100 malicious little mysteries Read online

  Joe McVey disposed of the two-story house less than a month after his wife’s death—sold it at a bargain price to a couple with a grown daughter. Joe McVey then left Haleyville—went to Chicago, some said—and Captain Flammer no longer looked forward to spring, and the coming of the flowers, with joyful expectation.

  But spring came again, resolutely as always, and despite the Captain’s mood of sorrow and resentment at his own inadequacy, his senses began to twitch. He began driving out into the countryside. And one day he stopped his car in front of the former McVey house.

  The woman who stood on the porch, framed by clumps of blue hydrangea, lifted her arm and waved. If a heart can somersault, Flammer’s did. He almost said Grace’s name aloud, even after he realized that the woman was only a girl, plumpish, not yet twenty.

  “Hello,” she said, looking at the police car in the driveway. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Flammer said dully. “Are the Mitchells at home?”

  “No, they’re out. I’m their daughter Angela.” She smiled uncertainly. “You’re not here on anything official, I hope?”

  “No,” Flammer said.

  “Of course, I know all about this house, about what happened here last year—the murder and everything.” She lowered her voice. “You never caught that burglar, did you?”

  “No, we never did.”

  “She must have been a very nice woman—Mrs. McVey, I mean. She certainly loved flowers, didn’t she? I don’t think I ever saw a garden as beautiful as this one.”

  “Yes,” Captain Flammer said. “She loved flowers very much.”

  Sadly, he touched a blue blossom on the hydrangea bush, and started back toward his car. He found that his eyes were filling up, and yet they had seen things clearly.

  For suddenly he stopped and said, “Blue?”

  The young woman watched him quizzically.

  “Blue,” he said again, returning and staring at the flowering hydrangea bush. “It was pink last year—I know it was. And now it’s blue.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hydrangea,” Flammer said. “Do you know about hydrangea?”

  “I don’t know a thing about flowers. As long as they’re pretty—”

  “They’re pretty when they’re pink,” Flammer said. “But when there’s alum in the soil—or iron—they come up blue. Blue like this.”

  “But what’s the difference?” the girl said. “Pink or blue, what difference? So there’s iron in the soil—”

  “Yes,” Captain Flammer said. “There must be iron in the soil. And now, Miss Mitchell, I’ll ask you to please fetch me a shovel.”

  She looked bewildered, but then she got him the shovel. There was no triumph on Flammer’s face when he dug up the revolver at the base of the hydrangea bush, its barrel rusted, its trigger stiff.

  He didn’t rejoice even when the gun had been identified, as both the weapon that had killed Grace McVey and as the property of Joe McVey. He didn’t rejoice when the killer had been brought back to face justice. But while he felt no sense of victory, Captain Flammer admitted one thing: there was a great deal of satisfaction to be derived from the love of flowers.

  Trick or Treat by Judith Garner

  I was sitting with my American friend Bambi in our basement kitchen when the front doorbell rang. As the caretaker, I immediately rose to answer it, not for the first time cursing the necessity of taking on this job for the rent-free quarters.

  It was October 30, and Mrs. Adams, my niggardly employer, had forbidden fires so early in the season. But already the chill and damp promised a fierce winter. I opened the street door to a grotesque little figure outlined against the yellow fog.

  It was a small girl, about eight or nine years old, dressed as a witch in a long black university gown and pointed Welsh hat. She was not one of the tenants of our service flats, but I vaguely thought I had seen her playing in the Gardens with her Nanny and a pram. I had an idea she was an American, that her father had something to do with the Embassy. Not a pretty child, she had an old-fashioned rubber doll in a very dilapidated push-chair.

  “Trick or treat?” she asked.

  “Treat,” I said firmly, thinking I was being offered a choice.

  She looked at me expectantly, but when I made no move, she inquired, “Well, where is it then?”

  “What?”

  “My treat,” she said patiently. “If you don’t give me a treat, I’ll play a trick on you.”

  “You be off now,” I said crossly. “Why, it’s extortion! You Americans are all gangsters at heart!”

  I closed the door in her hostile little face and went down to the basement, where Bambi was lighting yet another of her cigarettes.

  “Trick or treat,” I explained.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know you had that custom in England.”

  “We don’t. What is it, American?”

  “Yes, indeed. We always used to go out in costumes trick-or-treating in New York.”

  “What kind of trick can I expect?”

  “Well, my mother used to let us take a sockful of flour. If you hit it against the door it leaves a lovely mark.”

  “I thought I heard some sort of thud as I came downstairs,” I said, “but it didn’t sound like a sockful of flour, more like a kick.”

  “Well, they say things are very unpleasant in the States at Halloween nowadays. How gangs will break your windows or slash your tires if you don’t give them at least a dollar.”

  I thought the custom simply encouraged hooliganism and I said so. “Anyhow, Halloween isn’t until tomorrow.”

  Bambi looked put out at my unfriendliness about her national customs. “Good lord!” she said. “I’ve been giving away pennies for the Guy for the last month. I do think Guy Fawkes is just as peculiar. Fancy burning a human figure!”

  I couldn’t see it that way, but I held my tongue. Tonight I resented Bambi; poor though she was personally, I envied her the affluence of her background. Besides, I had always wanted to travel myself.

  I poured her another cup of tea, and she reverted to her show-business anecdotes. Then Ron, my husband, joined us, and we played dominoes with the gas money until eleven.

  I was up at six the next morning, bringing Ron his tea and stoking up the boiler for the hot water. At 7:30 I went up to the ground floor for the milk. The milkman was just leaving.

  “Curious decorations you have around here,” he said, gesturing at our front door. It certainly was odd. Nailed to the door was a doll’s hand. It had a rubber skin filled with cotton; the stuffing was coming out. It looked ugly and perverted.

  “If I’d seen that in Brixton or Camden Town,” the man said, “you know what I would have thought? That someone was practicing voodoo. But you don’t get that sort of thing around here. Not in Gloucester Road, you don’t.”

  I pulled the dirty thing off the door and chucked it into an open dustbin. “It’s all up and down the Gardens,” he continued. “Bits of a doll, nailed to the doors.”

  Not being superstitious, I just shrugged and went upstairs to distribute the milk. Later, having got my son off to school, I began cleaning the flats and the halls.

  I did not associate the mutilated doll with my small visitor of the previous evening until, Mrs. Adams having sent me out shopping, I saw the torso just being removed from Professor Newton’s door.

  “Creepy, isn’t it?” I greeted him.

  “It’s that wretched Halloween child who did it. Trick or treat indeed! Something disturbing about that family. Too much sibling rivalry is my diagnosis. I shall make a formal protest to the parents. Better yet, I shall write a letter to the Times, protesting about the importing of foreign customs—noxious foreign customs!” Having with some difficulty removed the nails, the Professor took the grisly souvenir into the house with him and indignantly slammed the door.

  The head of the doll was impaled on the railings at t
he corner. There I found Lady Arthwaite studying it with interest. “I wonder what the poor thing has done to be decapitated,” she murmured to me as I passed. “Positively medieval, isn’t it? Or, to be precise, it’s—well, I haven’t seen a doll like that since before the war. The skin texture is so much more lifelike than this disgusting plastic you get nowadays. I would have liked one like it for my little granddaughter.”

  But as it was chilly I could not wait around. Nevertheless, her homely words took something of the horror out of the incident. I did my shopping, and made Mrs. Adams’ lunch. I worked until it became dark, which was very early.

  A storm was brewing. The sky was very dark and threatening. My son got home from school just in time, but I made him a nice cup of hot cocoa anyhow, in case the chill had entered his bones. He is a delicate boy.

  The rain came pelting down just after five. Ron was drenched when he came in half an hour later. “Halloween,” he said. “I need a drink.” I mixed the whiskey and hot lemonade the way he liked it.

  He sat crouching over the newly stoked boiler in his second-hand smoking jacket. I began preparing the dinner—chops, chips, and peas, with fruit salad and custard for dessert.

  We began to eat. Suddenly the front doorbell sounded again. Muttering angrily, I climbed the stairs.

  The little American stood there, dressed like a pirate this time.

  “Trick or treat?” she said.

  This time she had her baby brother in the push-chair.

  Twice Around the Block by Lawrence Treat

  At an hour after midnight, only a handful of people got off at the subway station that served the huge, sprawling, small-homes development called Sunny Hills. Harry, big and handsome and blustery, was by intention the last one out.

  He had the cap, the glove, and the knife, well concealed under his coat. He was never without them, for he did not know just when his chance would come. Maybe tonight, maybe not for two or three weeks. It would come when he was able to walk past the night watchman’s shack without being seen.

  Although Harry’s plans had been perfected for some time, he was smart enough not to push them. He’d stood Mary for three years, he could wait a little longer. Besides, she had a part-time job in a department store, and she handed him her pay envelope every week.

  Mary did it meekly, pleased that they were finally building up a savings account. He’d always made good money, but he spent it all on himself. He had flash and style to him, although he hadn’t realized how exceptional he was in that respect until Velma moved in next door.

  He never could understand why a woman like Velma had landed in Sunny Hills, where even the small, neat houses were so monotonously alike that you could hardly tell them apart. But she spoke vaguely of some trouble she’d been in, and he gathered that she’d been forced to quit her job in the night club where she’d had the hat-check concession.

  From the moment they saw each other, they sparked like a pair of high tension wires, and neither of them had tried to resist. Shortly after the first crackle, Harry had managed to get himself transferred to the night shift so that he could see her during the day—without frustrating complications.

  But it wasn’t satisfying. The nights were what depressed him, going back to the house where he no longer belonged, to the woman he didn’t want, the woman he had grown to hate.

  “Kitten,” he had said to Velma once. “If something would only happen to her. If she could meet with an accident—”

  “You could make it seem like an accident,” Velma had said in her low, torchy voice.

  “If I do, you’re going to be part of it.”

  “Well?”

  “Maybe it would be smarter to try and get a divorce.”

  “You’d have to pay alimony. There wouldn’t be much left.”

  “You like money, don’t you?” he’d said. And her black eyes, lifting slowly, practically singed him.

  After that, he began his preparations. He bought the roll of film and kept it at home—just in case. He always took the rear car of the subway and was the last one out. Also just in case. And he checked the subway schedule and found out that the night trains ran exactly fifteen minutes apart, and every evening he set his watch by the subway clock. Just in case.

  Tonight was no different from the other nights. He came out of the subway exit and looked around to make sure that nobody had noticed him. Except for one cab, with the driver dozing over the steering wheel, the street was deserted.

  He crossed the roadway and strode down the long block, and for the hundredth time he thought it over. He put his hand in his pocket and touched the knife. He’d found it in a public lavatory. There was no conceivable way of tracing it and no one except Mary had ever glimpsed it.

  As he approached the night watchman’s booth he walked fast, the tempo of his pulse lifting. Then he was alongside the cubicle, and his heart gave a sharp, convulsive jerk. Mike Hogan wasn’t there. This was it—the one unbelievable chance.

  Harry didn’t panic. He sidled stealthily over to the shadows, beyond the ornamental gateway to Sunny Hills. He put the cap on, pulling it low, and he raised his coat collar. He left the sidewalk and slunk across the front yards, keeping close to the houses. If anybody saw him, they’d take him for a prowler.

  All right. Let them see him, let them tell the police later on that a man had sneaked across the lawns. Wake up, you fools, and take a quick look. Quick, but not careful.

  At the corner of his block, he turned and glanced behind him. Stay calm now, make sure. When he’d convinced himself that the coast was clear he started running—quietly, with a low, scuttling stoop. He was chuckling to himself, in silent excitement, buoyed up by the certainty that everything would go right.

  He put his key in the door and stepped inside. He was glad it was pitch dark. He might have hesitated and drawn back if he’d seen Mary’s face. He wasn’t a cruel man, he told himself. He was merely a man who faced facts.

  He took out the knife and snapped it open. His palm was wet, but he gripped the rough handle firmly. He flexed his arm once, his features hardening.

  He walked swiftly and soundlessly down the familiar hall. He ascended the one step, and opened the door to the right. Her bed was directly behind it.

  He struck savagely and repeatedly. This was the part he’d dreaded, but it was soon over, cleanly, effectively. Her breath caught and she moaned, but she didn’t even wake up.

  He wheeled and went out, circled the house and stopped in front of the bedroom window. He put on the thick, heavy glove and punched once at the glass. There was a brittle, crackling sound—and that was all.

  When he came into the room again, later, he’d have time to raise the sash, and the evidence of a marauding burglar would be clinched as far as the police were concerned.

  He glanced at his watch again. He was surprised that it had taken him only six minutes, and the precision of his timing gave him added confidence.

  He returned to the street and began the long circle of the block, back to the subway station. He ran openly now, deliberately keeping to the concrete sidewalk so that his steps thudded audibly. That was part of the plan. He was willing to be seen, at a distance, to establish the presence of somebody running away.

  He took the shortcut through the field and stopped at the rubbish pile, where he discarded the glove and the cap. Squinting in the darkness, he took out his keys. If the police should suspect him—if they should make more than a cursory investigation—he didn’t want them to find he had a key to Velma’s house. He threw the key away.

  He put his key-ring back in his pocket, set his hat firmly on his head, and marched briskly towards the subway exit. He got there with a couple of minutes to spare, and stood for a moment in the shadows of the adjoining newsstand. He took long, slow, deep breaths, and thought it through again—detail by detail.

  He’d forgotten nothing; he’d made no mistakes. He could trust Velma not to talk. She had good reaso
n to stay silent, but if she did break, there was no proof. No witnesses—and no overheard quarrels with Mary. No guilt-pointing link between him and the knife.

  He heard the rumble of the subway, and two or three passengers came up the steps. He waited a few seconds, then stepped into the light. The lone cab was still there, the driver awake now. Harry waved to him and continued on his way.

  He headed for the watchman’s shack. Hogan would have to go home with him and be present when he discovered the body. That was vitally important. But Harry had laid the background long ago. He’d stopped here night after night for the past month, not missing a single night.

  Hogan stepped out of his shelter, recognized Harry, and grinned. “Evening, Harry,” he said. “On the dot, as usual.”

  Harry smiled. “Sure, right on schedule. And Mike—that roll of film I told you about. I got it at home for you. It won’t cost you a cent, either.”

  “That’s damn nice of you, Harry.”

  “Come on back with me, and I’ll give it to you now.”

  “Thanks,” said Hogan. He fell into step with Harry and began grumbling endlessly about his camera problems. Harry hardly listened.

  As they rounded the corner of his block, Harry took out his keys. He stopped in front of his house—number forty- eight.

  “Come in,” he said. “I got them in the bedroom. It won’t take me a minute.”

  He put the key in the lock and tried to turn it. It stuck, and he pulled it out to examine it.

  “What’s the matter?” said Hogan pleasantly. “Got the wrong key?”

  Harry gave him a look of terror and rammed the key back in the lock. The wrong key?

  Then the door swung open. Mary, hugging her robe tight around her shoulders, said, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back. I’m so relieved.”