Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense

by Armstrong Charlotte

  “Shall I name it for you? To the penny?” Mitch was sweating. “Four thousand six hundred and fourteen dollars, and sixty-one cents,” he said slowly and carefully.

  “Right,” snapped the Lieutenant and his eyes came up, wide-open and baleful on Julius Maxwell.

  But Mitch Brown was not heeding and felt no triumph. “Natalie,” he said, “I’m sorry. I wanted to give you a break. I didn’t know what the trouble was. I wish you could have told me.”

  Her newly reddened lips were trembling.

  “Not so I could buy off the consequences,” Mitch said. “I’d have called the police. But I would have listened.”

  Natalie put her blonde head down on the red-checked tablecloth where it had once rested before. “I didn’t mean to do it,” she sobbed. “But he kept at me, Joe did. Until I couldn’t take any more.”

  Julius Maxwell, who had been thinking about evidence, said too late, “Shut up!”

  The Lieutenant went for the phone.

  Mitch sat there, quiet now. The woman was weeping. Maxwell said in a cold, severe way, “Natalie, if you . . .” He drew away from contamination. He was going to pretend ignorance.

  But she cried out, “You shut up! You shut up! I’ve told you and told you and you never even tried to understand. You said, give Joe a thousand dollars. He’d go away. You said that’s all he wanted. You wouldn’t even listen to what I was going through, and Joe talking, talking, about our baby that was dead . . . starved, Joe said, because she had no mother. My baby,” she shrieked, “that you wouldn’t have, because she wasn’t yours.”

  Now her pink-painted fingernails clawed at her scalp and the rings on her fingers were tangled in her hair. “I’m sorry,” she wept. “I never meant to make the gun go off. I just wanted to stop him. I just couldn’t take any more. He was killing me . . . driving me crazy . . . and money wouldn’t stop him.”

  Mitch’s heart was heavy for her. “Didn’t you know what matters?” he barked at Maxwell. “Did you think it was mink, diamonds—that stuff?”

  “The child died,” said Julius Maxwell, “of natural causes.”

  “Yes, he thought it was mink,” screamed Natalie. “And oh, my God . . . it was! I know that now. So he said he would fix it—but he can’t fix what I know, and I hope to die.”

  Then she lay silent, as if already dead, across the red-checked tablecloth.

  Julius Maxwell’s face was losing color as the policeman came back and murmured, “Have to wait.” But the Lieutenant was uneasy. “Say, Brown,” he said. “you can remember a row of six figures for six weeks? You a mathematical genius or something? You got what they call a photographic memory?”

  Mitch felt his brain stir. He said lightly, “It stuck in my mind. First place, it repeats. You see that? 461-461. To me that’s an awful lot of money.”

  “To me too,” the Lieutenant said. “Everybody in here heard what she said, I guess.”

  “Sure, heard her confess and implicate him as the accessory. Take a look at Toby, for instance. He’s had it. There’s going to be plenty of evidence.”

  The Lieutenant looked down upon the ruin of the Maxwells. “Guess so,” he said tightly.

  Later that night Mitch Brown was sitting up to a strange bar. He said to the strange bartender, “Say you ever know that the 17th of March is not Saint Patrick’s birthday?”

  “What d’ya know?” the bartender murmured politely.

  “Nope. It’s the day he died,” said Mitch. “I write, see? So I read. Bits of information like that stick in my mind. I’ve got no memory for figures and yet . . . Know the year Saint Patrick died? It was the year 461.”

  “That so?” said the bartender.

  “You take 461 twice and put the decimal in the right place. Of course that’s not very believable,” Mitch said, “although it really happened—on Saint Patrick’s Day in the morning. How come I knew—me a person who doesn’t always read the newspaper—the year Saint Patrick died? Well, a fellow doesn’t want to be made a fool of, does he? And probable is probable and improbable is improbable—but it’s all we’ve got to go on sometimes. But I’ll tell you something,” Mitch pounded the bar. “Money couldn’t have bought it.”

  The bartender said soothingly, “I guess not, Mac.”

  Mystery writer Jan Burke has praised Armstrong’s writing, characterizing it as “suburban noir.” This story may contain less noir or gothic elements than suburban, but it pleases nonetheless with its over the fence and kitchen table conversations and misunderstandings. As usual, Armstrong’s keen eye for the less obvious description compels readers to, as the Greeks say, “keep your eyes to the fourteen” as well. This love-me-respect-my-dog story appeared in EQMM in 1969.

  THE LIGHT NEXT DOOR

  Having loafed all morning, Howard Lamboy was improving the holiday afternoon, but Miggs, the dog, thought that raking leaves in the back yard was a jolly game, and a part of the fun for him was to scatter all the piles. After much haranguing, and gesturing with the rake, Howard had just conceded that he was never going to get anywhere until Miggs was banished indoors. He had his hand in the dog’s collar when the pouched face of his neighbor poked around the back corner of the garage. It was followed by the thin body, which stationed itself on the other side of the knee-high hedge.

  “Hi,” said Ralph Sidwell, with his usual gloomy diffidence.

  “Oh, hi, Ralph,” said Howard. “How’s every little thing?” Then he bit his tongue, because the man was a bridegroom, and his bride, whatever else, was certainly not little; and while Howard was filled with normal human curiosity he hadn’t meant to be crude.

  “Fine,” said Ralph absently. “Say, by the way, that dog of yours made off with a pillow from my place. Seen any traces?”

  “What?” Miggs was writhing, head to tip of tail, like a line of light

  on choppy water. Howard let him go and the dog gamboled over to the hedge to sniff welcome. The neighbor looked sourly down at the Dalmatian.

  “Now, what’s all this?” said Howard genially. “What the devil would Miggs want with a pillow? He’s got a pillow. No, I haven’t seen any traces. What do you mean?”

  “Francine,” said Ralph coldly, “put a bed pillow out on the back balcony to air and it fell off the railing. Your dog hauled it away.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Howard. “Where is it?”

  “That’s what I was asking you.”

  “Bed pillow?” Howard was incredulous. “I doubt he’d bury a thing like that, you know.”

  “Well, it’s gone,” said Ralph gruffly.

  “Well, I’m very sorry,” said Howard, “but I don’t know a thing about it and neither does my dog.”

  “How do you know he doesn’t?” said Ralph. “My wife saw him.”

  “She recognized him?” Howard was stiff.

  “Black and white spots,” said Ralph in triumph.

  “Well, well! Only black and white dog in the world, eh? I can tell

  you, Miggs didn’t bring any bed pillow home, and you tell me where else he would have brought it.”

  “He did something with it,” said Ralph stubbornly.

  “I don’t think so,” said Howard. “Excuse us, please?”

  He grabbed the dog’s collar again and dragged Miggs off to the kitchen door.

  “What’s the matter?” said Stella.

  “Oh, boy!” said Howard eloquently.

  After a while he told her.

  “Okay,” Stella said, “Miggs didn’t do it. So it’s a mistake. But, Howard, what makes you so mad?”

  “Aw, it was his attitude.”

  “In what way?”

  “So damned unreasonable.”

  “Listen, he’s only been married two days,” said Stella. “It’s whatever her little heart desires, for gosh sakes.”

  “Fine way she’s setting up diplomatic relations.”

  But Stella said, “A second marriage, at their ages, is probably pretty upsetting. Have a little human understanding.”


  “Well, it’s Miggs I understand,” said Howard. “I know him better, for one thing.”

  The fact was, he didn’t know Ralph Sidwell at all. Howard was 44 years old and his neighbor must be in his middle fifties. Howard preferred to think of this as a whole other generation. Ralph and his first wife, Milly, had been living next door when the Lamboys moved in eight years ago. While the Sidwells had not called, they had been pleasant enough over-the-fence; but the relationship had never become more than a hot-enough-for-you or sure-need-rain sort of thing.

  Milly Sidwell, a personality of no apparent force, had taken a notion to die in the distance, having succumbed, according to the newspaper, while visiting relatives in Ohio. When the widower had returned, without a wife or her body to bury here, the Lamboys had bestirred themselves to make a condolence call. This had evidently either surprised or alarmed the man to the point of striking him dumb. It hadn’t been a very satisfactory occasion.

  Later Stella had asked him over to dinner, three separate times, which invitations Ralph had refused, as if he couldn’t believe his ears, and they must be mad. So the Lamboys had given up. For the last three years Ralph Sidwell had lived alone, next door, taking his meals out somewhere, coming and going with a minimum of contact. The Lamboys, being involved in warm and roaring communication with their neighbors on the other side, didn’t miss what they had never had.

  Now, suddenly, Ralph had taken unto himself a second wife.

  The Lamboys had not been invited to the wedding which, indeed, scarcely seemed to have been a social occasion. Wednesday morning (only yesterday), Ralph had been standing in his own driveway when Howard drove out; Ralph had hailed him, and had announced, rather stiffly, that he had been married on his lunch hour the day before. He wanted the Lamboys to meet the bride.

  Howard had shut off his motor and got out of the car in honor of the news. (The least he could do!) Stella had come running out in her morning garb of robe and apron, and Francine Sidwell—the widow Noble, that was—had come out of her kitchen to be presented.

  She had been dressed neatly. (Stella confessed later that she had felt mortified, herself.) But there was no better word for Francine than “fat”—unless it was “enormous.”

  Stella reported that after Howard had driven off to his office they had told her that they had first met in a laundromat. “She’s a marvelous cook,” Ralph had said, and that was the end of the conversation.

  Although Stella said mischievously that probably Ralph only wanted to make sure they didn’t think he was living in sin, she was prepared to accept and adopt a neighborly approach. But it was only right to let them severely alone for “a while”—a period that would correspond to the honeymoon they evidently were not going on.

  This was only Thursday. Howard was thinking, with human understanding, that a second “honeymoon” might not be all honey when Miggs, that lovable clown, placed his jaw in warm devotion on Howard’s ankle. “That’s my fella,” said Howard. “Love me, love my dog.”

  This wasn’t what he meant. He didn’t expect the Sidwells to love him, but they ought to notice what he loved.

  On Saturday, Howard was out, moseying along the line of the scraggly hedge between the lots and wondering what the hedge disliked about its situation, when Ralph Sidwell came out of his own back door, marching, to accost him.

  “Now,” he said, with no other preliminary, “you are going to have to tie that dog up.” He pointed at Miggs, whose name he ought to know perfectly well, with a shaking finger. “We have a right,” he sputtered, “to hang anything we like on our own clothesline and have it safe. Your dog—”

  “His name,” said Howard coolly, “is Miggs.”

  “Your stupid animal,” said Ralph, “has taken my great-grand-mother’s patchwork quilt! And that’s a priceless heirloom! It can’t be replaced.” He was shouting. “My great-grandmother made it then she was a girl!”

  “Hold it,” said Howard. “Now calm down, will you?”

  “By hand!” yelled the neighbor.

  “Listen, I’m sure she did,” said Howard. “But what has that got to do with Miggs? He wouldn’t take quilt off your clothesline.”

  “If he didn’t, who did?”

  “How would I know? I suppose your wife saw him again? She must have spots before her eyes.”

  “Don’t you insult my wife!”

  “Then quit insulting my dog.”

  “Where is my great-grandmother’s quilt?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea and I couldn’t care less!”

  Miggs, getting into the spirit of things, began to growl. Stella came running out of the house. “What are you bellowing about?”

  By now Howard was speechless. Ralph was still pointing at Miggs.

  “Oh, honey?” Out of the back door of the other house (identical in floor plan except that right was left) came the bride. Francine was hurrying and her flesh jiggled and bounced. She had in her arms a patchwork quilt, all blues and whites and greens. “Oh, honey,” she panted. “Look, I found it. It’s all right, I found it.”

  “Well!” said Ralph hotly. He turned and gave Howard a hard glare. The look said: Don’t you dare say I shouldn’t have been so mad at you, because I am still mad.

  Miggs, who understood hostility in every language, even the silent ones, barked, and Francine clutched the quilt and began to walk backward. (Was she afraid?) Howard rose in his wrath and simply strode past the hedge. “Let me see that,” he demanded.

  Francine screamed lightly.

  “Hey, Miggs, whoa!” cried Stella, grabbing the dog’s collar and hanging on with all her weight.

  Ralph Sidwell said, “Don’t touch it. That’s mine.”

  “Yours, your great-grandmother,” yelled Howard. “You show me my dog’s toothmarks or his claw prints or any evidence—” He snatched up the quilt by a corner. It was a lovely old thing, on the fragile side. Francine kept backing away, and Howard had to let go to keep from tearing the treasure. “For your information,” he howled, “my dog doesn’t eat tomatoes.”

  “Okay, I apologize,” Ralph screeched, as angrily as he could.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Francine was saying to her bridegroom. (She was afraid?) “Oh, listen, Mrs. Lamboy, I’m so sorry—”

  Stella bent her head as if she were the Queen and Francine the commoner. “Come, Miggs. Come, Howard,” she said, rounding up her own fierce creatures.

  They persuaded Miggs into the house. Howard flung himself down in his den and poured some beer and did it wrong and caused too big a head and swore and blew out his breath in a long “Whew!” The dog lay down at his feet and thumped the floor with his tail, waiting for praise. “That’s right, pal,” said Howard. “You didn’t do it, did you? Darn idiots!”

  Stella was cooling off, by herself, in the kitchen, and it didn’t take her long. She came in and said, “We’re not going to have this, you know.”

  “Darned right.”

  “I mean we’re not going to have any feud on,” she said grimly. “Of all the miserable things in this world a feud with neighbors is the stupidest. And we are not going to have one.”

  “Okay. Let them lay off my dog.”

  “What’s this ‘my dog’ all the time?” she said. “He’s my dog too, and I love him dearly, and I know he’s not guilty, as well as you do. But I am not going to get into a silly fight with neighbors. Ralph apologized.”

  “Yeah, some apology,” Howard scoffed. But he saw her point. He wasn’t really as childish as this. So it was agreed that Stella would call on her neighbor, as soon as seemed correct, and—well, just do the right thing and be neighborly.

  So on Monday morning, Howard being at work, Stella made a luscious pie. She phoned Mrs. Sidwell and announced that she would like to come over and call. Would three o’clock be all right? Francine, in a fluster, said it would, of course.

  So Stella dressed herself nicely, but not too formally, and went down her own front walk and around on the publi
c sidewalk to the neighbor’s walk and up to their front door and rang the bell. She had been in this house only once before. She had no way to assess what changes the new mistress may have made in the décor or the atmosphere. The house was neat to the point of seeming bare. It “felt” like a man’s house. But Ralph was not there.

  Francine had dressed herself more or less “up” for company. She made exclamations over the high pie, delicate under its burden of whipped cream. She took Stella into the dining room and produced coffee with which she served generous portions of the peace offering. Stella, eating her own pie (and she wished she didn’t have to because she did count calories), made the normal approaches.

  The weather. Bright days. Cool nights. How long the Lamboys had lived here. That they had a daughter away at college. Just the one child. That the houses were small but comfortable, weren’t they? A development, yes. You would hardly know any more that they were all alike, what with each owner using paint and trellis, shrub and vine, in an individual way. This had always delighted Stella. But Francine wanted, she said, the recipe.

  Oh? Stella recited the recipe for her pie. And how did Mrs. Sidwell like the neighborhood?

  Well, Francine thought it was very nice and the house was very nice and the market was very convenient and the pie was delicious! Oh, yes, she had been a widow for some years, all alone, yes, and she was enjoying this pie. Would Mrs. Lamboy take another piece? No? Then Mrs. Sidwell would.

  Stella, smiling and murmuring, watched and listened and thought to herself: No wonder she’s so fat! She also was getting a strange impression that the woman beside her was, in truth, a gaunt starving creature, and the flesh in which she was wrapped was a blanket to keep cold bones from shaking apart—an insulation to keep fine drawn nerves from splitting and shattering at the slightest sensation. But everything was going smoothly, on the surface, so Stella brought up the matter of the quilt.

  She was so glad it had been neither lost nor damaged.

  Francine said, “I washed and ironed it and it’s as good as new.”

  This seemed to Stella to be an odd way to speak of an antique, but she went on to deplore any misunderstanding about the dog. “We know his habits so well, you see. He is really a harmless old fellow. Wonderful with children. Oh, he loves everybody, including burglars, I’m afraid. Of course, maybe you are a cat person? I seem to remember Mrs. Sid- Oh, I’m sorry.”