But he kept the capsule always in his pocket. He would touch it frequently during the day. It became the one thing that was on his side.
And then the opportunity came. Harry Lund knew that only a man capable of daring and swift decision would have seen it as such. But then he was possessed of both qualities. One evening Norma had asked him to go round to her sister’s to borrow a book she wanted. Just before he was about to leave, she had an attack.
Epinephrine! As he looked down at his wife, convulsively gasping for breath in the bed, the name of the drug prescribed by Dr. Peterson seemed to quiver between him and Norma in great red letters. Norma kept ampoules of epinephrine and a hypodermic always by her bedside. Proud of her knowledgeability, she had told Dr. Peterson that, if she felt a new attack coming on, she would administer the injection herself. A double dose of epinephrine would certainly kill even Norma.
Who could be suspicious if his wife, alone in the room, had tried to counter an attack and had inadvertently overdosed herself? This was using drugs, but it was using them with a difference—creatively.
His fine eyes bright with self-approval, Harry Lund filled the hypodermic from two ampoules. Norma was in a half-coma. She seemed barely conscious of what was happening as he administered the injection.
Scrupulously Harry Lund wiped his fingerprints from the two empty ampoules and from the syringe. Holding the ampoules in his handkerchief, he brought them in contact with the limp fingertips of Norma’s left hand and then let them fall to the floor. With the handkerchief, too, he squeezed the syringe into Norma’s right hand and left it where it dropped.
Get out quickly. That was all he had to do, just in case there might be some question about the time of death. Hurry over to Ella’s house for a chat about the book Norma wanted.
When he shut the bedroom door, he seemed to be shutting a door forever on his misunderstood past.
Harry had a pleasant talk with Ella, extended through a cup of coffee and a piece of homemade cake. He knew Norma’s sister had never liked him, but that day he was so charming that he could see her visibly thaw.
With the book under his arm, he started back to the drug store. He had given the epinephrine plenty of time. During the next few days, he would need to do some clever acting, but Harry Lund was not worried. His exhibition with Ella had been flawless. He had always known that, if he had wanted to, he could have made a great success on the stage.
Already, as he climbed the drab stairs to the apartment, he had instinctively arranged his face for its necessary expression—the expression of a husband overwhelmed by the discovery of his wife’s lifeless body. He was so preoccupied rehearsing the phrases he would use over the phone to Dr. Peterson that he had opened the door and stepped into the bedroom before he was conscious of anything unusual.
Then, as he looked across at the bed, all traces of reality seemed to be sucked out of the world. Because Frances was there. He saw her standing, young, silent, very stiff, at the foot of the bed. She was watching Norma, who lay prostrate under the huddled bedclothes.
As he entered, Frances turned and looked at him. The look was one of unspeakable horror and disgust. He shook himself, staring stupidly. This was in his mind, some vile, cruel trick played by a treacherous imagination.
“Welcome home.” Norma’s voice sounded from the bed, cracked and weak, but with a ghost of its sarcasm. “Your girl friend just arrived. You poor fool, Harry Lund. Thought I didn’t know about her, didn’t you? I’ve known for weeks. A friend of Ella’s saw you together in a restaurant. It was easy enough to find out her name, where she lived.”
The words fell on him like hammer blows. But it was the horror of Norma’s being alive which completed his demoralization. He had pumped enough epinephrine into her to kill anybody. Could nothing kill her? His knees were like water. He tried to grope for some pattern—anything to remove this feeling of helplessness.
Norma’s black eyes were watching him sardonically. “I telephoned this poor girl because I thought I should explain. She’s not to blame, of course. Used an assumed name, didn’t you? Told her you were a widower.” A dreadful travesty of the hoarse laugh came. “Guess you thought you were—almost.”
She shifted her gaze to the white, rigid Frances. “Three times he tried. First he fixed the brakes of the car. Then he set fire to the house. And now—the epinephrine. He put in a lot of work to get you. You should be flattered.”
Harry Lund swung to Frances. Without any control, words spilled out. “Frances, listen to me. Please listen. It isn’t true. I didn’t …”
The icy contempt in her eyes checked him. There was a moment of silence, as awful to Harry Lund as a bomb explosion. Frances turned and walked to the telephone.
Her voice seemed to surge up through the silence. “The police. Get me the police.” And then: “Come quickly. There’s been an attempted murder at …”
Despair brought Harry Lund absolute clarity. He saw, in all its truth, how pitifully bungled had been his great design. He had lost his car, his house, and now he had lost his girl. The police inevitably would trace the damning connection between the three “accidents.” Norma was there as a living testimony against him and, with tormenting irony, Frances would be her witness.
His predicament was without remedy. Somehow, its enormity destroyed in him the worm of fear. His plan had been a magnificent failure. Perhaps that was what his destiny had always been. A magnificent failure. Hadn’t all the outstanding figures of tragedy been overwhelmed in the closing scene?
The actor in him rose to its greatest moment. Frances would see him, at least once, as he really was. He felt exalted, high above the pettiness of Harry Lund, druggist. His hand moved to his pocket and closed around the cyanide capsule.
He walked nonchalantly to the bathroom, entered it, and locked the door.
Norma Lund bustled cheerfully around the drug store, which was now entirely her own. Although she had been bored with her husband for years, some vestige of pity for him still remained. But Norma was a sensible woman with little sympathy for a fool. And that had been Harry’s trouble. He had always been a fool.
True, she’d had her own moments of folly. She had only realized that her husband had fixed the brakes a few seconds before the car had toppled over the ravine. Her foolishness had almost cost her her life then. But, once she knew he had tried to kill her and would almost certainly try again, she had made no mistake.
She had rather enjoyed lying in bed, bullying him and keeping him from seeing that girl. It served him right. Later, when she had tasted the sleeping draught in the hot milk, it had been simple to take amphetamine as an antidote in the bathroom. While she pretended sleep she had watched and almost admired Harry’s device of the candle and the saturated moss. She had felt a certain pleasure in seeing his house burn, too.
Perhaps she should have gone to the police then. It had been a risk, she supposed, to carry the farce on longer. But, because Harry was a fool, it had not been a dangerous one. The first sham heart attack, artificially induced by digitalis, had fooled even Dr. Peterson. The second attack, which had been sheer acting coupled with the planted props of the hypodermic and the epinephrine ampoules filled with sterile water, had seemed to her too obvious a trap even for Harry. But he had lumbered into it like an ox and provided enough evidence to convict him a dozen times over.
Mrs. Grant came into the store for a toothbrush and a bottle of mouthwash. She greeted Norma warmly. Since Harry’s suicide, everyone had been particularly kind.
While she reached for the mouthwash, Norma was wondering whether Harry would have killed himself if Frances had not been present during those final moments of his humiliation. Perhaps, by introducing Frances, she had in a way turned from murderee to murderer.
But it was foolish to speculate. Things had gone well for her.
Mrs. Grant was saying: “It’s really wonderful the way you manage to run this place all by yourself.”
“I do my best.” Norma Lund bri
skly wrapped up the mouthwash. “But sometimes it’s hard for a woman all on her own….”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick, and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966), Martha Mott Kelley (1906–2005), and Mary Louise White Aswell (1902–1984) wrote detective fiction. Most of the stories were written together by Webb and Wheeler, or by Wheeler alone. Their best-known creation is amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1961 by Patrick Quentin
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5147-7
This 2018 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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PATRICK QUENTIN
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