Grab Bag (18 page)

“Goodbody. I live next door, in the apartment below where Seraphine Laberes used to live.”

“God rest her soul,” she sighed. “I wish we had more like her.”

“I understand she was making you all new uniforms.”

“Habits, yes.”

“Can you tell me how much each one would cost to buy?”

“More than we can afford, I’m afraid.” The Mother Superior was pretty shabby, herself. She named a figure that exactly corresponded to my weekly salary at the library.

“And you need thirty-seven more.”

“Thirty-seven for the sisters. Thirty-eight counting me,” she amended with childlike shrewdness.

I figured quickly on the back of my blank check. “Is that right?”

“It is. I’ve figured it often enough myself.”

I filled in the amount, signed the check, and pushed it over to her. “Please buy them right away.”

“But Mrs. … Mrs. Goodbody.” She seemed hardly to know what to say. “This is an awful lot of money.”

“The check’s good,” I answered shortly. “My husband left me”—a phrase of my brother-in-law’s popped into my head—“well provided for.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You must not thank me!” I think I frightened her with my vehemence. “You must take those thirty-seven nuns with you immediately into your chapel or whatever you call it, and give thanks that new habits have been provided through the efforts of Seraphine Laberes. I mean it! If you don’t do this right away, I’ll stop payment on the check.”

“We’ll certainly do it,” she assured me nervously. “And we’ll also say—”

“No. My name must never be mentioned. The gift is from Seraphine. Promise me, by all you hold sacred.”

“I swear it on the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” She made the sign of the cross. Then she looked at me for what seemed a long time. Perhaps she saw something. “Seraphine Laberes was a very determined woman.”

I nodded. Suddenly I felt drained of all my strength, as though I had sat up for many nights, sewing on black cloth that strained the eyes. “I must get to work.”

She saw me to the door herself. That night I slept like a baby.

I often come across the nuns in their new habits now, but only in the daytime, thank goodness. Every so often, I slip into the Catholic church and light a candle. I don’t quite know why I do it. Still, as Miss Edith says, you can’t be too careful.

FIRST PUBLISHED IN
Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine,
August 1966, as “The High Price of Cat Food,” this story is hardly long enough to merit any further introduction.

“Puss, puss, puss.”

“There she goes,” said Miss Johnson. “That old cat of hers must have slipped his lead again. You might think she’d have more sense than to go looking for him at this time of night.”

“Don’t tell me,” sighed Miss McGuffy. “I’ve begged and pleaded with her a hundred times. “Mrs. Quinter, I tell her, no cat’s worth getting yourself killed for. There’ve been five stranglings so far this year already. You stay off the roads after dark, I tell her, or you’ll be the sixth. But will she listen?”

“You can’t tell her a thing,” said Miss Johnson. “I said the same thing to her myself only last Thursday. If you think so much of that precious cat of yours, I said, why don’t you keep him indoors? But she only simpered in that featherheaded way of hers and said oh no, she couldn’t do that. Tommy would be so unhappy if he didn’t have his little run. Then let him run in the daytime, I said. But you might as well talk to a stone wall.”

“She ought to be locked up, if you ask me,” said Miss McGuffy. “Living on bread and tea herself and feeding that smelly old thing chicken and tinned salmon, if you please. It’s a disgrace.”

“Well, she’ll get herself strangled one of these foggy nights while she’s out there hunting for him,” said Miss Johnson, tugging the tea cosy sharply down over the pot. “And then where will she be?”

Where was she now? Mrs. Quinter thought she knew, but she wasn’t quite sure. She pulled her old black coat tighter around her bent body. There was a bone-chilling dampness coming up from the slimy cobblestones.

“Puss, puss, puss!”

She’d put a long way between herself and her tiny basement flat by now. Still no lithe, shadowy form had bounded out of the blackness behind the dust bins. She slapped Tommy’s thin nylon lead anxiously against the palm of her free hand. The empty collar dangled at one end. Miss Johnson had suggested that she buy the cat a smaller size, but Mrs. Quinter wouldn’t hear of it.

“Oh no, I couldn’t do that. What if the collar got caught on something and Tommy wasn’t able to squirm loose from it? A cat could strangle that way.”

“Better a cat than a human,” Miss Johnson had sniffed. She’d meant well, of course.

“Puss, puss, puss!”

It would be warm at home. She’d set the teapot on the back of the stove and fixed Tommy’s chicken on a blue willow plate. She’d been careful to remove all the bones. A cat might choke on a chicken bone. They knew how to make themselves cosy, she and Tommy.

She did wish they were both there right now, she in her comfortable chair by the fire and Tommy purring on her lap. It was no night for an old woman and a middle-aged cat to be prowling the streets.

“Puss, puss—oh!”

A figure loomed out of the mist, directly beside her. She had not heard footsteps.

“You’d best be getting home, Ma,” boomed a not unfriendly male voice. “This is no place for a woman alone. Not with a mad strangler about.”

“I know,” she quavered, “but my cat slipped his collar and ran off. I daren’t leave him out, in this neighborhood. There’s no telling what might happen to him.”

“A cat’s got nine lives. You’ve only one. He’ll find his way back all right, don’t you fret. They always do. Get on with you, now. You’re not safe here. Nobody is.”

There was an edge of panic in the man’s gruff voice as he tramped on past her over the cobblestones. He was much taller than she. Mrs. Quinter had to stand on tiptoe to fling the lead around his neck.

It was too bad he had to be the one this time. He had seemed a pleasant sort of man. But it cost so much to keep a cat properly fed these days. Her mended gloves fumbled awkwardly at his wallet. Twelve pounds. Excellent. That would take care of her and Tommy for weeks to come. She tucked the money inside her glove and replaced the wallet neatly in the dead man’s pocket.

“Puss, puss, puss!”

She was almost home before the familiar, sinuous form pounced out of nowhere to wind its purring length around her weary legs.

“Tommy, you naughty cat,” she cried. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Come home this instant and get your supper.”

She snapped the collar under his jowls and took a turn of the lead around her glove. Miss Johnson, peering out from behind her curtain, saw the light go up in the entry across the way.

“Well, she’s found him at last.”

“And lucky she didn’t find more than him,” said Miss McGuffy. “A night like this, it isn’t safe to be out.”

A MORE OR LESS
searing tale of illicit passion, diplomatically couched so as to offend hardly anybody. Unveiled in
Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine,
September 1965.

“We’d be doing him a kindness, really,” said Gerald. “You do see that, Eleanor?”

Lady Patterly ran one exquisite hand idly through the thick, fair hair of her husband’s steward. “I’d be doing myself one. That’s all that matters.”

Born beautiful, spoiled rotten as a child, married at twenty-one to the best catch in England, wife at twenty-three to a helpless paralytic, bored to desperation at twenty-four; that, in a nutshell, was Eleanor, Lady Patterly. When old Ponsonby had retired and her husband’s close friend Gerald had come to manage the Patterly estates, Eleanor had lost no time in starting an affair with him. Discreetly, of course. She cared nothing for the world, but she was vain enough to care greatly for the world’s opinion of her.

Gerald had been only too willing. As handsome as Eleanor was lovely, he had the same total lack of scruple, the same cold intelligence, the same passionate devotion to his own interests. He took the greatest care of his old friend Roger Patterly’s property because he soon realized that with Eleanor’s help he could easily make it his own. It was Gerald who suggested the murder.

“The killing part is the easiest. A pillow over his face, a switch of medicines, nothing to it. The big thing is not getting caught. We must make sure nobody ever suspects it wasn’t a natural death. We’ll take our time, prepare the groundwork, wait for exactly the right moment. And then, my love, it’s all ours.”

Lady Patterly gazed around the drawing room with its priceless furnishings, through the satin-draped windows to the impeccably tended formal gardens. “I shall be so glad to get out of this prison. We’ll travel, Gerald. Paris, Greece, Hong Kong. I’ve always had a fancy to see Hong Kong.”

They would do nothing of the kind. Gerald was too careful a steward not to stay and guard what would be his. He only smiled and replied, “Whatever you want, my sweet.”

“It will be just too marvelous,” sighed the invalid’s wife. “How shall we go about it?”

“Not we, darling. You.”

After all, it would be Eleanor, not he, who would inherit. Unless he married her afterwards, he hadn’t the ghost of a claim. And suppose she changed her mind? But she wouldn’t. With the hold of murder over her she could be handled nicely. If he were fool enough to do the job himself … Gerald was no fool.

“I shall continue to be the faithful steward. And you, my dear, will be the dutiful wife. A great deal more dutiful than you’ve been up to now.”

Lady Patterly inspected her perfect fingernails, frowning. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to start showing some attention to your husband. Don’t overdo it. Build it up gradually. You might begin by strolling into Roger’s room and asking him how he’s feeling.”

“But I do, every morning and evening.”

“Then do it again, right now. And stay for more than two minutes this time.”

“Oh, very well. But it’s so depressing.”

“It’s not all jam for old Roger either, you know.”

“How sententious of you, darling. Shall I hold his hand, or what?”

“Why don’t you read to him?”

“He loathes being read to.”

“Read to him anyway. It will look well in front of the nurse. That’s our objective, Eleanor, to create the impression of devotion among the attendants. You must be able to act the bereft widow convincingly when we … lose him.”

His mistress shrugged and turned toward the stairs.

“Oh, and Eleanor,” Gerald lowered his voice yet another pitch. “We’d better postpone any further meetings until it’s over. We mustn’t take any risk whatever. And don’t be surprised if I start a flirtation with one of the village belles.”

She arched one delicately pencilled eyebrow. “Have you picked out anybody special?”

“One will do as well as another. Protective camouflage, you know. It’s only for a few weeks, darling.” He turned the full force of his dazzling smile on her, and went out.

Eleanor stood for a moment looking after him. It was hard on Roger, of course. Still, she had her own future to think of. Her husband had offered her a divorce as soon as the doctors had told him the sports car smashup had left him paralyzed for life. Naturally she had refused. It wouldn’t have looked well, and besides, the settlement he’d offered was not her idea of adequate support.

No, she would have it all. She and Gerald. It was clever of Gerald to have found the way. She arranged her features in exactly the right expression of calm compassion and went to visit her husband.

Day by day she increased the length of time she spent in the sickroom. It was less tedious than she had anticipated. For one thing, Roger was so glad to have her there. She took to bringing him little surprises: some flowers, a few sun-warmed strawberries from the garden. She had the gramophone brought into his room and played the records they had danced to before they were married. Nurse Wilkes beamed. Marble the valet scowled distrustfully.

Eleanor found herself looking forward to her visits, planning the next day’s surprise, thinking of new ways to entertain the invalid. The weeks went by and Gerald began to fidget.

“I say, don’t you think we ought to be getting on with it?”

“You said we mustn’t rush things.” And she went past him into Roger’s room, carrying a charming arrangement of varicolored roses she’d got up early to pick with the dew on them.

As had become her habit, she took up the book she was reading aloud to him and opened it to her bookmark. Her eye, now attuned to Roger’s every expression, caught a tightening of the muscles around his mouth. She put the book down.

“You hate being read to, don’t you, Roger?”

“It’s just that it makes me feel so utterly helpless.”

“But you’re not. There’s nothing the matter with your eyes. From now on, you’ll read to yourself.”

“How can I? I can’t hold the book, I can’t turn the pages.”

“Of course you can. We’ll just sit you up, like this—” Eleanor slid one arm around her husband and pulled him up. “Nurse, let’s have that backrest thing. There, how’s that?”

She plumped a pillow more comfortably. “Now we’ll prop the book up on the bed table, like this, and lift your arm, like this, and slip the page between your fingers so that you can hold it yourself.” A pinching between the right thumb and forefinger was the only movement Lord Patterly could make. “And when you’ve finished with that page, we just turn it over. Like this. See, you’ve managed it beautifully.”

“So I have.” He looked down at his hand as though it were something miraculous. “That’s the first thing I’ve done for myself since … it happened.”

For the next half-hour, Roger read to himself. Eleanor sat at his side, patiently moving his hand when he signalled that he was ready, helping to slide the next page into his grasp. She found the monotonous task strangely agreeable. For the first time in her life, she was being of use to somebody else. When Marble brought in the patient’s lunch and Nurse Wilkes came forward to feed it to him, she waved the woman away.