“What happened to your leg?” he asked. She looked down, guiltily, he thought.
“Hit it on that hassock in the kids’ room,” Blanche answered. She saw no point in telling him that she had bruised the leg and ruined a perfectly good stocking on that broken, crazy-angle emergency brake on her Mother’s car. Let him think that his funny game with the car keeps me home while he’s gone, was her idea.
Harry set the magazine carefully in its rack and wandered out to the kitchen where he drew a glass of water from the tap. He set the glass on the drain and stepped quietly across the hall to the children’s room where he removed the stocking from his pocket and held it, heel against the floor, next to the hassock. He moved the stocking back and forth, trying various angles of attack until he was satisfied that the only way she could have hit that particular spot would have been to lie down on the floor and kick the hassock. He put the stocking back in his pocket and went out to the living room.
“Well,” he said, “what went on here while I was gone?”
“Just the usual,” Blanche answered noncommittally, “Kids go to school, kids come home from school. Eat supper, watch TV, go to bed.”
“Anyone drop in?” he persisted.
“No. That is unless you count Edna as somebody.” She knew he didn’t like Edna, but she thought she’d better not lie about that, because he knew Edna was always popping in. Her answer cinched the case for Harry. Of course, he’d known of her faithlessness all along, but he knew that his evidence was circumstantial, and his questions had been worded carefully so that any answers save the ones she had given could have proved her innocence on the basis of reasonable doubt. Blanche had lied; of that he had no doubt. He reasoned that if there were an innocent explanation of the evidence, then Blanche would have no reason to lie: Therefore, the explanation was decidedly uninnocent. He went into the bathroom.
“Come here, Blanche,” he called. “I want you to look at something.”
“Oh, God,” she thought. “Has he found one of the gray hairs I’ve been so carefully plucking out? Old Sherlock will probably deduce that I’ve been having an affair with Caesar Romero.”
“What is it, Harry?” she said aloud as she walked into the bathroom, but she didn’t say any more after that because Harry wrapped the incriminating stocking around her throat and choked every last bit of life out of her.
The rest of it went right according to plan. When darkness fell, he drove the car out and left it a couple of blocks from the railroad station. He walked home, keeping to the shadows. He got out his hacksaw and methodically flushed every last piece of Blanche down the toilet. He cleaned up the mess with small rags and flushed them down the toilet after Blanche. He showered, scrubbing every last inch of his body very carefully, and then he dressed, noting with satisfaction that the job had taken fifteen minutes less than his original estimate. It was eleven forty-five, fifteen minutes before midnight. He was ready for phase two of the operation.
Harry went to the telephone and dialed his Mother-in-law’s number. “Hello, Mother? Sorry to bother you at this hour, but is Blanche still there?” He waited for the negative response and went on, “I must have fallen asleep while she was taking the kids over — are they asleep? — anyway, I just woke up, and she’s not back yet.”
He waited for her to suggest Edna’s, as he knew she would, and then said, “Yes, of course, Edna’s. She may even have come back and found me asleep before going over there. I’ll call over there right now.”
He talked briefly with Edna and then called the police station. It took them two hours to find the car, and upon hearing the desk sergeant’s theory about the car and the train station Harry audibly thanked God that she hadn’t been in an accident and told them to keep trying; that he’d let them know if he heard anything.
On the third day the police informed Harry that they could do no more. They opined that she had caught the evening commuter train to the city and had disappeared from there. He was advised to hire a skip tracer (if he could afford it) because the police had run out of leads and couldn’t spend any more time on it. Oh, they had looked around the house and in her room and asked a lot of questions, but there was certainly no evidence of foul play, and the few talks they had had with Harry, Edna, and the Pulver children had more or less convinced them that Blanche had a lot of justification for disappearing.
Harry had worked that third day — the children were staying with their grandmother — and he was relaxing in the living room when the bell rang announcing Edna.
“Have you heard anything, Harry?” she asked.
“Not a thing, Edna,” he answered. “Won’t you sit down?”
And as she did, “Can I fix you a drink?”
“Thanks, Harry, I need one. Scotch and soda, please.”
“SODA?” He almost shouted the question.
“Yes,” she explained. “Nancy gave me soda by mistake a couple of weeks ago. I liked it so well, well you know how it is, I won’t drink anything else now.”
He fixed the drinks rather mechanically while he pondered Edna’s inconsistent and inconsiderate behavior in changing a habit of years’ duration. When he returned to the living room with the drinks he noticed something wrong.
He was trying to isolate the source of his discomfiture, and Edna must have noticed for she said, “It’s my cigarette, Harry. I’m smoking these things made with pipe tobacco. Not very ladylike, I suppose, but I enjoy the taste of them.” She poured a cloud of smoke at the ceiling and said, “Harry. I know you’re worried and all about Blanche, and maybe this isn’t the time to bother you with trivialities, but I used one of Blanche’s lipsticks when I was over here the other night — I scrubbed my own off because hers looked so good with this outfit — well, I wonder if I might borrow it again?”
“Sure Edna,” Harry said numbly. “It looks like you’ve lost a button off your sleeve. Is this it?” He woodenly handed her the tiny button he had removed from his pocket.
“Why thank you, Harry.”
When they found Harry Pulver hanging in his garage the next afternoon, some thought it was due to despondency over his wife’s recent disappearance. Some thought other things. The Bank ordered an immediate audit of all of Harry’s accounts. One very methodical policeman, however, found a couple of rusty hacksaw blades and took them to the lab where it was discovered that the washing hadn’t removed all of the bone, tissue, and blood. Where did the policeman find the hacksaw blades?
Why, where else?
The Hand
by Charles A. Freylin
She sat frigidly, hands together in her lap, fingers locked securely. Her blonde hair was in violent disarray and her face was a staring mask of psychogenic despair.
Conrad tells me I might have prevented the whole thing. I wonder though, how I could have seen such a far-reaching tragedy and the night of horror from those few whispered words.
Bleeker came into the laboratory that morning and handed me some papers. “Will you sign these, Doctor? Six copies. Original for the county, one for us, one for—”
“What is it? Oh, the assault case.”
“Positive Florence test. That man has had it.” Bleeker leaned against my desk, scratching his ribs monotonously.
“For goodness’ sake, Lover, stop scratching,” I growled.
“Sorry, sir. He’ll get the axe for this, all right. Cops are in there talking to the girl now.”