by Joan Aiken
“I know, Captain. It’s what I should have done. I know it as an attorney, even though I’ve never had any dealing with criminal cases. But my sister—both my sisters—are very conventional in their ideas. The mere thought of the family name of our personal affairs—being made public—I guess.” He laughed apologetically. “We Faulkners are rather an old-fashioned lot. Our father, you know, was a pretty prominent man; he—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said the captain brusquely. He dreaded, from sad experience, getting mixed up with any of what he called bitterly “that Pacific Heights crowd.”
“For the present,” he added stiffly, “it will be kept a matter for the police department only. The papers will not be given anything by us.”
“Thank you, Captain. After all, since no crime had been committed—”
“We don’t know whether one has or not. That’s what we’re going to find out. And if it has, Mr. Faulkner, I might as well tell you that it will be treated exactly as if it had happened down on Skid Road.”
“Oh, certainly—certainly,” said Philip quickly. “I leave the whole thing in your competent hands.”
But for all the department’s best efforts, and willing cooperation offered by Philip, the police were as baffled as the Biggs Company had been. They interviewed Philip and Mamie exhaustively; they analyzed the sherry; they fine-toothed the premises; they took fingerprints; they talked to everybody in both apartment houses next door. Not a single clue developed. It was simply a grotesque, bizarre happening, without explanation or meaning. Caroline and Harriet Faulkner, two commonplace elderly women, had vanished, six months apart. They were gone, and nobody could find out where or why.
For several weeks Philip spent every night in the house, with the lights on, as if to welcome either or both of his sisters if they should return. When a month passed without word of either of them, he came to a resolution.
“I’m closing up the house, Mamie,” he said. “You’ll be glad enough to stay at home, after all these years. William will have no trouble finding a job nowadays. I’ll take Flopsy with me.”
Worry had made Philip expansive. He went on, more to himself than to the old cook. “I never thought I’d give up the family home. But after what’s happened—it sounds superstitious, but it’s hard not to feel there’s a curse on this house.”
it is indeed, Mr. Philip. I feel the same way meself. What are you goin’ to do—rent the house?”
Philip shuddered. “I’m going to lock it up, just as it is, furniture and all, and let it stay that way. After all, Mamie, perhaps some day this—this mystery will be solved; Miss Caroline and Miss Harriet may come home again. If not—well, after the war I suppose it will have to be torn down. It’s the last one-family house in the block.” He made his plans to close the house the next Wednesday.
Until then, Mamie was to come daily as usual, while Philip stayed away from his office; and after a brief trip to Woodacre, he helped her pack his personal belongings and what few things he wanted to take with him, cover the furniture, and store Caroline’s and Harriet’s things in the attic.
“If you could get here a little early tomorrow morning, Mamie,” he suggested on Tuesday evening. “The water and gas and electricity and telephone will be turned off soon, and there will be a lot of last-minute things to do before I leave.”
“Sure, I’ll be here by seven, Mr. Philip. And I’ll make you a grand breakfast for the last one you eat in your own home. Curse or no curse, you must be sad to be going. I’m sad meself.”
Indeed, Mamie was almost in tears. It was the end of many years’ faithful service.
“That’s good of you, Mamie,” said Philip, touched. “And when you go, take everything from the pantry home with you. All I want is the basket we packed with the wine. And, Mamie—here’s a little something for all your extra work this week, and all the years you’ve been our mainstay here.”
“Oh, Mr. Philip!” Mamie took the envelope with a shaking hand. “God bless you, Mr. Philip! And if you want me to help out any time—”
“We’ll be seeing each other, Mamie, don’t worry. Run along now, and I’ll be looking forward to that special breakfast.”
“At seven sharp I’ll be here, Mr. Philip.”
Mamie hurried to catch her bus and get home before Fred came off duty. Philip looked with distaste at the living room, swathed in covers and no longer habitable. They had left the dining room and kitchen for the last. He ate the cold supper Mamie had left for him, put the dishes in the kitchen for her to wash in the morning, uncovered an armchair and dragged it in from the living room, and settled down by the dining-table. The secretary he shared with two other lawyers in a suite of offices downtown had telephoned him during the afternoon, and he had some notes to make and letters to write in connection with two or three pending cases.
Though ever since Harriet had vanished he had spent all his nights alone in what he had finally called a house with a curse on it, tonight it seemed emptier and gloomier than ever. Already it possessed the uneasy silence of an empty building. It was hard to put his mind to his work.
At last he got up and went to the basket he had mentioned to Mamie. Among the bottles of sherry and port and burgundy was an unopened pint of brandy. Philip Faulkner drank very little, but tonight brandy was just what he needed.
He opened the bottle, found a glass, drank a stiff jolt, and resolutely opened his briefcase and laid out the papers he needed. Flopsy was asleep in his bed in the kitchen.
It was poor Mamie again, hurrying in at seven, who found the doors unlocked, Flopsy in the garden, lights on in the empty living room, the dining room, and Philip’s bedroom, his bed turned down and his pajamas and slippers by it, the dining-table scattered with legal papers, Philip’s pen open on a half-finished note, the bottle and glass beside it—and no one in the chair. No one in the house but herself. Philip Faulkner had followed his sisters.
This time Mamie phoned her husband. And Fred, telling her to wait there till someone came, took the matter immediately to Captain Joyce.
As soon as Mamie’s story had been taken down, and she had gone home, weeping, with Flopsy in her arms, the house and grounds were searched thoroughly, and Philip’s office was visited. Then the investigation moved on to Woodacre. There was no longer any question of keeping the affair out of the newspapers. Three mysterious disappearances in a prominent family—no clues—police (as usual) baffled—it was a lulu of a story. In three out of the four daily papers it shared the first page with the war news. There were no pictures available of Caroline or Harriet, but one was dug up of Philip from his college annual, and another from a group at some Civilian Defense function; and the house was photographed from every angle. “Is There a Curse on This House?” asked The Morning Investigator under a view of the front door—much to the embarrassment of the residents of the exclusive apartment houses on both sides. People came to stand and gape at the Faulkner home, and paid no attention whatever to the indignant doormen who tried to shoo them away.
The next morning, with a deputy sheriff in tow, since this was another county, Fred Mullins cut the barbed wire and trampled through Philip’s cherished underbrush to his cottage. “What kind of woman is this wife of his?” he asked Deputy Davis.
Davis shook his head.
’’I’ve lived here, man and boy, all my life, and darned if I ever saw her. Once in a while, before he put this fence up, kids passing through would get a glimpse of a woman’s figure passing the window. He did all the shopping in the town—what he did; most of the stuff they used he brought from the city. When he was away, she never set foot out of the house—leastwise, if she did, nobody saw her. Wish I could have my wife trained like that!”
“He’s ashamed of her, that’s what I gather from what my wife’s told me—things she’s overheard all these years. Probably married her when she was young and pretty, and the veneer wore off. These high-up snobs, that’s the way they handle things, I guess.”
“
Folks here always figured she was maybe kind of—funny, and he wouldn’t let her go out where people’d find it out.”
“Well, here’s where we find out. There’s smoke coming from that chimney.”
They banged on the door. After a few moments, steps crossed the floor and the door opened.
The woman who stood there, looking with bewilderment and consternation at the two men confronting her, was tall and gaunt. Obviously she was an urban product, from her too-golden hair to inappropriate high-heeled and open-toed shoes. Everything about her which would have gone unnoticed in a darkened cocktail bar—her hair, her lipstick, her mascara, her nail polish glared grotesquely in her surroundings. The one thing she did not look like was what she was—practically a hermit in the country for a score of years.
“What is it? What do you want? Who are you?” she asked in a rapid staccato. Her voice was low and husky—again a voice for a cocktail bar, not for a cottage in the woods.
“We’re the police, lady,” announced Fred Mullins bluntly. She was a type he disliked at sight. “You Mrs. Faulkner? We’re looking for your husband. Is he here?”
“Here? Philip? The police? What’s wrong?”
“He’s missin’, that’s what’s wrong. Just like his sisters. Dead, maybe, all of ’em, for all we know.”
She gave a little scream, and swayed on her high heels. The deputy sheriff pushed forward.
“We want to talk to you,” he said. “Let’s go in the house.”
“Why, I never—” murmured the woman. But she backed into the room and Davis and Fred followed her.
“Sit down,” Fred ordered. “We’ll talk to you in a minute. We want to look around first.”
The cottage contained only two rooms, with a kitchen alcove and a cubbyhole just big enough to hold a toilet and a shower. It needed only a glance to see that there was no one in it but the three of them.
The woman had dropped into a chair and sat there stiffly, staring at them dazedly, occasionally licking her dry, too red lips.
“Now, Mrs. Faulkner,” Fred finished his brief inspection of the house and planted himself in a chair facing her. “Tell us all about it.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said in that husky, rapid tone. ’’Where is Philip? What’s happened to him?”
“That’s what we want to know,” said Fred grimly. “You know what happened to his sisters, don’t you? Well, now it’s happened to him too.”
“You mean,” she whispered, “that he’s—disappeared?”
“They found the place yesterday, all open and lit up and just the way it was with the other two.”
“Oh!”
“When did you see him last?” Davis put in.
“Not for nearly a month, except for one night last week. He said he was going to stay down there till his sister Harriet turned up or he got things settled. He—he phoned me last night, though. He said he’d be up tonight And now you’ve come instead.”
“You were pretty sore at those sisters of his, weren’t you?” growled Fred Mullins. “You must have been pretty sore at him too, by this time, keeping you hidden like this—a woman like you.”
“What are you driving at?” The woman’s voice grew strident. “I never left this house—ask this man, if he’s from around here. Philip wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t even let me answer the phone, even if he wasn’t here, unless he told me when he was going to call me himself. It wasn’t until last week that he left any money here for me—and that was for a special purpose. How could I have got away from here to—for anything?”
“You’re talking a lot, lady. I guess you’d better come along with us.”
“Oh, no!” she screamed. “Listen—I’ll tell the truth! I wasn’t ever going to, but if he’s disappeared, then I must.”
“Okay, talk. They’re all dead, ain’t they? Who killed them?”
Mrs. Faulkner struggled to regain her composure. “I never saw those sisters, except once, years ago, before we were married. They wouldn’t let me set foot again in that old cemetery vault they called a house—all I ever saw of it was the front parlor, and darned little of that. But I know they had Philip buffaloed—plenty. The only thing he ever did in his life against their will was to marry me. Unless you count taking all their money, of course,” she added calmly.
“What!”
“Oh, yes, I found that out long ago. He had charge of their property, you know. I don’t understand that kind of thing, my self, but one way or another he gradually got all their stocks or securities or whatever you call it into his hands. He’d say, ‘Sign this—I’m selling this to buy you something better,’ and old Caroline or Harriet would sign. He paid all their bills, and he kept money in the bank for them to draw on. If either of them had ever asked for an accounting, the whole game would have been up, but he knew they never would.
“The only thing was, being so much older than he was, one of them might die any time—and then he’d be in the soup. They’d both left their money to each other, if you know what I mean, and then to him. ‘After all, honey,’ he used to say to me, ‘it will all be mine some day—I’m just anticipating.’ But of course it wouldn’t have been as simple as that if one of them kicked the bucket
“So some time along last year, when his sister Caroline had a spell with her heart, and he was afraid she wasn’t going to get over it, he made up his mind he didn’t dare let either of them die a natural death. They had to disappear, for good, instead. Then in seven years, he figured, he could go to court and ask to have them declared legally dead, he said they call it.”
“You mean to say he told you all this?” Davis demanded. “Why should he put his own safety in your hands?”
“Why, I’m his wife—I couldn’t testify against him. He told me so.”
“I see. And you were livin’ on that money too, weren’t you?” said Fred. “Well, then, what else did you find out?”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “How he killed them, of course. And how he staged the disappearances.”
“And how did he kill them?” demanded Fred.
“With—with his hands,” she whispered. “His hands are awful strong. They thought he was up here, but he didn’t go, either time. He just drove around till dark and then drove home, around back to that garage they had. And then he went in the house, where his sister was alone—first Caroline, and then Harriet—and I guess he said something like ‘I didn’t go to Woodacre after all,’ and then suddenly he stepped behind her and put his thumbs on her neck and strangled her. They were little, both of them, you know.
“And then,” she went on, “he carried the—he carried his sister out back through the kitchen, and put her in the baggage compartment of the car, and drove up here. He’d dug a—a place out here in the woods, out where I couldn’t see from the house, and covered it up with leaves and stuff so it wouldn’t show, and he put her in it and put the earth back and fixed it up with plants on it so nobody could tell.
“The first time, he was out doing—that, when he heard the phone ring. He just got here in time before it stopped ringing—like I told you, he never let me answer it. I got a black eye once for just trying to.
“With Harriet, it was the next morning before your wife rang, so he had time for a good sleep first,” she concluded simply.
“Well, if you knew all this, even for a month,” Davis exploded, “why in the name of heaven didn’t you get out from under while he was away from here? Didn’t you figure you might be next? You couldn’t testify against him, but it certainly wouldn’t be healthy for him to have you around knowing all about it. Some time you might divorce him, and then where would he be? He must have been crazy in the first place to tell you, and you must have been crazy not to get out fast.”
“But I wouldn’t divorce him—why would I? I haven’t any money of my own, and he’d never give me any alimony, would he, if I said anything against him? Besides, he’s my husband—I love him.”
Davis snorted and stood u
p.
“Well,” he exclaimed, “I give up! I’ve heard everything now!”
“Sit down, Davis,” said Fred mildly. “The lady’s got more to tell us. Now, how about this disappearance of his? He staged that too, eh? What for, and where is he now?’’
Mrs. Faulkner fished a pink handkerchief from some subterranean hiding place and held it to her eyes. Her voice broke.
“That’s why I’m telling you,” she sobbed. “He’s dead. You’ll never find him. He’s at the bottom of the bay.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he told me. Last week, when he was up here. You say you can’t understand why he told me all this. Why, mister, you’ve got to tell things! There’s got to be somebody you can tell! You couldn’t hold it all in—you’d go crazy. And who can you tell, if not your wife or husband?
“So he told me. And he was awful worried. He said, ‘Honey, I got away with it once, but can I do it twice? It’s all for you, honey,’ he said, ‘so we can be together always, and they can’t ever bother us again, and so there won’t ever be any trouble about the money my father meant for me to have anyway. In a few more years I can claim they’re dead and nobody will ever know there was anything wrong about the money.’ I remember every word. ‘I’ve always hated them,’ he said, ‘ever since I was a kid and they bossed me and wouldn’t let me go on the stage the way I wanted, and tried to take you away from me. But it was all or nothing. It was neither of them or both. And this time I had to take it to the police. I knew I’d have to, but I’m worried.
“‘They took it all right,’ he said, ‘but that captain I talked to might be smarter than he looked. And there’s a guy on the force I wish was retired from it; he knows the whole family, and I wish he didn’t. He’s old, and he’ll be out soon, but I couldn’t wait. If he gets on the case, he might smell a rat.
“‘So, honey,’ he said, ‘let’s put it this way. I think everything’s going to be all right. But if anything happens that makes me think there’s real danger, they’ll never catch me alive. If you ever hear I’ve disappeared, you’ll know what it means. I’ll stage the same act I did with them, to keep the family from shame,’ he said, ‘but I’ll go straight to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and jump off the way fifty people have done before me, where the current will take me out to sea, and they’ll never find me. And you go East and change your name,’ he said. That was when he gave me that money I said I had—enough to go East on.’’