It was more than three hours later when Howard finally came out of his mother’s room. Paula, sitting in the hall outside, knew by his face that the old woman was dead. The tension in which Paula had spent the intervening hours broke suddenly and she gave way to hysterical sobbing.
“Oh, dear,” murmured Howard, distressed. He came to her quickly and sat beside her. “Paula, you mustn’t... Don’t blame yourself, my dear. It was a dreadful accident, that’s all.” Then, as her sobbing continued unabated, he went on nervously. “Please, dear, try to look at it this way. These last few months have been the happiest Mother has ever known, thanks largely to you. Really, she remarked many times about your great kindness to her.”
Paula buried her face even deeper in her hands to hide the blush that flared up in her cheeks. It was several painful minutes before she could control her sobs enough to mumble, “She didn’t even get to have her birthday party.”
“That’s true,” said Howard with a sad smile. “Poor Mother. That would be her only regret, I think. She had so counted on being able to turn over Father’s money to us.”
Paula lifted her head at this and stared at Howard through a blur of tears. “What do you mean?” she asked finally.
“Why — didn’t Mother explain to you about Father’s will?”
“Not — very clearly,” Paula managed to say. Her mouth felt dry.
“Well,” Howard began, settling comfortably into his classroom manner, “although Father became quite a wealthy man in his lifetime, he always retained a strong Yankee fear of the corrupting influence of money not earned. He felt that Mother spoiled me and that if he left the money to her outright she’d turn it over to me immediately and I’d become a wastrel. And he may have been right, you know. Dear Mother, she found it very hard to deny me anything. At any rate, Father made out a will leaving the money in trust, allowing Mother only a monthly income until she should reach the age of sixty-five.”
“Sixty-five?” Paula echoed stupidly.
“I don’t know why sixty-five exactly. Perhaps he felt that by that time I’d be forty and have acquired the habit of earning my own keep.”
“But—” Paula was struggling to make sense of Howard’s words. “But how could he be sure she’d live to be sixty-five?”
“He couldn’t, of course. And,” he added with a sigh, “as it turned out, she didn’t.”
Paula closed her eyes. She could hardly bring herself to ask it. “What... what happens to the money now?”
“Oh — that.” Howard frowned in an effort to recall the exact wording. “In the event of her death before attaining the age of sixty-five,” he recited with maddening accuracy, “the money automatically goes to the college.” Here he permitted himself a dignified chuckle. “Like so many people with very little formal schooling, Father had the greatest respect for institutions of higher learning.”
Up to this point Howard had fastidiously avoided looking directly at his wife, on the charitable assumption that her initial excessive outburst had been as embarrassing to her as it was to him. As he turned to face her now, he was shocked to see the crushing effect his words had been having on her.
“Oh, my dear Paula,” he hastened to reassure her. “Surely you don’t think I mind about the money? How can I miss something I’ve never had? We lived very frugally even when Father was alive. Why, I have my work, a good wife, our little home — what more could I possibly want? You’ll see, my dear, our life will go on quite as usual. Except that poor Mother is no longer with us, nothing has changed at all.”
Handon C. Jorricks
Hocus-Pocus at Drumis Tree
The murder occurred right before Guy Moran Caine’s eyes and instantly it brought dire peril to the beautiful girl with whom Guy had fallen in love at first sight...
For the first time in a week Guy Moran Caine wasn’t marveling at finding himself in London. Instead, he was marveling at a young lady. She was one of a party at the next table at the Drumis Tree, a restaurant which the guidebook had rightfully told Guy he would find delightful — though it could hardly have anticipated his reasons.
The young American couldn’t have said why he found so enchanting someone he didn’t even know, but there it was. In addition to a vibrant beauty which reached him all too clearly at the next table, there was something in her smile, both warm and exciting, that made him feel he simply had to meet her.
He was not so approving of her behavior toward the good-looking young man on her left, a behavior which seemed altogether too friendly. It was no part of Guy’s rapidly forming dream that she should be in love with someone else. He observed them toast each other with the wine that the waiter had just poured — champagne, Guy thought it was. They put their heads together for a moment, and then exchanged glasses.
The girl had barely sipped hers when she gasped and stared, horrified, at her companion. He had slumped over the table, oddly inert.
As Guy watched, a little man with a goatee and a fussy manner rose from his place at the young man’s left and bent over him. He seemed to study the young man closely, then he straightened and said something in a low voice to the other three people at the table.
Guy, who was frankly straining his ears, caught the words dead, poison, and police. Then the little man gave the girl a queer look and said something that Guy couldn’t catch at all, but her color drained completely.
The others at the table — an immoderately gorgeous woman and a rather nondescript, rumpled-looking man — were staring at his beloved in a way Guy didn’t care for. They edged away from her and huddled at the other side of the table.
Guy felt his blood boil. Without stopping to think, he stormed over to the neighboring table. “Look here,” he blurted out to her, ignoring the others, “let me help. You must think I’m crazy,” he added, “but I can see there’s trouble and you need someone to stand by you.”
“Galahad and the damsel in distress,” murmured the little man in a suave voice, tinged with a foreign accent. “My dear sir, I think we can handle our own affairs without help from a total stranger,” and turning to the girl he said pointedly, “Can’t we, Melissa, my dear?”
She hesitated, then flung up her head. “No,” she said clearly and firmly. “I don’t know who he is, but it’s good of him, and perhaps some objectivity is just what we do need.”
She turned to Guy, who refrained from pointing out that objectivity was not what he was offering. “I’m awfully grateful. I’m Melissa St. Dinserd, and this” — indicating the little man with the goatee — “is my guardian, M. Druerre. Over there is Ramora Glussot, and her agent, Herr Girden. There’s been talk all week about their making a movie together — my guardian to finance it, and Ramora to star. They want... wanted—” She broke off and looked at the dead man, “They wanted him to be in it too.”
Ramora Glussot! No wonder the other woman seemed more gorgeous than life — she was the glamorous star of French films. He could only put down his initial lack of recognition to the magic of Melissa, which for Guy obscured all else.
He told Melissa his name, still ignoring the others beyond a curt nod when they were introduced, and steered her to his own table.
“What kind of friends and guardian have you?” he demanded. “It looked as if they were accusing you of murder.”
It never entered his bewitched head that she might in fact be a murderess. Even when he had been a table away, he had felt that she radiated honesty and decency, along with her other more physical qualities.