“But why is that—any of it—significant now?”
“What I really wanted to know from her was where Troy went after he got into the car alone and started off again. Johnny, he didn’t leave—he didn’t go anywhere! Lala said they heard the Purcells come in that night. Troy was singing, and Mavis told him to be quiet. He went into the house with her, meek as a lamb, and went to bed.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Then she told a deliberate lie! She even called the Erickssons to say how worried she was. Now that I think of it, it was out of character for Mavis. She’s not the confiding type.”
Anne urged me into motion and we walked again. “No,” she agreed, “she’s not the confiding type, nor does she act on impulse, as Troy does. That story to the Erickssons was a calculated dramatization, a plant of some kind. And for some definite reason.”
We paced in silence for a while. “Tell me,” Anne said then, “what Bill Garrison was saying to you about Troy’s insurance.”
“You were behind me. You heard him.”
“Not every word.”
I slowed my step, scuffing damp sand as I concentrated.
“First, Peggy said it was a good thing Troy has Mavis to manage his affairs. Then Bill explained that Troy carried life insurance of thirty thousand and had told him he wanted to drop it because he doesn’t expect to earn enough in the future to keep up the payments. Bill argued with Troy, but couldn’t persuade him to change his mind. Later he heard from the home office that they had received Troy’s check.”
“Troy’s check—or hers?”
“He didn’t say—why should he? Maybe they have a joint account. What difference does that make, anyhow?”
“At this point, none, probably.” Anne shivered.
I knew she couldn’t be cold. I stopped and pulled her into my arms and kissed her. She clung tight for a moment, and then moved back and caught my hand and we walked on.
Anne began to think aloud. “Mavis has paid up Troy’s insurance—or persuaded him to do so. She has written to the Morgans—Leila’s letter was dated five days ago, and she had just heard from Mavis—giving them notice to move because she wants the apartment. Yet today she lets us believe that she intends to stay here. She doesn’t contradict Troy when he mentions selling their furniture in New York and using the money to buy a car. She talks about decorating the cottage and says their new home will be charming.” She gripped my hand tight and said, “I don’t like it, Johnny! Especially after what we saw on her face this evening.”
“When you bring the facts together that way, I don’t like it either,” I admitted. “That naked hatred when she looked at Troy and Lala—it might be just the girl she hates. And Lala is leaving soon. Perhaps after she goes Mavis will get over it.”
“I don’t think she will,” Anne insisted. “She’s not young any more. She’s invested years of effort manipulating Troy, building the kind of life she wants for them both. Now the entire structure is threatened. And in spite of her pretty manners, she is capable of violence. Lala said she screamed at Troy in fury. That must have been one of her few unguarded moments. Now she’s docile. But she spends her time reading stories of murder.”
“That’s as good a sublimation as any.”
“Don’t be an idiot. It’s only in psychology books that sublimation really works.”
“All right,” I said. “What can we do? What can anybody do?”
We had turned and were headed toward the party again. “I don’t know,” Anne said. Automatically we quickened our pace.
When we rejoined the crowd, we saw neither Troy nor his wife. We went to the table, now serving as a bar, then through the house to the kitchen, and back to the lanai. There we ran into Umi.
“Looking for Troy?” he said. “He just left.”
An old man on the grass near us cackled approval. “Troy plenty onaona. Had one fine time.”
“Was he really drunk?” I asked.
“He was stiff!” Bill Garrison told us from the steps. “We just poured him into the car and Mavis took him home. Never saw anything happen faster. One minute he’s sitting here with this glass in his hand, singing— the next, he’s flat on his face. No wonder, after all the liquor he took aboard.”
Anne and I avoided looking at each other. We were both remembering what Troy had said about not wanting to drink, and what David had told us about the straight ginger ale.
“Don’t worry about Troy,” Bill said. “He’ll be all right. The fresh air’ll sober him up on the way home. And Mavis is a good driver.”
“Of course,” Anne said. She sank to the steps of the lanai where Troy had recently been sitting. “Give me a cigarette, Johnny.”
As soon as Bill and Umi had wandered off, she stood up. “Let’s go after them.”
“We haven’t a car.”
“Take David’s. Take the first one we find. But hurry!”
We took David’s car without permission. Anne opened the glove compartment as we started.
“What are you putting in there?” I asked.
“The glass Troy drank from. When we get as far as Kaneohe I want to telephone.”
I pressed the accelerator. At Kaneohe, Anne reported no answer from Troy’s house or Umi’s. “All the Kealohas are at the party, of course. And Mavis probably hasn’t had time to get home yet. Are we taking the Pali road?”
“It’s quicker—if it doesn’t start to rain when we get there.”
The rain started when we were halfway up the long, winding drive. It didn’t rain hard; there was just a blowing mist which clouded the windshield and made the road like glass. We drove in silence and Anne said nothing as we skidded on curves; nor did she grab at the door when we scraped, once, against stones of the outside wall.
When we reached the summit, we were in a downpour. Wind rocked the car as we made the turn and started down. It had taken us almost an hour, slowed as we were by the weather. We were possibly twenty minutes behind Mavis, and in that much time anything could happen—or could be made to happen—to Troy.
My thoughts went back and forth with the clack of the windshield wipers. One minute I thought this whole thing was preposterous and we were acting like idiots; next I recapitulated everything we knew plus what we surmised, and I was sure we would be too late.
We found a filling station on Nuuanu Avenue, and Anne was out of the car even before it stopped. She was inside for quite a while and I watched her through the window as she spoke over the phone. She came back with a set look on her face and said, “I reached her.”
“What did she say?”
“She was hysterical. She called me a fool. But when I told her we have the glass Troy drank from—and that several witnesses remembered her giving it to him—then she was scared. Let’s go to the house now.”
We turned at last up the steep drive which led to the cottage, and I parked near the path to the front door. The house was lighted, but when we knocked there was no answer. We waited and listened but heard no sound other than the drip of water from the eaves and the soughing of trees in the wind which swept down the valley. We knocked again and called, then tried the door and found it unlocked. We walked in.
The living room was empty. The wicker table by the side of the broken-springed couch was piled with magazines; there was a manicuring set, a filled ashtray, and an empty glass with cigarette butts in it.
We went into the bedroom. It was lighted and empty. Troy’s grass slippers, one strap torn loose, were half under the bed. It gave me a queer feeling to see them. The white dress Mavis had worn was tossed on a chair and her white sandals lay close by.
On the dresser were jars and cosmetics of all descriptions. A bottle of liquid cleansing cream lay smashed on the floor, as if the woman who was using it had dropped it there, perhaps, when she heard the telephone ring.
We went into the kitchen and found the screen door half ajar; light from the room streamed out over the small rear landing onto steps which led to the concrete driveway.
<
br /> It was there we found Mavis. We saw first her naked legs, then the shell pink satin of the dressing gown which had spread over her face when she tripped and sprawled headfirst down the steps. She lay still, in that final stillness which is death. But we heard a sound.
It was the familiar sound of the ancient car which had chugged so faithfully as it carried us to the luau.
“The garage!” Anne cried. “Quick! Open the door!” As I went to it she ran around the side of the building.
The door was padlocked. I heard breaking glass, and then Anne came back and said, “The window is nailed. Can’t you get the door open?”
While I tugged at the hasp she went to Mavis’s body and snatched the key from her outflung hand. I took it and opened the lock.
Anne untied the halter top of her bathing suit and thrust it at me. “Be careful, Johnny. Hold this over your nose while you turn off the ignition—”
But there was no key in the ignition. The motor chugged on, while I dragged Troy’s sagging body out of the car and across the garage floor to fresh air and Anne shut the garage doors again.
“He’s breathing,” I said when she turned. “He can’t have been in there long. He’ll probably be all right once we get him to the hospital. I’ll go phone.”
As I reached for the screen door I was dimly aware that Anne was leaning over Mavis’s body. Then I almost tripped over a high-heeled satin mule. Mavis should have known better than to rush down a flight of steps in high heels, I thought as I went into the house.
When I came out Troy’s breathing sounded normal and his face looked less pink. We left him lying on the damp grass and went to sit on the steps of Umi’s cottage. I helped Anne tie her halter back on, and we moved very close together. After a while she stopped shivering.
We didn’t hunt for the ignition key. Later, after disconnecting some wires to stop the motor, police found it in the pocket of Mavis’s dressing gown.
As we waited, Anne and I began to talk.
The story Mavis had planned to tell seemed fairly obvious, we decided, remembering the one she had already told the Erickssons. Troy had “refused” to enter the house, and she left him in the car to sleep off his “drunk.’’ He had revived and decided to go back to the party, had started the motor, and then passed out again—while Mavis slept. The next day—or the next hour, it did not matter—she would become alarmed and go to the garage and find him.
“By the time she’d have called the police,” Anne said, “the door would be open, of course, and the key back in the ignition. She must have taken the idea from a newspaper, or from one of those stories she read.”
“She would never have got away with it.”
“She might have. A pretty woman, a good lawyer, and a husband with a reputation for drinking heavily? And even if she were convicted—” Anne let out a long, ragged sigh, “—that wouldn’t have done Troy any good.”
She looked at her hands, which were dirty, and went to brush them across the wet grass. When she sat beside me again I said, “Hey, kid. Your legs are all streaked, as if you’d been carrying—”
I looked at Mavis’s body, then I squared around. “Anne. You moved something away from there. What was it?”
Instead of answering directly, she said, “Johnny, do you remember the things we heard about Troy and Mavis—the two accidents they almost had?”
“Once when she was nearly drowned, and he went in after her—”
“That was the time Troy ‘absent-mindedly’ hung his shirt over the warning sign at the beach.”
I was beginning to get the idea, “—and then the hand-brake on the car froze, the night Troy got drunk!”
“Mavis told us earlier today that the brake didn’t work because Troy ‘forgot’ to have it repaired. It might be interesting to know whether there were other instances of Troy’s ‘absent-mindedness’ before they left New York, or whether his need to be rid of his incubus crystallized only after they came here. But the point is—the third time Troy tried to murder his wife, he was successful.”
“Anne, what was it you moved?”
“Remember, you told them of the superstition about hanging a fishnet in the house?”
“Sure. Mavis ordered Troy to take it down. And he tossed it—” I looked with horror at the steps down which Mavis had tumbled to her death.
“Yes,” Anne said. “I removed the net.”
Before I could say anything Troy stirred, and we heard him groan.
Then the ambulance arrived.
Afterword
We at Mystery Writers of America hope you enjoyed this collection of stories from our great writers. The Lethal Sex, edited by John D. MacDonald, is the latest in a series of classic crime collections in our new program, Mystery Writers of America Classics.
Since 1945, MWA has been America’s premiere organization for professional mystery writers, a group dedicated to learning from each other, helping new members, and sharing our successes and good times. One way we celebrate our talent is through the production of original, themed anthologies, published more or less yearly since 1946, in which one remarkable writer invites others to his or her collection.
Read more about our anthology program, both the new ones and classic re-issues, on our web page: https://mysterywriters.org
And watch for future editions of Mystery Writers of America Classics. To receive notifications, please subscribe here: http://mysterywriters.org/mwa-anthologies/classics-newsletter/
The authors of the stories in this collection have kindly granted special permission to the editor and the Mystery Writers of America to include them in the book. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the authors and also to the copyright holders, magazines, and publishers named below.
Introduction. Copyright © 1959 by John D. MacDonald.
“Dear Mr. MacDonald” by Christianna Brand. Copyright © 1959 by Christianna Brand.
“Snowball” by Ursula Curtiss. Copyright © 1959 by Ursula Curtiss.
“McGowney’s Miracle” by Margaret Millar, copyright © 1954 by The Hearst Corporation. Reprinted by permission of the author and Cosmopolitan magazine.
“Two for Tea” by Margaret Manners, copyright © 1958 by Margaret Manners. Reprinted from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine by permission of the author.
You’ll Be the Death of Me” by Anthony Gilbert, originally published under the title “The Goldfish Button.” Copyright © 1958 by Davis Publications. Inc. (formerly Mercury Publications. Inc.). Reprinted by permission of the author and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
“The Withered Heart” by Jean Potts. Copyright © 1956 by Davis Publications, Inc. (formerly Mercury Publications, Inc.). Reprinted by permission of the author and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
“To Be Found and Read” by Miriam Allen deFord. Copyright © 1958 by Davis Publications, Inc. (formerly Mercury Publications, Inc.). Reprinted by permission of the author and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
“Sleeping Dogs” by Gladys Cluff. Copyright © 1959 by Gladys Cluff.
“A Matter of Ethics” by Carolyn Thomas. Copyright © 1959 by Carolyn Thomas.
“What Is Going to Happen?” by Nedra Tyre. Copyright © 1959 by Nedra Tyre
“Thirty-Nine” by D. Jenkins Smith. Copyright © 1959 by D. Jenkins Smith.
“No Trace” by Veronica Parker Johns. Copyright © 1957 by King-Size Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and King-Size Publications, Inc.
“There Are No Snakes in Hawaii” by Juanita Sheridan. Copyright © 1954 by Davis Publications, Inc. (formerly Mercury Publications, Inc.). Reprinted by permission of the author and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
Did you love The Lethal Sex? Then you should read Women's Wiles by Joyce Harrington et al.!
NOTHING'S WHAT IT SEEMS IN THIS SLYLY SINISTER COLLECTION OF DAMES DONE WRONG...AND DOING THE SAME!
Shocking surprises, chilling comeuppances, and mercies that are anything but tender are just part of what to expec
t from these memorable stories of women's wills...and wiles. Choosing them with an eye to the dangers ever lurking in our everyday lives, acclaimed editor Michele Slung very clearly wants to play with her readers' comfort levels-and succeeds. Among the nineteen tempting treasures she's come up with are stories by four Mystery Writers of America Grand Masters: be prepared to be unsettled by the twists of Edward D. Hoch's tale of burglary-turned-romance; the haunting neighbors dreamed up by Margaret Millar; Stanley Ellin's unreliably recognized intruder; and the plight of Dorothy Salisbury Davis's sensible housekeeper suddenly stricken with a sleuth's awareness. Yet those are hardly all... there's suspense for every taste with each and every compelling page-turner you'll discover here.
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