The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  All this was of moderate interest to Mr Appleby whose motive, a desire to come into the immediate possession of his wife’s estate, was strikingly similar to the alleged motive of Mrs X’s husband. But more important were the actual details of the case. Mrs X had been in the act of bringing him a glass of water, said her husband, when the scatter rug, as scatter rugs will, had suddenly slipped from under her feet.

  In rebuttal the indefatigable lawyer had produced a medical authority who made clear through a number of charts (all of which were handsomely reproduced in the book) that in the act of receiving the glass of water it would have been child’s play for the husband to lay one hand behind his wife’s shoulder, another hand along her jaw, and with a sudden thrust produce the same drastic results as the fall on the scatter rug, without leaving any clues as to the nature of his crime.

  It should be made clear now that in studying these charts and explanations relentlessly Mr Appleby was not acting the part of the greedy man going to any lengths to appease that greed. True, it was money he wanted, but it was money for the maintenance of what he regarded as a holy cause. And that was the Shop: Appleby, Antiques and Curios.

  The Shop was the sun of Mr Appleby’s universe. He had bought it twenty years before with the pittance left by his father, and at best it provided him with a poor living. At worst – and it was usually at worst – it had forced him to draw on his mother’s meager store of good will and capital. Since his mother was not one to give up a penny lightly, the Shop brought about a series of pitched battles which, however, always saw it the victor – since in the last analysis the Shop was to Mr Appleby what Mr Appleby was to his mother.

  This unhappy triangle was finally shattered by his mother’s death, at which time Mr Appleby discovered that she had played a far greater role in maintaining his orderly little world than he had hitherto realized. This concerned not only the money she occasionally gave him, but also his personal habits.

  He ate lightly and warily. His mother had been adept at toasting and boiling his meals to perfection. His nerves were violently shaken if anything in the house was out of place, and she had been a living assurance he would be spared this. Her death, therefore, left a vast and uncomfortable gap in his life, and in studying methods to fill it he was led to contemplate marriage, and then to the act itself.

  His wife was a pale, thin-lipped woman so much like his mother in appearance and gesture that sometimes on her entrance into a room he was taken aback by the resemblance. In only one respect did she fail him: she could not understand the significance of the Shop, nor his feelings about it. That was disclosed the first time he broached the subject of a small loan that would enable him to meet some business expenses.

  Mrs Appleby had been well in the process of withering on the vine when her husband-to-be had proposed to her, but to give her full due she was not won by the mere prospect of finally making a marriage. Actually, though she would have blushed at such a blunt statement of her secret thought, it was the large, mournful eyes behind his rimless spectacles that turned the trick, promising, as they did, hidden depths of emotion neatly garbed in utter respectability. When she learned very soon after her wedding that the hidden depths were evidently too well hidden ever to be explored by her, she shrugged the matter off and turned to boiling and toasting his meals with good enough grace. The knowledge that the impressive Appleby, Antiques and Curios was a hollow shell she took in a different spirit.

  She made some brisk investigations and then announced her findings to Mr Appleby with some heat.

  ‘Antiques and curios!’ she said shrilly. ‘Why, that whole collection of stuff is nothing but a pile of junk. Just a bunch of worthless dust-catchers, that’s all it is!’

  What she did not understand was that these objects, which to the crass and commercial eye might seem worthless, were to Mr Appleby the stuff of life itself. The Shop had grown directly from his childhood mania for collecting, assorting, labeling, and preserving anything he could lay his hands on. And the value of any item in the Shop increased proportionately with the length of time he possessed it; whether a cracked imitation of Sevres, or clumsily faked Chippendale, or rusty saber made no difference. Each piece had won a place for itself; a permanent, immutable place, as far as Mr Appleby was concerned; and strangely enough it was the sincere agony he suffered in giving up a piece that led to the few sales he made. The customer who was uncertain of values had only to get a glimpse of this agony to be convinced that he was getting a rare bargain. Fortunately, no customer could have imagined for a moment that it was the thought of the empty space left by the object’s departure – the brief disorder which the emptiness made – and not a passion for the object itself that drew Mr Appleby’s pinched features into a mask of pain.

  So, not understanding, Mrs Appleby took an unsympathetic tack. ‘You’ll get my mite when I’m dead and gone,’ she said, ‘and only when I’m dead and gone.’

  Thus unwittingly she tried herself, was found wanting, and it only remained for sentence to be executed. When the time came Mr Appleby applied the lessons he had gleaned from his invaluable textbook, and found them accurate in every detail. It was over quickly, quietly, and, outside of a splash of water on his trousers, neatly. The Medical Examiner growled something about those indescribable scatter rugs costing more lives than drunken motorists; the policeman in charge kindly offered to do whatever he could in the way of making funeral arrangements; and that was all there was to it.

  It had been so easy – so undramatic, in fact – that it was not until a week later when a properly sympathetic lawyer was making him an accounting of his wife’s estate that Mr Appleby suddenly understood the whole, magnificent new world that had been opened up to him.

  Discretion must sometimes outweigh sentiment, and Mr Appleby was, if anything, a discreet man. After his wife’s estate had been cleared, the Shop was moved to another location far from its original setting. It was moved again after the sudden demise of the second Mrs Appleby, and by the time the sixth Mrs Appleby had been disposed of, the removals were merely part of a fruitful pattern.

  Because of their similarities – they were all pale, thin-featured women with pinched lips, adept at toasting and boiling, and adamant on the subjects of regularity and order – Mr Appleby was inclined to remember his departed wives rather vaguely en masse. Only in one regard did he qualify them: the number of digits their bank accounts totaled up to. For that reason he thought of the first two Mrs Applebys as Fours; the third as a Three (an unpleasant surprise); and the last three as Fives. The sum would have been a pretty penny by anyone else’s standards, but since each succeeding portion of it had been snapped up by the insatiable Appleby, Antiques and Curios – in much the way a fly is snapped up by a hungry lizard – Mr Appleby found himself soon after the burial of the sixth Mrs Appleby in deeper and warmer financial waters than ever. So desperate were his circumstances that although he dreamed of another Five he would have settled for a Four on the spot. It was at this opportune moment that Martha Sturgis entered his life, and after fifteen minutes’ conversation with her he brushed all thoughts of Fours and Fives from his mind.

  Martha Sturgis, it seemed, was a Six.

  It was not only in the extent of her fortune that she broke the pattern established by the women of Mr Appleby’s previous experience. Unlike them, Martha Sturgis was a large, rather shapeless woman who in person, dress, and manner might almost be called (Mr Appleby shuddered a little at the word) blowsy.

  It was remotely possible that properly veneered, harnessed, coiffured, and appareled she might have been made into something presentable, but from all indications Martha Sturgis was a woman who went out of her way to defy such conventions. Her hair, dyed a shocking orange-red, was piled carelessly on her head; her blobby features were recklessly powdered and painted entirely to their disadvantage; her clothes, obviously worn for comfort, were, at the same time, painfully garish; and her shoes gave evidence of long and pleasurable wear without correspond
ing care being given their upkeep.

  Of all this and its effect on the beholder Martha Sturgis seemed totally unaware. She strode through Appleby, Antiques and Curios with an energy that set movable objects dancing in their places; she smoked incessantly, lighting one cigarette from another, while Mr Appleby fanned the air before his face and coughed suggestively; and she talked without pause, loudly and in a deep, hoarse voice that dinned strangely in a Shop so accustomed to the higher, thinner note.

  In the first fourteen minutes of their acquaintance, the one quality she displayed that led Mr Appleby to modify some of his immediate revulsion even a trifle was the care with which she priced each article. She examined, evaluated, and cross-examined in detail before moving on with obvious disapproval, and he moved along with her with mounting assurance that he could get her out of the Shop before any damage was done to the stock or his patience. And then in the fifteenth minute she spoke the Word.

  ‘I’ve got a half million dollars in the bank,’ Martha Sturgis remarked with cheerful contempt, ‘but I never thought I’d get around to spending a nickel of it on this kind of stuff.’

  Mr Appleby had his hand before his face preparatory to waving aside some of the tobacco smoke that eddied about him. In the time it took the hand to drop nervelessly to his side his mind attacked an astonishing number of problems. One concerned the important finger on her left hand which was ringless; the others concerned certain mathematical problems largely dealing with short-term notes, long-term notes, and rates of interest. By the time the hand touched his side, the problems, as far as Mr Appleby was concerned, were well on the way to solution.

  And it may be noted there was an added fillip given the matter by the very nature of Martha Sturgis’ slovenly and strident being. Looking at her after she had spoken the Word, another man might perhaps have seen her through the sort of veil that a wise photographer casts over the lens of his camera in taking the picture of a prosperous, but unprepossessing, subject. Mr Appleby, incapable of such self-deceit, girded himself instead with the example of the man who carried a heavy weight on his back for the pleasure it gave him in laying it down. Not only would the final act of a marriage to Martha Sturgis solve important mathematical problems, but it was an act he could play out with the gusto of a man ridding the world of an unpleasant object.

  Therefore he turned his eyes, more melancholy and luminous than ever, on her and said, ‘It’s a great pity, Mrs …’

  She told him her name, emphasizing the Miss before it, and Mr Appleby smiled apologetically.

  ‘Of course. As I was saying, it’s a great pity when someone of refinement and culture—’ (the like yourself floated delicately unsaid on the air) ‘—should never have known the joy in possession of fine works of art. But, as we all learn, it is never too late to begin, is it?’

  Martha Sturgis looked at him sharply and then laughed a hearty bellow of laughter that stabbed his eardrums painfully. For a moment Mr Appleby, a man not much given to humor, wondered darkly if he had unwittingly uttered something so excruciatingly epigrammatic that it was bound to have this alarming effect.

  ‘My dear man,’ said Martha Sturgis, ‘if it is your idea that I am here to start cluttering up my life with your monstrosities, perish the thought. What I’m here for is to buy a gift for a friend, a thoroughly infuriating and loathsome person who happens to have the nature and disposition of a bar of stainless steel. I can’t think of a better way of showing my feelings toward her than by presenting her with almost anything displayed in your shop. If possible, I should also like delivery arranged so that I can be on the scene when she receives the package,’

  Mr Appleby staggered under this, then rallied valiantly. ‘In that case,’ he said, and shook his head firmly, ‘it is out of the question. Completely out of the question.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Martha Sturgis said. ‘I’ll arrange for delivery myself if you can’t handle it. Really, you ought to understand that there’s no point in doing this sort of thing unless you’re on hand to watch the results.’

  Mr Appleby kept tight rein on his temper. ‘I am not alluding to the matter of delivery,’ he said. ‘What I am trying to make clear is that I cannot possibly permit anything in my Shop to be bought in such a spirit. Not for any price you could name.’

  Martha Sturgis’s heavy jaw dropped. ‘What was that you said?’ she asked blankly.

  It was a perilous moment, and Mr Appleby knew it. His next words could set her off into another spasm of that awful laughter that would devastate him completely; or, worse, could send her right out of the Shop forever; or could decide the issue in his favor then and there. But it was a moment that had to be met, and, thought Mr Appleby desperately, whatever else Martha Sturgis might be, she was a Woman.

  He took a deep breath. ‘It is the policy of this Shop,’ he said quietly, ‘never to sell anything unless the prospective purchaser shows full appreciation for the article to be bought and can assure it the care and devotion to which it is entitled. That has always been the policy, and always will be as long as I am here. Anything other than that I would regard as desecration.’

  He watched Martha Sturgis with bated breath. There was a chair nearby, and she dropped into it heavily so that her skirts were drawn tight by her widespread thighs, and the obscene shoes were displayed mercilessly. She lit another cigarette, regarding him meanwhile with narrowed eyes through the flame of the match, and then fanned the air a little to dispel the cloud of smoke.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘this is very interesting. I’d like to hear more about it.’

  To the inexperienced the problem of drawing information of the most personal nature from a total stranger would seem a perplexing one. To Mr Appleby, whose interests had so often been dependent on such information, it was no problem at all. In very shoft time he had evidence that Martha Sturgis’s estimate of her fortune was quite accurate, that she was apparently alone in the world without relatives or intimate friends, and – that she was not averse to the idea of marriage.

  This last he drew from her during her now regular visits to the Shop where she would spread herself comfortably on a chair and talk to him endlessly. Much of her talk was about her father to whom Mr Appleby evidently bore a striking resemblance.

  ‘He even dressed like you,’ Martha Sturgis said reflectively. ‘Neat as a pin, and not only about himself either. He used to make an inspection of the house every day – march through and make sure everything was exactly where it had to be. And he kept it up right to the end. I remember an hour before he died how he went about straightening pictures on the wall.’

  Mr Appleby, who had been peering with some irritation at a picture that hung slightly awry on the Shop wall, turned his attentions reluctantly from it.

  ‘And you were with him to the end?’ he asked sympathetically.

  ‘Indeed I was.’

  ‘Well,’ Mr Appleby said brightly, ‘one does deserve some reward for such sacrifice, doesn’t one? Especially – and I hope this will not embarrass you, Miss Sturgis – when one considers that such a woman as yourself could undoubtedly have left the care of an aged father to enter matrimony almost at will. Isn’t that so?’

  Martha Sturgis sighed. ‘Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,’ she said, ‘and I won’t deny that I’ve had my dreams. But that’s all they are, and I suppose that’s all they ever will be.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mr Appleby encouragingly.

  ‘Because,’ said Martha Sturgis somberly, ‘I have never yet met the man who could fit those dreams. I am not a simpering schoolgirl, Mr Appleby; I don’t have to balance myself against my bank account to know why any man would devote himself to me, and, frankly, his motives would be of no interest. But he must be a decent, respectable man who would spend every moment of his life worrying about me and caring for me; and he must be a man who would make the memory of my father a living thing.’

  Mr Appleby rested a hand lightly on her shoulder.

  ‘Miss Sturgis,’ he said gra
vely, ‘you may yet meet such a man.’

  She looked at him with features that were made even more blobby and unattractive by her emotion.

  ‘Do you mean that, Mr Appleby?’ she asked. ‘Do you really believe that?’

  Faith glowed in Mr Appleby’s eyes as he smiled down at her. ‘He may be closer than you dare realize,’ he said warmly.

  Experience had proved to Mr Appleby that once the ice is broken the best thing to do is take a deep breath and plunge in. Accordingly, he let very few days elapse before he made his proposal.

  ‘Miss Sturgis,’ he said, ‘there comes a time to every lonely man when he can no longer bear his loneliness. If at such a time he is fortunate enough to meet the one woman to whom he could give unreservedly all his respect and tender feelings, he is a fortunate man indeed. Miss Sturgis – I am that man.’

  ‘Why, Mr Appleby!’ said Martha Sturgis, coloring a trifle. ‘That’s really very good of you, but …’

  At this note of indecision his heart sank. ‘Wait!’ he interposed hastily. ‘If you have any doubts, Miss Sturgis, please speak them now so that I may answer them. Considering the state of my emotions, that would only be fair, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so,’ said Martha Sturgis. ‘You see, Mr Appleby, I’d rather not get married at all than take the chance of getting someone who wasn’t prepared to give me exactly what I’m looking for in marriage: absolute, single-minded devotion all the rest of my days.’

  ‘Miss Sturgis,’ said Mr Appleby solemnly, ‘I am prepared to give you no less.’

  ‘Men say these things so easily,’ she sighed. ‘But – I shall certainly think about it, Mr Appleby.’