The 2nd Golden Age of Mystery and Crime MEGAPACK ™: Ruth Chessman

by Ruth Chessman

  For instance at noon Ellen said, “I’m sure Mr. Matthews will be in at any minute, so don’t give up hope. He has to be back so I can go out to eat. Then if you like I’ll show you a good place so you can have lunch.”

  Sherman thought it a perfect idea, since it was presented ready made. When Mr. Matthews returned as Ellen had predicted, Sherman signed for the transfer and went off light-headedly with Ellen. Naturally they had their lunch together. He told her something of his predicament regarding the future, and Ellen looked wise and said, “What a remarkable coincidence! Mr. Matthews is looking for someone just like you, he’s so rushed.”

  Sherman returned to the office with her and waited outside while she spoke to Mr. Matthews privately. He was not concerned about the results. A woman had always smoothed his way for him in the past, why not now?

  Ellen did get him the job and Sherman, being really bright, did well from the start. At work and outside, Ellen was his constant companion. At the end of a year she suggested that he ask to have an unused portion of the front office partitioned off for his use. Mr. Matthews thought it a sensible idea. The privacy of an office gave Sherman a feeling of importance, and his work got even better. At the end of another year he was appearing in court on his own occasionally, and Ellen suggested that he needed a secretary. Mr. Matthews quite agreed, so Ellen found him Mrs. Murphy, a pleasant, middle-aged woman who knew her business. Having thus made him into a practicing lawyer with his own office and secretary, Ellen told him it was time he began to think of marriage.

  “We can’t go on like this forever,” she pointed out.

  As usual she was right, Sherman agreed. It wasn’t very romantic, but he was getting exactly what he wanted, an energetic woman who could plan ahead and tell him what his life was going to be like.

  Ellen continued to work after their simple wedding. She decided his house was a luxury for the prescient, so she leased it at an excellent rental and he moved into her adequate, if somewhat prim, furnished apartment.

  Every time Ellen revealed a new side, it just proved her to be more like Sarah. She even insisted they have liver once a week because of the valuable things it contained.

  When he made one of his rare protests, she too could recite all liver’s vitamins and so forth, as glibly as Sarah.

  “All right, all right,” he conceded amiably, “I’ll eat it, just don’t ask me to memorize it.”

  Less than a year after their marriage Mr. Matthews made Sherman a junior partner. Ellen decided the time had come to quit work. Mrs. Murphy took her place, for of course Mr. Matthews must have the more experienced secretary, and a new one was hired for Sherman.

  Now if Ellen had been there, Harriet Baker would never have been hired. Mrs. Murphy, good soul, hardly noticed the girl’s beauty, being intent only on her preferences, so one morning Sherman came into his office to find Harriet demurely seated near his desk.

  She was a stunning redhead, a real redhead with real green eyes, and her clear bright coloring reached the artist in him. For a moment he stood stock still, staring. For a moment she stared back, innocently expectant, because his silence was such a speaking one. But it was all perfectly smooth and correct in a few minutes. Harriet knew proper office decorum and Sherman promptly accepted her as just his secretary, in the convenient way he had of sinking his feelings into oblivion without even knowing he was doing it.

  From then on, though, he did a great deal of cheerful whistling, bought himself a couple of lively ties, and looked forward with enthusiasm to each day’s work. He also developed an exciting new approach to his work, an impetuousness—it was the way a man might act if he were freshly in love and full of derring-do to impress his Lady. But if this were really the case with Sherman, he would be the last to know it.

  Harriet was discreetly worshipful, but only to the exact degree the perfect secretary ought to be. Mr. Matthews, a pedestrian lawyer at best, began to regard Sherman with a mixture of awe and alarm—as if he were an irradiated Clarence Darrow. To Sherman, whistling a love song, the world looked sweet.

  As if to fill his cup to running over, one fine spring day Ellen announced that since their tenant’s lease was up, she had decided it was a good time for them to move into the house themselves.

  “It should take six months to have the house renovated and furnished enough for us to move in. I know you’ll be glad I sold the old furniture to the tenants,” Ellen said.

  This was precisely the ordered planning Sherman loved. The tenants moved out, and Ellen began picking color schemes. At one point Sherman said, “How are you doing with the house, Ellen? I’m quite a hand with colors, you know.”

  “Are you, dear?” she asked absently.

  He tried again. “I mean—I’d like to see what you’re doing—I may be able to contribute some ideas.”

  “Yes, dear,” she said. He felt like a fool—an angry fool, for a minute or so, but his anger passed soon enough into the limbo of all his other emotions, and it was as if it had never been.

  Ellen never came to the office once she quit. “I don’t approve of interfering wives,” she would say, and he could have sworn he heard Sarah in her voice.

  Besides, she was much too busy to take the time to visit his office. She was at furniture houses, drapery houses, rug houses, all day long.

  As she had predicted, in about six months Ellen decided the time had come to move into the house. Sherman had not been back to it since the tenants left, but he knew it would now be perfect because Ellen would settle for nothing less. When he left work he went to the house that had been home to him for most of his life, parked his car where he always had, at the foot of the little rise which the house topped. Sarah’s car used to have priority for the garage, and sure enough there was Ellen’s, already snugly parked inside.

  Sherman let himself in with the key Ellen had efficiently handed him as he left for work that morning. By habit he hung his jacket in the front hall closet. The living room had been papered in a white brocaded pattern that looked like silk, and the furniture sat on the silver grey rug in an untouchable state. He walked slowly to the kitchen, where Ellen stood at the stove, and they exchanged their customary pecks. He complimented her on the decor of the house, and she replied, “Thank you, dear.”

  The room that had been his was now to be the den, and had been painted the latest green. He opened the closet door and without knowing why reached far back on the shelf. There were no sketch pad and charcoals, of course, and he laughed at himself for the impulse. By a freak accident the shelf-board caught in his shirt and came down, ripping the sleeve and laying open a deep gash along the inside of his arm.

  After the first burning tear there was no pain and little blood, but the wound itself was ugly and gaping, with bits of green paint caught in it. He had to be etherized while the wound was cleaned and stitched. In the morning he felt so tired he decided to stay home.

  “I’m going to court tomorrow,” he told Ellen, “but fortunately I…hadn’t a thing on for today.”

  Ellen frowned. “But the day before you go to court you always work on your brief,” she said. She spent a thoughtful moment. “I had planned to see about the hangings today. Kaufmans are expecting some new fabrics—” Sherman felt he could safely leave the problem in Ellen’s hand, and typically enough she worked it out by calling Mrs. Murphy and asking that either she or that new girl deliver the brief by cab.

  Thus by a series of very ordinary events came about a very extraordinary situation. At ten o’clock on a beautiful fall morning, Harriet and he met on the front lawn where he had gone when he heard her cab. He took the folder from her and dropped it on the mail table in the front hall, saying, “It’s too pleasant for either of us to hurry back to work.”

  Harriet smiled devoted agreement. They walked about, and he pointed out the trees he had watched his sister plant when he was a child. “They grew up with me,” he concluded sentimentally.

  “What a wonderful place for a boy to grow up!” Harri
et exclaimed.

  He gave a reminiscent chuckle and suddenly, for the first time since—for the first time in many years he remembered the clearing.

  “I even had a little hideout,” he said, and by unspoken agreement they walked to it, he pushing aside the overgrown shrubs with his good arm.

  It hadn’t changed. It was like standing in a cathedral with the morning sun just barely reaching them.

  “I wish I had my charcoals!” he said, half to himself.

  “Oh—I knew it!” Harriet exclaimed. “You are so imaginative in your work, you could have been a great artist, I’m sure of it.”

  As it had once overwhelmed him before in this very spot, gratitude shook him. “I used to think I’d make it my life,” he said unevenly, remembering it with a shock, with regret, with—with feelings he kept pushing back where they came from.

  “But it’s never too late,” Harriet protested.

  No, it wasn’t! He was still a young man. He could make a new life—and Harriet would have to part of it, naturally. His one good arm held her, and she met his kiss yearningly. It was a pledge. The ideas rushed at him in a riot. Divorce—! Ellen wouldn’t mind—! Maternal, that’s how she felt—! He could tell the difference now—! Harriet—!

  They didn’t say a word, yet he could sense they were in full agreement. Even when they started back out of the clearing it was done so naturally, just as if they had actually said out loud, now is not the time, this is not the place. He led the way with confidence, and came out onto the lawn just ahead of Harriet.

  Sauntering to meet him was Ellen, who explained she had just returned, and added, “I wondered where you’d gone to.”

  For a moment he forgot all about Harriet, he was so astonished to see how prim and old-maidish Ellen really was! He’d simply never looked at her before!

  Harriet must have stepped out of the trees just then, because Ellen’s sharp eyes went past him, then darted to his face again. He didn’t stir, but he knew why she was looking at him like that. Neither he nor Harriet had thought to remove traces of her lipstick.

  “So this is Miss Baker,” Ellen said, with icy contempt. “So this is how the days go at the office—” She’s just like Sarah, Sherman thought calmly, remembering Bird. He cleared his throat. “You quite misunderstand—” he began.

  “I don’t think so,” Ellen said drily. She looked past him again at Harriet. “You are discharged. Miss Baker. Don’t bother going back to the office.”

  There was no sound from Harriet. Sherman knew she was waiting for him to defend her as once before another girl had waited. He wanted to do it this time. He wanted to take Harriet’s hand firmly in his and stalk boldly by Ellen. Or he wanted to shatter Ellen with a word. Or—but still, he was a reasonable man, he told himself, cringing from such aggressive behavior. He could see how it must look from Ellen’s point of view—from anyone’s point of view, really. He was a married man, he had no right, the facts were all against him, what could a guilty man do or say?

  “Go into the house and phone for a cab,” Ellen directed Harriet. “Then wait on the sidewalk till it comes. The office will send you the fare.”

  “I’d rather walk all day than set foot in your house,” Harriet choked, and ran by them, around the house.

  “Well, now,” Ellen said briskly, “let’s go in. While I fix lunch you can wash that girl’s lipstick off your face.”

  One-handedly Sherman washed his face. He was too ashamed to look in the mirror. He had acted shabbily! He’d deserted Bird—no, Harriet, he’d deserted her, there were no words to describe how despicably he’d acted.

  He listened bleakly to the sounds Ellen made in the kitchen. The faintly nauseating smell of frying liver reached him. “You need extra strength,” she had told him that morning. “A nice piece of liver will do it for you.”

  He went to the kitchen door and stared inside. The liver smell was stronger. A rage such as he had known only once before took hold of him. Terrified, he tried to control it before it went too far, but in a flash he was berserk and murderous, and it was too late.

  The liver was smoking and charred by the time his rage ebbed, by the time he took his hands from her throat. The stitches on his arm must have broken, because blood began to show on his bandage. He leaned weakly against the refrigerator, then dropped heavily to his knees beside Ellen.

  She was quite dead. He’d known that, of course. Even in his paroxysm he’d known that he wouldn’t let go of her throat until he was sure she was dead.

  When he could, he staggered to his feet. He was reeling dizzily when he reached the phone and dialed the police.

  “I want to report a murder,” he said, and then groped through the fog in his mind, seeking the words he knew were there, finding them, saying them, “I’ve just killed my sister.”

  It was an easy one for the police. He was executed for killing Ellen, of course, but they were able to close the case on Sarah too. Nobody, least of all Sherman, ever thought to question his confession, to ask which part of it was his will, and which his deed.

  THE HARRINGTON FARTHING

  Originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Apr. 1959

  Walter Paige was a thief. In this modern England of 1700 a man had to have his trade, else how could he live? Walter was an expert in his line, and it is no exaggeration to say that his skill as a thief was a matter of life and death, for the laws were strict and mercy was rare. Still, he might have lived out his years in peace, prosperous from robberies conceived by his daring mind, but for a mischievous turn of character that did not vanish with his boyhood.

  In January of the year he was twenty-three he paused on an impulse to kiss the lovely lips of an alluring victim, and the kiss being acknowledged—and unexpectedly returned—the pause lengthened. It was truly the worst kind of luck that the husband returned in time to defend his possessions.

  Walter was found guilty of the theft of her ladyship’s jewels and, discreetly, of nothing more. But this was enough-indeed, more than enough-to bring him to the edge of the gallows. On his final night he was held in a bleak cell with one other condemned man, each to share in the dubious glory, for it was to be a double hanging.

  “A pretty boy you are, too,” his companion, an old man, commented, not unkindly. “The ladies will call it a pity you die.”

  “I needn’t go to the ladies for that,” Walter retorted. “I call it a pity myself.”

  “Do you indeed?” the old man queried in sincere surprise. “You really wish to go on living? To be hungry save when you steal for your food? To have no bed you can call your own? To turn from the filth of all you call home to—something worse? No, even had I your youth and that yellow hair of yours, even that flashing smile and that great height, still I would choose this end rather than a going on with life as I have always known it. Young man, I welcome the drop that comes at dawn! I can hardly wait for an end to all I suffer.”

  “Oh, my poor old friend!” Walter exclaimed compassionately, and talked of it no more. Well he knew the picture this old man, Coogins by name, drew of the poor. It was only by a mixture of good luck and good blood that he had improved on his own lot, for he had a better heritage than most. His mother had been a dancer before her fall, and a nobleman—though which one she could not say—had been his father. In him was mingled the best blood of the kingdom with the wiliest grace imaginable, for his mother had been first not only in England but in the world. Knowing of his heritage had given him an audacity to augment his skill, and he had thought never to run afoul of the law. And in truth, it was only a moment’s amorousness that had brought him to this pass.

  He took off his handsome jacket, stolen only three months earlier from the only gentleman in England who-was broad enough in the shoulders, and now he rolled it into a pillow for the old man. He sat on the stone floor beside him, for there was not even straw to soften their waiting. Neither of them spoke, for with the dark hours rising fast into their final sunrise, what would there be to s
ay save good-bye?

  At dawn the door to their cell rattled, and Walter sprang to his feet. He thought it was the gaolers, come to guide them on their last walk, and he had determined to go down fighting. But when the door opened it admitted another sort of man entirely, dressed like a gentleman without being one, a smooth-talking sort with a paper in one hand and hope—yes, hope!—on his lips. When he stated his case, Walter turned jubilantly to his cellmate.

  “We are free, Coogins!” he cried. “We need only sign for transportation, and we are out into the free air again.”

  Coogins struggled to his feet. “Do not sign it!” he cried. “They are cheating you. Instead of dying all at once this very dawn, they will drag out your dying for fourteen years. I have heard much of those American masters.”

  Walter had a moment’s pause at that, for he did not relish the thought of slavery, and the word “master” did not set well with his independent spirit. Yet even though it meant being sold into bondage for fourteen years, a time that might well be longer than what life was left to him, still it was being alive, and with life there was always hope. With no more hesitation than this he made his mark enthusiastically, and turned once more to Coogins.

  “I am not a man to think my way is the only right one,” he said gently, “and so if you persist you must die, by your own hand as it were, and God save you. But think on it once more. Life may be kinder to you henceforth.”

  Without response Coogins handed Walter back his silken jacket and took a coin from somewhere among his rags.

  “Here,” he said. “I meant to die with it on me. It was a whim, that I must not die a pauper. But you have been kind to me, and there are evil days before you. Who knows, my old farthing piece may stand you a moment’s good.”