by Gorman, Ed
I’ve got to turn in now, roomie. Tomorrow’s a school day down at the Gazette and I can’t stay up all night the way I used to back at North Cheshire Central, not if I’m going to be all full of pep and energy in the morning.
Oh, one more thing. Tony LoPresto says that he and Jennie are planning a trip back to Massachusetts for the big homecoming game next month. Going to bring all their youngsters with them, too. The old campus is in for a real treat! I wish I could make it but every time I look my budget in the eye and ask, How about it? the old budget looks right back at me and says, Not this year, old fellow!
So maybe next year, Izzy. I assume that you and Carolyn will attend, it can’t be much of a trip from New York City. Say hello to Tony and Jennie for me, and congratulations again to yourself and Carolyn. You lucky dog — or should I say, Cheshire Cat!
Meow, Cats, Meow!
Robert “Bobcat” O’Brien
• • •
Keweenaw Bay Gazette
Keweenaw Bay, Michigan
September 20, 1940
Mr. Zachary Grand
Editor-in-Chief
Grand Publications
143 West 43rd Street New York, 16, New York
Dear Izzy,
This is a letter I never expected to write, old roomie. You know, Keweenaw Bay may be isolated and all, but we do have radios and we get out of town newspapers even if we have to wait a few days to see what’s happening in the rest of the world. But Tony LoPresto telephoned and gave me the lowdown on what happened during homecoming weekend, and then there were reports in the Boston and New York dailies.
Now we know what happened to Henry von Eisen.
Who would ever have expected an Atlantic hurricane to make it all the way to Massachusetts, and then to sweep inland as far as Cheshire County, setting off that waterspout from Big Star Pond and then turning into a tornado and ripping up the old landfill near the old Cheshire Pike? Mainly, everybody was upset that the big homecoming parade was cancelled, the football game against Billerica Tech was called off, and the gymnasium was flooded so the homecoming dance never happened.
At least, that’s what Tony LoPresto said when he phoned me. I don’t know if he paid for the call himself or found some way to get the city fathers in Bayou Richelieu to foot the bill, but one way or another all that gab must have cost plenty.
The kids at North Cheshire were disappointed by the mess the storm made of homecoming weekend, but Tony was more interested in what the storm pulled out of the old landfill. Tony told me that the human remains that turned up were identified as belonging to some old tramp who’d fallen into the landfill years before and died there. The local authorities gave Tony the run of the place. Professional courtesy, they call it.
But Tony knew better. He didn’t say so, but he knew better.
We both knew who that corpse was, or what was left of it after almost eight years lying there in the landfill. There are raccoons and lynxes and even a few wolves in those woods. There wasn’t much left of that fellow. But Tony told me there was one odd thing about the body. You know how freakish Old Ma Nature can be, and somehow, for all the scavengers who’d worked over that body and then the effects of lying in the earth all these years, the flesh was almost perfectly preserved on the left hand.
Isn’t that odd, Izzy?
Tony told me that the left hand of the body showed a big scar running straight across the palm. As if the owner of that hand had got into a fight and his opponent came at him with a really nasty knife, and that fellow put up his hand to try and stop the knife and wound up with a terrible gash running right across the palm of his hand.
Looked as if the cut had healed up all right, Tony said, but the scar was something to behold. And Tony figured that whoever owned that hand would never be able to do very much with it ever again, even after the wound had healed.
Oh, it was Henry von Eisen all right. Tony has some wild theory about von Eisen getting into a scrape with poor old Percival Dunning that icy night back in the winter of ’32–’33, and maybe beating old Percival into a helpless state and then putting him in his old Pullman coupé and sending it out onto the ice of Big Star Pond.
And then, Tony figures, somebody else comes along, somebody von Eisen doesn’t like to start with, and now this other person has seen von Eisen practically murder poor old Percival Dunning. So von Eisen goes after this other person, too. You’d think von Eisen would win a fight, but who knows, under those conditions, anything could happen. Anything. Right, Izz?
Even though I’m not a religious person, I know a few Bible stories. I know about David and Goliath. Do you think Henry von Eisen might have been a kind of Goliath? And who would be David?
Who, Izzy?
Well, I guess I missed all the excitement of homecoming weekend, the hurricane, the waterspout, the tornado, the body in the landfill. Things are quiet here in Keweenaw Bay. Must be more exciting back East where you are, Izzy.
Congratulations again on your marriage. Give Carolyn my best wishes. You are one lucky son of a gun!
Meow, Cats, Meow!
Robert “Bobcat” O’Brien
• • •
RICHARD A. LUPOFF’S novels and short stories cover a spectrum from mysteries to mainstream, fantasy and horror to science fiction. Even his mysteries range from fair-play puzzle stories to hardboiled. He is best known for his tales of insurance investigator Hobart Lindsey and homicide detective Marvia Plum of the Berkeley Police Department. His most recent books are Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix (Crippen & Landru); Killer’s Dozen (Wildside Press), a collection of criminous tales; and The Emerald Cat Killer (St. Martin’s Press), the eighth novel in the Lindsey and Plum series. His nonfiction books include The Great American Paperback (Collectors Press), Writer at Large (Gryphon Books), and Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (University of Nebraska). He has taught at the University of California, Stanford University, the College of Marin, and other institutions.
THE TELL-TALE PURE
By Mary Higgins Clark
There comes a time when in the name of common decency grandmothers ought to die. I confess that in the early stages of my life I had a half-hearted affection for my grandmother but that time is long since past. She is now well up in her eighties and still exceedingly vain even though at night her teeth repose in a water glass by her bed. She has a constant struggle every morning to get her contact lenses popped into her myopic eyes and requires a cane to support her arthritic knees. The cane is a custom-made object affair designed to resemble the walking stick Fred Astaire used in some of his dances. Grandma’s story is that she danced with him when she was young and the cane/walking stick is her good-luck charm.
Her mind is still very keen and seems to become keener even as her eccentricities grow. She, who always proudly considered herself frugal, is spending money like water. Thanks to several investments her husband, my grandfather, made, she is downright wealthy and it has been with great pleasure that I have observed her simple lifestyle. But now it is different. For example she just put in an elevator which cost forty thousand dollars in her modest home. She is sure she will live to be one hundred but is contemplating building a state-of-the-art gym in the backyard because in the Harvard Medical Report, she read that exercise is good for arthritis.
I submit to you that a better cure for her arthritis is to put an end to it forever. This I propose to do.
You must realize that I am her sole grandson and heir. Her only child, my mother, departed this earth shortly after I was graduated from college. In the twenty-six years since then I have married and divorced twice and been involved in many ill-fated ventures. It is time for me to stop wasting my time on useless enterprises and enjoy a life of comfort. I must help to make that possible.
Obviously her demise would need to seem natural. At her advanced age, it would not be unlikely to have her pass away in her sleep but if someone holding a pillow were to help that situation occur there is always the danger of a bruise that
might make the police suspicious. Suspicious police look for motive and I would be a living, breathing motive. I am uncomfortable about the fact that when under the influence of wine I was heard to say that the only present I wanted from my grandmother for my next birthday was a ticket to her funeral.
How then was I to help my grandmother sail across the River Styx without arousing suspicion?
I was quite simply at a loss. I could push her down the stairs and claim she fell but if she survived the fall, she would know that I caused it.
I could try to disable her car but that ancient old Bentley, which she drives with the skill of Mario Andretti, would probably survive a crash.
Poison is easily detectable.
My problem was solved in a most unexpected way.
I had been invited to have dinner at the home of a successful friend, Clifford Winkle. I value Clifford’s superb wines and gourmet table far more than I value Clifford. Also I find his wife, Belinda, insipid. But I was in the mood for a splendid dinner in comfortable circumstances and looked forward to the evening with pleasure.
I was seated with Clifford and his wife, enjoying a generous scotch on the rocks which I knew had been poured from a two-hundred dollar bottle of single malt reserve, when their little treasure, ten-year-old Perry, burst into the room.
“I’ve decided, I’ve decided,” he shouted, spittle spraying from the space between his upper front teeth.
The parents smiled indulgently. “Perry has been reading the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe this week,” Clifford told me.
The last time I was a guest I endured Perry’s endless description of a book he had read about fly fishing, how by reading it, he could really, really understand all about baiting and casting and catching and why fly fish were really, really special. I wanted desperately to interrupt him and tell him I had already seen A River Runs Through It, Robert Redford’s splendid film on the subject, but of course I did not.
Now Perry’s all-consuming passion was obviously Edgar Allan Poe. “‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is my favorite,” he crowed, his short red hair spiking up on the crown of his skull, “but I could write a better ending, I know I could.”
Barefoot Boy with Cheek out-Poes Poe, I thought. However I wanted to show some small degree of interest. I was down to my last sip of the two hundred dollar scotch and hoped that by directing attention to myself, Clifford might notice my empty glass and not neglect his duty as my host. “In high school I wrote a new ending to 'The Cask of Amontillado,’” I volunteered. “I got an A in my English class for it. I remember how it began.” I cleared my throat. “‘Yes. I killed him. I killed him a long fifty years ago...’”
Perry ignored me. “You see, in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ the guy kills the old man because he can’t stand looking at his eye. Then he buries the old man’s heart but when the cops come he thinks he hears the heart beating and goes nuts and confesses. Right?”
“Right!” Clifford affirmed enthusiastically.
“Exactly. Um-hum,” Belinda agreed, beaming at her quiz kid.
“In my book, the guy is going to kill the old man, but another guy watches him and helps him cut up the body and bury the heart under the floor. When the cops come in, the murderer laughs and jokes with them and think he’s getting away with it. Then when the cops go, the friend comes back and as a joke says he can hear the old man’s heart beating. Isn’t that good?”
Fascinating, I thought. If only Poe had lived to meet Perry.
“But then the murderer, ’cause he doesn’t know it’s a joke, believes he really is hearing the heart and you know what?”
“What?” Clifford asked.
“I can’t guess,” Belinda gushed, her eyes wide, her hands clutching the arms of her chair.
“The murderer dies of fright because of the heart he thinks he’s hearing.”
Perry beamed at his own brilliance. Send for the Nobel Prize, I thought, not realizing there was more to come.
“And the twist is that his friend was going to split the money the old man had hidden somewhere in London and now he realizes he’ll never know where to find it so he’s punished for the crime too.” Perry grinned triumphantly, an ear-splitting grin that made all the freckles on his cheeks bond together in a henna-tinted mass.
It was I who led the applause and my reaction was genuine. The sound had scared the murderer to death. My grandmother’s fear of cats rushed into my mind. She shakes and trembles to the point of almost fainting at the sight or sound of one. It goes back, I am told, over eighty years when a rabid cat attacked her in the garden. She still bears a scar on her left cheek from that long-ago encounter.
My grandmother has a new elevator.
Suppose ... just suppose, Grandma got stuck in her new elevator in the dark during a power failure. And then she hears the sounds of cats yowling and hissing and howling and purring. She hears them scratching at the door of the elevator. She is sure they will break through. She cowers, shrieking against the back of the elevator, then crumbles onto the floor of the elevator, the memory of that long-ago attack overwhelming her. No, it is not a memory. It is happening. She is sure that the cat is poised to attack her again, not just one cat but all the cats in this hydrophobic pack, foaming at the mouth, teeth bared.
There is only one way to escape the panic. She is frightened into heart failure and her death would be blamed on her being trapped, alone, at night in the new elevator.
I was so excited and thrilled at this solution to my problem that I hardly tasted the excellent dinner and was uncommonly responsive to Perry who, of course, dined with us and never shut up.
I planned my grandmother’s death carefully. Nothing must arouse even the slightest suspicion. Fortunately in her area of northern Connecticut during a wind storm there are frequent power failures. She has talked of installing a home generator but so far that has not happened. Still, I knew I had to move swiftly.
Night after night for the next few weeks, I roamed through the nearby towns, slithering through dark alleys and around abandoned buildings, any place where wild cats gathered. I tossed pieces of meat and cheese to get them fighting with each other, their teeth bared, their ungodly yowls rumbling from their throats. One night I was attacked by a cat that sprung on me, frantic for the food in my hand, her front claw ripping my right cheek in the same spot my grandmother was scarred.
Undeterred I kept on my mission, even recording cats in animal shelters where I caught the plaintive meows of discarded felines bewildered at their fate. At the home of a neighbor I secretly caught on tape the contented purring of her treasured pet.
A cacophony of sound, a work of genius. That was the result of my labors.
As I was engaged in my nocturnal wanderings, by day I was also dancing attendance on my grandmother, visiting her at least three times a week, enduring at mealtime the vegetarian regime that was her latest quirk in her battle to stay alive til her hundredth birthday. Seen with such frequency, the annoying habits she was developing became increasingly hard to take. She began to avoid my eyes when I spoke to her, as though she was aware everything I said was a lie. She also took on a nervous mannerism of pursing then releasing her lips, which gave the impression she was always sucking on a straw.
Grandma lived alone. Her housekeeper, Ica, a kind Jamaican woman, arrived at 9:00 AM, prepared Grandma’s breakfast and lunch, tidied the house, then went home and returned to prepare and serve dinner. Ica was very protective of Grandma. She had already confided to me her distress that Grandma might somehow get trapped in the elevator when she was alone. “You know how when it gets very windy, she gets power failures that can last for hours,” Ica worried.
I assured Ica that I, too, was troubled by that possibility. Then, impatiently I waited for the weather to cooperate and a good wind storm to come along. It finally happened. The weather report was for heavy winds during the night. That evening I had dinner with Grandma, a particularly difficult dinner, what with the vegetarian menu, Grandma’s averted
eyes, her twitching mouth, and then the dismaying news that she was meeting an architect concerning her idea for building a personal gym. It was clearly time to act.
After dinner, I kissed Grandma goodnight, went into the kitchen where Ica was tidying up, and drove away. At that time, I lived only three blocks from Grandma. I parked my car and waved to my next-door neighbor who was just arriving home. I felt it was fortuitous that, if necessary, he could testify that he had seen me enter my own modest rental cottage. I waited an hour and then slipped out my back door. It was already dark and chillingly cold, and it was easy to hurry undetected back to Grandma’s house. I arrived through the wooded area checking to be sure that Ica’s car was surely gone. It was and I slipped across the lawn to the window of the den. As I expected I could see Grandma, hunched up on her recliner, an old fur lap robe wrapped around her, watching her favorite television show.
For the next ten minutes she stayed there, then, as I had expected, promptly at nine o’clock, the fur robe dragging behind her, she turned off the television and made her way to the front of the house. In a flash, key in hand, I was at the basement door and inside. As soon as I heard the rumble of the elevator, I threw the switch, plunging the house into silence and darkness.
My feet, noiseless in my sneakers, my flashlight a thin beam, I crept upstairs. From the sound of my grandmother’s cries for help I could detect that the elevator was only a few feet off the floor.
Now for the tricky part. I placed my tape recorder on the vestibule table behind a book I had left for Grandma. I reasoned that Ica, if indeed she noticed it, would think nothing of it being there. I had developed the habit of bringing books and little gifts for Grandma.
And then I turned on the tape. The sound that thundered from it was a litany from cat hell, meowing, clawing, scratching, and howling, their shrieks interwoven against the suddenly incongruous rattle of purring contentment.
There was absolute silence from the elevator.
Had the recording done its job already? I wondered. It was possible but I wouldn’t know for sure until the morning. The tape was twenty minutes long and would play repeatedly until midnight. I was sure that would be sufficient.