Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense

by Linda Landrigan

  Gustav snorted. “The old goat was lying in his teeth, obviously. Can you see a world-famous chef giving up a recipe worth three hundred thousand francs a year to a stupid gourmet society? For nothing? No, he intends to sell his damned recipe to the highest bidder, believe me. Or leave it, perhaps, to his mistress, if he has one in this godforsaken place.”

  Yvonne laughed again. “You flatter Uncle André. If he’s too old to cook soup any longer, he’s also too old for love!”

  That was enough for André. The anger in him was now burningly alive. He considered telephoning the police in Arezzo that he was being robbed, but he realized that the police could do nothing in these peculiar circumstances. How could you arrest a man for trying to steal a recipe that did not exist except in André’s head?

  In the end, André went quietly back into his house and set about preparing luncheon for his guests, after first visiting the tumbledown shack he used as toolhouse and feed shed for his fowl. He rooted about on its shelves until he found a small cardboard box, which he carried with him into the kitchen.

  Yvonne and Gustav returned to the house an hour later. André greeted them cheerfully. All through the excellent luncheon—a delicate ragoût d’agneau served with a dry white wine of the region—he chattered away with animation. He did not succeed, however, in drawing his guests into more than laconic answers to his sallies. They seemed distraught.

  Drinking the last of his wine, André said to Gustav, “Where did you go this morning while I was in the village?”

  “For a walk,” Gustav answered shortly.

  “I can see you got very warm,” said André, eyeing the perspiration stains on Gustav’s dark-blue shirt and trying to ignore the offensive odor of the man.

  “This Italian sun is as hot as the hinges of hell,” Gustav complained.

  André nodded. “Hot enough to kill you if you exercise too violently. So I hope you took a long and exhausting walk.”

  Gustav’s lips tightened. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing, Gustav,” Yvonne said quickly. “He was joking. Weren’t you, Uncle André?”

  “No,” André said.

  “I didn’t think so.” Gustav set down his wine glass, rose from his chair, and started ponderously around the table toward André.

  “Wait,” André said. “You want to know my recipe for Potage François Premier, don’t you?”

  Gustav said nothing, but he stopped moving toward André.

  “You and Yvonne stole my recipe box this morning to search for the recipe. True?”

  “Your recipe box is on the kitchen shelf,” Yvonne said.

  “You replaced it when you returned from your ‘walk,’ but only after you failed to find my recipe in it.”

  Gustav interposed. “We were curious about the other recipes you mentioned … the ones you suggested as possible specialties for me. You told us yourself last night that the recipe for Potage François Premier was not in the file box.”

  “But you didn’t quite believe me, did you?”

  Gustav growled. “I am tired of beating about the bush. I want your recipe for Potage François Premier, yes.”

  André laughed. “And you are prepared to steal it from me if necessary?”

  “I am prepared to kill you to get it,” Gustav replied.

  André’s eyes widened in genuine surprise. Suddenly he knew fear, yet he said quite calmly, “If you kill me, nephew, you destroy your chance of owning my recipe, do you not?”

  “I didn’t say I’d kill you all at once. Let me show you what I mean …” Gustav took two steps and stood beside André’s chair. He drew back his maul-like fist. “Here is a small sample,” he said, and as André attempted to stand, the fist took him on the right temple with dreadful force. Blackness descended upon him.

  It was late afternoon when he came to his senses. He was lying on his own bed in his own bedroom. He tried to move his arms but found he could not. He was tightly secured by wrists and ankles to the bedposts, trussed up like a chicken. He could, however, turn his head, which was aching rather badly. When he did so, he saw his niece sitting in his old rocking chair beside the bed, smoking a cigarette and regarding his awakening with unsympathetic eyes. Beyond her, he saw that his telephone had been torn out by the roots and tossed into a corner of the room.

  “Yvonne!” he said. His voice scratched, the single word came out as a croak.

  Blowing smoke, she said, “Hi, Uncle. I’m sorry Gustav hurt you, but he had to, you know. You are so stubborn.” She hesitated, then went on. “I advise you to cooperate fully with Gustav, because he means to have your recipe, one way or another. It is, after all, a legacy in my family, too. I am your brother’s daughter.”

  “No longer,” whispered André. “You are a stranger to me.”

  She waved a hand airily, the hand with the cigarette in it. “I guess I can afford to lose an uncle if I gain a priceless recipe,” she said. “Although you must understand that your attitude wounds me deeply. Such selfishness!”

  André was silent. Gustav came shambling into the room. “Awake, are you, Uncle?” he inquired. “Good. I give you three minutes to collect your senses and prod your memory. Then I want you to dictate the recipe for Potage François Premier to Yvonne. Or else, as the Americans say.”

  “Or else what?” Fear clutched André again. He shook it off impatiently.

  “I’ll bring you another small taste of death,” Gustav said. “This time considerably more painful, however.”

  “I see. And if I give you my recipe, how will you be sure it is genuine?”

  “I shall prepare your soup myself, here in this house, before I accept the recipe as true. Believe me, I am chef enough to recognize it. And Yvonne has tasted the original, remember. Like falling in love, I believe she said.”

  André saw that Yvonne now had a pad of paper on her lap and held a ball-point pen poised above it. With difficulty he summoned a shaky laugh. “I cannot believe you are serious, Gustav.”

  “I am very serious. Dictate.”

  “No,” André said, testing them for the last time.

  Yvonne handed Gustav her cigarette. “Here,” she purred in her soft voice. “Show him, darling.”

  Gustav placed the burning cigarette end under André’s left eye and pressed it against the flesh with disdainful carelessness. André bellowed with pain and squirmed on the bed like a maddened eel.

  “You see?” Gustav said, lifting the glowing coal at last and handing the cigarette back to his wife. Yvonne took an unconcerned puff upon the stub before tamping it under her heel.

  “I am ready for you to begin,” she said, smiling at her uncle and gesturing with her ball-point pen.

  André clenched his teeth against the pain in his cheek and thought sadly, So it is true then. They really would torture me to get my recipe … and perhaps kill me afterward to safeguard themselves. He felt only contempt for the man Gustav, but a corrosive sense of sorrow for his niece. He said in a low voice, “You begin with chicken stock …”

  Gustav’s pig-eyes glinted and Yvonne’s pen began to race across her pad.

  “… made with lightly salted water, simmered for exactly five hours, strained, reheated, and allowed to cool four separate times. Carefully skim off the solidified fat after each cooling. Add half a cup of salted water to the kettle before each reheating, and each reheating should simmer for thirty-eight minutes.”

  He paused until Yvonne’s pen caught up with him, then resumed. “Use five cups of the chicken stock thus obtained to boil the leanest parts of three ducklings for five hours at a slow simmer, again straining, reheating, and cooling four times, and skimming fat as before, adding four more tablespoons of the pure stock, lightly salted, to the mix before each reheating.”

  Gustav hung over Yvonne’s shoulder, watching the words take shape upon her pad. He scarcely breathed, he was so intent.

  André continued. “After straining the mixed poultry stock for the last time, use three cups of
it to form a marinade in which you soak thinly cut cucumber slices for eight hours, after which you add the juice extracted from three small carrots before combining the cucumber-carrot liquor with the remaining poultry stock. You continue to reheat this stock and salt lightly until the vegetable taste factor of cucumber-carrot begins to dominate the poultry taste factor in the broth.” He paused for breath and went on. “Taste frequently to ascertain the exact point of balance.”

  André’s voice droned on, reciting a complicated formula consisting of ingredients that he knew were readily available either on his own farm or in the village grocery store. From chicken stock to the final bacon crumbs, there were twenty-six ingredients. When he finished, he said, “And that’s my recipe, in its entirety. Now release me.”

  Gustav ignored him. He said to his wife, “Catch three of the chickens your uncle keeps in the yard behind his vegetable garden, kill them, pluck them, and bring them to me.” His tone was urgent, his excitement quite genuine. Turning to André, he asked anxiously, “Do you keep ducks here?”

  “A few. Beside the stream that bounds my farm on the south.”

  “Good! Yvonne, three ducklings, also! And hurry!”

  André said, “What about me?” He strained against his bonds.

  Gustav struck him a negligent backhanded blow on the cheek that was already inflamed from the cigarette burn. “Shut up,” he grunted, “until I have tested your recipe.”

  “But that will be five days!” André was plaintive.

  Gustav shrugged and left him. André could hear him rummaging the shelves of the refrigerator in the kitchen, exploring his food closet, his spice rack, his canisters, rattling the copper saucepans and kettles that André kept under his sink.

  It was very late before exhaustion at last overcame the pain of André’s wounds and he fell asleep. To his surprise, he slept soundly until the sun was high the next morning. He awoke to find himself stiff and sore in every muscle, and to find that his bonds had been severed during the night while he slept. He stretched, groaned, rolled over, and stood up. Two steps across the tiny bedroom showed him that the door was solidly secured. His niece and her husband had locked him in when they cut him loose. At least the primitive bathroom opening off his bedroom was available to him. The whole house was redolent of boiling chicken.

  He called through the door, “Let me out!”

  “Good morning, Uncle.” Yvonne’s voice came through the stout door between them. “You slept well, I hope?”

  “You know I did not. Where’s Gustav?”

  “In the village, buying the ingredients you don’t have here.”

  “I smell chicken, don’t I?”

  “Of course. We’re almost through with the chicken stock. We worked all night.”

  “Do I get any breakfast?”

  “Not until Gustav gets back. I’m awfully sorry, Uncle André.” However, her cheerful, carefree tone told him plainly that she was not.

  On the second day, he awoke to continued sounds of activity in the kitchen and could smell the distinctive odor of the soup stock formed by combining chicken and duckling liquor. He nodded to himself and did not even ask for breakfast. They brought him some rolls and coffee at noon, when Gustav reported triumphantly that they were ready to marinate the cucumbers.

  André didn’t sleep at all that night. He was waiting.

  At three in the morning, a key turned in his locked door, and Yvonne burst into his room. “Uncle!” she cried, “Help me, please! Gustav is sick!”

  André rolled over on his bed to look at her. “Gustav is sick?” he echoed, and kept his face expressionless, his emotions suppressed.

  “Terribly! All of a sudden he got these awful cramps! I’m afraid he’s dying! For the love of mercy, won’t you please help us?”

  André rose and put on an old dressing gown with calculated deliberation. Then he accompanied his niece to the kitchen. She was now almost hysterical with worry, but pathetically humble and contrite.

  Gustav was lying on the kitchen floor, moaning and clutching his middle. His face, in the light of the kitchen bulbs, was the color of parchment and was drenched with sweat. He turned popping, panic-stricken eyes on André when he came into the room.

  André glanced at the stove. A saucepan bubbled gently on a front burner. André was sure its contents could only be the soup stock after the marinated cucumber liquor had been added to it.

  Ignoring Gustav, he looked at his niece. Her face was pinched, her eyes wild. She was weeping, he noted with surprise. Tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped unheeded onto her bosom. Her hard flippancy, her indifference, her callous manner were gone.

  So she really loved that incredible lout, André concluded, with sudden compassion for his niece. He felt his resolve soften.

  He said to her, “Has Gustav been tasting the soup stock?”

  “Yes, of course. Ever since we added the cucumber liquor. To tell when the vegetable taste factor approached the poultry taste, just as you said.”

  “Often?”

  She nodded silently and bent over Gustav. Then she knelt and cradled his head in her arms. “Help him, Uncle André!” she pleaded. “He’s dying, isn’t he?”

  André took Gustav’s pain-wracked body under the arms and dragged it toward the steps that led from the farmhouse porch to the lane.

  “Where are you taking him?” Yvonne demanded.

  “You must drive him to the hospital in Arezzo. A stomach pump may save him if you are quick enough.”

  “Stomach pump!” Yvonne helped to bundle Gustav, still moaning, into the backseat of their car.

  “Yes,” André said. “I poisoned him.”

  She climbed under the wheel of the car and switched on the headlights.

  “You couldn’t have!” she said. “You were locked in your room!” There was nothing soft or ladylike about her strident tones now.

  André said, “I mixed arsenic with the salt in the kitchen, my dear, before Gustav started on the recipe. Just in case, you understand.”

  Yvonne started the engine, raced it for a moment to warm it, and as she slipped the car into gear, cast a worried glance over her shoulder at her husband, sprawled in the rear seat. She gulped down her sobs. “Poor Gustav!” she wailed. “He only wanted a little specialty to advance his career!”

  André put a finger to the burn under his left eye. “He has one now, Yvonne. Potage de Volaille Gustav.”

  As the car scattered dust in a headlong flight down the lane, André chuckled. “Which is to say: fresh poultry soup, lightly salted with rat poison.”

  TALMAGE POWELL

  NEW NEIGHBOR

  October 1975

  A PROLIFIC WRITER of stories, Talmage Powell got his start writing for the pulps. When AHMM launched, he was a regular contributor under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. Powell is also remembered for his “Ed Rivers” novels, considered to be some of the best P.I. stories of the late 1950s. In addition, he wrote for television and films, and he was the ghostwriter for several Ellery Queen novels.

  Each of us lives in one world only,” Mrs. Cappelli said, “the singular world within the skull. No two are alike. Who can possibly imagine some of the dark phantasms within the worlds other than one’s own?”

  Isadora, old, gray, spindly, gnarled, more friend and companion than servant, drifted to Mrs. Cappelli’s side. The two women were of an age, in the autumn of their lives, with a close bond between them. The years had touched Mrs. Cappelli with the gentler brush. She was still trim; her face had not entirely surrendered its youthful lines; her once-black hair was braided in a coil atop her head, a silver tiara.

  The two stood at the window of Mrs. Cappelli’s slightly disarrayed and comfortably lived-in bedroom and looked from the second-story window at the youth in the backyard of the house next door.

  “A strange one,” Isadora agreed.

  He was lounging on a plastic-webbing chaise, indolent, loose, relaxed, calmly pumping a pellet rifle. In scruf
fy jeans and T-shirt, he was long, tanned, and lean, slightly bony. Even in repose he was a suggestion of quick, whip-like agility and power. His face was cleanly cut, even attractive; his forehead, ears, and neck feathered with very dark hair. Idly, his gaze was roving the bushes and trees, the pines at the corners of the yard, the avocado tree, the two tall, unkempt palmettos.

  He lifted the gun with a casual motion and squeezed the trigger. A bird toppled from the topmost reaches of the taller pine tree, the small body bouncing from limb to limb, showering a few needles, hanging briefly on a lower limb before it struck and was swallowed by the uncut grass along the rear of the yard.

  The youth showed no sign of interest, once again pumping the gun and stirring only his eyes in a renewed search of the trees.

  Mrs. Cappelli’s thin figure flinched, and her eyes were held by the spot where the bird had fallen.

  Isadora touched her arm. “At least it wasn’t a cardinal, Maria.”

  “Thank you, Isadora. From this distance the details weren’t clear. My eyes just aren’t what they used to be.”

  Isadora glanced at the face that had once been the distillation of all beauty in Old Sicily. “I think we could use some tea, Maria.”

  Mrs. Cappelli seemed unaware when Isadora faded from her side. She remained at the window, as hushed as the hot Florida stillness outside, looking carefully at the young man on the chaise.

  Mrs. Cappelli had been delighted when the house next door was rented at last. It had stood vacant for months, a casualty of Florida overbuild. Dated by its Spanish styling, it was nevertheless a sound and comfortable house in a substantial and quiet older neighborhood where urban decay had never gained the slightest foothold.

  Mrs. Cappelli had expected a family. Instead there were only the mother and son arriving in a noisy old car in the wake of a van that had disgorged flimsy, worn, time-payment furniture. Mrs. Ruth Morrow and Greg. A lot of house for two people, but Mrs. Cappelli supposed, correctly, that the age of the house and its long vacancy had finally caused the desperate owner to offer it as a cut-rate bargain on the sagging rental market.