Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

“Well, you poor kid.” Dr. Prince looked around. “Where is your uncle sitting?”

“Uncle didn’t come with me. He said he was too busy.”

“You mean you’re traveling by yourself? A little girl like you?” He knew that children sometimes were handed over to the care of stewardesses, but to his conventional thinking it seemed a strange way of life.

Suzy nodded. “Uncle put me on the airplane and went home to get drunk.”

Before Dr. Prince had a chance to respond, a stewardess who had been watching came toward them.

“Is the little girl being a bother?” she asked. “I said I’d try to keep her amused, but we’ve been kind of rushed today. But if you’re busy—” She nodded toward the manuscript on the table in front of him.

“Oh, no, it’s all right,” Dr. Prince said.

The stewardess smiled, patted Suzy’s head and went away.

“Who is going to meet you in Boston?” Dr. Prince asked.

“Uncle said his brother will take me home to stay at a mansion and give me a maid all for myself, and I can go out on a big yacht whenever I want. But I don’t believe him. I don’t think anyone is going to meet me at all.”

“Oh, come, Suzy! Of course someone will meet you. Your uncle wouldn’t say so if it weren’t true.”

“Yes, he would. Uncle Lucifer wants me to get lost and die, because he wants my money. When Uncle gets drunk he always says, ‘I hope you die, you little brat, and then I’ll get your money.’ ”

The information was coming too fast. “Lucifer?” said Dr. Prince. “His name isn’t really Lucifer, is it? What do you mean, he wants your money?”

“Of course his name is really Lucifer! Uncle says there’s always been a Lucifer in the family. Daddy left tons of money for me, but I can’t have it until I’m eighteen, and Uncle can only spend little bits of it to take care of me, so he wants me to die and he will get it.”

Dr. Prince looked speculatively at the little girl. How much of this was fantasy? She did seem an imaginative sort. On the other hand, of course, there certainly were people like the uncle that Suzy was describing. Dr. Prince made a mental note to watch and make sure someone did meet Suzy in Boston. Meanwhile, of course, there was his manuscript, which was being sadly neglected. He turned back to it and picked up a page, hoping Suzy would take the hint.

“I wish I had my teddy bear,” said Suzy, sighing.

Dr. Prince thought he saw an opportunity. “Why don’t you go back and sit with Teddy for a while, then?” he said. “I think they’re going to serve dinner now, and you ought to be with Teddy when you’re having dinner.”

“His name isn’t Teddy, it’s Smoky, and he didn’t come with me. He was in the suitcase but Uncle Lucifer took him out and put in a box of candy instead, because he said there isn’t any candy in Boston.”

“That was a foolish thing to say. There’s all sorts of candy in Boston, even some famous candies...”

Suzy nodded. “Uncle lies to me all the time. Anyway, it isn’t all candy, I know. There’s a clock.”

“A clock?”

Suzy nodded again. “I heard it going ‘tick, tick’ in the box when Uncle went out of the room for a minute, and I told him I heard it, but he just said, ‘Shut up, you little brat!’ and locked the suitcase.”

Dr. Prince felt a prickling at the back of his neck, and it seemed to him his forehead had suddenly become moist. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at it.

“Listen to me, Suzy,” he said. “Where is the suitcase now? Is it back at your seat?”

Suzy shook her pigtails. “Uncle gave it to a man at the airport and the man put a little tag with my ticket and said I could get the suitcase with it when I got to Boston.”

The public address system of the airliner came on with a sharp click. “This is your captain speaking,” said a confident, pleasant voice. “We have leveled off at our cruising altitude of thirty-six thousand feet. We have a good tail wind, and our ground speed is six hundred and—”

Dr. Prince cast a furtive glance around the plane. All these innocent people! he thought. How could anyone be so utterly unscrupulous! Fighting panic, he thought incongruously of his precious manuscript, saw, in his mind’s eye, the pages gliding and fluttering down, like autumn leaves, toward faraway earth.

Pull yourself together, you fool, he thought. With luck, you’ve found this out in time. There must be an airport we can get down to in a hurry.

He saw a stewardess in the service area, ten rows or so ahead, and he scrambled over Suzy and started up the aisle toward her. Then, turning back, he grasped the child’s hand and pulled her along with him. Better to have her there to repeat the story.

As they reached the service area, Suzy pulled her hand out of his grasp abruptly and went to sit down in a seat just ahead, in a rear row of the first-class section.

“I guess I’ll stay here a while,” she announced.

The frightened professor hurried toward her and tried to take her hand again, but the child pulled away and shrank toward the woman in the seat beside her. It was the Hollywood actress.

“Dammit, Suzy, honey!” said the woman, putting her manuscript down with a gesture of exasperation. “Where in hell is that stewardess who was going to keep your busy little mind occupied for a while? I told you all about my new movie, Uncle Lucifer. Now can’t you leave Mummy alone for a minute to study the script?”

Except for the witches in the closet, Catharine was the wife John had thought she would be. She was companionable and neat, she played an expert hand of bridge, and she was really interested in cooking. She liked, or pretended to like, the movies, the magazines, and most of the people he liked. It did not occur to him to worry about the witches until some weeks after his marriage. He did not think of them, in fact, until he and Catharine were looking for their first apartment.

“Remember, darling,” she said, with a chuckle at her own foolishness, “we must find one with the proper bedroom closet.”

John had to think a moment before he did remember. The problem had not come up in the hotel where they had been staying, and John had almost forgotten the evening when Catharine had told him about the witches. He recalled how she made a small point of telling him, soon after they were engaged, and of how at the time he had thought tenderly of what an innocent child she was. He had not been uneasy at all because, with the telling, she gave a plausible explanation.

“You see—” she had pressed his hand confidingly. “I really must warn you before we’re married. It wouldn’t be fair not to warn you about my phobia.”

“Every smart person has at least one phobia these days.”

Catharine mused, resting a small bright-tipped finger on her lips.

“Maybe it isn’t a phobia; I’m not sure about those terms. Anyway, when I was ten years old I was real sick with a high fever and chills and all, and one night I woke up and saw three witches in the bedroom closet. I screamed and screamed — really, I did!” She smiled reminiscently. “I was such a silly thing, and you know we had a big bedroom closet in that house, a big, deep dark one. Well, I saw three witches there. Well, since then...”

“You’re always expecting to see them again,” he interrupted, not because he was uneasy but because he thought they had more important things to say.

She clasped her fingers.

“Brace yourself, darling. I was going to tell you. As a matter of fact, I do see them. I still do see those witches once in a while.” Her eyes narrowed, as though she were pondering an irritating puzzle. Then she laughed and shook her head. “Of course, a good deal depends upon the closet.”