Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007
- Автор: Baldwin Barry, Campbell Melodie
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN:0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
“Positive, positive, positive!”
A half hour later, the limo was whisking Hatcher and his autographed photo of Marnie back to the studio, and she and I were relaxing against my Jag, alone except for park creatures noisily scavenging in the hillside brush, exploring the truth of what had occurred today.
“The trick with Mr. Hatcher, I can’t thank you enough for that, Mr. Gulliver. I think it’s enough to satisfy Auntie Laura she doesn’t have a stalker to worry about anymore.”
“There is no stalker, is there?” I said.
“Yes, there is — in Auntie Laura’s mind. Back to haunt her forty years later. Before that, she was getting daily calls from her agent, Meyer Mishkin, about a costarring role he said she was perfect for, with Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin in a Budd Boetticher film coming up at Universal.”
“All of them long dead and gone.”
“Not to Auntie Laura... The stalker made his first call soon after Meyer Mishkin called saying Gail Russell had been cast in the role and she sank into a deep depression, spent days in bed, bemoaning that Gail Russell has a bigger drinking problem than she ever had, so what was that all about?”
“It must be tough on you, Marnie.”
“The half of it.”
“The cough, her weight loss — the other half?”
Marnie stared into the darkness. “She’s my auntie, Mr. Gulliver. I’d still be Marnie Who? not Marnie Nichols, if not for Laura Dane.” She twisted around and pressed herself against me in a hug to end all hugs. Plastered my lips with a kiss that set my mouth on fire and was over far too soon. She whispered, “Thank you for recognizing her condition early on and playing along anyway,” then hurried back inside the house.
I heard from Marnie again three days later, shortly before six in the morning.
She called to tell me Laura was dead.
Murdered.
Smothered to death with one of her bed pillows.
Her voice drained of emotion, Marnie described how she was awakened around four A.M. by strange noises coming from Laura’s room and charged over. It was too late to help her auntie, but she saw the killer’s face when he tossed the pillow away, shoved her aside, and fled.
“It was Clifton Hatcher,” she said. “Clifton Hatcher in that stupid makeup, the handlebar mustache and all the rest. Almost like he wanted me to know it was him.”
“Did you report this to the police?”
“They’re here now. Yes. Detectives are on their way over to the studio, the Two Guys from Surrey set, but they figure it’s unlikely he’ll show up, seeing as how I recognized him and all.”
“In makeup again. We never got a look at his real puss.”
“No, but the detectives said they’d know soon enough, if they had to, through the casting director or his agent. That there has to be his photo around somewhere.”
There wasn’t.
By midafternoon, the detectives had determined that everything about Clifton Hatcher was fake, not only the mustache. He wasn’t in the Brynie Foy movie. He’d used it to angle his way onto the lot. The Screen Actors Guild had no member named “Clifton Hatcher.” AFTRA records came up with a member who used that name professionally and gave an address and a phone number in Studio City for a private mailbox service that went out of business four years ago.
His real name was Elrod Stump, Jr.
He’s still out there somewhere, Elrod Stump, Jr., under some name, some face I wouldn’t recognize. Were I to stumble across him, Elrod Stump, Jr., would doubtless be surprised by what I’d have to say to him, words he’d probably least expect to hear out of my mouth: Thank you.
Before he murdered Laura Dane, she was another of those half forgotten stars who retreat into the past, a prisoner of memory until their minds fail them, then their bodies. They get a final, brief review on the obituary page, sometimes accompanied by a photograph of the star that was, not the relic they became.
By killing Laura, Elrod Stump, Jr., restored her to stardom. He gave her the leading role in a murder mystery that remains unsolved to this day. He put her name and her photograph on page one of newspapers throughout the world. He turned her into another of the enduring icons in an exclusive club, the Stars of Scandal, whose members live in perpetuity in books, magazine articles, and films.
He took Laura Dane’s life and gave her legend.
Who could ever ask for more than that?
Certainly not Laura, who lived to be remembered.
German Johnson and the Lost Horizon
by L. A. Wilson, Jr
THE ETHIOPIAN COASTAL PLAINS, JUNE 13, 1940
A British doctor who had just dropped from the sky walked through a field hospital a few kilometers inland from the Ethiopian coast. He averted his eyes from the anguish-filled gazes of the sick and dying. The long open ward of the hospital tent was saturated with the odors of diseased and dying flesh. The doctor had to do his job quickly. The hospital was an international humanitarian effort, but the Italian invaders remained suspicious and only reluctantly tolerated its presence. As a citizen of a hostile Allied government, he would be shot as a spy if discovered.
At the end of the ward Adonis Abebe lay on a pallet. Abebe’s face was covered by a thick layer of gauze wrapped around his head, giving him the appearance of a mummy. A woman completely covered in black robes sat on the floor beside him, fanning constantly to ameliorate the sweltering temperature as well as to discourage the flies.
The doctor spoke softly to the man as he began to cut away the bandages.
“Do you remember what happened to you?”
His associate translated the question, and Abebe responded painfully with a barely audible whisper.
“Uh... something... I didn’t understand all of it,” the translator said. “He followed something into the desert. It disappeared over a dune.”
The outer layer of dry gauze was cut away revealing an ointment saturated dressing that had been applied directly to the skin.
“What was it?” the doctor asked. “How did this happen to you?”
Abebe responded with a hoarse and weakened voice. He summoned all of his strength in his effort to speak. The doctor’s associate leaned close to him while meticulously avoiding direct contact.
“He says that he remembers light. I think he’s confused,” the translator said.
The doctor removed the final dressing and frowned as if repulsed by what he saw.
Abebe’s face was a bloody bed of ulcers and blisters. His left eye was swollen shut, and the pupil of the right eye was opacified and gray.
“What did you see?” the doctor asked more forcefully. “What did you see?”
Abebe managed hoarse gurgles through fissured lips. The doctor nodded unconsciously at him, although it was obvious that Abebe couldn’t see.
“I... I couldn’t hear that,” his associate said.
The doctor took a syringe from his bag and slowly injected morphine into a vein in Abebe’s forearm.
“Is there anything I can do for you, old friend?” the doctor asked.
Abebe shook his head no in response to the translated question.
The doctor patted his shoulder gently before walking away. He knew Abebe would not recover, and he had done the only humane thing that he could do. Abebe would be dead before he reached the far end of the ward.
Outside the hospital a familiar figure wearing a quasi-military uniform without rank insignias awaited him.
“What did he say?” the man asked.
The doctor shook his head, indicating a lack of information.