The next morning at ten, red-eyed and pale. Clete looked as if he had substituted small, continual nips of Scotch for sleep during the whole of the night. His mass of beard and hair obscured much of the evidence, and his nerveless control did the rest Cousin Melanie blithely entered the cottage without noticing the clues to his mental state. Instead, the unbelievable disarray of the cottage captured her immediate attention.
“You,” she said with a laugh, “have created a room straight from the left bank, here on the sunny shores of Florida.”
Clete reached behind himself, flipping the latch, locking the door. “Sit there, please.”
She gave him the grin of a gamin on a lark, crossed to a straight chair, and sat down. She was silent as Clete walked around her slowly, three times.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” he said. “It simply wasn’t reasonable. All night long I wrestled with the problem of it.”
She began to frown. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“It was as if my artistic senses had gone haywire,” he said. “My genius was playing me false. But no! My perceptions are still true.”
She came out of the chair slowly. “I think we had better postpone this, or cancel the idea entirely. Perhaps we can discuss it sometime when you haven’t been drinking.”
“Who are you?” Clete asked.
“I’ve no earthly idea what you’re talking about. Let me pass, please.”
“Who are you?” Clete shouted.
Real fright flared in her eyes. She ducked around him and made for the door. Clete caught her before she could reach it. He grabbed her arm and spun her about.
She had an unusual resistance to panic. “You’d better think what you’re doing,” she said. “Release me and open the door this instant and I won’t report you. Otherwise, it will go hard for...”
Clete made an animal sound in his throat, suddenly and without warning twisted her arm. She was wheeled into a helpless position, frozen in a hammerlock. With his free hand, Clete scooped the hair from the side of her face.
“Only a tiny, threadlike scar,” he said. “The plastic surgeon didn’t have to do much, did he?”
“You’re mad!” she gasped. “You shall pay for this!”
He jerked her away from the door and shoved her across the room. She half fell on the protesting daybed and remained there, supporting herself with her hands on the edge of the railing.
“I don’t suppose I need to ask you a third time,” he said. He loomed over her, hands on hips. “You were probably an understudy, a double to begin with, searched out with her money, through the talent agencies of Europe. Then later, a bit of plastic surgery and you were her identical twin — except for one thing. So the question now is: What happened to the real Melanie Sutton, the rich old babe with the theater bug? How did you kill her? What did you do with her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Move aside or I’ll start screaming.”
“Go ahead and scream,” he said relentlessly, “and we’ll tell the whole world why. I’ll give you three safe seconds in which to scream.”
He waited. Both remained silent, the woman crouching on the edge of the daybed.
“Where is the real Melanie Sutton?” he insisted. “At the bottom of an Alpine crevasse? Feeding the fish off the south of France?”
She stirred, finally, “How did you know?”
“Your neck. The conniving, money-hungry plastic surgeon could not very well change the length of your neck, so it is far too short”
“My neck...” she raised her hand slowly to her throat.
“Possibly no one else in all the world would ever have noticed,” Clete said. “But I labored over the depicted image of Melanie Sutton for endless hours. When I saw you, I knew instantly, even though it took me all night to believe it, to admit it.”
“I should never have come here,” she said, “but I had to. The corporation lawyers in New York were faintly puzzled by a thing or two I said and did. I was playing the role of ever-loving elder cousin. They would have become downright suspicious if I’d refused the opportunity to drop by and see my closest surviving relative, Perky boy and his wife. So I had to come. I believed I could carry it off here as well as I did in New York. I’d studied Melanie Sutton and her affairs from close range for a long time. I knew everything there was to know about her — except that her cousin had you for a friend.”
“Now I shall live and paint,” Clete said, “away from all this. I am now a painter with a liberal patroness.”
She came to her feet almost shyly. “And if I am to be your patroness, how do I know I can trust you?”
“You’ll simply have to take my word.”
“Your word — yes, I suppose I must. You wish me to mail you your first check today?”
“And once a month thereafter,” Clete said, “for so long as you live. A thousand a month will do nicely.”
The woman was quite composed when she stopped her car in the Bersom driveway. Perky came bouncing out to meet her.
“How did it go, Cousin Melly?”
“Not too badly, but I decided not to sit for any more portraits.” She remained behind the wheel of the car, giving him such a sudden, intent look that the smile eased from his lips.
“Perky, I know this isn’t talked in polite family circles, but I want an honest confidential answer, just between the two of us. In an acute crisis, to what lengths would you go to insure your eventual inheritance of my fortune?”
The thing in her eyes got through to Perky. His playboy aura seemed to fall away. He became bone and sinew, with the eyes of a hungry, prowling cougar. “I think I would even murder,” he said with cool honesty.
The woman behind the wheel looked far down the beach. Then she turned, got out of the car. “My dear boy,” she said fondly, “your answer couldn’t have pleased me more...”
Mind the Posies
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, June 1965.
No believer in miracles, Mrs. Hester Bennett could not fully account for her husband’s new interest in life.
Claude’s heart attack had been severe, and without any prior warning. He had been coming up the front walk late one afternoon, an old man with iron gray hair who still retained some of his earthy, brutish handsomeness. He’d staggered, clutched his chest, crumpled, looked as if he’d died instantly.
But he hadn’t. Not quite. For endlessly long hours Claude’s life had been measured by the successive weak pulse beats which never quite stopped.
Hester had remained at Claude’s hospital bedside, never taking her eyes for very long from the gray face canopied by the clear plastic oxygen tent, until the doctor told her the crisis was finally past. A man steeped in bitter solitude had come home, shuffling and looking about the solidly comfortable house as if everything were new and strange to him.
To Hester’s queries he gave the same, short answer, “I’m fine!” He took his prescribed rests with the secretive inner rebellion of a small boy. He ate the flat salt-free food stolidly, cramming it into his mouth as if he had a strange sort of derision and loathing for himself.
The rapport built by thirty-five years of marriage was broken. Unable to communicate with Claude, Hester mechanically continued her routine of flower gardening and conscientious housekeeping.
Once, as she was arranging a vase of yellow roses, Claude had entered the living room unknown to her. His voice had startled her. “Why do you bother?” he said. “They’ll only die.”
He’d turned and left the room without waiting for her answer. And she’d bit her lip, feeling the emptiness and desolation of the house. The attack has left him with traumatic scars as well as physical ones, she’d thought, but they will pass; after all, thirty-five years of marriage does mean something; the scars will all pass.