AHMM, November 2007
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ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE
November 2007
Vol. 52, No. 11
Dell Magazines
New York
Cover by Joel Spector
CONTENTS
FICTION
THE LAST GHOST OF STRACHAN ISLAND by Terence Faherty
OF WAX AND WATERMARKS by R.T. Lawton
ACCOUNT CLOSED by William Link
KILLING TIME by Rhys Bowen
PUBLIC IMMUNITY by Eve Fisher
CLIFF'S FOLLY by Douglas Grant Johnson
HOMESTEAD by Rex Burns
MYSTERY CLASSIC
THE JUDGE'S HOUSE by Bram Stoker
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR'S NOTES
BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
UNSOLVED by Robert V. Kesling
THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by Willie Rose
REEL CRIME by Steve Hockensmith
Visit us online at www.TheMysteryPlace.com!
Click a Link for Easy Navigation
CONTENTS
EDITOR'S NOTES: THE BEST REVENGE ... IS A GOOD STORY by Linda Landrigan
THE LAST GHOST OF STRACHAN ISLAND by Terence Faherty
OF WAX AND WATERMARKS by R.T. LAWTON
BOOKED & PRINTED by ROBERT C. HAHN
ACCOUNT CLOSED by William Link
KILLING TIME by Rhys Bowen
PUBLIC IMMUNITY by Eve Fisher
CLIFF'S FOLLY by Douglas Grant Johnson
UNSOLVED: LOGIC PUZZLE by Robert V. Kesling
THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by by Willie Rose
HOMESTEAD by REX BURNS
REEL CRIME by Steve Hockensmith
MYSTERY CLASSIC: THE JUDGE'S HOUSE by Bram Stoker
SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER
COMING IN DECEMBER 2007
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EDITOR'S NOTES: THE BEST REVENGE ... IS A GOOD STORY by Linda Landrigan
Like a well-crafted short story, an artful act of revenge is the culmination of thought, patience, and effort—and as several of this month's stories demonstrate, the result may (or may not) be a moment to be savored. Rhys Bowen's story “Killing Time” is an especially delightful morsel in that respect, showing how one type-A character learns (the hard way) the patience of Job. William Link's “Account Closed” likewise explores the topic as a father, watching his daughter's killer, rots from the inside with the desire for revenge. And in “Of Wax and Watermarks,” R.T. Lawton's down-on-his-luck Chevalier leaves no slight unavenged in pre-Revolutionary Paris.
The possibility of revenge as motive runs through the investigation of the death of a wealthy ne'er-do-well in “Public Immunity,” our cover story this month, but author Eve Fisher takes notions of vengence and culpability in an unexpected direction.
Also this month, we welcome the return of Douglas Grant Johnson and his Depression-era mechanic Cliff, who applies a bit of pluck and sleuthing when a customer fails to return one evening in “Cliff's Folly.” Aboriginal Liaison Constable Leonard Smith also returns this month, investigating a case of suspected domestic abuse in the Aboriginal Outback of Australia in Rex Burns's “Homestead."
And did somebody say “ghosts"? In time for Halloween we offer two stories with supernatural suggestions. Our mystery classic this month, “The Judge's House” by Bram Stoker, is sure to send chills down your spine. Terence Faherty's story “The Last Ghost of Strachan Island” is a little subtler, but no less eerie. New to AHMM, Mr. Faherty won a Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Novel in 1998 for Come Back Dead, featuring his Hollywood P.I. Scott Elliott. Welcome!
Revenge: It may be justified, or not. It may be successful, or not. It may be exacted in the heat of the moment or, proverbially, best served cold. But whatever the circumstances, it is always a fine engine for a gripping story.
[Back to Table of Contents]
THE LAST GHOST OF STRACHAN ISLAND by Terence Faherty
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Hank Blaustein
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Philip Sibley wasn't the first of the party to speak of ghosts in connection with the old carriage house on Strachan Island, but he claimed the first real encounter. He and his wife Beverly were one couple of three who had rented the former stable, which had been converted to a “luxurious vacation opportunity.” The couples were all flatlanders from Indiana, all successful professionals, not people prone to seeing ghosts. They'd come to the Georgia coast to play golf, to swim laps in the carriage house's brick-decked pool, to drink frozen margaritas in the hot tub.
But at the first sight of the old house, Heather, the very young and very blond second wife of Nelson Pierce, had said, “Great place for a ghost story."
The carriage house was all that remained of a Gilded Age estate built by a shipping magnate named McPherson in 1879. McPherson's great house, Shore Cottage, now resided on a neighboring island, moved there by barge shortly after its hundredth birthday. Beverly, a petite, dark-featured librarian, found a photograph of the floating house just inside their rental's first floor great room. It showed the building far out in Strachan Sound, its second floor windows and long front porch giving it a face not unlike that of the tank engine on her favorite nephew's favorite television show. To Beverly, the house looked sad and perhaps a little mortified. All the picture needed, she decided, was a four-fingered hand in a cartoon glove waving good-bye.
Behind her, Dial Ward, a tall, slender architect, and her tall, stooped, architect husband Willard were explaining to the others that the entire first floor of the carriage house had once been stables, the big square openings in the brick walls—filled now with bay windows on the street side and French windows on the side that faced the pool—once holding the stable doors.
Thank God, Beverly thought, we have a pair of professionals along to unravel that mystery for us.
The second floor had been servants’ quarters, in the opinion of architect and nonarchitect alike. It was reached by a creaking staircase whose railing was anchored by heavy posts decorated with horse-head reliefs and much scarred by the passage of suitcases. Upstairs, the creaking was taken up by the dark hardwood floors and echoed by the three-inch boards that paneled the white walls and ceilings.
Nelson, a balding and florid man who was the editor of a business magazine, found a particularly noisy board and rocked his considerable weight on it. “Not a house where you can have sex with a clear conscience,” he said.
Show me a house where you can, thought Beverly, whose husband had lately refused even to discuss children.
Two of the bedrooms were small and shared a bathroom that had a claw-foot tub on a raised platform. “For additional inconvenience,” as Heather, a real estate agent, phrased it. The third bedroom was a suite with a sitting room, fireplace, and a private bath.
The disparity in bedrooms created the problem of deciding which couple would get the master suite. Beverly stepped out onto the balcony that served all the bedrooms and overlooked the pool. She didn't want to take part in the negotiations or even hear them. She knew they would go on until Philip, a lawyer, balding like Nelson but with skin as pale as hotel sheets, had secured the room for them. The other couples knew it as well and surrendered after only a
token resistance. Beverly was embarrassed, but the sight of the master's sitting room—a library, really, with two walls of books and a writing table—eased her pain.
It was late by the time they'd settled their things, too late to grocery shop and cook. They walked the two blocks to the little town center to a restaurant recommended by a publisher friend of Nelson's. Beverly, serving as rear guard, marveled anew at the thinness of Heather's legs, so thin they made her knees look rheumatic. Beverly suspected that Heather was avoiding the unforgivable sin of Nelson's first wife, Molly, who had grown almost as fat as he was in the process of bearing him two children. Sure enough, for dinner Heather ordered a dry side salad. Beverly had a grouper sandwich with fries.
On the way back to the house, they saw a sign for the Strachan Island Ghost Walk. The bright green sign featured a black silhouette of a ghost and stated that the walk began every night at nine from the foot of the fishing pier.
"Our house is on that tour,” Heather said. “I'd bet my Gucci sunglasses."
Nelson said, “We should find out what time they go by and pop out in sheets."
"They better not be peeking in our windows,” Dial said.
"Not at these prices,” her husband added.
Philip said nothing, which surprised Beverly. He rarely let the last word be spoken in someone else's voice. She put it down to the wine he'd had with dinner.
Back at the house he seemed preoccupied, begging off on the euchre game and going out to the pool with his cell phone. Beverly watched from the shadows of the balcony as he paced back and forth, speaking in whispers but nodding and gesturing as though he were shouting. These private phone calls were growing more frequent, and Beverly wondered if Molly Pierce had noticed a similar pattern before being jettisoned.
Philip insisted on turning in early, thoughtfully suggesting that if Beverly wanted to read, she try the love seat in the little sitting room. She did, trading her paperback for a typescript she found on the mission desk, a history of the property. The history began with a plantation that predated the McPhersons by almost a century and a half. It had been abandoned in 1863, when the Yankee navy had claimed the island, liberating its many slaves. Even with that potentially exciting incident, the manuscript was deadly dull, being more concerned with property lines and deeds than people. It grew more so during the period between the departure of the Federal troops and the arrival of the robber barons, equipped with steam yachts and anxious for cheap winter estates and solitude. McPherson had been one of these, but by the time he sailed onto the scene, Beverly's head was nodding.
She set the manuscript aside and slid back the pocket door that had shielded Philip from her reading light and the crash of pages turning. By the light coming through the open bathroom door, she saw that he'd been further protected by the foam earplugs he invariably wore in hotels and which she invariably found on the floor or in between the sheets in the morning. She also saw that he'd left his cell phone on the nightstand next to his glass of water. Beverly was tempted to slip the phone into the bathroom and check the last number dialed. Instead, she crossed to her side of the bed, climbed in without disturbing his regular breathing, and went to sleep.
She awoke a little before six to a very quiet house, the only sounds the calling of birds and the rhythmic whoosh of the ceiling fan. She changed into T-shirt and running shorts in the bathroom and slipped out to walk the island's beach. Its narrow and fleeting beach, according to the research she'd done after Philip had announced the location of this year's golf trip. She'd learned that Strachan Island had the most dramatic tidal swing of any place on the East Coast. For half the day there would be no beach at all, and only twice a day, at low tide, would there be very much.
That morning there was a hard-packed fifty feet of sand. Beverly walked to the fishing pier and beyond it to the lighthouse. It was a replacement lighthouse, she knew from her reading of the night before, the original having been blown up by the Confederates when they'd abandoned the island. On her walk, she saw a pod of dolphins, surfacing and diving in a regular, lazy rhythm, and a flight of pelicans in follow-the-leader formation. A woman walking toward her pointed to the surf at Beverly's feet, and she looked down in time to see a shark fin slicing through a wave. The fin was pale gray and no bigger than her hand. The tiny shark circled, and Beverly saw a flash of bright blue, a crab scuttling for its life. Then the shark closed in, using all but the foamy leavings of the waves, and the crab was gone.
The carriage house was still quiet when she returned. She carried the newspaper she'd purchased in town up to her husband and found him sitting, fully clothed, on his side of the unmade bed. He was waiting for her, Beverly realized. Lying in wait for her.
She remembered with a hot flush of guilt her impulse to check his cell phone, but when he said, “Did you do this?” his tone was more anxious than accusing.
He pointed to the nightstand next to him. It held the phone, a now empty water glass, and a lamp. The lamp was identical to the one on her side of the bed, but Beverly hadn't paid much attention to either. She saw now that each had a white shade and a tall body of clear glass in the form of a stretched jar with a slightly protruding base. On the base of Philip's lamp were set two tiny orange objects: his trusty earplugs. The bell-shaped plugs were resting side by side on the wider of their two ends, which resembled suction cups. Their rounder ends were thrust upward like fantasy breasts.
"Did you put my earplugs there?"
"No,” Beverly said. “I didn't see them after I went to bed. You must have done it."
Her answer pleased him, she saw, but not enough to dampen a naturally contrary nature.
"Have you ever known me to take them out during the night? Or to put them someplace neatly if I did? They usually fall out. If I notice one gone, I might pull the other one out, but then I just toss it at the nightstand. It's a miracle if it ends up there."
Beverly was well acquainted with a similar miracle: his spent tissues landing in the wastepaper basket.
"And look where they ended up,” Philip said, pointing again to the lamp. “It's the perfect spot for them. But I never even noticed that lamp last night. I was too bushed to read. Are you sure you didn't put them there?"
"I'm positive."
"So if you didn't do it and I didn't do it, who did?"
"Heather?” Beverly asked, feeling contrary by then herself.
"Close. How about Heather's ghost? I mean, the ghost Heather felt in the house."
Beverly pointed out that Heather had only said the house would be a good place for a ghost story. Philip missed the distinction.
"She was right. Look at the way those earplugs were stuck on that glass. I mean, it's the perfect place to put them, but it's unnatural too."
Beverly was moved to quote Bill Murray. “You're right. No human being would stack books like that."
Her husband encountered the same skepticism from the others. The exception was Heather, who had passed an uneasy night and blamed psychic vibrations.
"She was hungry, probably,” Dial said to Beverly as they sat in a golf cart on the sixth hole of the Strachan Palms Golf Club, watching Heather waggle interminably. “What do you think of Philip's ghost?"
Beverly said, “If it picks up his underwear tonight, I'm taking it home in a bottle."
"The neat ghost of Strachan Island,” Dial said with a laugh. “Maybe it's a dead chambermaid."
Mentioning home had reminded Beverly of another issue. She explored it tangentially. “The real ghost of this trip is Molly. I miss her."
Dial immediately changed the topic to the seven wood she'd hit into a pond on the previous hole.
"She knows something,” Beverly thought, while pretending to listen. “She knows Philip is seeing someone, but she won't say it. And we've known each other forever."
Then she remembered how Philip had let slip Nelson Pierce's secret plans for Molly. Beverly hadn't called to warn her, a woman she'd known forever. She hadn't wanted to get involved.
Next year Dial and Heather would be waiting for a stranger to finish waggling. A Tiffany, probably. Or a Stephanie.
The husbands’ threesome always teed off first, so they would have time for a drink before the women finished. As she entered the clubhouse bar after turning in her cart, Beverly decided that the men had had time for two drinks or maybe three. Nelson was laughing himself purple, and Dial's normally staid husband Willard was pointing to his elongated head while twirling his finger, the universal dumb show for insanity.
"We're having a séance tonight, ladies,” he said. “We're going to lay Phil's ghost."
"Watch your language,” Heather said.
Learn your language, Beverly thought.
Philip, whose laughter was obviously forced, said, “I never mentioned a séance. I said we should all take the ghost walk. Our house is bound to be on it."
"They might be afraid to include us,” Nelson said. “A ghost who collects earplugs might be too gruesome for the tourist trade."
"It had to take his earplugs,” Dial said. “Phil couldn't hear it rattling its chains."
"Did you hear any chains, Bev?” Heather asked.
"It was more like bedsprings,” Beverly said, effectively diverting the conversation.
But not diverting her husband. On the drive back to the house, as they crept through the island's two-block business district, Philip spotted the ghost walk's distinctive green and black sign hanging from the porch roof of a used-book store. This time the sign's message was “tickets sold here.” Beverly, who had been wanting to visit the store anyway, volunteered to jump out and walk the rest of the way back.
The shop's familiar mustiness instantly transported her to the basement stacks of the library where she worked. The entire staff was a lone woman behind a cluttered desk, who was speaking on the phone and didn't acknowledge Beverly's arrival. Beverly walked to the shelves opposite the woman's desk and began to work her way to the back of the shop. In the meantime, the shopkeeper continued to discuss her business at a volume audible to passersby on the sidewalk. She was proposing the sale of the shop, Beverly realized, to either a real estate agent or a lawyer. Of the entire shop, the woman insisted more than once, building, books, fixtures, and “goodwill.” Beverly wondered how much goodwill a store owner who ignored her customers could have built up. She was more impressed with the stock, though she was professionally offended by the haphazard arrangement of the books and by the unshelved stacks in every corner.