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:
“Surely you’re not serious!”
“It’s a serious accusation. I didn’t come here to be amusing.”
“You must realize that Nettie is addicted to fantasy. I was about to say that she is an incorrigible liar, but let’s be charitable.”
“Do you deny the accusation?”
“Categorically. Why in the devil should I commit such a fantastic idiocy? Think a moment. If I had given her a live bullet with which to kill Cory, saying it was a blank, I should have certainly anticipated her spilling the beans when Cory was dead. One can’t sustain a deception like that.”
“One can’t, indeed. But one can deny it.”
“I see. It then becomes simply my word against hers. I’ve always known that Nettie was a clever little devil, but I seem to have underestimated the depth of her malice. I believe I’d better have a drink.” He stood up and went to a liquor cabinet, where he splashed whiskey into glass, drinking it neat before turning. “Excuse me. I confess that I’m a bit disturbed. However, the accusation won’t wash. Why should I want to kill Cory Singer, by contrivance or directly or any way whatever?”
“Because he happened to be Stella Singer’s husband.”
Brander turned again to the liquor cabinet. This time he added water to his whiskey and carried the glass back to his chair. Underhill, watching him, thought that his assurance had slipped a little. That was no indication of anything, however. Innocence, falsely charged, is apt to be more nervous than guilt charged truly.
“So that’s the way of it,” Brander said. “Well, I won’t deny that I’m in love with Stella. I’ve told her so, and I suppose that she has told you. Nettie’s also in on the secret, I believe. She’s an accomplished spy, you know, as well as a liar, and I’ve been indiscreet a time or two.”
“Are you confirming a motive?”
“No, no. Nothing of the sort. There was no motive. Frankly, the marriage of Stella and Cory wasn’t working out. He would have been eliminated in a short while without the drastic expedient of murder. I’m quite certain of that.”
“Is Nettie Singer familiar with firearms?”
“I believe she’s done some shooting under supervision.” Brander’s eyes widened, narrowing again as he looked intently at Underhill. “Enough, I’m sure, to know the difference between a blank and a live bullet.”
“It’s a point. She claims, however, that she hardly looked at it. She merely slipped it into her pocket and from her pocket into the rifle. It’s possible. It’s even possible that she noticed the difference without its actually registering.”
“Do you seriously believe such an absurdity? Anyhow, it’s irrelevant. I gave her no bullet, blank or live. Her story is a lie. Incredibly ingenious, too, I concede. I seem to be highly qualified on several points as a victim.”
“Is that your position? Your word against hers?”
“What other position is there? Did you expect me to collaborate in my own destruction?”.
“No.” Underhill stood up abruptly and slapped his hat against his thigh. “There will be a hearing, of course. We will see then whose story is believed.” Turning, he walked to the door, where he stopped and turned back. “Let me warn you against over-confidence, Mr. Brander. I have a notion that Nettie will be a rather convincing witness.”
But Brander seemed to have recovered his assurance completely. Without answering, he lifted his glass and smiled.
The door was unlocked, and Stella, opening it silently, slipped inside and stood listening intently in the darkness. There was no sound, no sound at all, but the room itself, holding its breath, seemed to throb with a giant cadenced pulse. Moonlight slanted through an eastern window and sliced on the bias across the floor. Beyond the bright path, in the farther shadows, Nettie was lying and listening too, waiting, Stella knew, for Stella to speak.
“Nettie,” Stella said.
“Yes, Mother?”
“I must talk with you. Are you sleepy?”
“No, Mother. Come sit on my bed. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Stella walked to the bed across the moonlit path. She sat down, one hand clasping the other in her lap, but a third hand, small and warm as sundrenched earth, crept in between them and lay still.
“Nettie, where did you get the bullet?”
“I told you, Mother. Gavin gave it to me.”
“Are you sure? You must be very sure, Nettie. If the police believe that, Gavin will be arrested for murder.”
“If they don’t, will I be arrested? Will they take me away from you?”
“I don’t know. I would try to protect you.”
“Don’t worry, Mother. They’ll believe me, because it’s the truth. Gavin gave me the bullet. He said it was a blank, but it wasn’t. He said he wanted to help me frighten Cory, but he really wanted me to kill him. Will you miss Gavin, Mother, when he is gone?”
“Never mind,” she said. “He is gone already.”
She lifted her eyes to the moonlit pane. Between her cold hands, the warm hand stirred. She was silent. Having come to terms with an intimate and terrible world for two, she had nothing left to say.
One Enchanted Evening
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, June 1965.
It was almost five o’clock when Ella came out of the theater. Because it was the kind of evening that it was, and because there was no hurry, and because Luke had the car, as usual, she decided to walk the sixteen blocks home. It was such a perfectly natural decision, made with hardly a second thought, that she didn’t for an instant suspect its momentous character or anticipate its consequences. To be exact, it was not really the decision to walk home that could be blamed, if any blame could be attached, for what later happened. It was the decision, impetuous and extravagant, to buy the little music box.
The music box was in the window of a sad and dusty shop of odds and ends, that was tucked tightly between two domineering buildings on the last block of the business district, just before the beginning of homes and grass and trees. She stopped in front of the window and stared at the music box. She had the strangest and most intense desire to possess it. It was a cheap little box, really, but it seemed to have, somehow, a quality of endearing pathos that may have been an effect of the evening, or her response to the evening’s spell. The lid was open and a tiny ballerina had risen from within, and now stood poised on the toes of one foot, on the point of a slender pin. The box was unwound, of course, but it was apparent that it would begin to play, when wound up, just as soon as the lid was opened, and the tiny ballerina would begin to pirouette in time with the tune.
What tune would the box play? The moment she began to wonder, as if the question had been whispered into her ear, Ella understood that it was imperative to know, that the whole evening would be spoiled if she did not. After the briefest hesitation, she entered the shop under a tinkling bell and stood near the window. An elderly man, almost elfin in his diminutive frailty, emerged from the shadows at the rear. His skin seemed translucent, glowing with an inner light, and his hands made a silken sound when he rubbed them together.
“Good evening,” he said. “May I help you?”
“I was attracted by the little music box in the window,” Ella replied.
“Yes.” The man reached into the window and lifted the box tenderly in his thin hands. “A charming thing, isn’t it? It’s designed to hold costume jewelry. The ballerina dances to the music.”
He held the box out, tendering it to her, and she, in the act of reaching for it, held her hands suspended, not touching it, fixed by the sudden fear that it would, if touched, disintegrate into smoke or crumble into dust. It was absurd, of course, another strange effect of the evening, or the promise of the evening, and she felt a spasm of laughter stirring silently in her throat, which she quelled.