Women's Wiles

by Joyce Harrington

  My past experience with Mom was enough to make me start a little. But at the same time I just didn’t see how she could possibly have solved the case on the little evidence I had given her. So I pretended to be unimpressed. “Well, let me in on it, why don’t you? Which one of those men do you want me to book?”

  “The answer to that,” Mom said, with a smile of secret wisdom that infuriated me, “you’ll find out in a minute.”

  “You mean, you really know—?”

  “Why shouldn’t I know? I know how people act, don’t I? Just because it’s a murder case, that don’t mean people are all of a sudden going to stop acting like people. A girl like that Platonic blonde—”

  “Platinum,” Shirley murmured under her breath—evidently just for the principle of the thing, because Mom ignored her elaborately.

  “—a girl who all her life is around men, such a girl is very fussy how she looks when a man drops in. So how come, when you found her dead, she didn’t have any lipstick on? When Suspect Number One, this banker, this Mr. Grizzly—”

  “Griswold! Just as I suspected!” I cried.

  But Mom ignored me and went on, “When he brought her home, she had lipstick on. He took her up to her apartment, she told him she wouldn’t go out with him anymore, she laughed at him and sent him away—do you think she took her lipstick off before he left? Believe me, it’s impossible. When a woman is making a fool out of a man, that’s when she wants to look absolutely at her best! So when Suspect Number One went away, she was still alive—with her lipstick on.”

  “Well—it sounds reasonable. So it was Suspect Number Two who did it, then. Tom Monahan! I had a feeling—”

  “That’s a lovely feeling,” Mom said. “Too bad it don’t have any connection with the truth. This Tom Monahan knocked on the door and asked her if he could come in and see her. A handsome young fellow that she was flirting with—listen, even if she already took her lipstick off for the night, you can bet she never would’ve let him through the door without putting it right back on again. But she didn’t put it right back on again. So that means she didn’t let him through the door. For some reason she didn’t hear his knock—maybe because the television was on too loud. Anyway, he couldn’t have killed her.”

  “And that leaves Suspect Number Three,” I said. “Artie Fellows. I had a hunch it was him all along. Your lipstick clue won’t work for him. He had a key to the apartment. She might’ve been in bed already, with her lipstick off, when all of a sudden he came barging in with his key.”

  “Maybe so,” Mom said. “But you could get a big headache trying to prove it. You remember, I asked you that question, what was on the television when Suspect Number Three found the body? Earlier in the evening, when Suspect Number One went away, the girl turned on the big prizefight. But it was an hour later before Suspect Number Three showed up. The fight must be over by then—especially a fight that was so uneven. Like the clerk and the elevator girl said, the champion was taking a terrible beating. So the fight was over, but the television was still on when Suspect Number Three found the body. Why?”

  “That’s a tough one, Mom. Maybe because she wanted to watch the program that came on after the fight.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. So what program was she watching? A concert orchestra, playing classical music! Now I ask you, Davie, from everything you know about this girl—a chorus girl that never even finished high school—does she sound like the type that’s interested in classical music? Not to me she don’t. So why did she still have the television on? Only one answer. Because she was killed while the prizefight was still going, and naturally she couldn’t turn off the television after she was dead. So there you are—it couldn’t be Suspect Number Three, since he got there too late.”

  “But, Mom, don’t you realize what you’re saying? It couldn’t be any of the three suspects, because you just proved it—and it couldn’t be anybody else from outside, because the clerk and the elevator girl were watching the lobby—and we know it couldn’t be anybody else in the building, because everyone has an alibi. In other words, it couldn’t be anybody!”

  “Alibi!” Mom gave a contemptuous little shrug. “Listen, Davie, when you get to be as old as me, you’ll find out that the world is full of Alibi Jakes.” (“Ikes,” Shirley muttered.) “Nothing is easier than tripping up an Alibi Jake. People doing favors for other people, for instance. Take your Aunt Selma’s cook—”

  “For Pete’s sake, Mom, what possible connection could there be between Aunt Selma’s cook and—”

  “For six whole months, every night, your Aunt Selma’s cook sneaked out of the apartment to meet the delivery man from the grocery store. All the time your Aunt Selma’s chambermaid knew it—but did she tell your Aunt Selma? Not a word. Every time your Aunt Selma rang for the cook, the chambermaid answered the bell. The cook is busy baking a cake, she said, or the cook has a spitting headache, or the cook is arguing over the phone with the butcher—or some excuse. Davie, you don’t know servants like I do. As long as they’re not mad at each other, they got a way of sticking together. Especially when it’s a question of fooling the boss.”

  A small glimmer of understanding was beginning to come to me. “Mom, what are you getting at exactly?”

  “You don’t know yet? What a nebbish son I’ve got!”

  “Well, if I’m not mistaken, you could be talking about—Bigelow the clerk and Sadie the elevator girl.”

  “A genius! A regular Dr. Einstein! Naturally that’s who I’m talking about. You told me yourself, how this elevator girl is so obliging and good-natured, and always doing special favors for people. Well, there was twenty minutes after Suspect Number Two went away and before Suspect Number Three went up in the elevator, and during those twenty minutes this clerk and this elevator girl were supposed to be chatting together about the prizefight on television, how brutal it was and what a beating the champion was getting. But what I’d like to know is—”

  I couldn’t keep myself from blurting it out. “How did Bigelow know the fight was so brutal if he was standing behind his desk all night—since there’s no television or even radio in the lobby? That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it, Mom? You’re saying that after Tom Monahan left and before Artie Fellows arrived, Bigelow came out from behind his desk, took the elevator up to the fifth floor, and killed the Degrasse girl—and while he was killing her, he saw the prizefight on the television in her room! And all this time, Sadie stayed downstairs and watched the desk for him, and covered up for him because she’s so good-natured!”

  I was extremely pleased with myself for catching on so quickly, and it surprised me when Mom gave an annoyed sigh. “Good-natured,” she said. “How good-natured can a person be? Is anybody so good-natured that they’d give a man an alibi for a murder? They might be willing to give him an alibi if he slipped away from the desk for another reason—but not for a murder.”

  “But, Mom, you yourself suggested—what other reason?”

  “You told me the reason yourself,” Mom said. “You just don’t pay attention, Davie, not even to your own words. You explained to me how you questioned the clerk this afternoon, and how he complained to you every two minutes that he’d been standing behind his desk for four hours, and how he blew beer fumes in your face. So if he’d been standing behind his desk for four hours, and the Assistant Manager was always poking around to see he wasn’t hiding anything under it, so where did he get a drink of beer?”

  This question stunned me. I couldn’t say a word.

  “This is why I asked you about the neighborhood,” Mom said. “And you told me just what I thought already. Around the corner is Third Avenue. Along Third Avenue is lots of bars. So this is how the clerk got his beer—he sneaked around the corner a few times to one of those bars. Chances are he does it every day—and chances are it’s what he did last night, when he and the elevator girl were supposed to be chatting. And she gave him an alibi because she didn’t want him to lose his job.”

 
“Very clever deduction, Mother,” Shirley said. “But what use is it to David? You know, he can’t arrest a man for taking a drink during working hours.”

  “Oh, thank you very much for the information,” Mother said, giving Shirley her most condescending smile. “But who wants to arrest him? Davie, don’t it even pop into your head yet? If the clerk was off in a bar somewhere drinking beer, who’s to prove where the elevator girl was?”

  “Sadie? Why, she was in the lobby chatting with—” I stopped short, as the truth dawned on me at last. “Of course, of course! That conversation she had with Bigelow about the prizefight! It takes two people to make a conversation! The same question I asked for Bigelow also goes for Sadie. How did she know that the fight was so brutal, and that the champion was taking such a licking? She must’ve seen it on television—on the blonde’s television!”

  “Finally, you’re talking like a slightly intelligent human being,” Mom said, beaming with motherly pride despite her sarcastic words. “While the clerk was away in his bar, this elevator girl went up to the fifth floor, knocked on the blonde’s door, then went into the room and killed her. And incidentally, you can see now, why the blonde didn’t bother to put her lipstick on when the elevator girl knocked. Because naturally she wouldn’t care how she looked in front of an elevator girl.”

  “But what about the motive, Mom? What was Sadie’s motive?”

  “Motive? The easiest part. Why do you think I asked you if this handyman, Tom Monahan, was married? A good-looking unmarried Irish boy—a good-natured unmarried Irish girl— and a blonde who’s coming between them. Listen, I’d be surprised if such a situation didn’t end up in murder!”

  Well, I spent the next few minutes apologizing to Mom for my skepticism—while Shirley put on a distant, faraway look, as if she were completely indifferent to what was going on, and not the least bit annoyed or jealous at Mom’s triumph.

  But one little thing still gnawed at me, and finally I came out with it. “Mom, I’m still puzzled about Bigelow, the clerk. He and Sadie both spoke about how brutal the fight was, just as if they’d seen it on television. We know now how Sadie got to see the fight—on the television set in the blonde’s room. But how did Bigelow get to see it, Mom? —unless he was up in the blonde’s room, too?”

  “Davie, Davie, my little baby,” Mom said, with a rather fond smile. “You forgot already where this Bigelow was for twenty minutes. In a bar drinking beer. And these days— though naturally I don’t patronize such places myself—I hear that you can’t get a beer in any bar without getting, along with it—”

  “Television!” I cried. Then I jumped to my feet. “Mom, you’re a mastermind! I’ll call up headquarters right now, and tell the Inspector!”

  But Mom’s voice, quiet and firm, made me sink back into my seat. “Such chutzpah!” she said. “Nobody’s calling up anywhere, or telling anything to anybody, till he finishes his string beans!”

  The Candle Flame

  Lawrence Treat

  In all the times I’ve seen her, I think she never smiled. Or showed anger.

  She arrived at the back door on that hot sultry day when everybody with any sense was cooling off at the lake. She was wearing a long red velvet skirt that swept a broad swath in the sandy path to the cottage. Her embroidered bodice was a fine example of nomadic art, and her flowing costume could have held three of her. It seemed impossible that her frail, flat-chested body could support the weight of that heavy velvet and those strings of beads.

  “Yes?” I said. “You wanted something?”

  For the few seconds before she replied, she gazed at me, and even now it is hard to describe her eyes. They were blue, they were white, they were colorless, and they seemed unable to blink or change expression. They were a child’s eyes—porcelain eyes, with no appearance of depth.

  “I heard you were looking for somebody to clean house,” she said.

  “Right. But my wife is down at the lake. She’ll be back around six.”

  “Could I see the house first?” she said.

  “Sure. My studio’s separate. I take care of it myself, so there’s just the living room-kitchen that you’re looking at and a couple of small bedrooms. Not very much. It’s nothing but a summer shack.”

  “I know,” she said. She moved forward and appeared to study the room. “When were you born?” she asked.

  It was a peculiar question, and later it occurred to me that it was even more peculiar that I answered it. “Nineteen thirty,” I said.

  “No. I mean what date?”

  “October,” I said. “The fourteenth.”

  “Libra,” she said. Then she walked forward and touched the paperweight on my desk. “That’s why you have the opal,” she said. “It’s your birthstone. And your wife? When was she born?”

  “Same month as I was, but on the seventh.”

  “I’m a Virgo,” she said, “so there won’t be any problem. Just so you’re not Scorpio.”

  She seemed about to leave, but before making up her mind she took a last look at the room and saw the sketch I’d made that morning. It was a quick drawing, only half finished, of a young girl. She picked it up and gazed at it rapturously.

  “Oh, I like that!” she exclaimed. “It’s me!” And she clasped it to her meager bosom. “May I borrow it? I have to be with it for a while.”

  “Of course,” I said, flattered by her enthusiasm and watching her hug it, carrying it as she would a sleeping infant.

  She seemed embarrassed, and she turned and looked at me with those pale, innocent eyes.

  “I have to go to The Area,” she said, as if she hated the necessity of explaining, “but you don’t have to take me there unless you want to.”

  “Glad to,” I said. “No trouble at all.” And I felt noble and virtuous at giving her a ride.

  I don’t know when people first started calling that grassy peninsula “The Area.” It had acquired the name long before Gerda and I had started coming to the lake, and by immemorial custom it was reserved for nude bathing. Nobody was sure who owned it. I tried once to check the title on the tax records, and found that theoretically it didn’t even exist. Perhaps that was why the police, otherwise so strict in petty law enforcement, stayed away from The Area.

  When I returned to the house, Gerda was changing from her bathing suit, and I told her about the apparition that was due to work for us.

  “What’s her name?” Gerda asked.

  “Amanda Pyle. She has strange, light-colored eyes, and her hair is blond-red, something like a pink grapefruit.”

  “What a romantic image!” Gerda said.

  I had to go to town shortly before six, and when I returned to the house I saw Martin Fuller’s beat-up bug parked nearby. I recognized his car by the variety of oversized flower decals that decorated its pockmarked hide. I pulled up alongside.

  “Hi,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for Amanda,” he answered. “It seems she’s decided to work for you.”

  “We certainly need her. Ever since Gerda hurt her arm, she’s been desperate for somebody to help out.”

  “That’s why Amanda came,” Martin said.

  That stopped me. Gerda needs someone, and Amanda divines or intuits or telepathizes, and comes to the rescue. Which was ridiculous.

  “Oh,” I said. “You mean somebody told Amanda about Gerda’s arm and that she needed a housecleaner?”

  “Well,” Martin said. “I suppose so.”

  I felt stupid and wanted to apologize or change the subject and get back to normal. “Been waiting long?” I said.

  “Ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Why not have a swim with me?” I said. “I’m going to have a quick dip before dinner.”

  “I can’t swim,” Martin said.

  “You? A big guy like you? How come?”

  Martin gave me a sheepish grin. “Makes me unique,” he said. “Everybody else swims, I don’t.” Then, becoming serious, he said, “When I
was a kid I almost drowned, and I’ve been scared of the water ever since.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll get over that. Maybe Amanda can manage it.”

  “I guess she will, eventually,” he said. Which was a commonplace remark, and yet at the time I had the feeling that Martin meant she’d perform some kind of hocus-pocus, that she’d tell him he was no longer afraid of the water and could swim, and her saying so would make it so.

  “Mmm. Well, I’d better bring my packages in.”

  Gerda told me later on that Amanda had walked into the house, tilted her head to one side while she studied Gerda, and announced that it was all right for her to work for Gerda.

  “Just like that?” I said. “She told you she was going to work for you? She didn’t wait to be asked?”

  “I wanted somebody and she looked clean, so why wouldn’t I give her a try?”

  “Just like that?” I said again.

  “Well, she said I had the right vibes—vibrations, I guess—so we went on to other things.”

  They were on the “other things” when I arrived. They were discussing when it was best to eat fiddleback ferns and whether purslane should be creamed or merely sautéed. It was clear that they were kindred souls, even to the point of finance.

  I heard the bargain being made. Amanda was about to leave when Gerda mentioned money. “I forgot to ask you how much you want. I suppose three dollars an hour, like everybody else.”

  Amanda objected. “Oh, no. I couldn’t take more than two. Two is Yin and Yang, and three would be triad.”

  Gerda looked surprised, but she recovered quickly. “Oh, yes,” she said. “That will be all right.”

  I quote the exact conversation, to prove that there was nothing sinister. Nothing.

  I was in my studio the following morning when Amanda arrived, and didn’t see her until I came into the house for my second cup of coffee. She was standing at the sink. Despite the bright sunlight a lighted candle was burning on either side of her. She was using my favorite eggcups as holders, and she was slowly washing a coffee cup in a basin of water. Later on, when Gerda and I redid the dishes, she told me Amanda had put a white lily in the basin instead of soapsuds.