The Case of the Seven Sneezes

by Anthony Boucher

  It was not so much a sound as a scent that made him look around.

  “A fine guard!” Alys Trent jeered. “I could have slit your throat like that.” She giggled at such a delightfully entertaining notion.

  Fergus grunted and turned back to the fire. In some respects, he reflected, the murderer might be safer company than the white-haired Alys. But his inhospitable reception was futile. Alys needed no invitation to settle herself down by the fire. The glow of its flames flickered warmly on her vivid face, but she kept her heavy black cloth coat wrapped tight around her.

  “You don’t like me, Fergus, do you?”

  Fergus lit a cigarette and said nothing.

  “Why don’t you?” she insisted. “We could have lots of fun. If you liked me.” She edged across the sand closer to him.

  “Look, Miss Trent,” he said slowly, his eyes resolutely fixed on the invisible coastline. “I’ve got troubles enough.”

  “I know why you don’t like me,” she answered herself. “You think I’m marrying Lucas Quincy for his money.”

  “And aren’t you?” he asked indifferently. “And what the hell business is it of mine anyway?”

  “I’m not.” She shook her white head with a vapid sort of leer. “Uh uh. Not just for his money.”

  “All right,” Fergus conceded. “All for Love or The World Well Lost. Very touching. Good night, Miss Trent.”

  “Lukey isn’t old. Not that way he isn’t. It wouldn’t have to be for his money. And when he’s still young that way why shouldn’t he want a change?”

  A green light of interest glinted in Fergus’ eyes. “A change? From what?”

  Alys drew back a little. “I don’t know. A change. Just a change.” She leaned closer again and lowered her voice. “Wouldn’t I be a change?” she murmured huskily.

  Her scent would have been unbearably cloying indoors. Here on the beach it was tantalizing and, Fergus admitted reluctantly, tempting. “The money makes more sense,” he said brusquely.

  “I know.” Her tone was petulant and injured. “That’s what Tommy thinks too because it’s his money.”

  “Whoa there. His money?”

  “Well he always thought maybe … I mean he was Lukey’s sole heir and now Lukey is going to marry me. I might even give him a son. I’ve always wondered if I could do that. I’d like to feel it. I’d like to feel … everything!” She bit off the last word with a kind of harsh delight.

  “You’re dated, darling,” said Fergus.

  “Oh, you … I You’re just as bad as Tommy. And I can’t understand. I’ve always been so nice to Tommy.”

  Fergus looked back in his memory and saw her being ‘nice to Tommy’ on the beach that afternoon and saw Tom’s agonizedly embarrassed face. “All in the family, isn’t it?” he said.

  She laughed. It was a loud shrill laugh with no humor in it. “All in the family. You don’t know how funny that is.”

  “I don’t know everything,” said Fergus. “Yet.”

  She came close again and stared hard into his face. “You know what I saw here on the beach today?”

  “Sure. Blood.”

  Her eyes glistened. “You do know! You are a detective!” She slipped her arm into his. “I like you, Fergus. Let’s have us some fun. I like to have fun. I’ve got to have fun. I’ve got to feel things and know things and … You know what we need?”

  “Fun?” said Fergus.

  “No. What we need right now is a drink.“

  Now this is a remark that Fergus himself has made many times before and since. It is a remark that is undeniably true ninety-nine times out of the hundred. But Fergus had never before felt so forcibly that this was a hundredth time. He opened his mouth to say as much. But his mouth stayed open. His nose wrinkled. The first of what he knew must be seven sneezes shook him in a fierce spasm.

  Alys backed away. “Now you see—” she started to say, but the explosion of the second sneeze drowned her voice. Only after the seventh could she make herself heard. “You see? You’re catching cold out here on this beach. Maybe I will too. What we need’s a drink.”

  “O. K. You go on back to the house and have one.” His voice sounded strained and preoccupied.

  “Uh uh. I brought some. I brought it in a pocket. Singa songa six pensa pocka fulla rye …” She rose, chanting softly to herself, and executed a clumsy dance step or two. Her hands fumbled, but she finally extricated a bottle from her coat pocket and triumphantly held it aloft. The coat fell open as she did so. There was nothing under it but pink flesh, warm in the firelight.

  Chapter 7

  “What did your uncle want?” Tom asked, almost apprehensively, as Janet came out into the hall.

  “Nothing. Don’t take your guard duty so hard. He just wanted to talk to me. Could I have a cigarette? I left mine hidden in a dresser drawer—hangover of my fears of mother.”

  Tom handed her his pack. “You’re a big girl now.”

  “Sure. At the office. But here I keep slipping …” She nodded thanks for the light and blew out a large cloud of smoke. “You know, Uncle Jim is sweet. He’s the most useless man on earth, but he’s sweet. And being so useless does hurt him. He said the damnedest thing just now. He said he wished he was a pair of ragged claws.”

  Tom’s alertness suddenly sharpened. “He said that? Ragged claws scuttling across the floors of something seas?”

  “Yes. But why the ear-pricking? What’s so—”

  “And earlier this evening he was quoting the Fire Sermon from The Waste Land. Your scuttling claws are from Prufrock, I think. Look, darling. If ‘the solution lies in Eliot,’ there’s just one person here who could be indicated by that hint. Your uncle seems steeped in the man, probably because he sees himself in J. Alfred Prufrock. And if—”

  Janet laughed. “We’ve got a professional detective. Leave the deductions to him. It’s too silly to think of Uncle Jim being—”

  “It’s pretty damned silly to think of anyone being … what someone must be, isn’t it? We know that it’s somebody in this house; but look at them all one by one and … Well?”

  “I know.” Her voice was grave. “All the murders I’ve ever read in books, and those crime problems that Ferguson does for the mag—well, they’re fun, and you always know it’s going to be the least suspicious character. But when it’s people you know, and you’re all tied up with them—why then every one of them is the least suspicious character. And that’s the hell of it.”

  Catherine Brainard came out of the bathroom at the end of the hall. She wore a pink and frilly robe over blue figured pajamas; but her pretense of youthfulness slipped several notches without her girdle.

  She looked at the young people and clicked her tongue. “Isn’t it time you went to bed, Janet? I’m sure Tom can guard us more effectively without you to distract him.” She tried to sound arch and playful, but there was worry in her voice.

  “Yes, Mother,” Janet started to say, and then changed her tone sharply. “Damn it, I’m not distracting Tom, and if I want to stay out here, I’ll—”

  “Janet! How can you stand there and use such language to your own Mother?”

  “Sorry, Mother. The rudeness was accidental. I simply mean that I’m an independent individual, and that my comings and goings are my own concern.”

  “On a night like this, in this situation, I don’t think anyone’s comings and goings are their own concern. We’ll all be much better off in bed.”

  “I’ll go, Mother, as soon as I’m through talking with Tom.”

  “I am not going to discuss it any further, Janet,” said Mrs. Brainard firmly. “I’m sure I don’t understand why my own child should turn on me like this. But we won’t talk about it any more tonight. Good night, Janet.” She went to the master bedroom and tried the door, but it did not open. She tapped on it and called, “Horace!”

  “Who the devil’s there?” Horace Brainard snapped from inside.

  “It’s me. Catherine.”

  “And how
do I know that?”

  Mrs. Brainard gasped and placed a fluttering hand on her bosom. “Don’t you know your own wife, Horace?”

  “No,” said Horace Brainard flatly.

  “It is Mrs. Brainard, sir,” said Tom, trying hard to keep from laughing. “I’m still out here on watch. You’re quite safe, Uncle Horace.”

  There were shuffling footsteps. The lock clicked, then instantly turned back. “No,” the voice decided. “If you can imitate Catherine’s voice, you can imitate Tom’s.”

  “And mine?” asked Janet.

  “And yours. I mean, hers.” They heard the footsteps moving away from the door. “I’m staying in bed,” the voice announced from farther off.

  “Three Blind Mice!” Tom cried in sudden triumph.

  “What on earth … !” Mrs. Brainard gasped.

  “Look. This murderer your husband’s so afraid of might imitate any one of our voices, but he certainly can’t sing rounds with himself. You start, Aunt Catherine, then I’ll come in, then Janet.”

  “I never heard of such a thing! To be forced to sing rounds to get into my own bedroom … !” Mrs. Brainard controlled herself with a strenuous effort and took up a stance like a local celebrity giving a recital before the Tuesday Morning Club. You could all but see the book of words in her hands.

  “Three blind mice,” she began, shrill and tuneless: “three blind mice … See how they run; see how they run …”

  “Three blind mice …” Tom followed in an unkeyed bass rumble, and Janet joined in at her turn with the only passable tune of the trio. They all sang pianissimo, but the discord was nonetheless impressive. There were sounds of restless stirring in the other rooms, rustlings of curiosity that dared not open the door to gratify itself.

  It was Mrs. Brainard who first reached the fateful words. “She cut off their tails,” she intoned, “with a…” And there she broke. “A carving knife,” she said unsinging. “With a carving knife …”

  Horace Brainard banged the door open. “For God’s sake come in, Catherine! Do you have to stand out there caterwauling all night?”

  “I’m sorry, Horace. But Tom thought it was the only way to prove to you that I was me. I mean that it was I. I mean—”

  “Tom thought! Tom thought! If Tom knows so damned much, maybe he can tell me …” He hesitated. His eyes lingered reflectively on his wife, and his fingers twitched at the little gray mustache. “Catherine. If that O’Breen lout is keeping watch tonight, he won’t be using his bed. Do you think you might like to … ?”

  “Why Horace!” Mrs. Brainard tittered. “Are you afraid to sleep with me?”

  “Afraid? Good God, no! I merely thought that it would fit in better with this ridiculous scheme of observation and segregation if …”

  Mrs. Brainard pushed past him into the room. “Horace Brainard, you’re a fool.” It was not said jestingly. “Good night, children. And Janet: Go to bed.”

  Horace Brainard said nothing. He closed the door slowly and tried it several times after locking it.

  “Funny …” said Tom.

  “Father is getting old. You worry when you get old.”

  “But why? Why should he be afraid of your mother of all people? As I understand it, they’re the only ones who couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with Martha Stanhope’s death.”

  “But of course they could, if you want to look at it that way. They— But that’s right. You wouldn’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “It was always a standing joke in the family, but I don’t think they ever told anybody else. It was a smart gag. They wanted to get away from the wedding party for their first night, and they were afraid somebody might track them down. So they tried a—I suppose you could call it a Purloined Letter stunt. They took a room, under assumed names, at the De la Playa, the very hotel they knew the wedding party was going to, and the last place on earth where anybody’d look for them.”

  “But wouldn’t the police have—No, that’s right. There was only the most routine once-over-lightly on that case.”

  “But of course,” Janet hurried on, “they must have been together all that night and Father would know that. He’s just nervous, that’s it. And aren’t we all?”

  “We are,” said Tom. “Even the staunch and loyal guards. And now you’d better get to sleep. Be a good girl like Mama says.”

  “I was stupid about that, wasn’t I? Making a scene like that … Please don’t think I’m one of these hysterical women.”

  “I don’t.”

  “It’s just that tonight everything’s so …”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. ’Night.”

  “Oh, and remind me to ask you some time—”

  “What?” Janet hesitated with her hand on the doorknob.

  “I asked you a question at a party five years ago. We were pretty young then to talk about engagements. We called it going steady.”

  Her voice was low. “I remember.”

  “I wondered if five years was time enough for you to make up your mind.”

  “I haven’t got a mind tonight. No, please Tom, don’t look crushed. I didn’t mean it to sound that way. Any more than I meant to snap at Mother. But tonight … A week ago everything was so simple. I had my life all planned out, neat and accurate. And now I’m all mixed up and twisted and I don’t know what I feel about people and I don’t even know if I’ll see them alive in the morning.”

  Tom took her hand gently. “But Janet dear—”

  “No, Tom. It’s not fair. Things I say tonight don’t mean anything … Your hair’s still curly, isn’t it? And lots of it. I was afraid—you must be almost thirty now.”

  “December and May,” Tom murmured quizzically.

  He lifted her hand to his lips, but she withdrew it hastily. “No, darling. Tomorrow. Some time when there’s sunlight and we know what’s happening … Not now. Good night.”

  Fergus let only a small trickle of the whisky course down his throat, but he pantomimed a gargantuan gulp. Alys snatched the bottle back and downed an eager quick one, her third since she had made the suggestion. The fire and the whisky were warming; she apparently saw no reason to close her gaping coat.

  “Like me any better now?”

  “Sure,” said Fergus disinterestedly. “You’re swell.”

  “Then for God’s sake act like it.” She snuggled close to him. The coat was soft and smooth under his hand, which he was damned careful to keep on the cloth.

  Alys moaned blissfully. “This is exciting … !” she murmured. “This is even better than the radio.”

  “The radio? Madam, I resent that comparison.”

  “You know what I mean. The newscasts. Life’s thrilling again now. I remember when I was a little girl … Only you had to read about it the next day then. Now you hear all about it right away. And it makes you feel all … !” She ended the sentence with a little voluptuous shudder.

  “Fun and games,” said Fergus.

  “Hitler knows,” she went on. “That’s how people have to live. Dangerously. It makes you come all alive. You go along quietly and peacefully and goodly and you aren’t really living. You’re just a vejable.”

  “A what?”

  “A vejable. You know, like spintch.”

  “Make mine broccoli.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me.”

  “Of you? No, darling.” Fergus’ voice was quite serious. “I don’t think you’re funny.”

  “Good. Only,” she added perversely, “I am funny. I live … oh, I don’t know how to say it … I live deeper than other people. I feel things more. And it takes deep things to make me excited. Like …” She gestured at the sand.

  “Blood,” said Fergus. “Blut und Boden …”

  She smiled to herself. “I know a better Nazi quotation than that: Woman is the relaxation of the warrior. And isn’t a detective a kind of a warrior?”

  Fergus was noncommittal. He said, “Hm.”

  “On
ly it’s a shame to go and catch murderers. They make life so exciting. I like this man, whoever he is. If I knew which one he was, I’d go up to him and I’d say, ‘Here!’”

  “Here?”

  “‘Here I am!’ And it’d be new and thrilling and wonderful. I’ve never been to bed with a murderer. At least I don’t think so.”

  “You never know,” said Fergus. His hand had slipped off the cloth, and it bothered him.

  “I think I’d know, though. It’d feel different … I’ve never been to bed with a detective either,” she added.

  Your hand has notions of its own. You can deplore its actions, but not restrain them. “Haven’t you?”

  “Or should I take the murderer? You know a lot about both. Which is better?”

  “That isn’t exactly the angle I know them from … How’s about another drink?”

  Again Alys gulped eagerly and again Fergus faked a magnificent swallow. “Why not try the murderer?” he asked. “If you know who he is. I’ll always be around. You may not have so many more chances at him.”

  Her answer was to press a whisky-wet mouth against his. “I like you,” she whispered.

  “You’re bluffing, toots. You’ve got to take me because you don’t know who killed Martha Stanhope.”

  She drew back, rye-dignified and resentful. “Maybe I don’t. I was just a lilgirl then. But I know who killed Valentino.”

  “Miss Paris’ cat?”

  “I was at that party. ’N’ I saw it. It was on the back porch. It was just one quick cut cause the knife was sharp and it bled on the porch. It was painted all white the porch and there were these red spots and they steamed-like and it made me feel … like I feel now,” she ended in a throaty whisper. She pressed her open mouth against Fergus’ and moved his hand to where it pleased her better.

  “Who?” he whispered in the first possible pause. “Who was it?”

  “Let’s have fun,” she gasped. “Afterwards … Tell you afterwards …”

  Fire and warmth and closeness. Black cloth and pink flesh. Night and danger and tension. Heavy breasts that half-perceptibly sagged with unvirginal promise. Rye-sweet lips demandingly parted. White hair gleaming in the firelight and the writhing body beneath it violating its whiteness.