. The attack has left him with traumatic scars as well as physical ones, she’d thought, but they will pass; after all, thirty-five years of marriage does mean something; the scars will all pass.

  The passing, when it had come, had been swift, almost as sudden as the attack that had struck Claude a low blow.

  He’d returned to the supervision of his small plastics manufacturing plant for want of something better to do. It gave him escape from the house, from windows that seemed to draw his gaze toward a certain spot on the front walk. He came and went, a tall, rawboned giant of a shadow.

  And then one afternoon Hester came in from her flower garden and heard Claude humming in the bedroom. She let the basket slide from her hand to the kitchen table. A tremulous expression crossed her faded, wrinkled lips. A light struggled for life in her tired blue eyes. Claude’s humming was off-key, but to Hester, it filled the house with a sweeter sound than the singing of the birds who flitted about their bath at the edge of her flower garden.

  Controlling the emotion that surged up in her, Hester went casually to the bedroom. Claude was at the dressing table mirror, bending slightly as he knotted a bright, striped necktie, one she had never seen before. He was impeccable in a freshly pressed suit, the iron gray hair brushed against his temples. There was even color in his face, making him look twenty years younger. Something about his appearance and manner disconcerted Hester. She felt drab and old.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said. “Do you want an early dinner?”

  His humming broke off. He looked at her reflection in the mirror. He didn’t bother to turn, and she had the feeling that the mirrored reflection of her was enough for him.

  “I won’t be here, Hester,” Claude said. “I’m hiring a new man at the plant, a junior exec, and I’ll be taking him to dinner. A man reveals himself, you know, in his choice of manner of food and drink. ”

  She didn’t know, but she supposed it was true. For thirty-five years she had waxed floors, pressed draperies, seen to the plentiful supply of snowy white shirts, paired socks, and, in accordance with his wishes, left the running of the business to Claude.

  Hester drifted to sleep over a book that night, and was awakened by the hissing sound of the shower the next morning. Maudie, the cook-maid, was putting breakfast on the table when Hester went into the nook off the kitchen.

  Claude entered, looking fresher and more agile than he had in years. With a nod toward the room in general, he sat down and spread his morning paper.

  “Did you hire the new man, Claude?” Hester asked,

  “What?” he said behind the paper.

  “The fellow you took to dinner.”

  “Oh. Him. No, I don’t think he’ll do. Have to keep looking.”

  “Claude…” she hesitated.

  “Yes? Well, what is it?”

  “Why don’t you bring them home? For dinner. The applicants for the executive position, I mean.”

  The paper rattled as he lowered it. He gave her a brief look, as if she had gone slightly daft. Then he shook out the paper and turned to another page.

  “You might think about it,” she said.

  “Sure,” Claude said. “I will. But it would be a lot of bother.”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Well, all right,” he said shortly. “I told you I’d think about it.” During the morning, Hester kept herself desperately busy plotting a new flower bed. But her thoughts kept returning to Claude’s disdainful impatience with her.

  In their long marriage, disagreements had been inevitable. But never before had Hester been ridden with this feeling of being shut out, of being a mere nothing in Claude’s eyes. The husband she’d known seemed to have passed from her, really, during that frightful heart attack.

  Hester looked toward the house, realizing that Maudie had been calling her name.

  “’Phone for you, Mrs. Bennett,” Maudie said.

  Removing her heavy cotton gloves with their earth stains, Hester went into the house. From the living room came the whirr of the vacuum cleaner under Maudie’s guidance.

  The kitchen extension phone was dangling from its cord, as Maudie had left it.

  Hester lifted the phone and said, “Mrs. Bennett speaking.”

  “You don’t know me,” a thin, taut, male voice said, “and my name’s not important. What I’ve got to say concerns your husband—and a girl.”

  “I don’t believe I understand.”

  “She was my girl. At least I thought so, until a well-heeled old leech came along. ”

  Hester clutched the phone in a nerveless hand. The sound of the vacuum cleaner seemed to swell to an intolerable roar that filled the house, reverberated from the walls.

  “What are you saying?” she said. “How dare you say such a thing!”

  “Okay, lady, keep your head in the sand.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “So don’t. But her name is Marylin Jordan, and the leech is fixing a hideaway for her right now on Taculla Lake. The real cool pad on the point.”

  “You must have made a mistake,” Hester said desperately. “My husband is old and dangerously ill. You’re suspecting the wrong man. ”

  “It’s more than suspicion, lady. She’s a hungry, predatory cat and he’s the rat she’s been looking for.”

  “But he—”

  “You know the saying, lady. No fool like an old one. Maybe he’s just got to burn big before the wick sputters out.”

  Hester closed her eyes, swayed. “This is the cruelest kind of joke.”

  “Joke?” the voice became a shallow, humorless laugh. “Maybe so. On the both of us. ”

  The line went dead. Hester lowered the phone slowly and looked at it as if it were a dream substance that would dissolve from her hand.

  Stirring finally, Hester turned and walked to the living room. Maudie was rattling Venetian blinds with a cleaner attachment and made no sign of hearing when Hester spoke her name in her soft, normal tone.

  “Maudie!” Hester repeated in a louder tone.
>
  An amply-fleshed pouter pigeon, Maudie looked over her shoulder.

  “I have some shopping to do,” Hester said. “I may be gone a good part of the day.”

  Maudie nodded and returned her attention to her work.

  * * * *

  In her light car, Hester drove out of the city without haste. She didn’t enjoy driving. And this was all so silly and useless. She really should turn back, she told herself. But the car seemed to have a will of its own. The city limits dropped behind.

  Taculla Lake was a full hour’s drive, away from civilization, over a secondary road of macadam. While a few families maintained year-round residences there, the lake mainly provided weekend retreats for those who could afford it. The lodges, widely separated to provide privacy, were mostly of an architectural design in keeping with the setting, with vaulted ceilings and long, railed galleries overlooking private docks for cruisers and small boats.

  Hester reached the small village above the lake. There was a large store handling general merchandise, a filling station, a glass and brick building, jarringly out of place, that displayed boats and marine gear. And a small log building with a sign on the roof that read: Hiram Hyder, Real Estate.

  Hester parked her car on the graveled area beside the real estate office. She got out, crossed the small porch, and entered a pleasant office paneled in wormy chestnut. The lone occupant was a heavyset man of middle age. In shirt sleeves, he was bent over a slightly cluttered desk. With the forefinger of his left hand he toyed with the few wisps of hair on an otherwise bald head, while he checked figures on an adding machine tape with a pencil in his right hand.

  As the screen door sighed closed behind Hester, he glanced up, rose immediately, plucked a suit coat from the back of his chair, and put it on.

  “Mr. Hyder?”

  “Yes, what can I do for you?” He came around the desk to offer Hester a chair.

  “I want to inquire about renting a lake house,” she said.

  “My specialty, Mrs…”

  She ignored the hint to give her name. “I have one particular place in mind. The lodge on the point.”

  “Oh, you must mean the Thrasher place. Yes, that’s a rare property to be on the rental market. Don’t get many like that. The Thrashers decided to remain in Mexico City and figure the place would be better off with somebody in it. ” Hiram Hyder spread his pleasantly chubby hands. “Unfortunately, it’s been taken. ”