Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (79 page)

“Well, well, well,” Davey says. “What have we here!”

“Get away from me,” she says.

“Sorry, I thought the stall was empty.”

“Get
away
from me,” she says again.

“Sure you don't want me to join you?” he says, and reaches in to touch her breast. She is too startled to scream. She throws the bar of soap at him, full into his face, hitting him over the eye with it. Grinning, he backs away. “See you at dinner,” he says. “Nice tits, by the way.” Still grinning, he lets the flap fall free of his hand.

Therese stands naked and glistening, covered with soap, gulping in huge breaths of air. At last, she pulls the chain to rinse herself in muddy river water.

When she tells Jeremy what just happened, he merely nods.

That is all.

F
OR DINNER THAT
night, the chef serves wildebeest.

“There are people all over the world who prefer it to beef,” Davey says. “I asked the chef to prepare it specially for you, Therese.” When she makes no reply, he goes through his routine again, saying to himself, “Why, thank you, Davey, that was very kind of you.” Therese is deliberately sitting very far away from him, on the opposite side of the mess tent table, between Lou and Frank.

Helen proposes a game.

The idea is to describe yourself by attaching an adjective to your first name.

Frank picks up on it at once.

He's had a bit too much to drink.

“Fearless Frank,” he says.

“Lucky Lou,” Lou says.

“Happy Helen.”

Therese hesitates.

“Tired Therese,” she says at last.

Davey, too, has been drinking.

“Dominant Dave,” he says, and raises his wineglass in a silent toast to Therese, and then turns his head and his smile toward Jeremy.

Jeremy is cold sober.

His eyes meet Davey's.

“Jugular Jere,” he says, and everyone bursts out laughing, because they don't know what he can possibly mean.

“Come on, partner,” Frank says. “Let's put you to bed before you fall on your face.”

A
T TWO IN
the morning, one of the Masai guards sounds the alarm. Jeremy is already awake when Frank rushes into the tent and yells, “Dr. Palmer, come quick! Something terrible has happened!”

What has happened is that Dominant Dave has put his own 9-millimeter Glock in his mouth and blown off the back of his head.

T
HE MOVIE HAS
ended. The cabin of the jumbo jet is temporarily dim. In the darkness, Jeremy and his wife continue whispering, their heads close together.

“Frank thinks he may have had a drinking problem,” Therese says.

“Maybe.”

“He certainly drank enough that night.”

Jeremy says nothing.

“Maybe he wouldn't have done it otherwise.”

“Maybe not,” Jeremy says.

“Anyway, it's over,” she says. “It's all behind us now.”

“Yes,” Jeremy says. “It's all behind us now.”

He takes her hand in his own. He puts his mouth very close to her ear.

“Therese,” he whispers, “he wasn't drunk.”

“Yes, he was,” she whispers. “Didn't you see him?”

“Therese … he was drugged.”

“What do you mean?”

“Seconal. Two hundred milligrams.”

“What are you saying?”

Her whisper is a sharp hiss in the stillness of the cabin. Beneath it, the jet engines drone incessantly.

“In his wine,” Jeremy whispers. “Two big reds. Enough to knock him out completely.”

His wife is staring at him now.

“I went to his tent later. I put the gun in his mouth, I put his thumb on the trigger. I blew out his brains, Therese.”

Her eyes are wide open in the gloom of the cabin.

“I killed him,” Jeremy whispers.

She is silent for merely an instant.

Then she says, “Good,” and smiles, and squeezes his hand.

Voodoo isn't often
the cause of death listed in modern police reports, but that was what Officer Paul Renoir had written on the sheet that reached my desk at the New Orleans Police Department headquarters. Probable cause of death: Voodoo.

I was intrigued enough by this to take on the investigation myself rather than handing it over to one of my juniors. After twenty years in the homicide division of a big city police department, I had had it up to here with gang bangs, drug deals gone wrong, and men who had smashed in their old lady's head simply because they felt like it after a night at the bars.

I called Renoir into my office. He was a serious-looking young man—shorter than cops used to be when I first joined the force, but broad shouldered and with a round, earnest face. He'd only been on homicide duty for a couple of months and was clearly ill at ease in my presence.

“What's this about, Renoir?” I waved the report in his direction. He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “What is it—some kind of joke?”

“Oh no, sir.” His face became even more serious. “I know it sounds really strange, but the widow was so insistent. She said there was no other explanation. And the doctor was equally baffled.”

I indicated a steel and vinyl chair opposite my desk. “You'd better take a seat and fill me in on the details.”

He perched on the edge of the chair, still clearly nervous. “Officer Roberts and I got a call to go to the Garden District, possible homicide. It was one of those big mansions, sir.”

“Mansions are usually big, Renoir. Learn to be brief, okay?”

“Sorry, sir. One of those big—uh—houses on St. Charles. We were met at the door by the distraught wife. She led us upstairs to the master bedroom, and there was this man lying there dead. No sign of struggle, nothing to indicate he hadn't died of natural causes. I asked her when he had died and if she had sent for her doctor, and she said the family doctor had already been there and he'd been as upset as she was. He couldn't find any other explanation for it either.

“Other than what?”

“That's what I asked her, sir. She looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Voodoo.' Then she told me that a month ago he had offended a voodoo priestess. She had cursed him and told him that if he didn't change his mind, he'd be dead within the month.”

“I gather he didn't change his mind about whatever it was.”

“He didn't, sir, and he started going downhill from that very moment. The wife said it was almost as if he were fading before her eyes.” Renoir's own eyes were peering at me earnestly, willing me to believe him. “I really think you ought to go and speak to her yourself, sir. I came out of there feeling really spooky.”

“Renoir, police officers are not allowed to feel spooky, even in the presence of a dismembered and partly eaten corpse.”

He flinched. “No, sir.”

I got up from my chair. “The best thing you can do is go straight back out there.”

“Me, sir?”

He tried to keep his expression composed, but the words came

out as a croak.

I had to smile. “It's like falling off a horse. You have to get right back on, or you'll be spooked forever. You can drive me.”

His face lit up. “You're coming too, sir?”

“Why not? God knows I need a good laugh.”

“I don't think you'll be laughing, sir,” Renoir said as he left my office.

A
N HOUR LATER
Renoir drove as we followed the streetcar tracks out along St. Charles Avenue to the upscale Garden District. Here was where New Orleans Old Money was concentrated. We passed an antique streetcar with tourists hanging out of the windows, videotaping the mansions as they passed. They glared at us as we got in their way.

“Here we are, sir.” Renoir pulled up outside the home of John Torrance III and his wife, Millie. When Renoir had told me that he liked to be called Trey, the lightbulb went off in my head. Trey Torrance was a familiar name to me, appearing regularly in the newspapers at some charity event or other. I had looked him up in the files before we set out and found out that Mr. Torrance had been fifty-nine years old and still very active in his business life as well as in various philanthropic organizations. He was, for example, a leading sponsor of the Bacchus Carnival Krewe. He had been born to an old plantation family across the river, inherited a sizeable estate of local land, and made himself even richer by putting subdivisions on it and selling it off.

I couldn't fault his taste in houses. Trey Taylor lived in a solid, square brick mansion with white shutters at the windows and an enormous magnolia grandiflora shading it. Nothing too fancy, no Southern-style pillars and porticos. But the gardens were beautifully kept and the place had an air of prosperity about it. We parked under one of the live oaks that draped in a canopy over the street.

“Thank God for trees,” I said. “At least the car won't have turned into an oven while we're away.”

I had expected the front door to be opened by a maid, but it was Mrs. Torrence herself who stood there, looking quite frail but elegant in a black-and-white-striped dress and pearls. How many women wear pearls at home in the afternoon these days, I wondered. Especially when their husband has just died. I introduced myself.

“I'm so grateful you've come, Lieutenant Patterson,” she said. “Do come inside, and you too, Officer Renoir. Can I fix you gentlemen a glass of iced tea or lemonade?” Even the death of her husband had not robbed this lady of her Southern manners.

“Nothing, thank you, ma'am,” I said as we stepped into the delightful coolness of a marble-tiled front hall. She led us through to a sitting room that was decorated with understated good taste—good old mahogany furniture and some classy-looking paintings on the walls. One of these was a portrait of a man with a bulldog face of almost Winston Churchillian tenacity. Chin stuck out defiantly, brow set in a perpetual frown. Trey Torrance had clearly been a man who expected to get his own way and dared anybody to cross him.

“You don't have a maid, Mrs. Torrance?” I couldn't help asking.

She was holding a dainty lace handkerchief, and she put it up to her mouth. “She didn't feel comfortable staying here after—after what happened. She said she could still feel the spirits flying around. So I had to let her go home, even though I'm not very comfortable here myself, I can tell you.”

I gave her a long, sympathetic look. “Voodoo, Mrs. Torrance?” I asked. “What makes you think it was voodoo that killed your husband?”

“What else could it have been?” She almost snapped at me. “He saw that woman and she cursed him and he died, just like she said he would.”

“Whoa—go back a little. What woman are we talking about?”

“Trey owned land across the river. Swampy land. No good for anything. But then he managed to get his hands on some landfill, and he was going to have it brought down in barges from Missouri. He planned to build up that land and put another of his subdivisions on it. Like I said, it was mostly swamp and grass, but there were a few shacks down by the river, and this old woman lived in one of them. She refused to move out, even though she had no right there. Trey owned the title to that land. Trey went to see her and she warned him. She said if he kept on with this, he'd regret it.”

“And what did your husband do?”

“He laughed, naturally. He told her he was bulldozing the place and it didn't matter to him whether she was in it or not.”

“So your husband didn't take her threat seriously?”

“Of course not. Trey didn't take kindly to threats, and he wasn't the kind of man who would believe in anything as ridiculous as voodoo. He came home and told me about it. ‘Silly old bitch,' he said—I'm sorry for the language. Trey was rather outspoken. ‘If she thinks she can scare me off with her mumbo jumbo, she can think again.'”

“And then what happened?”

“Then the doll arrived.” She looked up at me with hollow, frightened eyes and pressed the handkerchief to her mouth again.

“A voodoo doll?”

She nodded.

“May I see it?”

She disappeared and came back almost immediately with something wrapped in a cloth. Inside was a simple doll, made of coarse unbleached muslin. It was faceless and featureless and might have been some child's toy, except there were red-tipped pins stuck in its heart and stomach and throat. I examined it then handed it on to Renoir, who looked as if he didn't want to touch it.