The Listening House

by Mabel Seeley

  I saw where I’d have a struggle to call my soul my own.

  We drew up in front of 593 Trent Street with a flourish. It was ringed with piles of sand, boxes of cement, funny iron kettles like big empty iron balls. Men, too. Leaning on shovels and things.

  “I’ve rented us a furnished apartment to live in until you can hunt up what your domestic nature requires.” Hodge gave the orders. “I’ve got my stuff all packed, and most of your stuff. Movers coming at two o’clock. Now we’ll go in and quick pack up the rest of your stuff so we can grab a wedding luncheon before the movers get here.”

  Halloran children scuttled out of the hall when we came in; Mrs. Halloran herself, movie magazine in hand, moved to the parlor door from her chair to smile a genteel but aloof welcome upon me.

  My dishes were packed in barrels in the kitchen, my pots and pans, even my groceries. Funny how well Hodge had known what was mine and what Mrs. Garr’s—Mrs. Halloran’s now. The only thing left to pack were my clothes, bedding, linens.

  I directed Hodge while he dragged my trunk and suitcases out of the closet; I was clumsy with one hand, he was clumsy at packing clothes with two. His hair came uncombed and his face red.

  “See the pretty bridegroom,” I said.

  “What nice bride would have her husband of—wait a minute—fifty minutes packing her panties? Answer that one, my bruised beauty.”

  “Bruised by another man, too.”

  “When I think how long I have to handle you carefully—oh well, I’ll regale you with tales of what’s going to happen. Lots worse said than done.”

  He slammed my trunk shut, knelt to lock it.

  “That all? Then I’ll run up and lock my trunks before we shoot downtown for that lunch. I’ve got a few things to throw in, too. Think you can stay here without busting a leg, or do you want to come along? Hell’s bells, I see where I take you along to the office, next.”

  “Thank you,” I said with dignity. “I shall be perfectly safe here.”

  He left me. I could hear the scurryings of the little Hallorans in the house, like heavy mice. I walked through my rooms for that inevitable last look. Studio couch where I’d slept, nearly been killed. Armchair where Strom had held court. Shelves where my dishes had stood. Cavernous icebox where so much ice had melted, and so fast. The twice-bolted cellar door behind which a murderer had lurked. The closet where my clothes had hung; into which, panting, Mrs. Garr had helped me lift the trunk Hodge had so easily lifted out.

  It was the last time I would think, in her own house, of that evil woman, sitting below to watch the precious contents of that step. Sitting downstairs listening to me, too, because she had come into my rooms so quickly whenever I did anything unusual. That time I changed the furniture around. That time I took the trunk out for my summer clothes.

  I stood there in the little passageway, stock-still.

  Why had she listened so to me? Why, when it was that step she guarded? Why had she listened so closely to me? I was thinking hard, my heart racing, the blood pushing against the bruised half of my face.

  She came up when I moved furniture. She came up when I moved the trunk. She had helped me carry the trunk into that closet.

  The one thing she’d done when I moved in.

  She had helped me carry it back there when I’d taken it out.

  I stared into the closet. Bare walls, hooks, hanger rod.

  Nothing.

  Except the little platform for the trunk.

  There was a noise in the hall. I nearly fainted.

  I darted into the living room; the hall doors were shut but not locked; the key was there; I turned it with my one hand. Quietly I dragged the chairs to go under the knobs.

  If Hodge wanted to get in, he could knock.

  Quickly I slipped back to the closet, bent over the platform, tugged at its edge.

  It didn’t budge.

  I tugged harder.

  No giving.

  I stood up to tell myself what a fool I was.

  Of course there was nothing there. Why should there be?

  But a platform. Why a platform?

  She’d said stairs were under here. But stairs weren’t under there. They were at the side.

  I knelt now; looked the platform over every inch. Not a break, not a suspicious crack.

  I tried lifting the top again, tugging with all my one hand’s strength. It was immovable.

  I sat back on my heels to think again.

  The rise. It looked solid. It was solid. The baseboard.

  The baseboard ended where the platform began.

  The baseboard ended where the platform began!

  A box might open from any one of four sides.

  If that wasn’t the answer, there wasn’t any answer. I took the palm of my right hand and pushed downward, hard, on the front edge of the platform.

  My throat tightened.

  It moved!

  I jerked my head to the quiet behind me, expecting that, somehow, something would strike out at me. It was so much like that other night.

  Nothing came.

  I went back to the kitchen, the living room, looked.

  Nothing was there.

  Trembling with the excitement, with weakness, I dropped to my knees in front of the platform again. Quickly now, I pressed with the slanted palm of my hand against the platform’s outer edge.

  The top fitted tightly; it came up slowly, inch by inch.

  Then suddenly, free of the back wall, it flew back.

  I looked under it, gasped, and clung dizzily to the wood lid I held.

  There was no concealment under that platform’s top. No cleaning rags. No newspaper. Just money.

  Money! Stacks of bills which, at the sides, were four inches thick. I picked out one or two, riffled through them. One stack of fives. One of twenties. Bumpy envelopes.

  Shaking, I lifted one package of ten-dollar bills, counted. There were two hundred. I counted the twenties I had taken out before. Two hundred of those. The package of fives was the same size. I looked in a manila paper grocery bag. Fifty-cent pieces. Too many to count. I opened a smaller envelope. Five-dollar gold pieces. Exactly twenty of those. I piled money behind me on the closet floor in disorder as I estimated. Paper bags of silver, dimes, quarters, dollars. I didn’t count those. More stacks of bills, ones, fives, tens, twenties, all in the packages of two hundred. One was of hundred-dollar bills. I worked feverishly, awkwardly, bemoaning my useless left hand.

  When I was done I settled back on my heels, looking with dazed unbelief at the money strewn about me.

  One hundred and thirty thousand dollars. And the silver besides.

  All I could do was to stare at it, stupidly.

  I stood up, still staring at it. I thought about Rover, Richard, George, and Cecilia—Mrs. Garr’s pets. This was their money. This, plus the forty thousand I had found before, was the “residue of my estate.” This was the money that had been willed to Rover, Richard, George, and Cecilia.

  Rover, Richard, George, and Cecilia, who had not waited to be fed, and so had died.

  The money belonged to their heirs now. To men who would fight only moderately over forty thousand dollars, but would fight with more vehemence for the privilege of disbursing this larger sum for the pleasance of dogs, of cats—and of themselves. It belonged to lawyers, who would settle on the Hallorans in buzzing buzzard swarms. Shyster lawyers. It belonged to the Hallorans, if there was anything left after that; enough money, perhaps, so even the baby could get drunk.

  I jumped.

  Knocking at my door.

  My right hand went up to protect my throat before I remembered.

  “What’s the idea, locking me out? Took me longer than I thought. I’d forgotten—” he began. “Hey, what’s the matter with you?”

  I shook my head at h
im, locked the doors behind him again.

  “Come with me,” I said.

  I led him with my right hand to the closet.

  He gasped, too; gasped and leaned against the closet wall for support.

  “Ye gods, ye catfishes, and ye little brass monkeys,” he swore softly after a while. “Baby, I’m going to leave you alone often.”

  * * *

  —

  THAT WAS THE LAST thing that happened to us before we left Mrs. Garr’s house forever.

  Since then, rather nice things have happened to some of the people who used to live in Mrs. Garr’s house. Almost miraculous, some of them.

  One thing is that Mr. Kistler, co-owner of the Buyers’ Guide, has a new printing press; a press over which he and the other co-owner, a Mr. Lester Trowbridge, croon with pride and joy. The people who have been brought in by physical force to look upon its glory include the cop on the corner and every advertiser the Guide begs, buys, borrows, or steals.

  Another thing was that a young lawyer, who is a friend of Hodge’s, discovered that Miss Sands had been left eighteen thousand dollars by an uncle Hubert she scarcely remembered having. She said a ringing good-bye to the store and went out to live with the Wallers, who have rented a little house on some acres of ground in the country. Mr. Waller drives in to town for work. Miss Sands tells me she is starting a garden—in August.

  Me? I am very well, thank you.

  I know I am a thief. I know I am dishonest. I think sometimes of the lawyers I am defrauding—but I never quite weep over them.

  I am redecorating our apartment to match my blue sofa. I have a new linen tablecloth so heavy it blisters my palm to iron it ice-smooth. I have a chest of sterling silver so lovely it’s like watching a ballet to look at it.

  Husbands are nice to have, too.

  One of the most popular American crime writers of the twentieth century, Mabel Seeley was known as “The Mistress of Mystery.” Critically acclaimed titles like The Listening House (1938), The Crying Sisters (1939), and the Mystery of the Year–awarded The Chuckling Fingers (1941) have placed her stories and characters alongside those of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Among her many accolades and awards, Seeley was most proud of her service as the first director of the Mystery Writers of America. Born on March 25, 1903, in Herman, Minnesota, Mabel Seeley is best known for crime novels featuring female detectives who defied the stereotypes of the time as self-reliant and strong-willed Midwestern heroines.

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