Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense

by Unknown

  “It’s too fine to hang at a window,” said one practical Sunday-painting matron. “The sun will fade the colors.”

  “I’d love to wear it,” said the life model.

  “You!” said a bearded student of lithography. “It’s a robe for a pagan king!”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Mrs. Moon, and smiled her happiness on all of them.

  • • •

  The season was drawing to a close when in the third week of August, Mrs. Moon threw the shuttle for the last time. She slumped on the backless bench and rested her limp hands on the breast beam of the loom. Tomorrow she would cut the warp.

  That night, while George was showing color slides of his paintings in the main gallery, the girl from Minneapolis came alone to the Moons’ cabin. Mrs. Moon was lying on the bed watching a spider spin a web in the rafters. A fire was blazing in the fireplace, between Apollo I and Apollo II, for the late summer night was chill.

  “You must let him go,” said the golden-haired Teddy bear. “He loves me.”

  “Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Moon.

  “You don’t seem to understand. I’m talking about George.” The girl sat on the bed. “I think I’m pregnant.”

  “That’s nice,” said Mrs. Moon. “Children are a blessing, Watch the spider.”

  “We have a real relationship going. I don’t care about being married—that’s too feudal. But you must free George to come and be a father image to the child.”

  “You’ll get over it,” said Mrs. Moon, smiling a trifle sadly at the girl.

  “Oh, you don’t even want to know what’s happening!” cried the girl. “No wonder George is bored with you.”

  “Some spiders eat their mates after fertilization,” Mrs. Moon remarked. “Female spiders.”

  The girl flounced angrily from the cabin, as far as one could be said to flounce in blue jeans and sweatshirt.

  • • •

  George performed his end-of-summer separation ritual simply and brutally the following afternoon. He disappeared after lunch. No one knew where he had gone. The girl from Minneapolis roamed the camp, trying not to let anyone know she was searching for him. Finally she rowed herself down to the other end of the lake, to find that George had dumped her transistor radio, her books of poetry, and her box of incense on the damp sand, and had put a padlock on the door of the cottage.

  She threw her belongings into the boat and rowed back to the camp, tears of rage streaming down her cheeks. She beached the boat, and with head lowered and shoulders hunched she stormed the Moons’ cabin. She found Mrs. Moon tying off the severed warp threads.

  “Tell George,” she shouted, “tell George I’m going back to Minneapolis. He knows where to find me!”

  “Here, dear,” said Mrs. Moon, “hold the end and walk backwards while I unwind it.”

  The girl did as she was told, caught by the vibrant colors and Mrs. Moon’s concentration. In a few minutes the full length of cloth rested in the girl’s arms.

  “Put it on the bed and spread it out,” said Mrs. Moon. “Let’s take a good look at it.”

  “I’m really leaving,” whispered the girl. “Tell him I don’t care if I never see him again.”

  “I’ll tell him.” The wide strip of purple flowed garishly down the middle of the bed between them. “Do you think he’ll like it?” asked Mrs. Moon. “He’s going to have it around for a long time.”

  “The colors are very beautiful, very savage.” The girl looked closely at Mrs. Moon. “I wouldn’t have thought you would choose such colors.”

  “I never did before.”

  “I’m leaving now.”

  “Goodbye,” said Mrs. Moon.

  George did not reappear until long after the girl had loaded up her battered bug of a car and driven off. Mrs. Moon knew he had been watching and waiting from the hill behind the camp. He came into the cabin whistling softly and began to take his clothes off.

  “God, I’m tired,” he said.

  “It’s almost dinner time.”

  “Too tired to eat,” he yawned. “What’s that on the bed?”

  “My weaving is finished. Do you like it?”

  “It’s good. Take it off the bed. I’ll look at it tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Moon carefully folded the cloth and laid it on the weaving bench. She looked at George’s thin naked body before he got into bed, and smiled.

  “I’m going to dinner now,” she said.

  “Okay. Don’t wake me up when you get back. I could sleep for a week.”

  “I won’t wake you up,” said Mrs. Moon.

  • • •

  Mrs. Moon ate dinner at a table by herself. Most of the students had already left. A few people, the Moons among them, usually stayed on after the end of classes to rest and enjoy the isolation. Mrs. Moon spoke to no one.

  After dinner she sat on the pier and watched the sunset. She watched the turtles in the shallow water and thought she saw a blue heron on the other side of the lake. When the sky was black and the stars were too many to count, Mrs. Moon went to the toolshed and got a wheelbarrow. She rolled this to the door of her cabin and went inside.

  The cabin was dark and she could hear George’s steady heavy breathing. She lit two candles and placed them on the mantelshelf. She spread her beautiful weaving on her side of the bed, gently so as not to disturb the sleeper. Then she quietly moved the weaving bench to George’s side of the bed, near his head.

  She sat on the bench for a time, memorizing the lines of his face by the wavering candlelight. She touched him softly on the forehead with the pads of her fingertips and gently caressed his eyes, his hard cheeks, his raspy chin. His breathing became uneven and she withdrew her hands, sitting motionless until his sleep rhythm was restored.

  Then Mrs. Moon took off her shoes. She walked carefully to the fireplace, taking long quiet steps. She placed her shoes neatly side by side on the hearth and picked up the larger stone, Apollo I. The face of the kouros, the ancient god, smiled up at her and she returned that faint implacable smile. She carried the stone back to the bench beside the bed, and set it down.

  Then she climbed onto the bench, and when she stood, she found she could almost touch the spider’s web in the rafters. The spider crouched in the heart of its web, and Mrs. Moon wondered if spiders ever slept.

  Mrs. Moon picked up Apollo I, and with both arms raised, took careful aim. Her shadow, cast by candlelight, had the appearance of a priestess offering sacrifice. The stone was heavy and her arms grew weak. Her hands let go. The stone dropped.

  George’s eyes flapped open and he saw Mrs. Moon smiling tenderly down on him. His lips drew back to scream, but his mouth could only form a soundless hole.

  “Sleep, George,” she whispered, and his eyelids clamped over his unbelieving eyes.

  Mrs. Moon jumped off the bench. With gentle fingers she probed beneath his snaky locks until she found a satisfying softness. There was no blood and for this Mrs. Moon was grateful. It would have been a shame to spoil the beauty of her patterns with superfluous colors and untidy stains. Her mothlike fingers on his wrist warned her of a faint uneven fluttering.

  She padded back to the fireplace and weighed in her hands the smaller, lighter Apollo II. This time she felt there was no need for added height. With three quick butter-churning motions she enlarged the softened area in George’s skull and stilled the annoying flutter in his wrist.

  Then she rolled him over, as a hospital nurse will roll an immobile patient during bedmaking routine, until he rested on his back on one-half of the purple fabric. She placed his arms across his naked chest and straightened his spindly legs. She kissed his closed eyelids, gently stroked his shaggy brows, and said, “Rest now, dear George.”

  She folded the free half of the royal cloth over him, covering him from head to foot with a little left over at each end. From her sewin
g box she took a wide-eyed needle and threaded it with some difficulty in the flickering light. Then kneeling beside the bed, Mrs. Moon began stitching across the top. She stitched small careful stitches that would hold for eternity.

  Soon the top was closed and she began stitching down the long side. The job was wearisome, but Mrs. Moon was patient and she hummed a sweet, monotonous tune as stitch followed stitch past George’s ear, his shoulder, his bent elbow. It was not until she reached his ankles that she allowed herself to stand and stretch her aching knees and flex her cramped fingers.

  Retrieving the twin Apollos from where they lay abandoned on George’s pillow, she tucked them reverently into the bottom of the cloth sarcophagus and knelt once more to her task. Her needle flew faster as the remaining gap between the two edges of cloth grew smaller, until the last stitch was securely knotted and George was sealed into his funerary garment. But the hardest part of her night’s work was yet to come.

  She knew she could not carry George even the short distance to the door of the cabin and the wheelbarrow outside. And the wheelbarrow was too wide to bring inside. She couldn’t bear the thought of dragging him across the floor and soiling or tearing the fabric she had so lovingly woven. Finally she rolled him onto the weaving bench and despite the fact that it only supported him from armpits to groin, she managed to maneuver it to the door. From there it was possible to shift the burden to the waiting wheelbarrow.

  Mrs. Moon was now breathing heavily from her exertions, and paused for a moment to survey the night and the prospect before her. There were no lights anywhere in the camp except for the feeble glow of her own guttering candles. As she went to blow them out she glanced at her watch and was mildly surprised to see that it was ten minutes past three. The hours had flown while she had been absorbed in her needlework.

  She perceived now the furtive night noises of the forest creatures which had hitherto been blocked from her senses by the total concentration she had bestowed on her work. She thought of weasels and foxes prowling, of owls going about their predatory night activities, and considered herself in congenial company. Then taking up the handles of the wheelbarrow, she trundled down the well-defined path to the boathouse.

  The wheelbarrow made more noise than she had anticipated and she hoped she was far enough from any occupied cabin for its rumbling to go unnoticed. The moonless night sheltered her from any wakeful watcher, and a dozen summers of waiting had taught her the nature and substance of every square foot of the camp’s area. She could walk it blindfolded.

  When she reached the boathouse she found that some hurried careless soul had left a boat on the beach in defiance of the camp’s rules. It was a simple matter of leverage to shift her burden from barrow to boat and in minutes Mrs. Moon was heaving inexpertly at the oars. At first the boat seemed inclined to travel only in wide arcs and head back to shore, but with patient determination Mrs. Moon established a rowing rhythm that would take her and her passenger to the deepest part of the lake.

  She hummed a sea chanty which aided her rowing and pleased her sense of the appropriate. Then pinpointing her position by the silhouette of the tall solitary pine that grew on the opposite shore, Mrs. Moon carefully raised the oars and rested them in the boat.

  As Mrs. Moon crept forward in the boat, feeling her way in the darkness, the boat began to rock gently. It was a pleasant, soothing motion and Mrs. Moon thought of cradles and soft enveloping comforters. She continued creeping slowly forward, swaying with the motion of the boat, until she reached the side of her swaddled passenger. There she sat and stroked the cloth and wished that she could see the fine colors just one last time.

  She felt the shape beneath the cloth, solid but thin and now rather pitiful. She took the head in her arms and held it against her breast, rocking and humming a long-forgotten lullaby.

  The doubled weight at the forward end of the small boat caused the prow to dip. Water began to slosh into the boat—in small wavelets at first as the boat rocked from side to side, then in a steady trickle as the boat rode lower and lower in the water. Mrs. Moon rocked and hummed; the water rose over her bare feet and lapped against her ankles. The sky began to turn purple and she could just make out the distant shape of the boathouse and the hill behind the camp. She was very tired and very cold.

  Gently she placed George’s head in the water. The boat tilted crazily and she scrambled backward to equalize the weight. She picked up the other end of the long purple chrysalis, the end containing the stone Apollos, and heaved it overboard. George in his shroud, with head and feet trailing in the lake, now lay along the side of the boat weighting it down.

  Water was now pouring in. Mrs. Moon held to the other side of the boat with placid hands and thought of the dense comfort of the muddy lake bottom and George beside her forever. She saw that her feet were frantically pushing against the burden of her life, running away from that companionable grave.

  With a regretful sigh she let herself slide down the short incline of the seat and came to rest beside George. The boat lurched deeper into the lake. Water surrounded George and climbed into Mrs. Moon’s lap. Mrs. Moon closed her eyes and hummed, “Nearer My God to Thee.” She did not see George drift away from the side of the boat, carried off by the moving arms of water. She felt a wild bouncing, a shuddering and splashing, and was sure the boat had overturned. With relief she gave herself up to chaos and did not try to hold her breath.

  Expecting a suffocating weight of water in her lungs, Mrs. Moon was disappointed to find she could open her eyes, that air still entered and left her gasping mouth. She lay in a pool of water in the bottom of the boat and saw a bird circle high above the lake, peering down at her. The boat was bobbing gently on the water, and when Mrs. Moon sat up she saw that a few yards away, through the fresh blue morning, George was bobbing gently too. The purple shroud had filled with air and floated on the water like a small submarine come up for air and a look at the new day.

  As she watched, shivering and wet, the submarine shape drifted away and dwindled as the lake took slow possession. At last, with a grateful sigh, green water replacing the last bubble of air, it sank just as the bright arc of the sun rose over the hill in time to give Mrs. Moon a final glimpse of glorious purple and gold. She shook herself like a tired old gray dog and called out, “Goodbye, George.” Her cry echoed back and forth across the morning and startled forth a chorus of bird shrieks. Pandemonium and farewell. She picked up the oars.

  Back on the beach, the boat carefully restored to its place, Mrs. Moon dipped her blistered hands into the lake. She scented bacon on the early air and instantly felt the pangs of an enormous hunger. Mitch, the cook, would be having his early breakfast and perhaps would share it with her. She hurried to the cabin to change out of her wet clothes, and was amazed, as she stepped over the doorsill, at the stark emptiness which greeted her.

  Shafts of daylight fell on the rumpled bed, but there was nothing for her there. She was not tired now, did not need to sleep. The fireplace contained cold ashes, and the hearth looked bare and unfriendly. The loom gaped at her like a toothless mouth, its usefulness at an end. In a heap on the floor lay George’s clothes where he had dropped them the night before. Out of habit she picked them up, and as she hung them on a hook in the small closet she felt a rustle in the shirt pocket. It was a scrap of paper torn off a drawing pad; there was part of a pencil sketch on one side, on the other an address and telephone number.

  Mrs. Moon hated to leave anything unfinished, despising untidiness in herself and others. She quickly changed into her town clothes and hung her discarded wet things in the tiny bathroom to dry. She found an apple and munched it as she made up her face and combed her still damp hair. The apple took the edge off her hunger, and she decided not to take the time to beg breakfast from the cook.

  She carefully made the bed and tidied the small room, sweeping a few scattered ashes back into the fireplace. She checked her summer straw po
cketbook for driver’s license, car keys, money, and finding everything satisfactory, she paused for a moment in the center of the room. All was quiet, neat, and orderly. The spider still hung inert in the center of its web and one small fly was buzzing helplessly on its perimeter. Mrs. Moon smiled.

  There was no time to weave now—indeed, there was no need. She could not really expect to find a conveniently deserted lake in a big city. No. She would have to think of something else.

  Mrs. Moon stood in the doorway of the cabin in the early sunlight, a small frown wrinkling the placid surface of her round pink face. She scuffled slowly around to the back of the cabin and into the shadow of the sycamores beyond, her feet kicking up the spongy layers of years of fallen leaves, her eyes watching carefully for the right idea to show itself. Two grayish-white stones appeared side by side, half covered with leaf mold. Anonymous, faceless, about the size of canteloupes, they would do unless something better presented itself.

  Unceremoniously she dug them out of their bed, brushed away the loose dirt, and leaf fragments, and carried them back to the car.

  Mrs. Moon’s watch had stopped sometime during the night, but as she got into the car she glanced at the now fully risen sun and guessed the time to be about six thirty or seven o’clock. She placed the two stones snugly on the passenger seat and covered them with her soft pale-blue cardigan. She started the engine, and then reached over and groped in the glove compartment. She never liked to drive anywhere without knowing beforehand the exact roads to take to get to her destination. The road map was there, neatly folded beneath the flashlight and the box of tissues.

  Mrs. Moon unfolded the map and spread it out over the steering wheel. As the engine warmed up, Mrs. Moon hummed along with it. Her pudgy pink hand absently patted the tidy blue bundle beside her as she planned the most direct route to the girl in Minneapolis.

  ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING

  ___________________

  1889–1955

  The famously prickly Raymond Chandler said of ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING: “For my money she’s the top suspense writer of them all. She doesn’t pour it on and make you feel irritated. Her characters are wonderful; and she has a sort of inner calm which I find very attractive.” Holding was born in New York but spent much of her life traveling the world after marrying George Holding, a British diplomat, in 1913. The time she spent in the Caribbean, especially Bermuda, would inform several of Holding’s nineteen suspense novels (she published six romantic novels in the early 1920s, switching gears when the 1929 stock market crash provided an economic incentive), including The Strange Crime in Bermuda (1937). But the hallmark of Holding’s work was subtle, psychologically nuanced portraits of women making sense of troubled marriages, conflicted relationships with children, or intrigue thrown up by the larger world.