Fletcher Flora - The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™ - 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!

She took the lovely vase from the mantel and set it on the table beside the package. Her annoyance dissolved in a feeling of delicious companionship. Opening the package, she began to pour its contents into the vase.

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , August 1966.

In the yellow pages, Gaspar Vane was listed simply as a private investigator, leaving it up to any prospective client to discover for himself the precise nature of investigations undertaken. As a matter of fact, almost any kind that promised a fee was acceptable, but as things worked out, most of them were associated with the more sordid aspects of divorce. He was prepared to gather the evidence of grounds where grounds existed, and he was, for a premium, prepared to create it where it did not. He was not, in brief, a man to permit professional ethics to handicap his operations.

Gaspar suffered from baldness, which is a perfectly normal hazard of maturity, and he was fat. Altogether, considering a pocked face, loose lips, and ferrety little eyes, he was a physical composition of exceptional ugliness. What was not immediately apparent was the poetic range of his imagination. He spent much of his time in a private world in which miracles happened to Gaspar Vane, and it was this happy facility for fantasy that kept him in the practice of his rather unsavory trade.

In spite of the liberal policies that made it possible for him to take any kind of work that was offered, Gaspar’s practice did not flourish. He frequently had difficulty in paying the rent and satisfying his creature needs. He had no payroll to meet, having no employees. However, he did have an answering service that was essential to the little practice that he had, and he was forced at times into devious maneuvers to scratch up even the little that it cost. But he was stuck to his last, as the old saying goes, by a tenacious dream. He existed in the hope of a lode of luck. There would surely be one client who would turn out to be a jackpot.

He did not dream, however, when Hershell Fitch climbed the creaky stairs to his dingy office, that the jackpot was at hand. Hershell was a faded, depleted little man who had bleached to virtual anonymity in the shadow of a domineering wife, and it was under the orders of this wife, it developed, that he was seeking the services of Gaspar Vane. Anyhow, Hershell did not look like a jackpot, and he wasn’t one. The jackpot was Rudolph La Roche, and it was merely Hershell’s coincidental function to reveal him. Gaspar acknowledged Hershell’s introduction with a flabby smile and a greasy handshake.

“Sit down, Mr. Fitch,” Gaspar said. “How can I help you?”

Hershell sat in the one client’s chair and balanced his felt hat carefully on his knees.

“It isn’t exactly I,” Hershell said. “It’s actually my wife. I mean, it’s my wife who sent me here to see you.”

“In that case, how can I help your wife?”

“Well, we have these neighbors. La Roche is their name. Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph La Roche. It’s Mr. La Roche’s activities that she wants investigated.”

“Ah! That’s different. Quite different.” Gaspar leaned back and dry-washed his fat hands. “You suspect Mr. La Roche of something illicit?”

“Perhaps I’d better tell you about it.”

“I was about to suggest it.”

“Well, it’s this way.” Hershell’s fingers fiddled nervously with his hat, while he attempted to gather his harried thoughts. “The La Roches moved in next door nearly three years ago. Immediately they adopted this peculiar routine, and they’ve been in it ever since.”

“Routine? What’s peculiar about a routine? Most married people have a routine.”

“It’s not only the routine. It’s mostly that they act so mysterious about it. In the beginning, when Mrs. Fitch and Mrs. La Roche were on amiable terms, my wife tried to find out where Mr. La Roche went and what he did, but Mrs. La Roche was evasive. Finally she was quite rude about it. That, I think, was the beginning of the bad feeling.”

“Went? Did?” Gaspar’s confusion was apparent in his voice. “Mr. Fitch, if you want my help, you must be more explicit.”

“I’m trying to. The point is, you see, Mr. La Roche operates a small barber shop. As owner, he works the first chair. There is one other chair that is worked by a hired barber. I must say that the La Roches live in a much higher fashion than one would expect from the income from such a small shop, especially when Mr. La Roche is never there himself on Saturdays.

“Where,” said Gaspar, “is Mr. La Roche on Saturdays?”

“That’s the main point. That’s what I’m coming to. We don’t know, and we can’t find out. Every Friday night, about six o’clock, Mr. La Roche leaves home in his automobile. He always carries a medium size bag, and he always leaves alone. Sunday night, between nine and ten, he returns. The schedule varies only slightly from week to week. The general routine never varies at all. Don’t you agree that it’s peculiar?”

“Not necessarily. Just because the La Roches decline to discuss their private affairs, it doesn’t mean they’re up to anything shady. Maybe Mr. La Roche has other business elsewhere on weekends that is more profitable than working the first chair in his barber shop.”

“Exactly. What kind of business? After all, Saturday is the busiest day of the week in most barber shops.”

“Mr. Fitch, let us come directly to the crux. Do you want to hire me to find out where Mr. La Roche goes and what he does?”

“It’s my wife, really. She’s the one who’s got her mind set.”

“No matter. It comes to the same thing. Are you prepared to pay my fee even though my report may be disappointing to you? I mean to say, even though Mr. La Roche’s activities may be perfectly innocent?”

“Yes, of course. My wife and I have discussed the possibility, and we’ve decided that it’s a risk we must take.”

“Good. In the meanwhile, there will be certain expenses. Shall we estimate a hundred dollars?”

“A hundred dollars! My wife and I thought fifty would be ample.”

“Well, let’s not quibble. If my expenses are more than fifty, I’ll simply add them to my fee. If you will give me the cash or your personal check...”

Hershell had a personal check already made out in the proper amount. He extracted it from a worn wallet and handed it across the desk. It was signed, Gaspar noted, by Mrs. Fitch. Her Christian name was Gabriella.

Friday afternoon, Gaspar threw an extra shirt and a pair of socks into a worn bag, threw the bag into the rear seat of his worn car and drove to the address he had extracted from Hershell in a final settlement of details. He had been there earlier in the week in a preliminary excursion designed to get the lay of the land, and now he drove past the La Roche house, a modest brick one across the hedge from the Fitches’ modest frame one, and on down the block and around the corner. Turning his car around so that he would be in position to fall in behind La Roche when the latter passed the intersection, he settled himself behind the wheel to wait. It was then a quarter to six. He had ascertained from Hershell, of course, the direction in which La Roche took off. He had already observed La Roche’s car, a black late model, and had unobtrusively taken down the license number. In the course of his careful preliminaries, he had even inspected La Roche himself in his two-chair barber shop.

On schedule, the black car passed the intersection shortly after six. Gaspar wheeled in behind and followed at a discreet distance. La Roche made his way across town, avoiding the congested trafficways, and turned onto the entrance to a turnpike and stopped obediently at the tollgate. He accepted his ticket, properly punched, and was immediately off again, while Gaspar was forced to wait for what seemed an interminable time until his own ticket was delivered. Meanwhile, he watched the other car uneasily and saw that it took the ramp which would send it onto the turnpike eastbound. He was soon nicely spaced behind La Roche’s car, and it was apparent that the pace was going to be a judicious sixty-five.