The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!
- Автор: Флора Флетчер
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 978-1479436668
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!». Краткое содержание книги:
Dennis looked at me bitterly. “I hope to hell it isn’t you and I,” he said bitterly.
“Does that mean you agree to do it?”
“I suppose so. I can see that Sherry is all for it.”
“I am,” Sherry said. “I surely am. Sherm, this last part is absolute genius. Although I was inclined at one time to exaggerate your virtues, I see now that in certain respects I didn’t give you the credit you deserved. In this matter, I can think of only one thing you neglected to do which is rather disappointing.”
“Yes? What’s that?”
“You should have used sherry instead of port.”
“Oh. Sherry for Sherry. I did miss a nice touch there, didn’t I? I’m afraid, however, that it’s too late now to change.”
“Yes. Disappointing as it is, we’ll have to go along with port.”
“Wait a minute,” Dennis said. “Do you know which bottle has the poison?”
“No,” I said. “The bottles are identical, and I messed them around with my eyes closed. At any rate, you and Sherry may choose the bottles you want, and I’ll take the one that’s left. Is that acceptable?”
“It’s perfectly acceptable,” Sherry said, “and I don’t think it was quite nice of you, Dennis, to imply that Sherm might cheat in an affair of honor of this sort. I suggest now that we all have another martini and be compatible.”
We had the martinis compatibly, and afterward I went downtown to a hotel and took a room. In the room, after putting on a pair of pajamas I was willing to be caught dead in, I drank the port and lay down on the bed.
I was sitting at the bar drinking an ambrosia highball when Sherry came in. It was not the cocktail lounge of the Cafe Picardy by any means, but it was a pleasant place, and there was a talented and pretty girl who sat on a little dais and played pretty tunes on a concert harp. Sherry was certainly astonished to see me, and apparently uncertain whether to be happy or otherwise. Anyhow, she sat on a stool beside me.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she said.
“Hello, Sherry,” I said. “It’s odd that you should use that expression.”
“What expression?”
“On earth.”
“Oh.” She stared at me and frowned and tapped on the bar rapidly with the nail of the index finger of her right hand, which was a sign that she was angry. “Well, never mind being evasive with me, for I understand everything clearly now. Sherm, you so and so, you put poison in two of those little bottles, and then you contrived somehow to have them chosen by you and me, and it was nothing but a damn dirty trick to get me permanently away from Dennis. There is simply no limit to your duplicity.”
“You do me an injustice to accuse me of playing a dirty trick like that,” I said. “It’s true that things were not quite as I said, but I certainly didn’t discriminate against anyone. We all had exactly the same chance.”
“Explain yourself, if you don’t mind.”
“The truth is, I put poison in all three of the bottles.”
“In that case, where’s Dennis?”
“Yes, indeed,” I said. “Where is he?”
“I haven’t seen him around anywhere.”
“Neither have I. Nor will we. Not for a long time.”
“You mean he reneged? That after agreeing to participate, he didn’t drink his port at all?”
“That’s it.”
She kept on staring at me, but her index finger kept tapping slower and slower until it shortly stopped altogether, and I thought I could see in her eyes certain signs that we might be entering a heavenly era of madness, delirium, and irresistibility.
“Well,” she said, “I can see that I called the wrong man an old so and so.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “Would you care for an ambrosia highball?”
“I think I would,” she said. “I need it.”
Sounds and Smells
Originally published in Ed McBain’s Mystery Book #3 1961.
When Rector Goodhue got home that evening a few minutes after five o’clock, Charlie Treadwell was sitting on the front-porch steps of the house next door. It was all right for Charlie to be sitting there, for it was his house, but what impressed Rector was Charlie’s air of abstraction. He was sitting on the top step, hunched over his knees, and when Rector spoke and waved in a neighborly way, he didn’t respond by either voice or gesture. Rector went on into his house and back to the kitchen, where Gladys, his wife, was spooning strawberries over shortcake.
“What’s the matter with old Charlie Treadwell?” he said.
“Is something the matter with him?” Gladys said.
“Well, he’s sitting over there on his front steps, and he acts as if he were in a trance or something. He didn’t even answer when I spoke to him.”
“Maybe he’s had another fight with Fanny.”
“That Fanny’s a real witch. The truth is, she’s more than old Charlie can manage.”
“Oh, nuts. All he needs to manage her is a little more backbone. What he had better do about Fanny, if you want my opinion, is make her quit wearing those short shorts and tight dresses that ride up when she sits down. She’s far too sexy for her own good.”
“It’s true that men are always running after her. It makes old Charlie frantic.”
“It’s not men running after Fanny that makes Charlie frantic. It’s Fanny running after men.”
In Rector’s opinion it was really six of one and half a dozen of the other, but he did not wish to debate the issue, especially with Gladys, and so he said he guessed he’d go out and mow the back yard before supper, and Gladys said supper would be at six, which meant six thirty. Rector went into the bedroom and changed into the old clothes he wore working in the yard, and then he went out and started the power mower and mowed the grass neatly, and he was just finished with the back yard when Gladys came to the door and said supper was ready. They ate in the kitchen, baked ham and potato salad with the strawberry shortcake for dessert, and Gladys said over coffee that Sinatra was at the Paramount.
“To hell with Sinatra,” Rector said.
“What’s wrong with Sinatra?” Gladys said.
“For one thing, he’s getting bald.”
“So are you, in case you didn’t know it.”
“Just a little on top where it doesn’t show much. That Sinatra has to wear a toupee.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“It’s common knowledge.”
“I don’t care if he wears a toupee and a full plate besides. He makes me break out with prickly heat, and he’s playing at the Paramount, and I want to go see him.”
“Be my guest.”
“You mean you’ll actually go with me?”
“I mean I’ll pay your way and give you enough extra for a sack of popcorn.”
“Thanks. And what do you plan to do while I’m gone, or is it a secret?”
“Not at all. I’m going to mow the front yard, and afterward I’ll have a couple cans of cold beer and maybe watch television or just sit on the front steps and watch lightning bugs.”
“God, you’re exciting! Being married to you is just one long exciting experience! Don’t you ever worry about me running around alone at night?”
“Why don’t you take Fanny along? If she and old Charlie are sore at each other, it might relieve things to get them apart for a while.”
“Going with Fanny is better than going alone, I suppose. You run over while I’m dressing and ask her if she wants to go.”