Red-haired Lydia, wilful American heiress, has become enmeshed in plots against her life, her fortune, her good name. Aided by Dr. Ian McGrath, the young Scot who loves Lydia, Sturrock plunges in to foil the plotters. If much of the speech seems cruder than need be, if formal police tactics did not yet exist, this pre-Scotland Yard sleuth unmasks several villains for the spectacular and satisfactory end.
Though murder victims dating back thirty years are unearthed from one grave in Richard Forrest’s A Child’s Garden of Death (Bobbs-Merrill, $7.95), this ancient crime has immediate and grim application to the present day.
Investigating three buried corpses, Rocco Herbert, police chief in rural Connecticut, enlists the help of his old friend Lyon Wentworth. Wentworth, picturesque author whose hobby is ballooning and his wife a state senator, has the right gift. With both amateur and professional using police resources to supplement their wits, they uncover plots updated as well as backdated, and trap their quarry in this admirable exercise of narrative skill.
The Pond
by Patricia Highsmith[11]
Elinor Sievert stood looking down at the pond. She was half thinking, half dreaming, or imagining. Was it safe? For Chris? The real-estate agent had said it was four feet deep. It was certainly full of weeds, its surface nearly covered with algae or whatever they called the little oval green things that floated. Well, four feet was enough to drown a four-year-old. She must warn Chris.
She lifted her head and walked back toward the white two-story house. She had just rented the house, and had been here only since yesterday. She hadn’t entirely unpacked. Hadn’t the agent said something about draining the pond, that it wouldn’t be too difficult or expensive? Was there a spring under it? Elinor hoped not, because she’d taken the house for six months.
It was two in the afternoon, and Chris was having his nap. There were more kitchen cartons to unpack, also the record player in its neat taped carton. Elinor fished the record player out, connected it, and chose an LP of New Orleans jazz to pick her up. She hoisted another load of dishes up to the long drainboard.
The doorbell rang.
Elinor was confronted by the smiling face of a woman about her own age.
“Hello. I’m Jane Caldwell — one of your neighbors. I just wanted to say hello and welcome. We’re friends of Jimmy Adams, the agent, and he told us you’d moved in here.”
“Yes. My name’s Elinor Sievert. Won’t you come in?” Elinor held the door wider. “I’m not quite unpacked as yet — but at least we could have a cup of coffee in the kitchen.”
Within a few minutes they were sitting on opposite sides of the wooden table, cups of instant coffee before them. Jane said she had two children, a boy and a girl, the girl just starting school, and that her husband was an architect and worked in Hartford.
“What brought you to Luddington?” Jane asked.
“I needed a change — from New York. I’m a freelance journalist, so I thought I’d try a few months in the country. At least I call this the country, compared to New York.”
“I can understand that. I heard about your husband,” Jane said on a more serious note. “I’m sorry. Especially since you have a small son. I want you to know we’re a friendly batch around here, and at the same time we’ll let you alone, if that’s what you want. But consider Ed and me neighbors, and if you need something, just call on us.”
“Thank you,” Elinor said. She remembered that she’d told Adams that her husband had recently died, because Adams had asked if her husband would be living with her. Now Jane was ready to go, not having finished her coffee.
“I know you’ve got things to do, so I don’t want to take any more of your time,” said Jane. She had rosy cheeks, chestnut hair. “I’ll give you Ed’s business card, but it’s got our home number on it too. If you want to ask any kind of question, just call us. We’ve been here six years. — Where’s your little boy?”
“He’s—”
As if on cue Chris called, “Mommy!” from the top of the stairs.
Elinor jumped up. “Come down, Chris. Meet a nice new neighbor.”
Chris came down the stairs a bit timidly, holding onto the banister.
Jane stood beside Elinor at the foot of the staircase. “Hello, Chris. My name’s Jane. How are you?”
Chris’s blue eyes examined her seriously. “Hello.”
Elinor smiled. “I think he just woke up and doesn’t know where he is. Say ‘How do you do,’ Chris.”
“How do you do,” said Chris.
“Hope you’ll like it here, Chris,” Jane said. “I want you to meet my boy Bill. He’s just your age. Bye-bye, Elinor. Bye, Chris.” Jane went out the front door.
Elinor gave Chris his glass of milk and his treat — today a bowl of applesauce. Elinor was against chocolate cupcakes every afternoon, though Chris at the moment thought they were the greatest food ever invented. “Wasn’t she nice? Jane?” Elinor said, finishing her coffee.
“Who is she?”
“One of our new neighbors.” Elinor continued her unpacking. Her article-in-progress was about self-help with legal problems. She would need to go to the Hartford library, which had a newspaper department, for more research. Hartford was only a half hour away. Elinor had bought a good second-hand car. Maybe Jane would know a girl who could baby-sit now and then. “Isn’t it nicer here than in New York?”
Chris lifted his blond head. “I want to go outside.”
“But of course. It’s so sunny you won’t need a sweater. We’ve got a garden, Chris. We can plant — radishes, for instance.” She remembered planting radishes in her grandmother’s garden when she was small, remembered the joy of pulling up the fat red and white roots — edible. “Come on, Chris.” She took his hand.
Chris’s slight frown went away as he gripped his mother’s hand. Elinor looked at the garden with different eyes, Chris’s eyes. Plainly no one had tended the garden for months. There were big prickly weeds between the jonquils that were beginning to open, and the peonies hadn’t been cut last year. But there was an apple tree big enough for Chris to climb in.
“Our garden,” Elinor said. “Nice and sloppy. All yours to play in, Chris, and the summer’s just beginning.”
“How big is this?” Chris asked He had broken away and was stooped by the pond.
Elinor knew he meant how deep was it. “I don’t know. Not very deep. But don’t go wading. It’s not like the seashore with sand. It’s all muddy there.” Elinor spoke quickly. Anxiety had struck her like a physical pain. Was she still reliving the impact of Cliff’s plane against the mountainside — that mountain in Yugoslavia that she’d never see? She’d seen two or three newspaper photographs of it, blotchy black and white chaos, indicating, so the print underneath said, the wreckage of the airliner on which there had been no survivors of 107 passengers plus eight crewmen and stewardesses.
No survivors. And Cliff among them. Elinor had always thought air crashes happened to strangers, never to anyone you knew, never even to a friend of a friend. Suddenly it had been Cliff, on an ordinary flight from Ankara. He’d been to Ankara at least seven times before.
“Is that a snake? Look, Mommy!” Chris yelled, leaning forward as he spoke. One foot sank, his arms shot forward for balance, and suddenly he was in water up to his hips. “Ugh! Ha-ha!” He rolled sideways on the muddy edge and squirmed backward up to the level of the lawn before his mother could reach him.