Fletcher Flora: The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™: 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

Fuller, who resented the assignment, betrayed his feelings. Marcus, who marked the resentment, did not.

“Who cares if one bullet missed?” Fuller said. “We got the one in Gray, soon as the coroner digs it out this morning, and that’s all we need. Besides, from the position of his body, Gray was facing the bank; the killer wasn’t. Any bullet that missed him would have gone in the opposite direction.”

“Go dig around anyhow,” Marcus said. “It doesn’t do any harm to be thorough.”

Fuller gone, Marcus assumed his favorite position for thinking, chair rocked back, eyes closed, fingers laced above his belly. He thought this time about several things in a rather fantastic pattern. He thought about Alexander Gray and Rufus Fleming and Sandra Shore in an emotional triangle so crazy that it could certainly have been sustained only by a trio who were themselves a little crazy. He thought about Alexander Gray lying on a golf course. He thought about a brown worsted jacket lying on the grass about five paces from Gray’s body. He thought about Herbert Richards, a construction worker in the act of trespassing, hearing two shots fired so closely together that they were barely distinguishable from one. He thought about a matched pair of target pistols placed in accidental symbolism below a reproduction of Daumier’s Don Quixote . He thought about a cabinet above a lavatory in which there was only one razor and one toothbrush.

I don’t believe it, he thought. By God, I simply don’t believe it.

After a while, he went to ballistics and got a report, but still lacked the specific comparison he needed, which waited upon the coroner. In his car, he drove slowly, with an odd feeling of reluctance, to Sandra Shore’s apartment building. He rang her bell and waited and was about to ring it again when she opened the door. Her eyes widened a little in the faintest expression of surprise, recovering almost immediately their grave, characteristic composure.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” she said. “Do you want to come in again?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I do mind, rather, to tell the truth, but I suppose I must let you.”

“Thank you. I’ll try to be brief.”

They sat as they had yesterday, in the same chairs, and he was silent for a while, looking down at the hat in his hands and wondering how to begin. Then he looked up at Sandra Shore, at the grave eyes in the serene heart, and let his own eyes slip away and fix themselves deliberately on the door closed upon her bedroom.

“May I go into your bedroom, Miss Shore?” he said.

“No. Certainly not.” She sat very still, watching him until his eyes returned to her, and then her small breasts rose and fell slowly on a drawn breath and a sigh. “Well,” she said, “I see you have been as clever as I was afraid you would be, but I’m glad, really, quite glad, because he seems to be getting worse instead of better, and I have been afraid he would die in spite of everything I could do. It was impossible to get a doctor, you see, and so I took out the bullet myself, but he seems to be getting worse, as I said, and I’ve been wondering what I should do.”

“Did you also return the pistols to the apartment and pick up a razor and toothbrush while you were there?”

“Yes. How very clever you are! Alex and Rufe simply decided between them what they must finally do, the way to settle matters for good and all, and so they walked out there to the golf course together, which was the handiest place where it could be done, and it might have turned out all right for Rufe, although not for Alex, except that he got hit, too, in the shoulder, and that made everything much more difficult. He had to go somewhere, of course, and so he came here, and I helped him. He had the pistols, and I thought the best thing to do was to clean them and oil them and take them back to the apartment, and that’s what I did.”

“It was a mistake. Surely you know we can match the bullet in Alexander Gray with one of those pistols.”

“That’s true, isn’t it? I suppose I didn’t think of it at the time because I was upset and not thinking clearly about anything. It’s odd, isn’t it? I wanted so much to help Rufe, and I tried, but I guess I only did him harm instead.”

“The fools! The crazy fools!” Marcus spoke with low-key intensity, slapping a knee. “Why the hell couldn’t they have drawn high card for you or something?”

“Oh, no!” She stared at him with scorn, as if he had betrayed himself as a sordid sort of fellow with no discernible sense of honor. “Alex and Rufe would never have treated me so cheaply.”

“Excuse me,” he said bitterly. “I concede that you’ve done your best for Rufe, whom you love, but what about dear Alex, whom you loved equally and who is unfortunately dead as a rather irrational consequence?”

“If it had turned out the other way around,” she said, “I’d have done as much for Alex.”

“I see.” He stood up, his bitterness a taste on his tongue that he wanted to spit out on the floor. “I’ll call an ambulance, and then you and I can go downtown together.”

He was at his desk, doing nothing, when Fuller came in that afternoon.

“We dug all over that bank,” Fuller said, “and there’s no bullet in it.”

“That’s all right,” Marcus said. “I know where it is. Or, at least, was.”

“The hell you do! Maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me.”

“Not at all. It was in the shoulder of a fellow named Rufus Fleming. He and Gray had a duel out there yesterday morning. That’s how Gray got killed.”

“A duel! ” Fuller’s eyes bulged, and he was so certain that Marcus had gone off the deep end that he felt safe in saying so. “You’re always talking about someone being nuts,” he said, “but in my opinion you’re the biggest nut of all.”

Marcus was not offended. He closed his eyes and smiled bleakly.

Well, he thought, it takes one to catch one.

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , September 1962

Rena Holly was in the living room with the policeman when Charles Holly went downstairs to join them. Rena was sitting in a high-backed chair of polished walnut upholstered in dark red velvet. She was sitting there quietly, very erect, her knees together and her feet flat upon the floor and her hands folded in her lap. Her face was pale and still, perfectly composed, and she was even now, even in the violation of her grief by police procedure, so incredibly lovely that Charles felt in his heart the familiar sweet anguish that was his normal response to her. Only her eyes moved ever so slightly in his direction when he entered the room.

“Charles,” she said, “this is Lieutenant Casey of the police. He is inquiring about Richard’s death.”

Lieutenant Casey arose from the chair in which he had been sitting opposite Rena. He was a stocky man with broad shoulders and a deep chest and thin gray hair brushed neatly across his skull from a low side part. His face was deeply lined and weathered-looking, as if he spent much time in the wind and sun, and the hand he extended toward Charles had pads of callus on fingers and palm, although its touch was surprisingly gentle. He seemed awkward in his gray suit, which was actually of good cut and quality, and the impression he gave generally was one of regret, almost of apology, that he had been forced by his position to intrude.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant,” Charles said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“Sorry,” Casey said. “It’s a routine matter, of course. I regret that I’m compelled to disturb you at this time.”

“Not at all. We must tell you whatever is necessary.”