Clara Deforest, Mrs. Jason J. DeForest, was entertaining her minister, the Reverend Mr. Kenneth Culling, who conducted himself with a kind of practiced and professional reticence, faintly suggesting a reverent hush, that was appropriate to a house of bereavement. The situation, however, was delicate. In fact, the Reverend Mr. Culling was not at all certain that his visit, under the ticklish circumstances, was quite proper. So far as he could determine, there seemed to be no etiquette established for such occasions. But he had decided he could not afford to risk offending a parishioner as prominent as Clara DeForest, and that he must offer at least a tactful expression of sympathy. So here he was, with a teacup balanced on his knee and a small sweet cracker in his hand.
It was close to the time when he customarily fortified himself with a glass of sherry, and he wished wistfully that he were, at this instant, doing that very thing. He was unaware that Clara DeForest, who was also drinking tea and eating crackers, would have greatly preferred a glass or two of sherry, and would have happily supplied it. In short, the two were not quite in contact, and they were forced to suffer, consequently, the petty misery common to misunderstandings.
Clara DeForest’s bereavement, to put it bluntly, was qualified. It was true that her husband Jason was gone, but he had gone of his own volition, aboard a jet headed for Mexico City, and not in the arms of angels headed for heaven. At least, that was the rumor. It was also rumored that he had withdrawn his and Clara’s joint checking account and sold some bonds, had helped himself to the most valuable pieces in Clara’s jewelry box, and had been accompanied on the jet by a platinum blond. Clara made no effort to refute these charges. Neither did she confirm them. She merely made it clear, with a touch of pious stoicism, that she preferred to forgive and forget the treacheries of her errant husband, whatever they may have been precisely. Her marriage to Jason, twenty years her junior, had been under sentence from the beginning, and it was well over and done with. She was prepared, in short, to cut her losses. The Reverend Mr. Culling was vastly relieved and reassured to find her so nicely adjusted to her misfortune.
“I must say, Mrs. DeForest,” he said, “that you are looking remarkably well.”
“I feel well, thank you.”
“Is there nothing that you need? Any small comfort that I may offer?”
“I am already quite comfortable. I appreciate your kindness, but I assure you that I need nothing.”
“Your fortitude is admirable. A lesser woman would indulge herself in tears and recriminations.”
“Not I. The truth is, I have no regrets whatever. Jason has deserted, and I am well rid of him.”
“Do you feel no resentment, no anger? It would be perfectly understandable if you did.”
The Reverend Mr. Culling looked at Clara hopefully. He would have been pleased to pray for the cleansing of Clara’s heart. It would have given him something to do and made him feel useful. But Clara’s heart, apparently, required no cleansing. “None at all,” she said. “Jason was a young scoundrel, but he was quite a charming one, and I am rather grateful to him than otherwise. He gave me three exciting years at a time of life when I had no reasonable expectation of them.”
The nature of Clara’s excitement took the shape of a vague vision in the minister’s mind, and he tried without immediate success to divert his thoughts, which were hardly proper in connection with a woman of fifty, or any woman at all, however effectively preserved. He could not be blamed for noticing, however, that Clara was still capable of displaying a slender leg and a neat ankle.
“There are unexpected compensations,” he murmured with a vagueness equal to that of his vision.
“On the contrary, I did expect them, and I had them. I should hardly have married Jason for any other reason. He was poor. He was unscrupulous and rather stupid. He was pathetically transparent even in his attempts to kill me.”
“What!” The Reverend Mr. Culling’s voice escaped its discipline and jumped octaves into an expression of horror. “He made attempts on your life?”
“Twice, I believe. Once with something in a glass of warm milk he brought me at bedtime. Another time with something in my medicine. He repeated, you see, the same basic technique. Jason, like all dull young men, had absolutely no imagination.”
“But surely you reported these attempts to the police!”
“Not at all. What would have been the good? It would merely have destroyed our whole relationship, which still retained from my point of view, as I have indicated, much that was satisfactory.”
The minister, feeling that he was somehow on trial, tried to restrain his emotions. “Do you mean that you did nothing whatever about it?”
“Oh, I did something, all right.” Clara smiled tenderly, remembering what she had done. “I simply explained that I had disposed of my small fortune in such a way as to deprive him of any motive for killing me. Since he would receive no benefits from my death, there was no advantage in trying to rush what will occur, in any event, soon enough. He was like a child. So embarrassed at being detected!”
“Like a monster, I should say!” The Reverend Mr. Culling’s restraint faltered for a moment, and he rattled his teacup in his saucer to show the height of his indignation. “I must admit that your method was ingenious and effective.”
“Was it? Not entirely.” Clara’s tender smile took on a touch of sadness. “It may have deprived him of any motive for killing me, but it also relieved him of any compelling reason for sticking around. Not, as I said, that I have regrets. At least, no serious ones. But I shall miss Jason. Yes, indeed, I shall miss him. I shall certainly keep some small memento around the house to keep my memory of him fresh and vivid. As one grows older, you know, one’s memories fade without the help of mnemonics.”
“He has only been gone for a week. Perhaps he’ll return.”
“I think not.” Clara shook her head gently. “He left a note, you know, saying that he was leaving for good. Besides, he could, under the circumstances, hardly be sure of his reception. In a moment of pique, I destroyed the note. I regret now that I did. I should have kept it to read periodically. It would have served admirably to bring him back in spirit, if not in flesh.”
“You are an astonishing woman, Mrs. DeForest. I am utterly overwhelmed by your incredible charity.”
“Well, it is reputedly a Christian virtue, is it not?”
“Indeed it is. Faith, hope and charity, and the greatest of these…”
The minister’s voice trailed off, not because the rest of the words had slipped his mind, but because he chose not to compete with the front doorbell, which had begun to ring. Clara DeForest, in response to the ringing, had stood up. “Excuse me,” she said, and left the room.
He heard her a moment later in the hall, speaking to someone at the door. He was disturbed and a little confused by her almost placid acceptance of what he considered a shameful and faithless act. He was, in fact, inclined to resent it as an excessive application of his own principles. After all, it was entirely possible to be too understanding and submissive. His head tended to reel with antic thoughts, and he leaned back in his chair and looked for something substantial on which to anchor them. His eyes centered on a vase on the mantel, which made him think of Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Odes and urns seeming safe and substantial enough, he began trying to recall the lines of the poem, but he could only remember the famous one about a thing of beauty being a joy forever, a contention which he privately considered extravagant and dubious. Clara DeForest returned to the room. She was carrying a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Placing the package on a table, she went back to her chair.
“It was the postman,” she explained. “Will you have more tea?”
“No, thank you. No more for me. I was just admiring the vase on your mantel. It’s a lovely thing.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Clara turned her head to look at the vase, her eyes lingering. “My brother Casper brought it to me last week when he drove up to see
me.”
“I heard that your brother was here. It’s a great comfort to have a loved one near in a time of trouble.”
“Yes, Casper came immediately when I told him by telephone that Jason had left me, but it was hardly necessary. I did not consider it a time of trouble, actually, and I was perfectly all right. I suppose he merely wanted to reassure himself. He only stayed overnight. The next morning, he drove directly home again.”
“I have never had the pleasure of meeting your brother. Is his home far away?”
“About two hundred miles. He lives in the resort area, you know. He’s a potter by trade. He made the little vase you have been admiring.”
“Really? How fascinating!”
“It’s actually an art, not a trade, but Casper has developed it to the point where it is also a business. He started out years ago with a little shop where he sold his own wares, but they were so superbly done that the demand for them grew and grew, and he soon had to increase the size and numbers of his kilns to meet it. Now he supplies shops and department stores in all the larger cities of this area.”
“He must be very busy.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. He was forced to hurry home last week because he had some urgent work to do. He has great artistic integrity, you see. He personally makes all his own vases. It limits his production, of course, but each piece is far more valuable because of it.”
“I know so little about the making of pottery. I must read up on it.”
“You will find it interesting, I’m sure. The pieces are baked, for instance, in intense heat. Have you any idea of the temperature needed to produce a piece of biscuit ware?”
“Biscuit ware?”
“That is what the pottery is called after the initial baking, before glazing.”
“Oh. No, I must confess I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“An average temperature of 1,270 degrees.”
“Mercy!”
“Centigrade, that is.”
“Good heavens!”
“So, you see,” Clara finished humorously, “my lovely vase has been put through quite an ordeal. Don’t you agree it is worth it, though? It is too squat for most flowers, of course, but never mind. I shall keep it for something very special.”
Talk of such heat had prompted the Reverend Mr. Culling to think uneasily of Hell. He preferred talking of it to thinking of it, for silence increased its terrors, but it would hardly do as a topic for this polite conversation, which had continued, at any rate, long enough. He rose.
“Well, I must run along. I really must. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to find you taking things so well.”
“You mustn’t worry about me. I’ll survive, I assure you.”
They walked to the front door and said goodbye.
“I’m so glad you called,” said Clara. “Do come again soon.”
From the door, she watched him to his car at the curb, and then she turned and went back into the living room. At the table, she took up the package with an expression of annoyance. Really, Casper was simply too exasperating! It was well enough to be thrifty, but her dear brother was positively penurious. Not only was the package flimsy and insecurely tied, but it had been sent third class, just to save a few cents’ postage. Of course, one realized that postal employees rarely availed themselves of the right to open and inspect packages, but just suppose, in this instance, one had! It would have been embarrassing, to say the least.
She took the lovely vase from the mantel and set it on the table beside the package. Her annoyance dissolved in a feeling of delicious companionship. Opening the package, she began to pour its contents into the vase.
A LESSON IN RECIPROCITY
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, August 1966.
In the yellow pages, Gaspar Vane was listed simply as a private investigator, leaving it up to any prospective client to discover for himself the precise nature of investigations undertaken. As a matter of fact, almost any kind that promised a fee was acceptable, but as things worked out, most of them were associated with the more sordid aspects of divorce. He was prepared to gather the evidence of grounds where grounds existed, and he was, for a premium, prepared to create it where it did not. He was not, in brief, a man to permit professional ethics to handicap his operations.
Gaspar suffered from baldness, which is a perfectly normal hazard of maturity, and he was fat. Altogether, considering a pocked face, loose lips, and ferrety little eyes, he was a physical composition of exceptional ugliness. What was not immediately apparent was the poetic range of his imagination. He spent much of his time in a private world in which miracles happened to Gaspar Vane, and it was this happy facility for fantasy that kept him in the practice of his rather unsavory trade.
In spite of the liberal policies that made it possible for him to take any kind of work that was offered, Gaspar’s practice did not flourish. He frequently had difficulty in paying the rent and satisfying his creature needs. He had no payroll to meet, having no employees. However, he did have an answering service that was essential to the little practice that he had, and he was forced at times into devious maneuvers to scratch up even the little that it cost. But he was stuck to his last, as the old saying goes, by a tenacious dream. He existed in the hope of a lode of luck. There would surely be one client who would turn out to be a jackpot.
He did not dream, however, when Hershell Fitch climbed the creaky stairs to his dingy office, that the jackpot was at hand. Hershell was a faded, depleted little man who had bleached to virtual anonymity in the shadow of a domineering wife, and it was under the orders of this wife, it developed, that he was seeking the services of Gaspar Vane. Anyhow, Hershell did not look like a jackpot, and he wasn’t one. The jackpot was Rudolph La Roche, and it was merely Hershell’s coincidental function to reveal him. Gaspar acknowledged Hershell’s introduction with a flabby smile and a greasy handshake.
“Sit down, Mr. Fitch,” Gaspar said. “How can I help you?”
Hershell sat in the one client’s chair and balanced his felt hat carefully on his knees.
“It isn’t exactly I,” Hershell said. “It’s actually my wife. I mean, it’s my wife who sent me here to see you.”
“In that case, how can I help your wife?”
“Well, we have these neighbors. La Roche is their name. Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph La Roche. It’s Mr. La Roche’s activities that she wants investigated.”
“Ah! That’s different. Quite different.” Gaspar leaned back and dry-washed his fat hands. “You suspect Mr. La Roche of something illicit?”
“Perhaps I’d better tell you about it.”
“I was about to suggest it.”
“Well, it’s this way.” Hershell’s fingers fiddled nervously with his hat, while he attempted to gather his harried thoughts. “The La Roches moved in next door nearly three years ago. Immediately they adopted this peculiar routine, and they’ve been in it ever since.”
“Routine? What’s peculiar about a routine? Most married people have a routine.”
“It’s not only the routine. It’s mostly that they act so mysterious about it. In the beginning, when Mrs. Fitch and Mrs. La Roche were on amiable terms, my wife tried to find out where Mr. La Roche went and what he did, but Mrs. La Roche was evasive. Finally she was quite rude about it. That, I think, was the beginning of the bad feeling.”
“Went? Did?” Gaspar’s confusion was apparent in his voice. “Mr. Fitch, if you want my help, you must be more explicit.”
“I’m trying to. The point is, you see, Mr. La Roche operates a small barber shop. As owner, he works the first chair. There is one other chair that is worked by a hired barber. I must say that the La Roches live in a much higher fashion than one would expect from the income from such a small shop, especially when Mr. La Roche is never there himself on Saturdays.
“Where,” said Gaspar, “is Mr. La Roche on Saturdays?”
“That’s the main point. That’s what I’m coming to. We d
on’t know, and we can’t find out. Every Friday night, about six o’clock, Mr. La Roche leaves home in his automobile. He always carries a medium size bag, and he always leaves alone. Sunday night, between nine and ten, he returns. The schedule varies only slightly from week to week. The general routine never varies at all. Don’t you agree that it’s peculiar?”
“Not necessarily. Just because the La Roches decline to discuss their private affairs, it doesn’t mean they’re up to anything shady. Maybe Mr. La Roche has other business elsewhere on weekends that is more profitable than working the first chair in his barber shop.”
“Exactly. What kind of business? After all, Saturday is the busiest day of the week in most barber shops.”
“Mr. Fitch, let us come directly to the crux. Do you want to hire me to find out where Mr. La Roche goes and what he does?”
“It’s my wife, really. She’s the one who’s got her mind set.”
“No matter. It comes to the same thing. Are you prepared to pay my fee even though my report may be disappointing to you? I mean to say, even though Mr. La Roche’s activities may be perfectly innocent?”
“Yes, of course. My wife and I have discussed the possibility, and we’ve decided that it’s a risk we must take.”
“Good. In the meanwhile, there will be certain expenses. Shall we estimate a hundred dollars?”
“A hundred dollars! My wife and I thought fifty would be ample.”
“Well, let’s not quibble. If my expenses are more than fifty, I’ll simply add them to my fee. If you will give me the cash or your personal check…”
Hershell had a personal check already made out in the proper amount. He extracted it from a worn wallet and handed it across the desk. It was signed, Gaspar noted, by Mrs. Fitch. Her Christian name was Gabriella.
Friday afternoon, Gaspar threw an extra shirt and a pair of socks into a worn bag, threw the bag into the rear seat of his worn car and drove to the address he had extracted from Hershell in a final settlement of details. He had been there earlier in the week in a preliminary excursion designed to get the lay of the land, and now he drove past the La Roche house, a modest brick one across the hedge from the Fitches’ modest frame one, and on down the block and around the corner. Turning his car around so that he would be in position to fall in behind La Roche when the latter passed the intersection, he settled himself behind the wheel to wait. It was then a quarter to six. He had ascertained from Hershell, of course, the direction in which La Roche took off. He had already observed La Roche’s car, a black late model, and had unobtrusively taken down the license number. In the course of his careful preliminaries, he had even inspected La Roche himself in his two-chair barber shop.
The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack Page 28