Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense

by Unknown

  It was on the west side of the house, and although the curtains had been drawn, the sun filtered light through the patterned green cloth. I sat on the couch as I used to sit in the dentist’s waiting-room, my hands at my sides pressed hard against the seat.

  After a seemingly endless interval I heard Mike say, “Hello, dear.” He was silent for a few minutes, and then he turned to me and said, “She’s crying.”

  “Who?”

  He spoke into the telephone: “I know you wouldn’t do such a thing, my dear. I know who did it. . . . Yes! If you do as I say, she’ll have to confess.” After another interval he said to her, “Because I know. Of course it’s hard for you, but not half so hard as being accused, yourself.”

  Apparently she asked Mike to come to New York, for he told her that he was not free to leave, since he was in the Army. “I can’t get away, you know, unless they subpoena me, which isn’t probable, since I was three thousand miles away when the murder was committed. But I do know positively.” His voice became gentler: “You’ll have to handle this yourself. Tell her that you must talk to her privately, and get her to come to your apartment. She’ll come if you tell her you’ve talked to Mike Jordan. I’m sure that she knows I know. You must let her think you’re alone; but have someone there. If you’re constantly under surveillance by the Homicide Squad, so much the better. Have your lawyer there, too, but concealed.”

  Again there was argument. Mike almost lost his temper. “Of course it’s a horrid thing to do, but, my dear girl, you are suspected of murder.”

  She must finally have agreed, because Mike turned to me and nodded. Then he spoke again into the telephone: “Tell her that you know about her first murder.”

  I gasped. Probably there was as much astonishment at the other end of the wire, for Mike hastened to reassure her by saying, “Yes, indeed. I do know it. Tell her you know what caused Fred Miller’s death.”

  Silence must have followed this revelation. Mike turned to see the effect upon me.

  “Then it was Phyllis?” I muttered.

  Mike said it into the telephone, “It wasn’t jealousy that caused her to poison Gil. She was jealous, no doubt, and afraid of losing him. This made her hysterical, and you know how completely she’d abandon herself once she unlocked that shell of restraint. She probably pleaded with Gil, told him that he dared not desert her after what she’d done for him. I can’t tell you exactly what her words were, but I’m sure she disclosed theatrically that she’d been driven to murder for Gil’s sake.

  “Knowing Gil, I feel that he was shocked at the thought before he quite believed her. Instead of exciting him and increasing his passion, it turned him against her. You knew Gil better than I. He was vain enough to enjoy the spectacle of the two of you weeping and fighting over him, but he didn’t want corpses as tribute on the altar of love. I know Gil’s faults, too. He was vain and opportunistic, but there wasn’t a malicious bone in his body. Think of his naïveté over that suicide business. As soon as she had confessed, whether he fully believed it or not, he began to loathe her. This cooled her considerably, I’m sure. When the hysteria died, she saw that he was dangerous to her, and put poison in his highball.

  “She had the poison, you know,” Mike continued. “It was the same stuff she’d put into the sleeping pills. After she discovered that Gil had married you and she’d killed poor Fred in vain, she tried to kill herself. She probably thought she was sincere about it, but the sincerity wasn’t deep enough to make her go through with it. If she had died, Nancy, you would have been punished and your marriage with Gil haunted by her ghost. And since she recovered, she found it less embarrassing to appear the victim of a murder attempt than a frustrated suicide.

  “That looked bad for you, too, you know. She probably tried to make believe that you’d poisoned her sleeping pills. Yes, she inferred it when she told me the story. Naturally, I never believed it, Nancy; I knew you too well, and I also knew how Fred Miller died.”

  I did not hear the rest of the conversation, for there came into my mind then the image of a psychology professor, a pompous little man he was, who once said to our class that suicide and murder are not far removed from each other; both, he told us, were born of the desire for revenge upon an individual or upon society. Suddenly, as Mike finished the long-distance call, I saw the pattern of the story. There was only one point which I did not understand.

  “How did you know, Mike, that Phyllis had killed Fred Miller? I thought you said he’d died of pneumonia.”

  We were on the patio when I asked that question. The pepper tree’s shadow had shifted and Mike sat upright in a metal chair under the striped umbrella. Sunlight and the brilliant hues of the geraniums hinted mockingly at the pleasure of being alive. The blossoms of the mimosa were fat yellow balls.

  “There’s no doubt that Fred died of pneumonia. In a hospital with a physician in attendance.”

  “But you said that Phyllis killed him.”

  “It’s easy, Lissa, when a person has a bad cold, to give him pneumonia, particularly if you’re his loving wife.” In the hot light Mike shivered. “Don’t ask me how she did it. That, Lissa, is something I’ll never tell anyone again.”

  “You told her how to do it, Mike? Why? Why did you tell her how to kill her husband?”

  Mike rose and walked to the edge of the patio, stood at the wall looking down on the valley and the highway. His fists were clenched so tightly that the bones shone through the skin.

  “I gave her the recipe for murder.”

  “How, Mike?”

  Mike did not immediately answer. He stood beside the wall, looking down at the shadows on the hillside and the lively road. “Long ago, Lissa, when I was trying my hand at fiction, I wrote a story. It was a young man’s story, bitter and sordid, all about an unhappy wife who brought about her husband’s death by a series of acts which caused a bad cold to develop into pneumonia.

  “Each of these acts was described in the most minute detail, Lissa.

  “I read the story to Phyllis and Nancy. They were the only ones who ever heard it, for after Nancy’d got through telling me what she thought of my little masterpiece, I burned the manuscript. She was pretty tough with me that night, asked if I was crazy enough to suppose that anyone would ever publish a story that gave such precise instructions to potential murderers.

  “After Nancy had attacked the story so violently, Phyllis could not very well praise it. She listened quietly and neither praised nor criticized the tale. But she must have remembered. I knew —” Mike turned abruptly and raised his voice at me as though I were guilty. “I knew as soon as I heard of Fred Miller’s death. In a way I feel as if I had committed murder.”

  How blind men are. When he told me how heavily his conscience was burdened, I told Mike Jordan that this was not his first sin against the cousins. He took off his dark glasses and glared at me. “A sin of omission,” I said. “Are you so stupid, Mike, that you’ve never realized how Nancy loved you?”

  After a moment he said quietly, “That’s very female of you, Lissa.”

  “Since she was fifteen and made such an odious exhibition of herself in the silver and black dress at her party. Every time she succeeded in getting close to you, Phyllis came along and dazzled you with her beauty and that mystery which was only a disguise for her coldness and jealousy. Her sole purpose in life was revenge against Nancy, and you were her victim as well as Gilbert and Fred.”

  “But Nancy fell in love with other men, with Gil and Johnnie Elder. She flirted quite a lot in Europe and almost got engaged while she was in Mexico.”

  “She tried to make herself fall in love with them, Mike. Partly because she was trying to get you out of her system, and partly because it was only natural for her to want to take something away from Phyllis. She had shared hope and failure with Gil, which softened her toward him. And, besides, he was not exactly repulsive to women.�
��

  Mike’s hands fumbled in his pocket. He brought out the roll of bills again, hurried across the patio, and thrust them into my hands. When he spoke his voice was humble:

  “Would you mind, Lissa, if I used your phone again? I’d like to call New York.”

  HELEN NIELSEN

  ___________________

  1918–2002

  HELEN NIELSEN was the author of more than a dozen novels published between the late 1940s and the mid-1970s, including Dead on the Level (aka Gold Coast Nocturne, 1951), Detour (1953), Sing Me a Murder (1961), and The Brink of Murder (1976), as well as a number of television scripts for shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Perry Mason. Biographical details about Nielsen are scarce: she was born and raised in the Midwest and attended the Chicago Art Institute before working on aircraft designs as a draftsman during World War II. She later moved to Southern California, where her writing career flourished, before eventually settling in Arizona.

  Aside from writing novels and TV scripts, Nielsen published dozens of short stories for Manhunt, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Many of them featured a hard-boiled police detective, Mike Shelly, solving murderous crimes, but on occasion Nielsen would switch to tough-minded, cigarette-smoking female protagonists who try their best to get out from under the passions that ensnare them to unavailable men, but never manage to escape.

  Loren, the narrator of “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” which was first published in Manhunt in 1959, is one such woman. Starting as a secretary to her married boss, then moving up the social ladder as his wife, she knows the precariousness of her place in life even as she would prefer to not think about it. But then mysterious hang-up calls in the middle of the night begin and force Loren to reexamine her life and whom she can really trust.

  DON’T SIT UNDER THE APPLE TREE

  ___________________

  IT WAS exactly ten minutes before three when Loren returned to her apartment. The foyer was empty—a glistening, white and black tile emptiness of Grecian simplicity which left no convenient nooks or alcoves where a late party-goer could linger with her escort in a prolonged embrace, or where the manager—in the unlikely event that he was concerned—could spy out the nocturnal habits of his tenants. Loren moved swiftly across the foyer, punctuating its silence with the sharp tattoo of her heels on the tile and the soft rustling of her black taffeta evening coat. Black for darkness; black for stealth. She stepped into the automatic elevator and pressed the button for the seventeenth floor. The door closed and the elevator began its silent climb. Only then did she breathe a bit easier, reassuring herself that she was almost safe.

  There was an apex of terror, a crisis at which everything and every place became a pulsing threat. Loren wore her terror well.

  A watcher—had there been an invisible watcher in the elevator—would not have been aware of it. He would have seen only a magnetically attractive woman—mature, poised, a faint dusting of pre-mature gray feathering her almost black hair. The trace of tension in her face and eyes would have been attributed to fatigue. The slight impatience which prompted her repeated glances at the floor indicator above the doors would have passed for a natural desire to get home and put an end to an over-long, wearisome day.

  In a sense, the watcher would have been right.

  The elevator doors opened at the seventeenth floor, and Loren stepped out into a carpeted corridor of emptiness. Pausing only to verify the emptiness, she hurried to the door of her apartment. The key was in her gloved hand before she reached it. She let herself in, closed the door behind her, and leaned against it until she could hear the latch click. For a moment her body sagged and clung to the door as if nailed there, and then she pulled herself upright.

  Above the lamp on the hall table—the light turned softly, as she had left it—a sunburst clock splashed against the wall in glittering elegance. The time was eight minutes before three. There was work to be done. Loren switched off the lamp. The long room ahead became an arrangement of grays and off-blacks set against the slightly paler bank of fully draped windows at the end of it; but halfway between the hall and the windows, a narrow rectangle of light cut a pattern across the grays. The light came from the bedroom. Loren moved toward it, catching, as she did so, the sound of a carefully modulated feminine voice dictating letters.

  To Axel Torberg and Sons,

  Kungsgaten 47

  Stockholm, Sweden.

  Gentlemen.

  In regard to your inquiry of February 11, last: I am sorry to inform you that full payment for your last shipment cannot be made until the damaged merchandise (see our correspondence of Jan. 5) has been replaced.

  Having done satisfactory business with your firm for the past twenty years, we feel confident that you will maintain this good will by taking immediate action.

  Very Truly Yours,

  Loren Banion

  Vice President

  John O. Banion, Inc.

  Loren entered the bedroom. The voice came again, now in a warmer and more informal tone.

  Katy, get this off airmail the first thing in the morning. Poor old Axel’s getting forgetful in his dotage and has to be prodded. Okay, Doll—?

  Next letter:

  To Signor Luigi Manfredi,

  Via Proconsolo,

  Florence . . . .

  The room was heavily carpeted. Loren made no sound as she crossed quickly to the French windows, barely glancing at the dictograph which stood on the bedside work table. It was still partly open. The night wind worried the edges of the soft drapes which gave concealment as Loren, pulling them aside only a finger width, peered out at the scene below. The seventeenth floor was one floor higher than the recreation deck. The pool lights were out; but there was a moon, and young Cherry Morgan’s shapely legs were clearly visible stretched out from the sheltering canvas sides of one of the swinging lounges. There were legs other than Cherry’s—trousered legs; identity unknown. With her parents abroad, Cherry was playing the field.

  . . . if you will wire this office on the date of shipment, we will have our representatives at the docks to make inspection on arrival. . . .

  The voice of Loren Banion continued to dictate behind her. Loren listened and slowly relaxed. She had, she now realized, been gripping at the draperies until her fingers were aching. She released the cloth and walked back to the bed—no longer swiftly, but with a great weariness as if she had come a very long distance, running all the way. She sank down slowly and sat on the edge of the bed. The dictograph was now a droning nuisance, but a necessary one. Cherry Morgan could hear it, and that was important.

  “. . . Honestly, Mrs. Banion, I don’t know how you can work as late as you do! Sometimes I hear you up there dictating all night long.”

  “Not all night, Cherry. I never work past three. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Doctor’s orders? What a drag! I’m glad I don’t have your doctor. If I’m going to work until three in the morning it’s got to be at something more interesting than business correspondence!”

  And the fact that Cherry Morgan frequently worked past three was the reason the dictograph continued to play.

  . . . Very Truly Yours,

  Oh, you know the rest, Katy. On second thought, give the sign off more flourish. Signor Manfredi probably sings Don Jose in his shower.

  A small crystal clock stood beside the dictating machine. Loren glanced at it; it was six minutes before three. She had done well. A year of catching planes, meeting trains and keeping spot appointments, had paid off in timing. It was all over, and she was safe. The tension could ebb away now, and the heaviness lift; and yet, it was all she could do to raise up the small black evening bag she had been clutching in her left hand, open it, and withdraw the gun. She held the gun cupped in the palm of her right hand. She looked about the room for some place to hide it; then, unable to look at it any
longer, jammed it back into the bag and tossed it on the table beside the clock. The time—five minutes before three. It was close enough. She got up and switched off the machine. Then she removed her gloves, shoes, coat, and went into the bathroom. She left the door open—the shower could be heard for some distance at this hour—and returned exactly five minutes later wearing a filmy gown and negligee. She got into bed and now switched off the light; but now her eyes were caught by a glittering object that would not let them go. It was such a frivolous telephone—French styling sprayed with gold. It was magnetic and compelling. It seemed almost a living thing; and a living thing could be denounced.

  “Not tonight,” Loren said. “You won’t ring tonight.”

  • • •

  It had all started with a telephone call—long distance, Cairo to New York City.

  “Mr. Banion calling Miss Loren Donell . . . thank you. Here’s your party, Mr. Banion.”

  And then John’s voice, annihilating miles.

  “Loren—? Hold on tight. I’ve got one question: will you marry me?”

  It could have happened only that way. John wasted neither time nor words. She had clung to the telephone, suddenly feeling quite schoolgirlish and dizzy.

  “But, John, what about Celeste?”

  “What about her? She’s flipped over a Spanish bullfighter, and he’s expensive. We’ve finally struck a deal. She’s in Paris now getting a divorce.”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “Neither can I, but it’s true. I thought I’d never get rid of that—of my dear wife, Celeste.” And then John’s voice had become very serious. “You know what it’s been like for me these past years, Loren. Celeste trapped me—I admit that. She wanted status and money, and she got both. I got—well, now I’m getting free and I suppose I should just be grateful for the education. Loren, I don’t say these things well—but I love you.”

  At that moment, the telephone had been a lifeline pulling Loren out of the quicksand of loneliness. She clung to it until John’s voice blasted her silence.