100 Malicious Little Mysteries

by Isaac Asimov

  “Well,” Howard began, settling comfortably into his classroom manner, “although Father became quite a wealthy man in his lifetime, he always retained a strong Yankee fear of the corrupting influence of money not earned. He felt that Mother spoiled me and that if he left the money to her outright she’d turn it over to me immediately and I’d become a wastrel. And he may have been right, you know. Dear Mother, she found it very hard to deny me anything. At any rate. Father made out a will leaving the money in trust, allowing Mother only a monthly income until she should reach the age of sixty-five.”

  “Sixty-five?” Paula echoed stupidly.

  “I don’t know why sixty-five exactly. Perhaps he felt that by that time I’d be forty and have acquired the habit of earning my own keep.”

  “But—” Paula was struggling to make sense of Howard’s words. “But how could he be sure she’d live to be sixty-five?”

  “He couldn’t, of course. And,” he added with a sigh, “as it turned out, she didn’t.”

  Paula closed her eyes. She could hardly bring herself to ask it. “What... what happens to the money now?”

  “Oh... that.” Howard frowned in an effort to recall the exact wording. “In the event of her death before attaining the age of sixty-five,” he recited with maddening accuracy, “the money automatically goes to the college.” Here he permitted himself a dignified chuckle. “Like so many people with very little formal schooling, Father had the greatest respect for institutions of higher learning.”

  Up to this point Howard had fastidiously avoided looking directly at his wife, on the charitable assumption that her initial excessive outburst had been as embarrassing to her as it was to him. As he turned to face her now, he was shocked to see the crushing effect his words had been having on her.

  “Oh, my dear Paula,” he hastened to reassure her. “Surely you don’t think I mind about the money? How can I miss something I’ve never had? We lived very frugally even when Father was alive. Why, I have my work, a good wife, our little home — what more could I possibly want? You’ll see, my dear, our life will go on quite as usual. Except that poor Mother is no longer with us, nothing has changed at all.”

  Knit One, Purl Two...

  by Thomasina Weber

  Flo Connelly put her lunch wrappings in the large tote bag beside her camp stool. “You’d think they would have a garbage can here,” she said to her new acquaintance of the morning.

  “I don’t think they encourage eating in the courthouse corridors,” replied Mrs. Frisbee.

  “Tough. I’ve attended every hearing held in this courthouse, and if you’re not up front when they unlock the doors after lunch, you don’t get a seat.”

  “I had no idea so many people attended preliminary hearings,” said Mrs. Frisbee.

  “They don’t always. But for one like this, where the sweet innocent broad knocks off her husband, they come to hear the dirt.”

  Mrs. Frisbee moved slightly away from the smaller woman. “They don’t know for sure that Delcey Clark killed her husband,” she said.

  Flo Connelly laughed as she extracted from her bag a pair of knitting needles with five inches of a blue, unidentifiable something on them. “All you gotta do is look at that wide-eyed baby face and that shiny red hair, and you can see it right off. What would she want with a sick, crabby old husband other than his money?”

  “How could a young girl like that kill a sick old man?”

  Flo’s knitting needles moved swiftly. “How could a young girl like that marry a sick old man in the first place?”

  “Some people are dedicated to helping others.”

  “Horsefeathers.”

  Mrs. Frisbee clucked. “You seem to lack compassion, my dear.”

  Flo looked at the woman scornfully. “And you seem to be the kind who judges a book by its cover.”

  “A capacity for love can never be concealed.”

  Amen, thought Flo, returning to her knitting. The corridor was beginning to fill up. The people were forming a line along the wall, but new arrivals were congregating in little knots of two or three beside the line and although they seemed engrossed in conversation, their feet were edging toward the doors. Pointed looks, like poisoned darts, were directed at them by those in line, but no one challenged them.

  Flo was interestedly watching the approach of one, a sweating man in dark trousers, dirty white shirt, gaping shoes minus laces and no socks. By the time he had inched up to Flo, she was ready for him.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded loudly.

  “I’m in line, just like you,” he said.

  “Oh, no, you’re not. You got here seventeen minutes ago and you belong twelfth from the end of the line, which is about fifty feet south of here.”

  “Who died and made you boss, sister?”

  She stood up, her eyes on a level with his third shirt button. Shielded from the others by his broad body, Flo lightly pressed the point of her knitting needle against his abdomen. “If I were you, mister, I’d go to the end of the line.” He went to the end of the line.

  Twenty minutes before opening time, Flo packed her knitting and her camp stool in the tote bag and turned to face the doors. As if an invisible whistle had sounded, the mob began to move forward until it was a solid unit pushing ahead with nowhere to go.

  “Mercy’s sakes,” gasped Mrs. Frisbee, dismayed at the crush, “you’d think they were giving away something free!”

  When the doors were finally opened, Flo made good use of her elbows, netting herself and Mrs. Frisbee seats in the third of the four rows of chairs.

  “Were you here this morning?” asked the woman on Flo’s other side. She was fat with kinky white hair, wearing a straining green shift with a huge yellow daisy blooming obscenely on her stomach.

  “Yes,” replied Flo, mentally dubbing the woman Daisy. “Were you?”

  “You bet. You don’t think I’m going to sit in my hot little trailer and read magazines when I can sit with air-conditioning and watch the real thing, do you?”

  Flo took out her knitting. “What do you think of the pharmacist?”

  “Oh, he’s cute. Reminds me of my son when he was that age.”

  “They make a cozy couple.”

  “You got it all wrong. The whole thing was her idea. He didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Flo. “They’re lovers, and he’s the one who got her the drug to give the old man.”

  “You can’t make me believe that. Why, my son used to look just like him, except that his hair is brown instead of blond.”

  “That’s a stupid thing to base an opinion on,” said Flo.

  “Everybody rise!”

  There was a unified surge upward as the judge entered. He was slightly built and his dark-rimmed glasses seemed too large for his handsome face. “Be seated,” he said.

  Delcey Clark, red-eyed and ghostly without make-up, sat at the table with her attorney, a well-built man in his early forties, at ease in his faultlessly tailored suit. His arm, across the back of her chair, rested so that his hand touched her white nylon shoulder.

  “She’s got her attorney right where she wants him,” Flo whispered to Mrs. Frisbee.

  “What’s that you’re saying?” asked Daisy.

  “I must warn the spectators to refrain from making audible comments,” said the judge, looking directly at Flo. She held his eyes until he turned to the business at hand, whereupon Flo resumed her knitting.

  “Isn’t that judge a doll?” said Daisy.

  “I’d hardly call him that,” said Flo.

  “He’s the one who will decide whether there’s enough of a case to try her for murder,” said Daisy.

  “He’s still a man,” said Flo. “All she has to do is hike her skirt up a little and he’ll be chewing on his gavel.”

  “Sh-h,” said Mrs. Frisbee. “The judge is looking at you again.”

  “He’s always looking at me,” said Flo. “He’s use
d to me by now.”

  The prosecutor called his first witness of the afternoon, a neighbor who testified to seeing Delcey and the pharmacist together in a car in front of her house on one occasion. Under cross-examination by the defense, he admitted he had seen no embrace between them. The defense subsequently established the fact that Delcey had been in the drugstore picking up her husband’s medicine when it began to rain. Since it was closing time, the pharmacist had driven her home. The pharmacist readily admitted that he was in love with Delcey Clark but insisted he was willing to wait until she was free, “even if it’s years until your husband dies,” he had told her.

  “There are still some good people left in the world,” murmured Mrs. Frisbee.

  Flo laughed. People turned in their seats to see who had interrupted the proceedings. The judge frowned at Flo. “If the spectators cannot control themselves,” he said, “I will be forced to clear the court.”

  “Hmph!” said Flo under her breath, her knitting needles flying faster than ever. “Young smart aleck! Just because he’s sitting up there in a black robe, he thinks he’s God Almighty.”

  “This judge is highly respected,” said Mrs. Frisbee.

  “He hasn’t made a right decision yet, as far as I’m concerned,” said Flo. “I don’t see how one man can make so many wrong moves.”

  “Just because you don’t agree with his decisions doesn’t mean they are wrong,” said Mrs. Frisbee gently.

  “What’s that you said?” asked Daisy, leaning across Flo.

  “I said they ought to have women judges if they want justice done,” said Flo.

  William Clark’s physician took the stand and testified that he had been in South America when he learned of the death of his patient and the arrest of Delcey Clark. He had caught the first plane back. While he respected the confidential relationship between doctor and patient, he said the patient was now dead and another life was at stake. Since Dr. Fleischman took very seriously his oath to preserve human life, he felt that his responsibility was to the living, the living in question being Delcey Clark.

  The doctor further testified that William Clark, knowing he had less than a year to live, an increasingly pain-ridden year, had insisted this information be kept from his wife. The doctor said he was convinced Clark had hoarded his pain-killing drug to use in one fatal overdose. The doctor then produced his notes taken during consultations with William Clark confirming the deceased’s statement that he would take his own life rather than be a burden to anyone else.

  The courtroom began to buzz. The prosecutor was out of his chair, the judge was pounding his gavel.

  “Very neatly done,” said Flo acidly. “Anything to make it look good when they free her.”

  “Order, order,” said the judge in a calm voice which was somehow heard above the clamor. A hush fell immediately, letting Flo’s words ring out, “—the usual whitewash.” She looked up to meet the cold blue eyes of the judge. He gazed at her for a long moment, then struck his gavel one more time.

  “Will counsel please approach the bench,” he said. There followed a sotto voce conference and finally the judge said, “In view of the testimony and supporting evidence presented by Dr. Fleischman, a witness for the defense, the case against Delcey Clark is dismissed.” He rose and left the courtroom.

  Flo stuffed her knitting into the tote bag and pushed her way out the door, ignoring Mrs. Frisbee and Daisy, who were left to talk to each other. She walked determinedly down the corridor to the judge’s office, opened the door and stepped inside.

  The judge looked up as she entered. “What are you doing in here?”

  “I am here as a taxpayer and a citizen of this community, to tell you what I think of you.”

  “Didn’t you cause enough disturbance in the courtroom?”

  “It is a taxpayer’s right to attend public hearings, isn’t it?”

  “Of course.”

  “And there is such a thing as freedom of speech, isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that means I can attend all the hearings I want and say anything I please. Isn’t that a fact?”

  “No, it is not a fact. There is also such a thing as contempt of court, with which you flirt every time you come into my courtroom.”

  Flo was standing in front of him now, holding her knitting bag between them. He was not much taller than she.

  “Do you understand what I am saying?” he asked.

  “I hear you,” she replied, reaching into the bag and taking out her knitting, her eyes never leaving his face.

  “Of course, you hear me,” he said, “but do you understand me?”

  “Certainly. I may not have had a college education like you, but I’m not stupid.” She unfurled the knitting from its core of needles and raised a needle to his shoulder, the work dangling free.

  “You are not listening to me,” he said. “Let me tell you this. If I see you in my courtroom one more time, I am going to have you forcibly evicted, taxpayer or no taxpayer.”

  “Well!” she said, jamming the knitting back in her bag. “Just see if I finish this sweater for you!” She marched toward the door, put her hand on the knob, and turned back to look at the judge. “Such a way to talk to your own mother!”

  The Paternal Instinct

  by Al Nussbaum

  Big Ben came up to me near the side entrance to Leavenworth Penitentiary’s B-cellhouse. Everyone calls him Big Ben because he tips the scales at 250 pounds and his first name is Benny. The nickname has nothing to do with time, or the famous London clock, despite the long sentence — thirty years — he’s serving.

  “Hey, Bill, ya know anythin’ about boids?” Ben asked.

  “What kind?” I answered, as if it made a difference.

  “Sparrows.”

  “No, sorry.” I looked around to make sure no guards were close. “You have one?”

  “Yeah, look.”

  I’d noticed that he had his right hand cupped. Now he held it out to me and opened it. There on his palm huddled the most ugly little creature I’d ever seen. It was about an inch and a half of naked flesh and the head was all beak. There were no feathers.

  “That’s a bird?” I asked.

  “Sure. He’s just a baby. What d’ya think I should feed him?”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Found him outside. A nest was blew down an’ all busted up. I waited a while, but there wasn’t no mama boids around, so I picked him up.”

  Hearing Big Ben say “mama boids” was comical. I almost smiled — but I didn’t. I didn’t want to take the chance of having him think I was laughing at him. “Birds eat worms; bread, too. Guess you could feed it bread and worms,” I offered.

  That was on Friday afternoon. I didn’t see Ben again until the following Monday. We both were assigned to the Education Building — Ben as an orderly, and I as a helper in the library — and I met him on the way to work. “Still got the bird?” I asked.

  “Yeah... see?” He opened a cigar box he was carrying and thrust it proudly under my nose. He had lined the inside with soft rags and the tiny bird was nestled in the center of them.

  “You taking it to work?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yeah, sure. Can’t leave him in my cell. I gotta feed him. ’Sides, they might shake-down and find him. Pets ain’t allowed, ya know.”

  “What’re you going to do with it?”

  “Gonna put the box on one of the windowsills of A-cellhouse. He’ll get lotsa sun an’ air, an’ I can come out an’ feed him every chance I get.”

  And that’s just what he did. Several times that day I looked from a side window of the Education Building. Once I saw only the cigar box on a window ledge of the building thirty feet away; the other times Ben was out there feeding the bird and whispering to it.

  The next day I noticed that two pieces of corrugated cardboard about eighteen inches square were lying on the grass plot between the Education Building and A-cellhouse. This was unusual because t
rash doesn’t get a chance to accumulate at Leavenworth. You seldom see an empty cigarette package, let alone large pieces of paper. I was wondering how they had been left there when Big Ben appeared.

  He knelt, lifted a corner of one of the squares, and quickly reached under it. He got to his feet with a pink worm dangling from between his thumb and index finger and went to the cigar box,

  I went outside to see what was going on, I heard Ben say, “Ya wants another woim. Baby?” as I approached, but he stopped talking to the bird when he saw me,

  “I saw you get a worm from under the cardboard,” I said. “How d’you do it?”

  “Tore a couple of pieces from a box, soaked ’em in water, an’ put ’em on the grass,” he said. “Woims come outta the groun’ under the paper last night. They didn’t go back into the groun’ when it got light. They don’t move fast an’ I can catch ’em.”

  I stood there watching. Ben fed three large worms to the bird, and it continued to open its beak and scream for more. When there were no more worms to catch, Ben took small pieces of bread, dipped them in water, rolled them into little balls, and then dropped them into the bird’s open mouth. The bird would be quiet for a few seconds while it swallowed the bread, then it would open its beak and yell: “Cheep! Cheep!”

  “He sure likes to eat,” Ben observed fondly.

  After that it seemed as though every time I looked out of the window I saw Ben feeding Baby. It wasn’t difficult to see why Leavenworth or any prison would outlaw pets. If they were all as demanding and insatiable as Baby, no work would ever get done. Pets would quickly disrupt all order and discipline.

  But they would fill a need, too.

  It became clear to me that just as woman has a maternal instinct, man has a need to care for and protect a fellow creature. I could see proof of this every time I looked out the window. Big Ben, who wouldn’t hesitate to break your jaw if he suspected you were slighting him, thought nothing of gently nursing a tiny bird. I suddenly realized that the empty feeling in my stomach wasn’t hunger; I wished I had a skinny, ugly bird to nurse, too.