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

by Linda Landrigan

  He drifted a few steps toward her. The dying sunlight marked his cheekbones sharply. His body was tense, as if coiled inside. “You got a lot more regrets in the future, old lady. You better believe it. Think about it. You won’t know when, how, or where. But I don’t like people trying to throw me to the fuzz.”

  “I hope this is just talk, Greg.”

  He laughed suddenly. “That school principal—the one who got me sent up. Know what happened? About a year after I got out, a hit-and-run driver marked up the punk principal’s daughter, that’s what. She’ll be a short-legged creep the rest of her life. Sure, the fuzz questioned me—but they couldn’t prove a thing.”

  She could bear it no longer. She turned and started toward her front door with quick steps.

  “Don’t forget to think about it, old lady,” he called after her. “And remember—nobody ever proves a thing on Greg Morrow.”

  Three passing days brought Mrs. Cappelli the faint hope that Greg had thought twice and again. Perhaps his insults and threat had sufficed his ego. Usually, such fellows were mostly talk. Usually.

  The fourth night Mrs. Cappelli stirred in her always-light sleep, dreaming that she smelled smoke. She murmured in her halfconscious state; and then she had the sudden, clear, icy knowledge that she was not asleep.

  She flung back the sheet, a small cry in her throat, and stumbled upright, a ghostly pale figure in her ankle-length white nightgown.

  “Isadora!” she cried out as she hurried into the hallway. “Isadora, lazy-head, wake up! The house is on fire!”

  Isadora’s bedroom door flung open and Isadora appeared, gowned like her mistress, her iron gray hair hanging in two limp braids across her shoulders.

  “What is it? What’s happening?” Isadora chattered, her eyes bulging. She glimpsed the faint reddish glow in the stairwell and began crossing herself again and again. “Oh, heaven be merciful! Mercy from heaven!”

  Together the two women stumbled in haste down the stairway. The fiery reflection was stronger in the dining room.

  “Quickly, Isadora! The kitchen!”

  They ran across the dining room, wavering to a halt inside the kitchen. Mrs. Cappelli’s quick glance divined the situation. The curtains over the glass portion of the outside door had caught fire first. They were now remaining bits of falling ash and embers. The flames had spread easily to the window curtains along the rear of the kitchen and were now gnawing at the cabinetwork, fouling the air with the stench of burning varnish.

  Isadora dashed into the pantry, knocking pots helter-skelter as she grabbed two of the larger ones. Mrs. Cappelli was more direct. She pulled the sink squirter hose out to its full extension, turned the cold water on hard, and fought the flames back until she had drenched out the last flicker.

  With wisps of smoke still seeping from the cabinetwork, Mrs. Cappelli groped for a kitchen chair and sank into it weakly. She matched long breaths with the gulps Isadora was taking, and strength began to return.

  “How horrible it might have been,” Isadora said through chattering teeth, “if you hadn’t awakened.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Cappelli said.

  Isadora gripped the kitchen table to help herself out of her chair. “We must call the fire department to make sure everything is out.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the police.”

  “No!”

  Isadora looked at Mrs. Cappelli, wondering at the sharpness of her tone. “Maria … we know who did this. We know he has been planning, waiting, thinking, and deciding what to do.”

  “Yes, and tonight he made his move.” Mrs. Cappelli’s gaze examined the fire-blackened kitchen door and paused at its base. She got up, crossed to the door, and knelt down. She touched the ashes at the base of the door. “And so simply he did it,” she said. “Not all these ashes are from burned fabric. Some of them feel very much like brittle burned paper. So easily, without breaking in or leaving marks on the kitchen door, he simply slid strips of paper underneath the door until he had a sufficient pile inside. Then it remains for him but to light the tail end of the final strip and watch the tiny flame creep along the paper under the door and ignite the pile inside. Soon the hungry flames reach up to touch the curtains …”

  The two women were an immobile tableau—Isadora, standing beside the table, Mrs. Cappelli kneeling at the door, looking at each other.

  “Yes, I see,” Isadora said. “It’s all very clear. It would be clear to the police. But they cannot make the youth confess. They are not permitted. And he will have an alibi, someone to swear that he was far away from this street tonight.”

  A small sob caught in Mrs. Cappelli’s throat. “How much can we endure, Isadora? Call the firemen quickly. Then I want the phone. Late as it is, I want to hear the sound of John’s voice.”

  At ten o’clock the following evening an airport taxicab deposited John in front of the Cappelli house.

  “It’s he!” Isadora said, watching him pay off the taxi and get out his single piece of luggage.

  Beside Isadora, the giddy center of a little vortex of excitement, Mrs. Cappelli nudged hard with her elbow. “Quickly, Isadora! The table … the dinner candles.”

  Isadora darted from the front door, leaving Mrs. Cappelli there alone to watch the approach of her son.

  He wouldn’t have eaten on the plane, she knew. Mama always had one of his favorite meals waiting, whatever his hour of arrival. Tonight Mrs. Cappelli had centered the dinner on arosto di agnello, and already she could imagine him filling his mouth with the succulent lamb and blowing her a kiss of approval from his fingertips.

  “Ah, John, John!” Her wide-flung arms enfolded his dark, towering, masculine strength, and, as always, she wept joyously.

  He picked her up, almost as if he would tuck her under his arm, and kissed her on both cheeks.

  “What is that I smell? Not roast lamb as only mia madre can make?”

  “But yes, John! How was the flight? Isadora, wherever are you? Quickly, Isadora! The most handsome boy on earth is famished!”

  Arm linked with her son’s, Mrs. Cappelli strolled into the dining room, questions tumbling about her daughter-in-law, her precious grandchildren.

  All was well up north, John assured her. All was going beautifully.

  He sat down at the head of the old hand-carved walnut table, an inviting array before him, snowy linens, bone china, crystal and sterling, tall candles in beaten silver holders, fine food in covered dishes.

  Isadora and Mrs. Cappelli were content to sit on either side, near the head of the table, watching him eat and anticipating his every wish from the serving dishes.

  Then at last he could eat no more, and he rewarded his mother with a loving wink and appreciative little belch.

  He laid his napkin on the table, pushed back his chair, and lifted one of the candles to light a thin black cigar.

  Mrs. Cappelli was at his side as he walked to the windows in the side of the room and stood there looking at the lights of the Morrow house.

  “Now, Mama,” he said quietly, “what’s this trouble?”

  She told him every detail from the moment Greg Morrow had moved next door. She acquainted John with Greg’s every habit, the identity of Greg’s closest friends, the make, model, and license number of the Morrow car. It took her several minutes; she had accumulated a great deal of information during the time Greg had been a neighbor.

  When Mrs. Cappelli finished speaking, John slipped his arm about her shoulders. “Don’t worry, Mama,” he said quietly. “It will be taken care of. The young animal will stop killing his mother. He will kill and maim no more animals. He will hit-run no more children. He will light no more arsonist fires. It will all be taken care of very soon, when the first proper moment arrives.”

  Looking up at him, Mrs. Cappelli knew it would be so. In her, regrettably, Greg Morrow had made the biggest mistake of his life.

  She thought of John’s grandfather and his father and of Cappelli men from Sicily to San Francisco.
In all the Mafia—and it had been so for generations—there were no better soldiers than Cappelli men. They enforced Mafioso law without fear or regard—and none was more stalwart than the loving fullness of her heart, her John.

  WILLIAM BRITTAIN

  HISTORICAL ERRORS

  February 1976

  A RETIRED high school teacher, Brittain makes an educator the central character of this tale of historical accuracy and authenticity—written at a time when the United States was very interested in its own history. Brittain wrote a series of stories featuring another educator, high school science teacher Mr. Stang, as the detective. He also wrote a series of tales that are frequently termed the “Man Who Read” stories. Each features a character who is a devoted fan of a particular mystery writer and who ends up solving a mystery in the characteristic style of his literary hero.

  Norman Kaner lifted his head from the pillow, slowly opened his eyes, and immediately regretted having done so. As the light reached his brain, the mining and blasting operation within his head began full tilt. He wet his lips with his tongue, vaguely considering whether a muskrat or some other furry creature had died inside his mouth sometime the previous night. A hangover of these sublime proportions should, he thought, be enshrined somewhere as an example and warning for future generations. He wondered if the Smithsonian Institution would be at all interested.

  To drink so much, especially when driving strange roads, was unforgivable. Nevertheless, Norman managed to forgive himself. There were, after all, mitigating circumstances. Just yesterday he’d taught his final class in the pre-Revolutionary colonial period, and now he and Betty had the whole summer free for the tour of New England for which they’d been planning and saving since he was a mere instructor at Hadley College. That in itself was cause for celebration.

  The celebration had included four martinis at dinner in that tiny restaurant in southern Connecticut.

  Furthermore, Betty’s mother, Vera, had insisted on coming along on the vacation. No cause for rejoicing, this, but an excellent excuse for drowning one’s sorrows.

  Vera Blumenthal was a tiny old shrew of a woman with a mouth exceeded in size by nothing on earth except the Mississippi River and possibly the Amazon. From the time they’d left yesterday noon, she’d had a disapproving comment for each revolution of the station wagon’s wheels. The back seat was too narrow, Norman was driving too fast, her arthritis was acting up, they should have taken another route to avoid traffic … Yakkety, yakkety, yak! Whenever Norman had attempted to talk to her, to calm her or at least shut her up, she’d resorted to her favorite catch phrase: “A pox on you, Norman. And on all your brood, too.”

  A pox on you, Vera, thought Norman, pressing the heels of his hands against his eye sockets and tasting once again the dregs of the drinks he’d had. Somehow he’d reeled back to the car and managed to find the road. His memory from that point on wasn’t too clear. He’d stopped for a traffic light out in the middle of nowhere, and then the car door had opened and a man said something about his being under arrest. Who’d expect a cop to be waiting right there …

  Suddenly Norman sat bolt upright on the bed. He looked about at the stout oak walls of the room and the tiny window with the hand-wrought bars. The palms of his hands pressed against the mattress, feeling not springs but a crackling something that could have been wheat straw or corn shucks.

  The man had been leading a horse. Not only that, but he’d been dressed in baggy pants, gathered at the knees. His shirt had been white, with full sleeves, and his hair had been pulled back and tied behind his head. The picture was one Norman had seen hundreds of times in his own history books.

  “What do you know about that?” he said wonderingly. “I’ve been busted by Paul Revere.”

  As if the words were a signal, there was the sound of a bolt being thrown outside the stout door. It creaked open ponderously. Bright sunlight streamed into the tiny cell, and Norman peeped through squinted eyes at the figure in the opening.

  Ethan Allen, maybe? Or John Adams? The man was dressed in similar fashion to the policeman of the night before, with the addition of a wide-brimmed hat atop hair that hung almost to his shoulders. The 1700s? Norman shook his head. No, almost a century earlier. It was hard to believe that outside that door somewhere there was a land of jet planes and superhighways, smokestacks polluting the air and raw sewage turning clear water into poison—modern America.

  The guard jangled a ring of heavy wrought-iron keys in his hand. “Come to your senses have you, neighbor?” he said. “Your brain was more than a little fuddled by strong spirits when Constable Wainright towed your strange machine into town last night.”

  “My wife … her mother,” mumbled Norman thickly. “Where are they? Are they all right?”

  The guard nodded. “Since our gaol makes no provision for women, Dame Pellow was kind enough to put them up for the night. Just now, I suspect, they’re enjoying a bowl of her flummery to break their fast. But come, put yourself in order. It won’t do to keep Justice Sawyer waiting.”

  “Justice … Oh, yeah. The drunk-driving charge.” Norman patted his hip pocket. The thick wad of traveler’s checks was still there.

  He stood up, and his face turned white as the miners inside his skull let loose a three-megaton blast. With the palm of his hand he tried to smooth down his tousled hair.

  “Tell me,” he said, giving up the hair as a bad job and making ineffectual passes at the wrinkles in his pants, “what’s this thing with the costumes? And the policeman on horseback? Do you folks always carry on like this, or is something special going on?”

  “Illium—our little village—was one of the first settlements in New England. We have a long and proud heritage that we try to keep alive.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Norman tapped his head with an index finger. “The Bicentennial thing. Y’know, I clean forgot this was the year for it …”

  The guard shook his head. “We predate the Revolution by more than a century. Some ten years ago the people of Illium decided we should not let the old ways and customs die. So for one month each year we do our best to relive the early days, exactly as they were, as a reminder of the stock from which we sprang.”

  Norman considered the oddly dressed figure. “Not bad. Not bad at all. Just one or two little things out of place, though.”

  “Out of place?” The guard looked as if he’d been slapped.

  “Yeah. Historical errors from the wrong time. Anachronisms. Your shoes, for example.”

  “What about my shoes?”

  “They’re cut for right and left feet. Now, most of the shoes of the 1600s were made from a single last. The right and left ones were exactly the same.”

  “Interesting. I’ll make a note of that for the village board. We try to keep everything as authentic as possible.”

  “Another thing. The cop last night—Wainright, I think you said his name was—he had clubbed hair.”

  “Clubbed?”

  Norman nodded. “Tied at the back. Not really the style in Puritan days. It usually hung loose, like yours.”

  “Peter Wainright won’t like to hear that. He’s very proud of his hair. But I’m sure he’ll go along in the interests of accuracy. How is it that you know all these things?”

  “I’m a professor of American history. Did my doctorate on the Pilgrim and Puritan social systems.”

  “Ah, a man of learning. Be sure to mention it to Justice Sawyer. He puts great store by exact knowledge. Come now. We must not keep the good justice waiting.”

  As he marched across the village green accompanied by the key-jingling guard, Norman was amazed at how closely Illium resembled the woodcuts he’d seen of early New England villages. Windows, porches, and in some cases entire store fronts had been altered; here a home, seemingly constructed of hand-hewn timbers. Only the closest scrutiny showed they were really commercial products. There, the blacksmith shop, complete with spreading chestnut tree; the grease rack behind the facade was barely visible throug
h the half-open door. The tiny church on the hillside, surrounded by maple trees, might actually have been built decades before the American Revolution; amazing attention to detail.

  Court was held in Justice Jonathan Sawyer’s low-ceilinged living room. The furniture had been pulled back against the walls, and the justice’s desk placed by the room’s single window—a homey yet oddly formal setting for a trial.

  Betty and Vera were waiting for him when he arrived. In his hungover condition, Norman was scarcely up to the combined onslaught of the two women.

  “Norman!” chattered his wife. “This will put us at least a day behind schedule, if not more. I told you not to have so much to—”

  “Sheer tomfoolery,” chimed in Vera. “A pox on you, Norman. And on all your brood, too.”

  “We have no brood, Vera,” Norman groaned. “There’s just Betty and me, a condition I can hardly ignore since you—”

  “Oyez, oyez!” intoned the guard. “The court of the village and town of Illium is now in session, Justice Jonathan Sawyer presiding. Those who have business before this court, approach and ye shall be heard. All rise, please.”

  When Justice Sawyer entered from the kitchen, it was all Norman could do to keep from laughing out loud. A short, fat man in a black cloak, he resembled nothing so much as a large globe draped for mourning, surmounted by a wig of indeterminate shape, which insisted on drooping down over one eye.

  “The charge?” chanted Sawyer in a sepulchral voice.

  “Public drunk and disorderly,” said the guard.

  “He wasn’t that at all,” screeched Betty. “I—I mean he was drunk, all right. But he wasn’t disorderly. Mother and I both—”

  Justice Sawyer’s hand slammed down on the desk. “You are here on my sufferance as observers. Nothing more. Now let’s get on with it.”

  “But she was just trying to tell you there was nothing public about Norman’s being drunk,” Vera carped.

  “Enough, madams.” Justice Sawyer’s face was livid. “By my faith, I’ll have order in this court! This feminine caterwauling will cease immediately.”