“Possibly no one else in all the world would ever have noticed,” Clete said. “But I labored over the depicted image of Melanie Sutton for endless hours. When I saw you, I knew instantly, even though it took me all night to believe it, to admit it.”
“I should never have come here,” she said, “but I had to. The corporation lawyers in New York were faintly puzzled by a thing or two I said and did. I was playing the role of ever-loving elder cousin. They would have become downright suspicious if I’d refused the opportunity to drop by and see my closest surviving relative, Perky boy and his wife. So I had to come. I believed I could carry it off here as well as I did in New York. I’d studied Melanie Sutton and her affairs from close range for a long time. I knew everything there was to know about her—except that her cousin had you for a friend.”
“Now I shall live and paint,” Clete said, “away from all this. I am now a painter with a liberal patroness.”
She came to her feet almost shyly. “And if I am to be your patroness, how do I know I can trust you?”
“You’ll simply have to take my word.”
“Your word—yes, I suppose I must. You wish me to mail you your first check today?”
“And once a month thereafter,” Clete said, “for so long as you live. A thousand a month will do nicely.”
* * * *
The woman was quite composed when she stopped her car in the Bersom driveway. Perky came bouncing out to meet her.
“How did it go, Cousin Melly?”
“Not too badly, but I decided not to sit for any more portraits. “ She remained behind the wheel of the car, giving him such a sudden, intent look that the smile eased from his lips.
“Perky, I know this isn’t talked in polite family circles, but I want an honest confidential answer, just between the two of us. In an acute crisis, to what lengths would you go to insure your eventual inheritance of my fortune?”
The thing in her eyes got through to Perky. His playboy aura seemed to fall away. He became bone and sinew, with the eyes of a hungry, prowling cougar. “I think I would even murder,” he said with cool honesty.
The woman behind the wheel looked far down the beach. Then she turned, got out of the car. “My dear boy,” she said fondly, “your answer couldn’t have pleased me more…”
MIND THE POSIES
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, June 1965.
No believer in miracles, Mrs. Hester Bennett could not fully account for her husband’s new interest in life.
Claude’s heart attack had been severe, and without any prior warning. He had been coming up the front walk late one afternoon, an old man with iron gray hair who still retained some of his earthy, brutish handsomeness. He’d staggered, clutched his chest, crumpled, looked as if he’d died instantly.
But he hadn’t. Not quite. For endlessly long hours Claude’s life had been measured by the successive weak pulse beats which never quite stopped.
Hester had remained at Claude’s hospital bedside, never taking her eyes for very long from the gray face canopied by the clear plastic oxygen tent, until the doctor told her the crisis was finally past. A man steeped in bitter solitude had come home, shuffling and looking about the solidly comfortable house as if everything were new and strange to him.
To Hester’s queries he gave the same, short answer, “I’m fine!” He took his prescribed rests with the secretive inner rebellion of a small boy. He ate the flat salt-free food stolidly, cramming it into his mouth as if he had a strange sort of derision and loathing for himself.
The rapport built by thirty-five years of marriage was broken. Unable to communicate with Claude, Hester mechanically continued her routine of flower gardening and conscientious housekeeping.
Once, as she was arranging a vase of yellow roses, Claude had entered the living room unknown to her. His voice had startled her. “Why do you bother?” he said. “They’ll only die.”
He’d turned and left the room without waiting for her answer. And she’d bit her lip, feeling the emptiness and desolation of the house. The attack has left him with traumatic scars as well as physical ones, she’d thought, but they will pass; after all, thirty-five years of marriage does mean something; the scars will all pass.
The passing, when it had come, had been swift, almost as sudden as the attack that had struck Claude a low blow.
He’d returned to the supervision of his small plastics manufacturing plant for want of something better to do. It gave him escape from the house, from windows that seemed to draw his gaze toward a certain spot on the front walk. He came and went, a tall, rawboned giant of a shadow.
And then one afternoon Hester came in from her flower garden and heard Claude humming in the bedroom. She let the basket slide from her hand to the kitchen table. A tremulous expression crossed her faded, wrinkled lips. A light struggled for life in her tired blue eyes. Claude’s humming was off-key, but to Hester, it filled the house with a sweeter sound than the singing of the birds who flitted about their bath at the edge of her flower garden.
Controlling the emotion that surged up in her, Hester went casually to the bedroom. Claude was at the dressing table mirror, bending slightly as he knotted a bright, striped necktie, one she had never seen before. He was impeccable in a freshly pressed suit, the iron gray hair brushed against his temples. There was even color in his face, making him look twenty years younger. Something about his appearance and manner disconcerted Hester. She felt drab and old.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said. “Do you want an early dinner?”
His humming broke off. He looked at her reflection in the mirror. He didn’t bother to
