Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

Colonel Fritch started to answer, then his eyes grew suddenly thoughtful and he turned to his partner. “Gus,” he said, “how about running down to the stationer’s for some more of these envelopes?”

“What for? We got two boxes in the back.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to have two more.”

“Oh, all right,” Gus grumbled, and walked around the end of the counter and out the door.

When he was alone with Dudley, the colonel asked, “Tell me, my boy, how did you find our office?”

“Lesson Three,” Dudley said proudly, “Shadowing and Surveillance. I waited at the post office until somebody — it turned out to be you — came to pick up the mail from the box. Then I trailed you, just for practice.”

“Very enterprising.”

“But you didn’t come straight here from the post office. You stopped at an apartment on Franklin Avenue where you visited a blonde lady for one hour and twenty-two minutes.”

The colonel dabbed at his forehead with a crisp white handkerchief. “Dudley,” he said, “I have reconsidered and decided to finance you after all. If you will step back into my private office, we will discuss the terms.”

“I sure appreciate that, Colonel Fritch,” the young man said. “Some coincidence, isn’t it, how that blonde lady has the same last name as your partner.”

I said, “I think I’d better report Ellen missing tomorrow. If we wait any longer, the police may think it strange.”

Margot’s freckled face spread in the grin I had grown to love. She always laughed when I mentioned Ellen, and while I loved the sound of her deep, good-humored laughter, her jollity on this subject upset me. I suppose humor was the sanest attitude toward Ellen’s departure, and I for one certainly felt no regrets, but somehow Margot’s laughter indicated a lack of delicacy I would not have expected from her.

It was the laughter and the wide, unaffected grin that first drew me to Margot. When we moved to Bradford, the faculty house assigned us was next door to hers, and my study window looked directly into the broad windows of Margot’s sun room, where she kept her phone. She was fond of phone gossip, and often I would see her there, her sun-freckled face animated with laughter, and one lean, strong hand making wide gestures as she talked. When she phoned Ellen I particularly enjoyed watching her, for in the hall I could hear Ellen’s part of the conversation, and from Ellen’s words and Margot’s gestures, sometimes piece together what Margot was saying.

Almost from the first we were attracted to each other — as early as the faculty tea given in my honor as the new head of the English Department. Miss Rottell, the dean of women, introduced us, saying in her precise, inhibited drawl, “Professor Brandt, Miss Margot Spring. She’s Music,” and moving away to leave us together.

I remember bowling formally and saying, “An appropriate name, my dear. You have the look about you of nature’s fairest season.”

She laughed. “Why, Professor! I do believe you’re a romantic.”

It started as simply as that, and grew as the months passed into a deep but quiet love. Oh, on the surface we were merely good-natured friends, for in a college town gossip can be fatal to careers, and Margot chose to accept my compliments as laugh-provoking jokes, even when no one was nearby to hear. I too was meticulously careful to arouse no comment. Not once did I even so much as kiss her on the cheek, restraining my physical love-making to an occasional accidental touch — my fingers brushing against her hair when I held her coat as she prepared to leave after a visit with Ellen, or lightly managing to touch her hand as I passed her a cup at a faculty tea.

But the depth of understanding that springs from mature love made my innocent words and gestures as meaningful to Margot as though I held her in my arms, just as her apparently joking replies had a meaning for me that a less perceptive nature might have missed entirely. As a matter of fact, it was best that no one aside from me understood her sublety, for she had a breathtaking flair for danger and seemed to love making me shudder at the risks she took. She had a trick of brazenly stating her true thoughts as though they were rather clumsy jokes, such as the time she lightly remarked to Ellen, when Ellen first began to plan her visit home, “You better hurry back again, or you may find I’ve stolen your romantic husband.” But Ellen only laughed, and I pretended Margot’s remark was a great joke.

I waited until two days prior to Ellen’s scheduled departure before even mentioning what opportunities her absence would leave us, and even then I brought it up to Margot casually. But she surprised me with the blunt frankness of her reply.

“It’s too bad Ellen means to stay only two weeks,” I remarked.

“Ask her to stay a month,” Margot said. “I’m sure if you explained you wanted to elope with your next-door neighbor, Ellen would be glad to cooperate.”

Margot’s habit of affixing a completely fantastic suggestion to a sensible statement was another twist her odd sense of humor sometimes took, and I knew of course she had no expectation of my explaining any such thing to Ellen.

I asked, “Would you like it if she stayed away permanently?”

“You mean bury her body in the cellar?” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Is there enough insurance to finance our honeymoon?”

I said patiently, “I meant ask her to get a divorce.”

“And have a campus scandal?” Somehow she managed to grin and look horrified at the same time. “No, Theodore. The safest way is the cellar.” She closed one eye and made a cutting motion across her throat.

I said, “I’ve never even killed a chicken.”

“There’s nothing to it,” Margot said. “Read the papers. Husbands do it all the time. I’ll phone Ellen tonight and ask her to stand still.”

“Now please don’t make clever comments to Ellen,” I told her. “I know Ellen misses the double meaning of your jokes, but it’s an unnecessary risk.”

But Margot disobeyed my request when she phoned Ellen that evening. From my study I could see Margot’s wide smile and loosely gesturing hand, and in the hall behind me I could hear Ellen’s restrained laughter.

“It amazes me that you find Theodore so excruciating,” Ellen said. “I’ve never been able to detect the slightest sense of humor in him.”

I knew then that Margot was brazenly describing our conversation to Ellen, and even though Ellen was obviously enjoying it as a joke, I was irritated at Margot for indulging her bizarre sense of humor against my specific request.

It was a week after Ellen’s trip was supposed to have started that I suggested to Margot I inform the police I had not heard from her. We sat in my study sipping a Sunday afternoon cup of tea.

“You’ve never shown me where you buried the body,” Margot said, grinning across her cup like a good-natured spaniel.

I said, “I thought you’d rather not know. However, come along. I’ll show you.”

I rose and led the way through the house with Margot chattering behind me. Getting my flashlight from the kitchen, I preceded her down the cellar steps.

Holding my flash on the floor behind the furnace, I indicated the freshly laid cement. “There,” I said simply.

She turned toward me, a peculiar expression beginning to form on her face, and all at once she was so desirable my restraint fell away and I took her in my arms. She stood stiff but unresisting when I kissed her, and her lips were cool.

Immediately I realized it was a mistake to let down the barriers so soon, and the wisest course was to retain our surface amiability until the police lost interest in the case. I moved back a step, bowed and apologized.