Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (24 page)

Mrs. Cappelli turned slowly, and he was there, standing near the front walk of the Morrow house, the air gun in the crook of his arm. Tall. Lean. Young. Challenging her. Baiting her. His lips lifting in a smile that sent an icy shard through her.

She turned on stiff legs and went into her house.

The policeman's name was Longstreet, Sergeant Harley Longstreet. He was tall, strapping, with a pleasantly big-featured face and lank brown hair.

With the drapery pulled aside in the living room, Mrs. Cappelli watched him come from the Morrow house. He stood a moment, looking over his shoulder, a loose-leaf pocket notebook in his hand. Then he came across to the Cappelli front door.

Mrs. Cappelli opened the door while he was still a few feet away and stood aside for him to enter. With a glance at his face, she suspected that he hadn't been very successful with Greg Morrow. He was a nice young policeman. He'd responded quickly to her phone call. He'd heard everything she'd had to say. He hadn't thought a bird's death unimportant—not when it was coupled with the circumstances. He'd attached considerable meaning and importance to it. He had gone over to the Morrow place almost an hour ago. Now he was back.

Mrs. Cappelli stood with her fingers on the edge of the opened door. “I think I understand, Mr. Longstreet,” she said with no accusation or rancor.

“He simply denies killing the bird, ma'am. Did you actually see him kill it?”

“I didn't see him pull the trigger.”

“Well, you see, Mrs. Cappelli, the law is black print on white paper. Mrs. Morrow isn't home. No one else is out and about the houses close by. Without a witness or some tangible evidence I've done about all I can.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. Longstreet.”

He hesitated, tapping his notebook on his thumb. “He says you are a crotchety old lady who doesn't want young people in the neighborhood.”

“He's a liar, Mr. Longstreet. I delight in reasonably normal young people. Do you believe him?”

“Not for a moment, Mrs. Cappelli. Not one word.” He flipped his notebook open. “I checked the records briefly when I got your call, to see if he was in any of the official files. We have computers nowadays, you know. I can push a button and tell whether or not he'd been recorded in any city or county agency.”

She closed the door finally and stood leaning the back of her shoulders against it. “And what did your computer tell you?”

His sharp eyes flicked between her and the notebook. “He spent two years, our Greg Morrow, in a correctional institution for maladjusted teen-agers. Committed when he was sixteen. Released on his eighteenth birthday, which was eighteen months ago. Prior to the action that put him away, he had a record of classroom disruption, of vandalism in his schools, of shaking down smaller classmates for their pocket money. He was finally put away after he assaulted a school principal.”

“The principal should have given him a sound thrashing with a hickory switch,” Mrs. Cappelli said. “But in that event it would have been the principal who went to jail.”

“It's possible,” Longstreet agreed. He tucked his notebook in his hip pocket. “We've had complaints about Greg almost from the day he was let out, in various neighborhoods where the Morrows have lived. But other than a suspended sentence for trespassing, after a house was vandalized, nothing has stood against him in court.”

Mrs. Cappelli moved slowly to a large chair and sank on its edge, hands clasped on her drawn-together knees. “Mr. Longstreet, Greg Morrow is not merely a mischievous boy. He is the kind of force and fact from which those fantastic and gory newspaper headlines are too often drawn.”

“That's very possible.”

His tone caused her to glance up, and she caught the bitterness in his eyes. Her sympathy went out to him for the hardness of his job.

“Don't feel badly, Mr. Longstreet. I thank you for coming out and talking to him. Perhaps it will frighten him for a little while and help that much.”

“We simply can't lock them up without evidence of the commission of a crime. Sometimes, then, it's too late.”

“After the commission of a crime, Mr. Longstreet, it is always too late.” She rose to her feet to see him out.

He stood looking down on her, the small sturdiness of her. “I'll have the police cruiser in this area increase its patrols along your street, Mrs. Cappelli. I'll do everything I possibly can.”

“I'm sure of that.”

“Good day, Mrs. Cappelli.”

“Good day, Mr. Longstreet.”

She watched him stride down the front walk and get into the unmarked police car parked against the street curbing. He sat there for a brief time after he started the engine, looking at the Morrow house; then he drove away.

As she turned, Mrs. Cappelli saw Greg. He was standing in the Morrow yard, thumbs hooked in his belt, watching the police car move toward the intersection and turn out of sight.

Mrs. Cappelli started to close the door. Then, with a sudden impulse, she went outside and walked across to the driveway that separated the two properties.

“Greg … may I speak to you?”

He moved only his head, turning it to stare at her. “Why should I talk to an old bitch who sics the fuzz on me?”

She whitened, but held back the swift heat of anger. “I thought we might have a civilized talk. After all, Greg, we do have to live as neighbors.”

“Who says? Somebody around here could die. Old biddies are always popping off, you know.”

She drew a difficult breath. “A bit of reasonableness, Greg. That's all I'm asking. I was happy when you moved into the neighborhood, so young and vigorous. I looked forward to some youthful activity next door.”

“Old creep. You called the fuzz.”

“You know why, Greg. Somehow I must impress on you that there are limits. Why can't we discuss them? Observe them? Live and let live?”

He looked at her with studied insolence. “You made a bad mistake calling Longstreet, old lady. I don't like it. I don't like it at all. I won't forget it, either.”

Her voice rang with the first hint of anger. “Are you threatening me, Greg?”

“Who says? Can you prove to Longstreet that I am? Just your word against mine. I know how the law works. I know my rights.”

“I don't think this is getting us anywhere, Greg. I regret having come out and spoken to you.”

He drifted a few steps toward her. The dying sunlight marked his cheekbones sharply. His body was tense, as if coiled inside. “You got a lot more regrets in the future, old lady. You better believe it. Think about it. You won't know when, how, or where. But I don't like people trying to throw me to the fuzz.”

“I hope this is just talk, Greg.”

He laughed suddenly. “That school principal—the one who got me sent up. Know what happened? About a year after I got out, a hit-and-run driver marked up the punk principal's daughter, that's what. She'll be a short-legged creep the rest of her life. Sure, the fuzz questioned me—but they couldn't prove a thing.”

She could bear it no longer. She turned and started toward her front door with quick steps.

“Don't forget to think about it, old lady,” he called after her. “And remember—nobody ever proves a thing on Greg Morrow.”

Three passing days brought Mrs. Cappelli the faint hope that Greg had thought twice and again. Perhaps his insults and threat had sufficed his ego. Usually, such fellows were mostly talk. Usually.

The fourth night Mrs. Cappelli stirred in her always-light sleep, dreaming that she smelled smoke. She murmured in her halfconscious state; and then she had the sudden, clear, icy knowledge that she was not asleep.

She flung back the sheet, a small cry in her throat, and stumbled upright, a ghostly pale figure in her ankle-length white nightgown.

“Isadora!” she cried out as she hurried into the hallway. “Isadora, lazy-head, wake up! The house is on fire!”

Isadora's bedroom door flung open and Isadora appeared, gowned like her mistress, her iron gray hair hanging in two limp braids across her shoulders.

“What is it? What's happening?” Isadora chattered, her eyes bulging. She glimpsed the faint reddish glow in the stairwell and began crossing herself again and again. “Oh, heaven be merciful! Mercy from heaven!”

Together the two women stumbled in haste down the stairway. The fiery reflection was stronger in the dining room.

“Quickly, Isadora! The kitchen!”

They ran across the dining room, wavering to a halt inside the kitchen. Mrs. Cappelli's quick glance divined the situation. The curtains over the glass portion of the outside door had caught fire first. They were now remaining bits of falling ash and embers. The flames had spread easily to the window curtains along the rear of the kitchen and were now gnawing at the cabinetwork, fouling the air with the stench of burning varnish.

Isadora dashed into the pantry, knocking pots helter-skelter as she grabbed two of the larger ones. Mrs. Cappelli was more direct. She pulled the sink squirter hose out to its full extension, turned the cold water on hard, and fought the flames back until she had drenched out the last flicker.

With wisps of smoke still seeping from the cabinetwork, Mrs. Cappelli groped for a kitchen chair and sank into it weakly. She matched long breaths with the gulps Isadora was taking, and strength began to return.

“How horrible it might have been,” Isadora said through chattering teeth, “if you hadn't awakened.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Cappelli said.

Isadora gripped the kitchen table to help herself out of her chair. “We must call the fire department to make sure everything is out.”

“Yes.”

“And the police.”

“No!”

Isadora looked at Mrs. Cappelli, wondering at the sharpness of her tone. “Maria … we know who did this. We know he has been planning, waiting, thinking, and deciding what to do.”

“Yes, and tonight he made his move.” Mrs. Cappelli's gaze examined the fire-blackened kitchen door and paused at its base. She got up, crossed to the door, and knelt down. She touched the ashes at the base of the door. “And so simply he did it,” she said. “Not all these ashes are from burned fabric. Some of them feel very much like brittle burned paper. So easily, without breaking in or leaving marks on the kitchen door, he simply slid strips of paper underneath the door until he had a sufficient pile inside. Then it remains for him but to light the tail end of the final strip and watch the tiny flame creep along the paper under the door and ignite the pile inside. Soon the hungry flames reach up to touch the curtains …”

The two women were an immobile tableau—Isadora, standing beside the table, Mrs. Cappelli kneeling at the door, looking at each other.

“Yes, I see,” Isadora said. “It's all very clear. It would be clear to the police. But they cannot make the youth confess. They are not permitted. And he will have an alibi, someone to swear that he was far away from this street tonight.”

A small sob caught in Mrs. Cappelli's throat. “How much can we endure, Isadora? Call the firemen quickly. Then I want the phone. Late as it is, I want to hear the sound of John's voice.”

At ten o'clock the following evening an airport taxicab deposited John in front of the Cappelli house.

“It's he!” Isadora said, watching him pay off the taxi and get out his single piece of luggage.

Beside Isadora, the giddy center of a little vortex of excitement, Mrs. Cappelli nudged hard with her elbow. “Quickly, Isadora! The table … the dinner candles.”

Isadora darted from the front door, leaving Mrs. Cappelli there alone to watch the approach of her son.

He wouldn't have eaten on the plane, she knew. Mama always had one of his favorite meals waiting, whatever his hour of arrival. Tonight Mrs. Cappelli had centered the dinner on
arosto di agnello
, and already she could imagine him filling his mouth with the succulent lamb and blowing her a kiss of approval from his fingertips.

“Ah, John, John!” Her wide-flung arms enfolded his dark, towering, masculine strength, and, as always, she wept joyously.

He picked her up, almost as if he would tuck her under his arm, and kissed her on both cheeks.

“What is that I smell? Not roast lamb as only
mia madre
can make?”

“But yes, John! How was the flight? Isadora, wherever are you? Quickly, Isadora! The most handsome boy on earth is famished!”

Arm linked with her son's, Mrs. Cappelli strolled into the dining room, questions tumbling about her daughter-in-law, her precious grandchildren.

All was well up north, John assured her. All was going beautifully.

He sat down at the head of the old hand-carved walnut table, an inviting array before him, snowy linens, bone china, crystal and sterling, tall candles in beaten silver holders, fine food in covered dishes.

Isadora and Mrs. Cappelli were content to sit on either side, near the head of the table, watching him eat and anticipating his every wish from the serving dishes.

Then at last he could eat no more, and he rewarded his mother with a loving wink and appreciative little belch.

He laid his napkin on the table, pushed back his chair, and lifted one of the candles to light a thin black cigar.

Mrs. Cappelli was at his side as he walked to the windows in the side of the room and stood there looking at the lights of the Morrow house.

“Now, Mama,” he said quietly, “what's this trouble?”

She told him every detail from the moment Greg Morrow had moved next door. She acquainted John with Greg's every habit, the identity of Greg's closest friends, the make, model, and license number of the Morrow car. It took her several minutes; she had accumulated a great deal of information during the time Greg had been a neighbor.

When Mrs. Cappelli finished speaking, John slipped his arm about her shoulders. “Don't worry, Mama,” he said quietly. “It will be taken care of. The young animal will stop killing his mother. He will kill and maim no more animals. He will hit-run no more children. He will light no more arsonist fires. It will all be taken care of very soon, when the first proper moment arrives.”