“Take it easy, Mom. I’m not the one who’s crazy. It’s this Fisher case. I’ll tell you about it, and you can judge for yourself.”
Obviously unconvinced, Mom brought her fork to her lips again, took a ladylike mouthful, and settled down to hear my story.
“Agnes Fisher is in her early thirties,” I said, “very pretty and breathless and a little absent-minded — in a nice attractive way, you understand. Her husband died a year ago — he was an Air Force pilot in Korea — and she lives with her little boy Kenneth in the house that her husband left her. It’s a four-story house on Washington Square, one of the few oldtime red-brick houses of that type that’s left on the Square. It’s been in the Fisher family since the Nineteenth Century.”
“He had money, this Mr. Fisher?” Mom said.
“The Fishers are a wealthy old New York family. Not so wealthy as they used to be, I guess, but still doing pretty well. So anyway, Agnes Fisher lived on Washington Square quite peacefully, getting along nicely with her friends and neighbors, apparently reconciling herself to her widowhood. But her little boy’s life wasn’t quite so calm and happy. The death of his father evidently upset him badly. He’s a naturally shy, dreamy kid, and with his father gone he sort of went into his shell more than ever. He spent lots of time by himself. He seemed to prefer his own day dreams to the company of other kids. And then, a few months ago, somebody new came into the lives of the boy and his mother.
“The newcomer was Nelson Fisher, little Kenneth’s uncle, his father’s younger brother. Nelson Fisher was about thirty years old. Like his late brother he was an Air Force pilot. He had just been discharged from the service, not because he wanted to be — flying was his whole fife — but because he had contracted malaria in the Pacific. He needed care and attention, and his sister-in-law Agnes is his only responsible relative. She’s a kind-hearted woman, and she was happy to take him in. She gave him the whole third floor of the old house, and so he moved in with his sister-in-law and his little nephew.”
“And little Kenny was jealous maybe?” Mom said.
“At first he was jealous. He sulked in a corner, or he cried and carried on, or he looked daggers at his uncle. Nelson Fisher was still a sick man — he still had after-effects from his malaria, and what with his medicines, his dizzy spells, his chills, his weekly visits from the doctor, Agnes did a lot of fussing over him. Kenneth seemed to resent this. One day he even went into a tantrum over it. He jumped up and down and yelled hysterically, ‘He’s not my father! I don’t want him for my father!’ He finally calmed down, but the incident upset his mother terribly. And it caused a lot of talk among the servants.”
“This was only at first though?” Mom said. “Afterwards little Kenny changed his opinion of his uncle?”
“His antagonism lasted about a month. Then, all of a sudden, he developed a completely different attitude. One day he couldn’t stand the sight of Nelson, the next day he couldn’t stand to be out of Nelson’s sight. Suddenly he had a case of genuine, full-fledged hero-worship. He dogged his poor uncle’s heels. He trotted after him wherever he went. He bombarded him with questions, and whatever answers he got he believed them implicitly. He gaped in admiration at everything his Uncle Nelson did or said.”
“So this is normal enough in little children,” Mom said. “They change their minds for no logical reason. And incidentally, I’ve also known some grown-ups—”
“Oh, it was normal all right,” I said. “Anyway, it seemed to be. It’s only because of what happened later — But I won’t get ahead of my story. For a few months everything was fine in the Fisher home. Nelson seemed to enjoy his nephew’s company. He had never married and had any kids of his own, and he treated Kenneth like a younger brother. Very ideal relationship. And then, about a week ago, at the beginning of the summer, little Kenneth started to do peculiar things. Until a week ago, he had always been a fairly honest kid. And then, a week ago, he started to steal things.”
“Steal things?” said Mom, poking her head forward. “So what did he steal?”
“Always the same kind of thing, Mom. Things that belonged to his dead father. For instance, it started with Agnes noticing that her husband’s medal, a Silver Star, was missing. She kept it in the jewelry case in her dresser drawer, along with his cufflinks, wedding ring, and other things, but now it was gone. She sounded out the cook and the housemaid as indirectly as she could, but they both got very indignant and insisted that they weren’t thieves. For a while she suspected that the man who had come to fix the plumbing was the guilty one. And then, the next morning, the housemaid came to her, very triumphantly, holding up the medal. She had found it, she said, while she was making up Kenneth’s bed just a few minutes before. The medal was under Kenneth’s pillow. Agnes was puzzled. She asked Kenneth about it, but he wouldn’t give her any explanation. He just turned his eyes away, mumbled something, then ran off. And Agnes isn’t the strong-willed, domineering type of mother who could keep pounding at the boy until she got the truth out of him.
“And then Kenneth did it again. In one of the hall closets Agnes keeps a lot of miscellaneous things stored away in boxes — some of her husband’s old clothes, his books and papers, and so on. One day she was passing this closet when she heard a rattling inside. She opened the door and saw Kenneth. He had pulled down one of the boxes, torn it open, and was about to take away something from inside of it.
“Believe it or not, Mom, Kenneth was stealing one of those long, flowing old-fashioned opera capes that people used to wear fifty years ago. It had belonged to Kenneth’s father. When he was an undergraduate at Princeton, he had appeared in a sort of Gay Nineties revue presented by the dramatic society. This old opera cape was part of his costume for that show.”
“And little Kenny knew, definitely knew, that his Papa wore this opera cape once?”
“He couldn’t help but know, Mom. There’s a photograph of his father in the living room of the house — taken after the performance of the revue and showing him with the opera cape over his shoulders. Well, Agnes naturally made Kenneth put the opera cape back in the box. And the next day she looked into the same closet, found that the same box had been torn open again and the opera cape removed. She went right up to Kenneth’s room. He wasn’t there, but sure enough the opera cape was hanging up in his closet. So Agnes took it down and put it back in the box. And the next day—”
“Don’t say it,” Mom said.
“You’re right,” I said. “The opera cape was gone. It was too much for Agnes. She didn’t want to spend all her time running after that opera cape. So she told herself Kenneth probably wanted it for some innocent game of his, and she shrugged off the whole thing.
“But Kenneth’s stealing didn’t stop there. Only two days later — about three days ago — he was at it again. The housemaid came to Agnes in great alarm, along with the cook. The night before, they had both heard strange noises coming from the top floor of the house. They both thought it was mice or the wind or something, and went to sleep. But this morning, when the housemaid went upstairs to clean, she found a terrible disorder that neither mice nor wind could have caused. There’s a small storeroom on the top floor, and in this storeroom, packed away in mothballs, Agnes keeps all of her late husband’s uniforms, his caps, his insignia, the rest of his civilian clothes, overcoats, shoes, and so on. The housemaid found this room looking as if a cyclone had hit it. Clothes and mothballs were scattered all over the place. And all her husband’s uniforms, down to the last little insignia, were missing. The cook immediately announced that she was quitting her job. She wasn’t going to stay in the same house with a wild little thief like Kenneth, and all Agnes’s pleading wouldn’t change her mind.