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

by Unknown

  “I mean, is it new? Does Mrs. Smith tell you not to put your feet on it?”

  “No, she never tells me that,” Cathy said truthfully. “I want to go home now. I’m tired.”

  It was while she was putting Cathy to bed that Marion heard Paul call to her from the living room in an urgent voice, “Marion, come here a minute.”

  She found him standing motionless in the middle of the room, staring across the canyon at the Smiths’ place. The rectangular light of the Smiths’ television set was shining in the picture window of the room that opened onto the patio at the back of the Smiths’ house.

  “Either they’ve come home within the past few minutes,” he said, “or they were there all the time. My guess is that they were home when we went over, but they didn’t want to see us, so they just doused the lights and pretended to be out. Well, it won’t work! Come on, we’re going back.”

  “I can’t leave Cathy alone. She’s already got her pajamas on.”

  “Put a bathrobe on her and bring her along. This has gone beyond the point of observing such niceties as correct attire.”

  “Don’t you think we should wait until tomorrow?”

  “Hurry up and stop arguing with me.”

  Cathy, protesting that she was tired and that the Smiths weren’t home anyway, was bundled into a bathrobe and carried to the car.

  “They’re home all right,” Paul said. “And by heaven they’d better answer the door this time or I’ll break it down.”

  “That’s an absurd way to talk in front of a child,” Marion said coldly. “She has enough ideas without hearing—”

  “Absurd is it? Wait and see.”

  Cathy, listening from the backseat, smiled sleepily. She knew how to get in without breaking anything: ever since the house had been built, the real estate man who’d been trying to sell it always hid the key on a nail underneath the window box.

  The second trip seemed a nightmarish imitation of the first: the same moon hung in the sky but it looked smaller now, and paler. The scent of pittosporum was funereally sweet, and the hollow sound of the chimes from inside the house was like the echo in an empty tomb.

  “They must be crazy to think they can get away with a trick like this twice in one night!” Paul shouted. “Come on, we’re going around to the back.”

  Marion looked a little frightened. “I don’t like trespassing on someone else’s property.”

  “They trespassed on our property first.”

  He glanced down at Cathy. Her eyes were half closed and her face was pearly in the moonlight. He pressed her hand to reassure her that everything was going to be all right and that his anger wasn’t directed at her, but she drew away from him and started down the path that led to the back of the house.

  Paul clicked on his flashlight and followed her, moving slowly along the unfamiliar terrain. By the time he turned the corner of the house and reached the patio, Cathy was out of sight.

  “Cathy,” he called. “Where are you? Come back here!”

  Marion was looking at him accusingly. “You upset her with that silly threat about breaking down the door. She’s probably on her way home through the canyon.”

  “I’d better go after her.”

  “She’s less likely to get hurt than you are. She knows every inch of the way. Besides, you came here to break down the doors. All right, start breaking.”

  But there was no need to break down anything. The back door opened as soon as Paul rapped on it with his knuckles, and he almost fell into the room.

  It was empty except for a small girl wearing a blue bathrobe that matched her eyes.

  Paul said, “Cathy. Cathy, what are you doing here?”

  Marion stood with her hand pressed to her mouth to stifle the scream that was rising in her throat. There were no Smiths. The people in the sports car whom Cathy had waved at were just strangers responding to the friendly greeting of a child—had Cathy seen them before, on a previous trip to town? The television set was no more than a contraption rigged up by Cathy herself—an orange crate and an old mirror that caught and reflected the rays of the moon.

  In front of it Cathy was standing, facing her own image. “Hello, Mrs. Smith. Here I am, all ready to go.”

  “Cathy,” Marion said in a voice that sounded torn by claws, “what do you see in that mirror?”

  “It’s not a mirror. It’s a television set.”

  “What—what program are you watching?”

  “It’s not a program, silly. It’s real. It’s the Smiths. I’m going away with them to dance and play baseball.”

  “There are no Smiths,” Paul bellowed. “Will you get that through your head? There are no Smiths!”

  “Yes, there are. I see them.”

  Marion knelt on the floor beside the child. “Listen to me, Cathy. This is a mirror—only a mirror. It came from Daddy’s old bureau and I had it put away in the storage room. That’s where you found it, isn’t it? And you brought it here and decided to pretend it was a television set, isn’t that right? But it’s really just a mirror, and the people in it are us—you and Mommy and Daddy.”

  But even as she looked at her own reflection, Marion saw it beginning to change. She was growing younger, prettier; her hair was becoming lighter and her cotton suit was changing into a dancing dress. And beside her in the mirror, Paul was turning into a stranger, a laughing-eyed young man wearing a baseball cap.

  “I’m ready to go now, Mr. Smith,” Cathy said, and suddenly all three of them, the Smiths and their little girl, began walking away in the mirror. In a few moments they were no bigger than matchsticks—and then the three of them disappeared, and there was only the moonlight in the glass.

  “Cathy,” Marion cried. “Come back, Cathy! Please come back!”

  Propped up against the door like a dummy, Paul imagined he could hear above his wife’s cries the mocking muted roar of a sports car.

  MIRIAM ALLEN DEFORD

  ___________________

  1888–1975

  MIRIAM ALLEN DEFORD was a prolific writer in the mystery, science fiction and fantasy, and true crime fields. She was first published at the age of twelve, and by fourteen was making her mark in the early feminist movement as a campaigner and disseminator of birth control information to underprivileged women, first in her native Philadelphia and later, in Boston, New York, and the San Francisco area. DeFord, along with her first husband, Maynard Shipley, were active against the rising tides of antievolution fights in the 1920s. She also worked for Charles Fort, the famed researcher into paranormal phenomena, and for a time for the magazine Humanist. She was one of the first female insurance claims adjusters, and was actively involved in civil rights organizations, including the ACLU.

  Her science fiction and fantasy stories, with themes of alienation and changing sexual roles, were largely published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction when Anthony Boucher—also the mystery critic for the New York Times and a well-published writer in his own right—was editor, and later collected in Xenogenesis (1969) and Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow (1971). DeFord’s mystery short stories, many of which appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, were collected in The Theme Is Murder (1967). She also won an Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime for The Overbury Affair (1960), about the murder of Thomas Overbury during the seventeenth-century reign of King James I in England, and garnered further acclaim for The Real Bonnie and Clyde (1968), a corrective account of the notorious outlaw couple published a year after the commercially successful film was released. DeFord was also an active editor of anthologies, how-to manuals, and practical guides for writers. She died in San Francisco’s Ambassador Hotel, where she made her home, in 1975.

  “Mortmain,” first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1944, further mines deFord’s recurring interest in the alienated self through the prism of a nurse caring for elderly patien
ts in a hospital ward. The work is tough and frustrating, the rewards few, the indignities mounting. So it’s only natural that tension would build to a boiling point, with the nurse seeking personal redemption in the only manner she appears to have left.

  MORTMAIN

  ___________________

  “I’LL BE back on Thursday, Miss Hendricks, and I’ll drop in here in the afternoon. It’s only three days, and I don’t anticipate any change. You know what to do. If anything happens, you can call Dr. Roberts; he knows all about the case. I wouldn’t go away, with Marsden like this, but—well, it’s my only daughter, you know, and she’ll never be married again—at least, I hope not!—and she’d be heartbroken if her old dad weren’t there to give her away.”

  Dr. Staples turned to his patient.

  “Good-bye, old man; I’m leaving you in Miss Hendricks’ charge till Thursday. You won’t be sorry to have three days free of me, eh?”

  Dr. Staples put on his gloves and picked up his hat from the table by the bed. The sick man nodded feebly, essaying a slight courteous smile. The nurse nodded too, her eyes downcast. She was afraid to look at the doctor—afraid to let him see the incredulous joy in her face.

  “So long, then.” He was gone, shutting the door quietly after him.

  What unbelievable luck! Cora Hendricks felt herself trembling with excitement. How she had schemed and planned—and it had never occurred to her that anything would keep Staples from his daily visits to his patient. Now she had three whole days and nights.

  Today. It was only three o’clock. She could do it today. His four o’clock medicine. By five she would be finished here; by six she could be on a train. By Thursday she could be where Staples would never find her. No—that was foolish. She mustn’t disappear. She would phone Dr. Roberts, and he would come. Perhaps he would summon Staples back, perhaps he would take the whole responsibility. Either way, it would make no difference to her. Afterwards, she could go, and then—then her new life would begin.

  She sat silently by Marsden’s bed, on the other side of the table, and let her eyes, that she had not dared to let the doctor see, rove around the big room. Back of the framed photograph of Marsden’s dead wife was a sliding panel that hid a safe. She knew the combination; Marsden had given it to her when he wanted her to bring him the insurance papers for the doctor to look at. Marsden knew he was going to die soon.

  At night, when he was asleep, she had opened the safe again. It was full of money. She had not counted it all, but without the bonds—they would be dangerous—there was nearly ten thousand dollars in currency. Her hands shook at the memory.

  She could have taken it then, and gone away, but three things had restrained her. First, there was a lingering scruple of professional ethics, at deserting a patient in the middle of the night. Then, he might waken suddenly and understand, and she knew that in a drawer of the bedside table was a loaded revolver. He was probably too weak to use it, but once in a while he gathered sudden accesses of strength. And finally, it would be quite obvious where and how the money had gone. Marsden would tell the doctor in the morning, and they would have hold of her in short order.

  But she must get it. She must. There were urgent reasons. There was her own realization that time was slipping past her, that professional calls were growing fewer, that there was nothing saved. And there was Terry.

  Terry had been her patient once, long ago, before she knew anything about him. He was just a rich man taken ill in a hotel. That was when she was young and full of ideals and rigorous virtues. Probably, if she had never met Terry, the money would have lain in that safe forever for all of her. But after they had fallen in love she had found out—gradually. Terry was a professional bank-robber: that was the bald truth of it. He was also handsome, cultured, fascinating, and she was mad about him. Slowly his influence conquered all the ideals and most of the virtues. If she had been scrupulous and honest since, it was from expediency, not from principle. And then Terry had been caught. But he had not been armed—Terry was too wise ever to carry a gun—and he had received a light sentence—ten years. He was a model prisoner; with good behavior, his term would be over now in three more months. They were going to be married when he got out. He must never run such risks again; she must have money for him—plenty of money. They must be able to go away somewhere, change his name, live new lives. It was with Terry, in whispers across a high-ridged table in the visitors’ room, that she had planned this thing.

  Marsden would never need that money. There wasn’t anyone for him to leave it to: his wife was dead, he was childless and without brothers or sisters. He had told her himself that his will left everything to various charities. Everything about him was eccentric. Living alone in an apartment, eating in restaurants, hiring no servant—that was eccentric too, not miserly. He paid Cora Hendricks well, and he paid the woman well who came in once a week to clean. It was eccentric to refuse to go to a hospital when his illness became acute; Staples was an old friend and humored him. It was eccentric to keep his valuables in a safe built into the wall instead of in a safe-deposit box in a bank. It was surely eccentric to keep a loaded revolver in a table-drawer when he was too weak to lift it and had no occasion to use it anyway.

  At first she had suspected he was contemplating suicide as a quick way out of incurable disease, but he had disabused her mind of that.

  “I like to feel that I am still in touch with the active world I shall not rejoin,” he had said a little shamefacedly, in his precise voice. “When I was well I spent all my summers in Maine, in the town where I was born. Up there in Squanscutt I’m somebody important; here in New York I’m just a fairly prosperous man with nothing to do.

  “Do you know, Miss Hendricks”—his voice slumped to a conspiratorial whisper like a small boy’s—“when I’m at home, in the summer, I’m a deputy sheriff! I have all the accoutrements—I keep it here by me, to look at and remember, because I shall never wear the things again. In fact, I never did need them, but there was always a chance of—oh, let’s say adventure—a rumrunner, perhaps, before repeal, or an escaping bandit. Nothing exciting ever happened to me in my life,” he added wistfully. “This junk here represents my dream that something might have happened.”

  He opened the drawer confidentially—it was one of his good days—and let her look at everything. There was the badge, with “Deputy” on it in blue enamel; the revolver in its holster; the pair of handcuffs; even, crushed and folded, the hat, looking more like a western bad man’s than a Maine deputy sheriff’s. Cora, with a transient twinge of pity, realized that in Squanscutt they must laugh at him and indulge him and love him—probably he had been the town’s benefactor in more ways than one. He was no millionaire, but the bonds must run to a hundred thousand in value, and he had a good-sized checking account in two banks. The cash in the safe was all that mattered to her—just spending money to him, but imperative, vital, to Cora Hendricks.

  She could reach across him right now, open the drawer—it had no lock — and shoot him as he lay there with his eyes closed and his breath coming in irregular gasps. She would do nothing so ridiculous, of course. Marsden was going to die naturally—perhaps from the excitement of seeing his old friend and physician leave him for three days. That was what she would suggest to Dr. Roberts when she called him.

  She had the stuff ready: Terry had told her where and how to get it. It could be poured into the four o’clock medicine, and he would never know the difference. Neither would anyone else—who would order an autopsy on a man who had been dying for weeks? In ten minutes now he would be dead.

  Then she went over the plan mentally, while she sat watching the sick man’s troubled breathing. First she must wash out the glass thoroughly. Next she must dispose of the little vial which had been constantly in her apron pocket for a week while she awaited her chance. She could take it away with her, and throw it somewhere when she was on the train. She would get the money out, clo
se the safe again—it was unlikely that anyone, even Staples, knew just how much currency Marsden had there, or if he had any at all. Fingerprints wouldn’t matter—Staples had seen her open the safe at Marsden’s order.

  Ten thousand dollars made a big bundle. But there was room in her suitcase. When Roberts was through with her she would pack and return to her rented room. She would give her name in at the registry at once. She might even go out on another case if one presented itself. Nothing suspicious; no running away. When Marsden was buried, when Terry was about to be released, she would go to the place where they had agreed to meet, and take the money with her.

  Would the clock ever move to four? She felt her nerves fraying with impatience to have it over with. She got up softly and walked to the window. It was open a little. Cora gazed meditatively at the building opposite. No one could possibly interfere. Even if some fool stood there with a spy-glass, what would he see? A uniformed nurse giving her patient his medicine. She smiled, and returned to the chair on the left side of the bed.

  Four o’clock. She stood up briskly. Marsden opened his eyes and turned his head inquiringly to her.

  “Your medicine,” she said soothingly. She caught her breath; she must not betray her agitation.

  “Which one?” he asked feebly. He lost track of time easily.

  “The digitalis mixture.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He watched her while she poured a little water in the glass and then with the dropper measured the eight drops into it. The medicines were not on the bedside table—that was sacred to his personal belongings, his glasses and a book or two, and the touching little bunch of flowers the cleaning woman had brought him that very morning.

  She turned away from him to stir the mixture. In that instant the little vial came from her pocket and was emptied into the glass and returned to its hiding-place. The liquid was colorless and odorless.

  She marveled at her steadiness as she brought the glass to him, propped him on his high pillow so that he could drink. He took the glass in his veined hand and laid it beside him on the table.