And that was it. I couldn’t think of anything else — couldn’t think at all, at that point. So I burned the papers, flushed the ashes down the sink, and dragged myself upstairs. Not to sleep, but to lie awake and watch the clock and wonder feverishly if I’d overlooked anything.
They had all left, the whole milling throng of them, but Chief of Police Holbrook was still there, rubbing my nerves raw.
“Let’s go over it once more, Mrs. Marlin,” he said quietly.
So I gritted my teeth and went through the whole business again — Uncle Avery’s bitterness at his success, the disintegration of his personality, the drinking bouts, and finally his banishing me from the study last night, refusing dinner, and my discovery of his body and the suicide note that morning.
He still held the yellow sheet of paper, now encased in plastic, in his hand. He kept glancing at it, frowning, and re-reading it. It was driving me crazy.
“I didn’t type that thing, if that’s what’s on your mind,” I blurted, and could have bitten off my tongue.
He looked at me thoughtfully. “No one’s suggesting you did, Mrs. Marlin. But even assuming that it’s established that Mr. Curtis did in fact type this paper, there’s something about it that bothers me.”
Here it comes, I thought. “What exactly bothers you, Chief?” I said.
“Well, now, for one thing,” he said, “this doesn’t strike me as the kind of letter a man would write — even a suicidal man. It’s a little too flowery, too high-flown, if you see what I mean. More like what a woman might write, seems to me.”
“Uncle Avery was that kind of writer,” I said. “He was steeped in that type of lavender prose. He wrote so much of it that he started to talk that way, even think that way. It’s perfectly compatible with his personality, after all these years.”
“Mmm. Don’t know much about writing, myself, especially the kind he wrote. My wife reads that stuff — I lean more toward the detective-type yarn — my line of work, after all.” He chuckled.
I managed a strained smile, but couldn’t think of anything to say.
He walked to the desk and bent over the pile of manuscript draft. “Eyes aren’t what they used to be,” he said, and fished out his glasses. He riffled through the top few pages. “Certainly sounds like his style. Although that could work both ways, of course. Could be that this was a part of the book he was working on.
Prove it, you Keystone Cop, I thought grimly. I was sweating freely now, and I surreptitiously wiped my palms on my skirt.
He transferred his attention to the typewriter then, and suddenly he stiffened. He reached for a 3x5 memo pad and tore off a page, inserting it in the machine. He tapped out six letters, glanced over at me, and ripped the paper out of the roller. He picked up the plastic-wrapped yellow sheet, put the 3x5 page on top of it, and walked over to me. He handed me the papers without comment, his eyes cold, and the word he’d typed leaped out at me, turning me cold. It read:
“I don’t understand,” I said weakly.
But I did. I knew now what I’d overlooked, the damning thing that gave it all away. I stared at the ugly word that stood out black and clear against the pale typing on the yellow sheet underneath it, and I shivered.
“He wrote that paragraph, all right, Mrs. Marlin,” said Chief Holbrook. “But it was part of the story he was working on.
“A man doesn’t type out a suicide note and then put a new ribbon in his machine.”
Waiting for Mr. McGregor
by Julian Symons[19]
Julian Symons is one of the finest writers of crime and detective stories, both long and short, in our time. So you can imagine our delight when Mr. Symons advised us that he had written a new series of four contemporary short stories. You will find the stories different in theme, background, and storyline, but alike in reflecting Mr. Symons’ approach to the modern mystery story, alike in revealing Mr. Symons’ writer’s-eye-and-mind, with characterization as important in the scheme of things as suspense and the sequence of events.
“Waiting for Mr. McGregor” will appear in an anthology titled verdict of thirteen, edited by Julian Symons, to be published by Faber & Faber in the United Kingdom and by Harper & Row in the United States.
Now, meet Hilary Engels Mannering and his BPB — his Beatrix Potter Brigade — and attend one of the strangest trials by jury on unofficial record...
Even in these egalitarian English days nannies are still to be seen in Kensington Gardens, pushing ahead of them the four-wheeled vehicles that house the children of the rich. On a windy day in April a dozen perambulators were moving slowly in the direction of the Round Pond, most of them in pairs. The nannies all wore uniforms. Their charges were visible only as well-wrapped bundles, some of them waving gloved fists into the air.
The parade was watched by more people than usual. A blond young man sat on a bench reading a newspaper. A pretty girl at the other end of the bench looked idly into vacancy. A rough-looking character pushed a broom along a path in a desultory way. The next bench held a man in black jacket, striped trousers, and bowler hat, reading the Financial Times, a man of nondescript appearance with his mouth slightly open, and a tramp-like figure who was feeding pigeons with crumbs from a paper bag. Twenty yards away another young man leaned against a lamppost.
A pram with a crest on its side approached the bench where the blond young man sat. The nanny wore a neat cap and a blue striped uniform. Her baby could be seen moving about and a wail came from it, but its face was hidden by the pram hood. The pram approached the bench where the man in the black jacket sat.
The blond young man dropped his newspaper. The group moved into action. The young man and the girl, the three people at the next bench, the man beside the lamppost, and the man pushing the broom, took from their pockets masks which they fitted over their faces. The masks were of animals. The blond young man was a rabbit, the girl a pig, the others a squirrel, a rat, another pig, a cat, and a frog.
The masks were fitted in a moment, and the animal seven converged on the pram with the crest on its side. Half a dozen people nearby stood and gaped, and so did other nannies. Were they all rehearsing a scene for a film, with cameras hidden in the bushes? In any case English reticence forbade interference, and they merely watched or turned away their heads. The nanny beside the pram uttered a well-bred muted scream and fled. The child in the pram cried lustily.
The blond young man was the first beside the pram, with the girl just after him. He pushed down the hood, pulled back the covers, and recoiled at what he saw. The roaring baby in the pram was of the right age and looked of the right sex. There was just one thing wrong. The baby was coal-black.
The young man looked at the baby disbelievingly for a moment, then shouted at the rest of them, “It’s a plant. Get away, fast!”
The words came distorted through the mask, but their sense was clear enough, and they followed accepted procedure, scattering in three directions and tearing off the masks as they went. Pick-up cars were waiting for them at different spots in the Bayswater Road, and they reached them without misadventure except for the tramp, who found himself confronted by an elderly man brandishing an umbrella.