No, Mavis wouldn’t accept my change of plans. I knew that even suggesting it would bring on a tornado which would make her rage over my mild flirtation with the blonde seem like a gentle spring breeze. In all probability she would create a scene which would end with both of us on trial for our lives in a half-dozen different states.
There was really only one solution, I realized.
I was going to have to kill Mavis.
I reached the decision quite calmly. Five years earlier, just the thought of killing Mavis would have appalled me. But I had gotten a lot of practice in murder since then. It had become such a part of my life that it was the logical solution to any problem.
I started my campaign a few days later by telling Mavis in private that I was beginning to miss her so much, I wanted to arrange for us to get away for a few days.
“I don’t want to pull this thing until a couple of weeks after New Year’s,” I said. “When people have had a chance to get over the holidays. Before that we couldn’t get a judge to act on unfreezing the bank accounts, and we’d just have to sit and sweat it out anyway. But I’m going crazy for you. I can’t wait three more weeks.”
Mavis was so overjoyed at the suggestion that it didn’t even occur to her this was the first time I had ever violated my strict rule of never dropping our brother-sister relationship, even temporarily, when we were on a job.
“How will we work it?” she asked breathlessly.
“Buffalo’s only sixty miles from here. Suppose that right after New Year’s you announce you have a job offer in Buffalo and have to go up there to check it. Ill offer to drive you up. We’ll leave on Wednesday the sixth and stay over until Friday night.”
“Suppose Helen wants to go along?”
“I can handle Helen,” I said.
On Monday, January fourth, Mavis began putting the plan in operation. At dinner she announced that she had spotted an ad for a stenographer in the Buffalo Courier Express, had phoned the prospective employer long distance, and had an appointment to see him Wednesday afternoon.
“I think I’ll stay for a couple of days and see what Buffalo’s like while I’m up there,” she remarked.
I made no comment at the time. I waited until the following evening at dinner.
Then I said, “A number of Gwynn’s suppliers are in Buffalo. I’ve been thinking of running up to talk to them and get their slant on the store. Think 111 drive Mavis up and spend a couple of days there myself.”
Helen voiced no objection whatever, nor did she invite herself along, apparently feeling that I’d be too busy with suppliers to bother with her. Mavis and I left early Wednesday morning.
When we reached Buffalo, I drove straight to J. N. Adams’ instead of registering at a hotel. When I parked in front of the department store, Mavis looked at me puzzledly.
“What are we going to do here?” she asked.
“I’m going down the street and kill some time in the first tavern I see,” I said. “You’re going into J. N. Adams’ and get an outfit that makes you look like a woman instead of an old-maid school teacher.” I handed her five twenty-dollar bills. “Don’t go overboard, because you’re only buying these clothes to wear for a couple of days, but if we’re going to have a short second honeymoon, I want you to look the part.”
I told her I’d give her an hour and meet her back at the car.
Promptly at the end of an hour I found her waiting at the car with a happy expression on her face and two suit boxes under her am.
“Spend it all?” I asked.
“Hardly half of it,” she said. “But wait till you see what I got.”
She was so eager to get back into something feminine, she insisted on going straight to a hotel before we even had lunch. I registered us at the Richford as Mr. and Mrs. Sam Parker of Brooklyn.
As soon as the bellhop left us alone, Mavis disappeared into the bathroom with her two boxes. She was gone nearly twenty minutes, and when she came out again she was a different woman.
She wore a white quilted skirt of heavy satin, so tight across the hips that their firm roundness was brought out in sharp relief, and an ebony black blouse open at the throat, with the V dipping to the shadowed cleft between her breasts. She had loosened her hair from its old-maidish bun and had brushed it to fall loosely about her shoulders. Expertly-applied makeup completed her transformation.
“You did all that on fifty bucks?” I asked admiringly.
“Plus a clearance-sale coat for only nineteen dollars.”
Going back into the bathroom, she returned wearing the new coat. It was of gray cloth and tailored as simply as the one she wore with her spinsterish suits. But instead of being severe, its lines somehow managed to create an effect of complete femininity.
“Can you appear in public with me now without feeling ashamed?” she asked.
“I’ll have to fight off the wolves,” I told her.
Chapter XVIII
We decided to keep to restaurants off the beaten track and to the lesser-known night clubs while we were in Buffalo in order to decrease the risk of unexpectedly running into someone who knew us in Westfield. In a city the size of Buffalo, there wasn’t much chance of this happening, but on the other hand, Westfield residents often drove the sixty miles to shop there. Mavis, herself, understood that it would be difficult to explain her changed appearance if we did run into anyone we knew, and made no objection to keeping our celebration rather furtive.
That night when we went to bed, Mavis brought out another item she had purchased — a nightgown. Its purpose was obviously entirely decorative, for it was much too sheer to have any warmth to it.
I didn’t go to sleep when Mavis did. I deliberately lay awake for another hour, then carefully eased out of bed. When I was sure my movement hadn’t awakened her, I quietly collected all of her new clothes in the dark and carried them into the bathroom. I eased the door shut behind me before turning on the bathroom light.
With a razor blade I removed every label from her clothes, even the small tab sewed into the seam of her slip. Then I turned out the light again and quietly returned each item to where it had been.
As I slipped back into bed, Mavis stirred and said sleepily, “What’s the matter, honey?”
“Nothing,” I said, drawing her into my arms. “Just go back to sleep.”
At dinner the next night, I suggested we do what many other honeymooners do and take a run up to Niagara Falls that evening.
“At this time of year?” she asked. “Don’t the falls freeze in winter?”
“Sure,” I said. “But they’re supposed to be even more beautiful frozen than running. It’s only twenty-two miles.”
“Wouldn’t it be pretty late when we got there?”
“At night’s when you’re supposed to see them,” I explained. “They play colored lights on them from the Canadian side.”
“All right,” she said agreeably.
I hadn’t made the suggestion until eight o’clock. By the time we finished dinner, got back to the hotel, packed and checked out, it was nine-thirty. I told Mavis we were checking out because we’d stay over in Niagara Falls that night.
I took my time making the trip. It was a clear night, cold but without snow, and it was comfortable enough driving with the heater on. It was just ten-fifteen when we reached the city of Niagara Falls.
“Will we spend the night over in Canada?” Mavis asked. “I understand the Canadian side is where most of the tourists go.”
“If you’d like. I thought we’d stop long enough to take a look at the falls from this side, then go over the bridge and see how they look from Canada.”
Actually I had no intention of crossing International Bridge. I knew the immigration service lifted car registrations at the bridge and returned them when visitors came back over it. Whether they kept track of the number of people in each car, I had no idea, but I wasn’t going to chance having to explain on the way back why my passenger had stayed in Canada.