Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 16 Skeletons From My Closet Part 2

The man in charge was my friend Detective-Lieutenant Louis Parker of Homicide. His experts quickly ascertained the cause of death as cyanide poisoning. The cherry in the drained c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s was thoroughly imbued with it. Simon Troy's fingerprints were on the stem of the gla.s.s. The other gla.s.s was free of poison. There were no fingerprints on its stem. Inspection revealed no vial or other container for poison in the apartment. After the body and the evidence were removed and Lieutenant Parker and I were alone, he said, "Well, what goes? What's the story on this? What are you doing here?"

"Do you believe in ghosts, Lieutenant?"

Cryptically he said, "Sometimes. Why? Are you going to tell me a ghost story?"

"I might at that," I said. I told him the entire story and I told him what I was doing in Simon Troy's apartment.

"Wow," he said. "Let's go talk to the little lady."

She was in her dressing room. She maintained that she had been in her dressing room, or out on the floor performing, all night. Her dressing room opened upon a corridor which led to a back exit directly on the street. Parker questioned all the employees in the place. None could disprove what Sylvia Troy had said. Then Parker took her to the station house and I accompanied them. There he questioned and cross-questioned her for hours, but she stoutly maintained that she had not left her dressing room except to go out on the floor and do her act. Policemen came and went and the questioning was frequently interrupted by whispered conferences. At length Parker threw his hands up. "Get out," he said to her. "Go home. And you better stay there so we know where we can reach you."

"Yes, sir," she said meekly and departed.

We were silent. Parker lit a cigar and I lit a cigarette. Finally I said, "Well, what do you think?"

"I think that little chick is pulling the con-game to end all con-games and we don't have a thing on which to hold her."

"How so, my friend?" I said.

"You know about those reciprocal wills, don't you?"

"Yes."

"The first one - Joseph's - is still in Probate. Now the second one goes into Probate. With these two brothers dead, that little dame stands to come into upwards of a hundred thousand dollars."

"So?"

"So we've got Joseph listed as suicide, but since no weapon was found, it could have been murder. Now this Simon could be suicide too, can't he? - except no vial, no container." He waved a hand. "Spirited away."

"The ghost?" I said mildly.

"The dame," he said. "She killed the two of them and concocted this ghost story as the craziest smoke-screen ever. And we don't have one iota of proof against her. But we're going to keep at it, baby; that I can a.s.sure you." Then he smiled, wearily. "Go home, boy. You look tired."

"How about you?" I said.

"Not me. I stay right here and work."

I got home at four o'clock, and as I opened my door, my phone was ringing. I ran to it and lifted the receiver. It was Sylvia Troy.

"Mr. Chambers!" she said. "Please! Mr. Chambers!" The terror in her voice put needles on my skin.

"What is it?" I said. "What's the matter?"

"He called me."

"Who?"

"Adam!"

"When?"

"Just now, just now. He said he was coming ... for me." The voice drifted off.

"Miss Troy!" I called. "Miss Troy!"

"Yes?" The voice was feeble.

"Can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"I want you to close all your windows and bolt them."

"I've already done that," she said in that peculiar childlike sing-song.

"And lock your door and bolt it."

"I've done that too."

"Now don't open your door to anyone except me. I'll ring and talk to you through the closed door so you'll know who it is. You'll recognize my voice?"

"Yes, Mr. Chambers. Yes, I will."

"Good. Now just stay put. I'll be there right away."

I hung up and I called Parker and I told him. "This is it," I said, "whatever it is. Bring plenty of men and plenty of artillery. We figure to shake loose a murderer. I'll meet you downstairs. You know the address?"

"Of course."

I hung up and ran.

Aside from Parker, there were three detectives and three uniformed policemen - one of whom was carrying a carbine. As we entered the hallway, the detectives and the two remaining policemen took their pistols from their holsters. At the door to 4 C, Parker motioned to me and I rang the bell.

A deep booming masculine voice responded.

"Yes? Who is it?"

"Peter Chambers. I want to talk with Miss Troy."

"She's not here," boomed the voice.

"That's a lie. I know she's in there."

"She doesn't want to talk to you."

"Who are you?"

"None of your business," boomed the voice. "Go away."

"Sorry. I'm not going, mister."

The deep voice took on a rasp of irritation. "Look, I've got a gun in my hand. If you don't get away, I'm going to shoot right through the door."

Parker pulled me aside and called through the door: "Open up! Police!"

"I don't care who you say you are," boomed the voice. "I'm warning you for the last time. Either you people get away or I shoot."

"And I'm warning you," called Parker. "Either you open the door or we shoot. I'm going to count to three. Unless you open up, we're going to shoot our way in. One!"

No answer.

"Two!"

Deep booming derisive laughter.

"Three!"

No sound.

Parker motioned to the policemen carrying the carbine and he ranged up. Parker raised his right hand, index finger pointed upward.

"Open up! Last call!"

No sound.

Parker pointed the finger at the policeman and nodded. A stream of bullets ripped through the door. There was a piercing scream, a thud, and silence. Parker made a sign to two of the detectives, burly men. They knew what to do. They hurled themselves at the door, shoulder to shoulder, in unison, time and again. The door creaked, creaked, gave, and then burst from its fastenings.

Sylvia Troy lay on the floor dead of the bullets from the carbine. There was no one else in the apartment. The door had been locked and bolted. The windows were closed and bolted from the inside. Inspection was quick, expert, and unequivocal, but, aside from the corpse of Sylvia Troy - and now, ourselves - there was no one else in the apartment.

Detective-Lieutenant Louis Parker came to me, his eyes belligerent but bewildered, his face angrily glistening beneath a veil of perspiration. His men, tall, thick-armed, strong-muscled, powerful, gathered like silent children, in a group about him. "What the h.e.l.l?" said the Detective-Lieutenant, the words issuing in a curious hoa.r.s.e whisper. "What do you think, Pete?"

I had to swallow before I could speak, but I clung to my premise. "I do not believe in ghosts," I said.

Perhaps I do not believe in ghosts because I refuse to believe in ghosts and my mind rejects the possibility and seeks other explanation. In the Troy affair such explanation, for me, involved death-wish, hallucination, guilt complex, retribution, self-punishment, and dual personality.

There are those who disagree with my conclusions.

You may be one of them.

Phobia has become an accepted term in this day of parlor-psychiatry. Yet, defined as an irrational fear, is it acceptable as a cause of death? On a death certificate, for example, would "Apiphobia" be acceptable to the coroner?

WHERE IS THY STING?.

BY JAMES HOLDING.

To say I was flabbergasted when I found out about Doris and that bachelor writer across the hall is putting it mildly.

Doris and I had been married four and a half years then, and I still couldn't believe my luck. She was medium tall, with high color in her face and jet black hair that had a s.h.i.+ne to it, and a lovely soft mouth that smiled easily and often. Her eyes were electric blue, and with that black hair of hers, they really looked terrific. And her figure was for happy dreams ... other guys' dreams. I had the girl herself. My wife, Doris.

So you can understand I was quite upset when I learned about her and Wilkins. If you really love your wife, as I do, and trust her, as I did, and she's just about the living end in beauty of face and figure, and you're sure she thinks the sun rises and sets on you, it's a definite kick in the teeth when you suddenly discover that while you're out of town covering your sales territory two weeks out of each month, your wife is playing house with the detective-story writer whose apartment is across the hall from yours. Especially, when he's a nothing-type guy like Wilkins was - tall, skinny, no visible means of support except a battered typewriter, and even beginning to lose his hair, for G.o.d's sake!

I'm no Adonis, understand, but on the worst day I ever lived, I'm a better man than Wilkins was. Believe me. That's why I was so burned when I found out that Doris whiled away her time during my absence with this Wilkins clown.

I made excuses for Doris, of course. I still loved her, despite her expeditions to the other side of the hall where the gra.s.s looked greener. A girl as beautiful as Doris, I told myself, as full of life and crazy for fun, naturally becomes a target for the wolfishness of every predatory male within a six-mile radius. And she's understandably lonesome while I'm away. Poor Doris.

I could make allowances for her. But not for that rejection-slip Casanova across the hall. No, sir. Him I was going to fix, and fix right.

But not in hot blood, Jim, I warned myself. Wait until you're calmer. Wait till you can cream him without any chance of being tagged for the job. Otherwise, what will it get you? Nothing but an overcharge of electricity from the state. I'd be dead, and Wilkins would be dead, and Doris would be left all by her lonesome.

So I didn't let on to Doris that I knew a thing about her and Wilkins. I behaved just as usual, and so did she, the clever little actress. And when I ran across Wilkins at the mailboxes in the apartment house lobby, or in the elevator, or dumping trash into the communal incinerator at the end of our third floor corridor, I nodded and smiled in neighborly fas.h.i.+on and he doubtless thought me a very pleasant fellow, as well as a blind fool.

That was all right with me; I just kept my own counsel and watched Wilkins at every opportunity. I was confident that if I had patience enough, and was smart enough, I'd find the proper way to fix his wagon and still appear as innocent of fixing anything as the average garage mechanic.

This went on for several months. And sure enough, early in August, when the weather was pure hot h.e.l.l outdoors and I was coming home from the public golf course one Sat.u.r.day after a morning round, I found the handle I was looking for.

I pulled up to park before our apartment house, and when I'd got my car nuzzled into the curb the way I wanted it, I looked through the winds.h.i.+eld and there was Wilkins, getting out of his secondhand jalopy three cars ahead of me, with a big paper sack of groceries in his arms.

He nudged his car door shut with an elbow and started up the drive to the apartment entrance, carrying the bag. As he approached the bed of zinnias and snapdragons that bordered the drive on his left, he suddenly s.h.i.+ed like a startled horse and stopped in his tracks. After a momentary hesitation, he began to make a wide circle to his right around the bed of flowers to get to the apartment entrance, clutching the groceries tightly and looking with terrified eyes toward the flowers. And just then, a bee that had been prowling around the flowerbed left his work and buzzed toward Wilkins to investigate him. I could see the bee's wings winking in the sunlight. And that's when Wilkins really flipped.

He'd been watching that bee all along, I guess. And when he saw it coming over to say h.e.l.lo to him as he went by, he came all apart at the seams in one shattering instant. You'd have thought all the fiends in creation were after him, instead of a harmless little honeybee. He yelled something in a strangled voice, dropped his paper sack of groceries on the concrete drive with a grand splash of breaking milk-bottles, and took to his heels like an hysterical woman frightened by a mad dog.

He swung his arms around him desperately in shooing motions as he ran; he rolled his eyes over his shoulder at the bee to gauge its flight; he fled up the drive in a galvanic tangle of arms and lanky legs and didn't pause until he shot through the apartment entrance and slammed the door shut behind him.

I sat in my car and watched the whole bit. What a jerk, was my first thought, what a colossal, all-American jerk for my wife to fall for - a grown man that's scared of honeybees! And then my second thought came along and slapped me and I knew that this was it, this was what I needed to know about Wilkins.

For no sane adult is as scared of bees as Wilkins seemed to be - not without good and sufficient reasons. It just didn't figure.

I've mentioned that I'm a traveling salesman. But did I tell you what I sell? I guess not. Pharmaceuticals. I travel for one of the big midwestern pharmaceutical houses. And although I'm no M.D., I knew enough medical jazz to dope out Wilkins so he did figure.

And I had a nice warm feeling of satisfaction, right away.

I was leaving for my regular August swing around the territory the next day. I'd be gone two weeks, as usual. I looked deep into Doris' wonderful sapphire-colored eyes when I kissed her good-by, and I held her close with more than my usual affection when I left her.

I tended strictly to business for the next ten days, though it was a hard thing to do. I kept remembering that while I was away, that mouse of mine was probably playing like mad with that cat across the hall. But this is the last time, Jim, I told myself. Consolingly.

On the tenth day, I turned aside from my regular route and drove fifty miles out of my way to a little hick town in the northern part of the state. I wandered into the sleepy, half sporting goods, half hardware store there, and bought a dusty b.u.t.terfly net from a clerk who was either on dope or mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded, I couldn't tell which. I was pretty sure of one thing, though: he'd never remember me or what I bought from him.