Christmas Stalkings (21 page)

Parker’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch, but all he said was, “Yes, madam.”

As soon as the door had closed behind him, a babble of voices broke out.

“What on earth is all this, Mother?” This from Anne.

“I do assure you, Mother-in-law—”

“Just because I said yesterday ... of course I didn’t mean it . . .”

“What sort of fools do you think we are?” Philip sounded very grim. “You think Ally and I would poison her father just
to
. . . ?”

The voices fell abruptly silent as Mrs. Benson came in. She was red-eyed but composed.

“You wanted to see me, madam?”

“Yes, Mrs. Benson. You remember that I gave orders that nobody but myself was to go into the kitchen?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Well, did anybody go in? Or try to go in?”

Mrs. Benson flushed deeply. “I don’t really like—”

“What you like or not is immaterial, Mrs. Benson. Please answer my question.”

“Well, madam, Miss Anne . . . beg pardon, Mrs. Walters . . . she did come in to wish me a merry Christmas, while I was making the pastry for the apple pie. But I told her to go away, because of what you said, madam.”

“Did she say anything else, except ‘Merry Christmas’?”

Mrs. Benson went an even deeper red and snuffled.

“She asked me if she could help with the apple pie. Miss Anne’s always been so—”

“But you didn’t let her?”

“Oh, no, madam.”

“Anybody else?”

“No, madam.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Benson. You may go now.”

Before the door had closed behind the cook, Anne burst out, “Are you accusing me of . . . ?”

“I’m not accusing anybody,” said Mary evenly. “How can I? Even though I’m convinced that Robert’s death wasn’t natural.”

“Excuse me, Mother-in-law,” said Derek. “You’re accusing all of us, most explicitly. And it’s ridiculous. As you told us yourself, under the new will we wouldn’t get any money.”

Mary Runfold looked at him steadily. “You didn’t know that when you arrived here, did you?”

“Well—no. But—”

“There’s no point in talking about it.” Mary’s voice was suddenly very weary. “Mrs. Benson seems to have cleared you all.” She sighed. “I think I shall go and lie down now. I’m really very tired.”

When her mother had gone, Alison said, “I honestly believe she suspects one of us.”

“Or all of us,” said Philip.

Anne said, “It’s almost as though—oh, I don’t know—as thought she
wanted
one of us to be guilty.”

“That’s crazy,” remarked her husband.

“It may be crazy, but I think it’s true,” said Anne stubbornly.

It was when Mrs. Runfold did not appear for lunch that Alison went up to her room to wake her. She found her mother in a coma, with an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her and a note propped up on the dressing table. The note read, “Forgive me. I couldn’t face life without Robert, so I am going to join him.”

Mrs. Runfold was rushed to hospital, but it was too late. She died that afternoon, without regaining consciousness. The inquest was brief, the coroner very sympathetic. The verdict: Suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed.

When Alison and Philip arrived home after the double funeral, Alison was surprised and shocked to see a letter on the mat, addressed to her in Mary’s unmistakable handwriting. While Philip carried in the suitcases, she slipped it unopened into her handbag. It was only the next day, after her husband had gone to work, that she read the letter.

It was postmarked on the day of her mother’s death.

Dearest Ally,

I am giving this to Parker to post. It is for your eyes only. I am sure I can trust you to keep it secret. I feel I must tell somebody the truth.

I hardly know how to say this. You see, Robert was convinced that either Philip or Derek would try to poison him over Christmas—that is to say, give him some substance which would not be lethal to a healthy person, but would cause a heart attack to someone in Robert’s condition. I am ashamed to say that, although I pooh-poohed the idea, I secretly agreed with him.

I knew that digitalis was a heart stimulant, and I had a foolish notion that if I managed to give him some, it would help him to withstand whatever drug he might be fed. In any case, I reckoned it couldn’t do him any harm. You’ll understand that I couldn’t ask Dr. Carlton for advice without voicing my suspicions to him. And digitalis was something that I could get hold of.

I made my concoction late in the evening before you arrived, after Robert and Mrs. Benson had gone to bed. Then I soaked the paper wrapping of the bachelor’s button in it, so that it would seep into the surrounding pudding—and of course I made sure that Robert would get it.

It was only after his death that the doctor told me that the wrong dose could have killed him.

I confess I hoped against hope that one of you might have tried to poison him, which is why I questioned you all so closely just now; but I can no longer escape the fact that I killed Robert myself.

At least, you and Anne will now get your father’s money. There is nothing else I can do for you. Whether or not you decide to sell the house, please destroy the clump of foxgloves near the gate. And tell Mrs. Benson to throw away the small copper saucepan.

With all my love,

Mother.

Evelyn Smith .claims a rare distinction. She’s one of those exotic few who were actually born and have lived their whole lives in New York City. And so, moreover, is her cat Christopher.

Unvaried as her physical surroundings have been, Evelyn’s writing career has taken her all over the galaxy. It’s said that her early science fiction and fantasy stories earned rave reviews on Alpha Centauri. Coming down to earth, she began working on and writing for women’s magazines, winding up as Features Editor on
Family Circle.
During that period, she was also writing Gothic novels, plus books and articles on witchcraft and mail order under the pen name
Delphine
C. Lyons.

Then, out of the everywhere into the here, came Miss Susan Melville, another New Yorker with a unique approach to community service, and Evelyn Smith was again
relaunched
as a mystery novelist. This is Miss Melville’s first appearance in a short story; we rejoice to have her.

Darkness had fallen and a light snow was beginning to come down as a dim figure swathed in a voluminous raincoat crept furtively down the short flight of steps that led into the sunken yard of a white limestone-fronted building on a quiet, expensive street on New York City’s quiet, expensive East Side. The dim figure disconnected the alarm system attached to the grille beneath the front stoop, unlocked the grille and swung it open, passed through, re-locked the grille and swung it shut, reconnected the alarm, disconnected the alarm attached to the inner door, unlocked the three locks with which the inner door was fastened, opened the door, entered the basement, closed the door, relocked the three locks, and reconnected the alarm.

On the upper floors of the building there were lights and movement. Later there would be feasting and merriment, for it was Christmas Eve and the Melville Foundation for Anthropological Research was giving a party in honor of the deposed dictator of Mazigaziland, the infamous Matthew Zimwi, the man for whom
Time
magazine had established the category of Monster of the Year.

Inside the basement all was dark and had been quiet until the furtive figure entered and, stumbling into a sawhorse—on which, for some unaccountable reason, a bucket of small metallic objects had been balanced—knocked down a group of boards propped against it. There was a crash, followed by a ladylike oath, for the furtive figure was a lady and not only a lady but Susan Melville, world-renowned artist, en-dower of the Melville Foundation, and owner of the building she had so surreptitiously entered.

And why had Susan Melville entered her own building so surreptitiously, over four hours before a party which, she had informed Dr. Peter Franklin, director of the Melville Foundation, not even wild horses would compel her to attend? She had arrived this early because in half an hour the catering staff, and then the security guards without whom no New York social occasion would be complete, were due to arrive, considerably diminishing her chances of getting inside the building without being seen. The reason she did not wish to be seen was that she was planning to kill the guest of honor and wanted to be as unobtrusive about it as she could.

Matthew Zimwi would not be the first person Susan Melville had sent to his last reward, nor would he, unless she was unlucky, be the last. Like so many of the other old New York families, the Melvilles had a long tradition of public service. They had founded some institutions, served on the boards of others, contributed to charity, and lent their names to causes they deemed worthy. A few of the most zealous had even performed hands-on community service, though none quite so hands-on as Susan’s.

Her line of good works consisted of executing individuals of bad character who were beyond the reach of the local law. Over the last few years, in her own quiet way, Susan had been very successful at this; and one of the secrets of her success had been that she prepared very thoroughly for each sortie. Never before, however, had she been forced to make such elaborate preparations as she had for this one, but never before had she been required to strike so close to home.

Susan didn’t dare turn on a light in the basement, for, although the windows were covered with ornamental ironwork, this was designed to protect the interior from unauthorized entry, not to shield it from public view. The feeble beam of the pencil flashlight she had brought along was of little help in lighting her way through the shadowy masses that loomed up ahead of her. It had been a mistake, she thought, to give the workmen carte blanche to store their effects down here over the holidays. She had not realized there would be so much, or that the individual pieces would be so large and have so many painful protuberances. Each time she kicked something or tripped over something, she halted, fearful that someone on the floor above would hear the noises below and come down to investigate.

But no footsteps clattered down the narrow winding stairs; no creak came from the elevator. Not that it could creak, she recalled, because it was not there. Some days before, the elevator had been condemned by the building inspector and one of the last things the workmen had been supposed to do before they knocked off for the holidays was to eviscerate it. She had hoped that this mischance would put a stop to Peter’s party plans; however, he pointed out, as the Foundation officially occupied only the first two floors of the building, the elevator was seldom used and did not enter into those plans.

Probably it was the elevator’s innards that were taking up so much room, she thought. She noted with approval as she passed the elevator door that a notice saying “Out of Order” had been affixed to it. She had issued instructions that such notices were to be placed on all elevator doors—indeed, she believed that safety-code regulations required them—but workmen didn’t always follow instructions (or safety-code regulations, either).

Just beyond the elevator door was the door to the back stairs, and beyond that, another door. Susan unlocked the third door, went inside, and relocked it behind her. An earlier tenant who went in for orgies had had this room soundproofed and the windows blocked, so she could safely turn on the light and breathe freely. She did both; then sat down on an old couch and relaxed. If she wished, she could read, listen to the radio, even have a bite to eat, for she had previously stocked her retreat with the wherewithal for all these activities. Now all she had to do was wait.

At this point in her life, Matthew Zimwi was not a person she would normally have chosen to kill. Once she might have considered an ousted tyrant an appropriate subject for her gun, but time and economic independence had mellowed her. Why bother with fallen tyrants who were unlikely to be in a position to commit any more atrocities when there were so many miscreants in power committing one atrocity after another? Furthermore, it was a long-standing custom of hers not to kill anyone over the Christmas holidays. Susan was not a conventionally religious woman, but she did feel there were certain things that should be kept sacred, even if you didn’t believe in them.

However, Peter had forced her to put Zimwi at the top of her hit list. She and Peter had been together in the apartment they shared, preparing for quite another kind of party—the Fitzhorn Foundation’s Winter Gala to benefit something or other; she went to so many affairs of that kind, she lost track of what they were for—when, casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Peter told her he was planning to give a Christmas Eve party for Matthew Zimwi at the Melville Foundation Building.