The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack

by Fletcher Flora

  Alvin had not always lived alone. Once, for a couple of years, he had shared the modest house with a wife. Her name was Wanda, and Alvin acquired her in what he considered at the time to be an incredible stroke of good luck.

  It didn’t quite turn out that way, but Alvin was deceived by one element of reality that obscured all the others. The truth was, Wanda was stupid, and she had the morals of a mink. She didn’t even have the brains to exploit her remarkable physical assets, which was the only reason for her choice of Alvin. She could have done much better in the first place, and she could have done better, shortly thereafter, when she transferred her affections to Carter Malin.

  Alvin was aware of his deficiencies, and he was properly grateful and humble. He had never expected to establish an exclusive claim to so much smoldering beauty.

  And, to be exact, he never did.

  Wanda was restless, and Alvin was understanding. He pampered her shamelessly and was paid off in unconcealed contempt. It was not long before she was making short trips to Kansas City once a month to alleviate her unrest, and to patronize the department stores. Alvin, who stayed at home, thought the change in environment did her good, and there were brief periods after each return when her tongue seemed to lose its sharpness and he was convinced he had not been mistaken.

  However, the trips were soon lasting longer, and the bills from the Kansas City department stores kept getting bigger. Wanda was sometimes away for a week at a time, and the day arrived, of course, when she did not return at all.

  Alvin received a letter which he showed to no one. The spelling was atrocious, but the meaning was unmistakably clear. It was written on a crisp sheet of stationery bearing the impressive crest of a Kansas City apartment-hotel, and it said in effect that Wanda had found her true love at last, a prosperous cosmetic salesman named Carter Malin, and had taken up quarters with him at the above address. Alvin was welcome to a divorce, and Wanda was sure that he would understand.

  The implication was plain that he could, if he didn’t, go jump over a stump. Wanda’s candor was perhaps as much a manifestation of her stupidity as it was of an easily understandable desire to flaunt her improved status. But Alvin, being what he was, ascribed it to a basic integrity of character that would have been derided by almost anyone else in Wanda’s world, including Wanda herself.

  He was terribly unhappy and quietly desperate. He considered going after Wanda and pleading with her to return, but he was too much in dread of her certain scorn. He even thought of buying a gun and going after Malin. But he lacked sufficient confidence in himself to resort to that kind of violence and had no stomach for the mess it would be certain to create. He did not, moreover, want to do anything to hurt Wanda.

  In the end, he made a surreptitious trip to Kansas City and lurked about the apartment hotel until he saw Wanda and Malin together. Wanda looked smart and happy, even euphoric, and it was evident that “living in sin” was doing her no harm. Unseen and unheard, Alvin retreated, returned to his home and took up his routine.

  He kept hoping that Wanda would eventually return, and he was prepared to receive her without recriminations if she did. But she didn’t. When Alvin heard of her again, six months later, she was dead. Discarded by Carter Malin, she had, in the hoary tradition of melodrama, taken a handful of barbiturates and fallen into a fatal sleep.

  Even Alvin’s delusions had their limitations, and he had the wayward thought that her death was undoubtedly more of an accident than a suicide. She had made a gesture to frighten her lover, and had simply, through stupidity, taken too many pills. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was dead. She was dead, and Carter Malin was responsible.

  Alvin claimed her body and brought her home and gave her a decent burial in a double cemetery plot, the other half of which was reserved for himself. Afterward, with no demonstration of the grief and hatred he felt, he made the adjustments necessary to a widower and went on living.

  He took only one small step in the direction of vengeance. He purchased a few empty gelatin capsules and some cyanide salts. The purchase of the deadly poison was made openly, and he signed a register without hesitation, offering a plausible explanation of the purchase as he did so. There was no suspicion in the druggist’s eyes.

  At home, he filled one of the capsules with salts, and thereafter he carried it with him at all times, just as he carried his keys and his loose coins. When he went to bed at night, he put it on the dresser with the other items, and when he dressed in the morning he tucked it away securely into the watch pocket of his trousers.

  Although his friends and neighbors didn’t realize it, he was a man with a mission, and his mission was to kill Carter Malin. It was contrary to his nature to hunt Malin down, but he had an unreasonable conviction that the time would come when he and Malin would meet in circumstances exactly right for murder. Or justice, as he preferred to call it.

  After all, Kansas City was not far away, and sooner or later Malin was certain to show up. Perhaps his sales area would be expanded to include this town. Perhaps he would merely stop off on his way through. Perhaps—any number of things. For whatever reason, he would surely come, and in the meanwhile Alvin was prepared and waiting. His position, in short, was a compromise between what he was and what he thought he should be. His great advantage was that Malin had never seen him and wouldn’t recognize him.

  And so he waited. And sure enough, nearly three years later, Malin came. Alvin recognized him immediately, but there was no sign of it except the sudden barely discernible throbbing of a pulse in his throat. Malin was as natty and handsome as he had been when Alvin had seen him with Wanda in Kansas City. If he suffered from remorse for Wanda’s fate, it was not apparent. In fact, his appearance of well-being was marred only by the shadow of a twenty-four-hour beard.

  Alvin calmly finished the job he was doing, and then turned away. He drew some water into a paper cup. Removing the cyanide capsule from his watch pocket, he swallowed it with the water. There! It was done. In ten minutes he would be beyond the reach of temporal retribution. Any other kind he was willing to risk.

  Turning back toward Carter Malin, he bowed slightly with just a touch of deference, holding his tonsorial bib aside like the cape of a matador.

  “Next,” he said.

  THE TOOL

  Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, December 1964.

  From his country home, half-hidden in a grove of maples some five hundred yards away, Gavin Brander came across the intervening fields to visit his neighbors, the Singers. To be exact, it was Stella Singer and her daughter, Nettie, that he came to see, although he was prepared to tolerate Cory Singer also, if he happened to be around. Brander was a tall, slender man with the graceful carriage of an excellent tennis player, which he was. It was just after three o’clock when he left for the Singer home, and he hoped that he was not so early that he would be kept waiting for a cocktail.

  He approached the house through an old orchard of cherry and apple trees that still bore blossoms in the spring, and fruit in the fall. Under one of the apple trees, a few feet from the fence he had just vaulted, he came upon Nettie. She was sitting on the ground with her back against the tree trunk, and she was eating a green apple on which, before taking each bite, she sprinkled salt from a cellar that she held in her right hand. Her brown hair was so rich and thick that it seemed almost too heavy for her small head and the delicate neck that supported it, and she had a serene golden face that was, apparently, forever brooding pleasantly over some inner cache of warm secrets. She did not speak as he approached, and he stopped and looked down at her with an expression of indulgent affection. Sunlight filtered through the leaves overhead to dapple her white shirt and soiled jeans.

  “You know,” he said, “you are going to have the most awful bellyache. Better throw that away.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “Green apples never make me sick.”

  “That’s rather incredible. It makes me feel
squeamish just to watch you.”

  “It’s just a foolish notion people have about them. In my opinion, green apples are good for you. In moderation, of course.”

  “Perhaps it’s the salt. Do you think so?”

  “I doubt it. The salt makes them taste better, that’s all. Would you care to try one? I’ll loan you my salt if you would.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t believe I’ll risk it. Why are you sitting out here in the orchard?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “For me? That’s very flattering, I must say. I should think, however, that you could have waited at the house.”

  “Mother’s at the house, and I wanted to see you alone.”

  This was in precise conformity with his own wishes. Although he had come to see both mother and daughter, he preferred, for his own reasons, to see them separately. Now, balanced on his toes, he sat down easily on his heels.

  “What did you want to see me about?”

  She salted the green apple and took a bite. Her heavy hair fell forward, shadowing her eyes, and he was a little startled by the glint of malice that darted out of the shadows.

  “Thanks to you,” she said, “things have become very difficult in our family.”

  “Is that so? I’m sorry. In what way?”

  “Cory doesn’t like me. He’s afraid of me, I think. He wants to send me away to school in September.”

  “It’s absurd for a grown man to be afraid of a young girl. What makes you think he is?”

  “Because I hate him, and he knows it. I wish he were dead.”

  “How do you know he wants to send you away to school? Has he discussed it with you?”

  “No. He’s only discussed it with Mother, but I overheard them talking.”

  “That was lucky for you, wasn’t it? Now you know what to expect.”

  Her eyes, in the shadow of her hair, were bright for an instant with an expression of sly amusement.

  “It isn’t difficult to hear and see things if you know how to go about it. I’ve listened to Mother and Cory talking lots of times.”

  “Oh?” He stared at her hard with a sudden feeling of uneasiness that he disguised with the lightness of his voice. “I suppose you’ve also heard your mother and me talking lots of times?”

  “Whenever I felt like it. Sometimes I listened and watched both.”

  “You’ve acquired some atrocious habits, my dear. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that spying is bad manners?”

  “It’s often useful. You learn things.”

  “I dare say. What have you learned about your mother and me, for example?”

  “Oh, that’s plain enough. You’re in love with each other, of course. You always kiss when Cory isn’t there.”

  “That’s nothing. Nowadays, kissing is a casual form of greeting between good friends.”

  “Not the way you and Mother do it.”

  “You’re quite a clever girl, aren’t you?”

  “I’m extremely intelligent. Cory wants to send me to a school for gifted students.”

  “Would you like that?”

  “No, I’ll refuse to go.”

  “How does your mother feel about it?”

  “She thinks I ought to wait another year. She and Cory had an argument about it. She said he just wants to get rid of me.”

  “Does Cory suspect your mother and me? Is that what you meant by saying I’ve made things difficult? I certainly didn’t mean to.”

  “No, no. Cory’s very dull about such things. He doesn’t see what’s under his own nose.”

  “Perhaps he’s not as good at spying as you are.”

  “He’s not as good at anything as I am. Things are difficult because of the tension, and you have caused it by the advice you have given me.”

  “I’ve only tried to help. It would be much nicer for everyone wouldn’t it, if Cory would simply give up and go away? Divorces are quite easily obtained these days.”

  “Well, I’ve tried my best to make him go, but all it has done is create bad feeling between him and Mother. They are always at odds about me.”

  “What have you done? I may be able to suggest something more.”

  “I’ve taken every opportunity to express my hostility, that’s all. I even threatened to kill him.”

  “Such threats from young girls are not to be taken seriously. I imagine he simply discounted it.”

  “Do you? I don’t. He was quite disturbed about it. Later, I heard him asking Mother if she didn’t think I should see a psychiatrist, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Good for your mother. You can always depend on her to defend you. Nevertheless, however disturbed Cory was, I’ll bet the threat would have been more effective if you had done something to support it.”

  “Done what? I don’t want to get myself into serious trouble, you know.”

  “Of course not. I was just thinking of a kind of trick. A clever girl like you should be able to devise something.”

  “It shouldn’t be difficult. It really doesn’t take much to upset Cory. He’s a worrier.”

  “Not without cause, I can see. I happen to know a few tricks myself, in case you’re interested. I don’t think I’d better engage in a conspiracy with you, however.”

  “Why not? It would be our secret.”

  “Well, I’ll think about it, but I’m sure that you will think of something better yourself.”

  She finished her apple, and now she threw away the core and balanced the salt cellar on one knee, which she had drawn up in front of her. Her eyes were bright with excitement, but at the same time they seemed to retain an analytical detachment that survived excitement or anger or any emotion whatever.

  “You want me to make Cory leave Mother, don’t you? That will make it possible for Mother to get an enormous settlement that will make everything much better when you marry her later. You are planning to marry Mother, aren’t you?”

  “How would you feel about it?” He suddenly felt something himself that was very close to fear. “If you hate Cory for marrying your mother, wouldn’t you hate me as much?”

  “Not at all.” She laughed and snatched the salt cellar from her knee and shook her hair back from her eyes. “You’re different from Cory. It might be quite entertaining to have you in the family.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” He arose from his heels and settled his feet flat on the soft earth. “Keep me posted on developments, will you?”

  “Yes, I shall.” She laughed again with a kind of childish delight, anticipating a trick on Cory. “And now you had better go up to the house and see Mother. Cory isn’t home, so you don’t have to worry. No one will see you kiss her. Not even me.”

  He found Stella at the rear of the house, in a sunny room with sliding glass doors that opened onto a wide terrace of colored flagstones. She was standing at the doors looking out across the terrace. She turned, hearing him behind her, and started toward him. She was wearing a white sheath and white sandals, and her skin had been exposed to the sun in controlled baths that had given it the shade and sheen of butterscotch candy. She was holding a cigarette in one hand and in the other, he was happy to see, a thin-stemmed glass with an olive in it. No one saw him kiss her. Not even Nettie.

  “Darling,” she said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “My ego is greatly stimulated, I must say. You are the second beautiful woman who has told me that within the last half hour.”

  “I’m jealous of the other one.”

  “You needn’t be. I’ve been talking with your precocious daughter in the orchard.”

  “Nettie? The girl’s becoming quite impossible. What on earth was she doing in the orchard?”

  “As I said, waiting for me. Also eating a green apple.”

  “Nettie likes you, I think, and it’s rarely that she likes anyone at all. It must be your irresistible charm. I’m having an early martini. Will you have one?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

&nbs
p; “They’re in the pitcher on the table there. I remembered the ratio exactly. Four to one.”

  “Good. Will you have another one with me?”

  “Later, darling. Four-to-one martinis shouldn’t be rushed, especially when they get an early start.”

  “You’re right. They are good for you, like green apples, in moderation. If you doubt me, ask Nettie. She’s my authority.”

  She sat down on a white leather sofa, drawing her legs up under her, while he went to the table and poured a martini from the pitcher. After adding an olive, he went and sat beside her on the sofa, half-turned to face her directly.

  “What did Nettie want, exactly?” she asked.

  “I got the impression that she wanted to accuse me of making things difficult in your little family.”

  “That’s absurd. Cory doesn’t suspect a thing. You’re just a good neighbor, darling.”

  “Oh, it apparently has nothing to do with you and me. It’s strictly between Cory and Nettie. She hates him, you know.”

  “I know. But how are you involved?”

  “I’m not really. Nettie only thinks I am. She has a wild notion that I have somehow contributed to the hostility.”

  “I’ve sometimes felt myself that you incite Nettie to be a little more intractable than she might otherwise be.”

  “Not intentionally, I assure you. If I’m an innocent but unfortunate catalyst of some kind, perhaps the solution would be for me to stay away. Is that what you want?”

  “No. I couldn’t bear that. The truth is, I should never have married Cory.”

  “Of course you shouldn’t have. You should have waited and married me.”

  “Darling, I hope you don’t mind being next.”

  “Not I. I’m planning on it. First, however, there’s the small matter of a divorce. Preferably obtained by you on favorable grounds.”

  She leaned over and kissed him, and he patted one of her exposed butterscotch knees and continued to cup it intimately in his hand after the kiss was finished.