Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

“You and I may not believe in ghosts, but Elsie does. And she feels responsible for the ghosts in that house. You might say she wants to clean up her home before she sells it to anybody — especially a nice young couple like you and your wife. You and I know it’s crazy, but she insists on it. She wants to exorcise the ghosts, and she intends to do it with a séance. You and your wife must agree to be a part of it, since you’re the ones who’ll be moving into the house.”

Luft’s dark eyes shone with amusement. “She wants us to meet her ghosts?!”

“She insists on it. The séance will be tomorrow night, eleven o’clock. I hope you and your wife can be there.”

“Can we be there?!” Luft threw back his head and laughed, held his stomach. “God, we wouldn’t miss it for the world! Wait until I tell Linda we’re going to a séance tomorrow night in order to clean the ghosts out of our new home. She’ll love it!”

“I hope so,” Garth replied evenly, and wondered now, as he held the woman’s hand in the restored circle at the candlelit table, if Linda Luft and her husband were enjoying the experience as much as the man had believed they would. The woman’s hand was clammy, trembling, slick with sweat.

“I feel them coming closer, Mary,” Madame Bellarossa whispered.

“Yes,” Mary said in a soft, dreamy voice. “I feel them too... very close. They’re so angry — but not with Elsie. And they’re not the ones who’ve been doing the terrible things to her. There are others... undead. Not dead. Greed; it’s all about greed, incredible selfishness, a young couple who think they’re entitled to anything they want just because they want it, no matter who’s hurt. I see money, pieces of paper... stocks! Yes! The man used to be a stockbroker, but he was fired for churning accounts, and suspicion of embezzlement. He stole... Wait! I see something...”

Garth looked up as a light began to glow in the darkness near the ceiling. The light resolved into a rectangle, and then became two figures in hooded robes, bathed in moonlight, approaching the house from the beach, opening a basement window. Linda Luft snatched her sweat-soaked hand from Garth’s grip.

“That’s enough!” John Luft shouted at almost the exact moment when the giant frog sailed out of the darkness and landed in the center of the table, knocking over half the candles, then hopped away toward the living room.

Garth rose from his chair, reached for the light switch on the wall behind him. The lights in the dining room came on. John and Linda Luft, their faces the color of old parchment, were standing back a pace from their overturned chairs, almost directly beneath the suspended screen with its mounted, remote-controlled rear projector, gaping at the people around the table who stared back at them now with undisguised hostility and contempt.

“I guess this is the part where we find out if the butler did it,” Mary said in a low, steely voice.

“I don’t have a butler,” Elsie said, her voice quavering with rage as she glared at the couple across the table from her.

“That wasn’t us!” John Luft shouted, pointing a trembling finger at the screen above his head. “We didn’t put the robes on un—!”

“Shut up!” Linda Luft screamed at her husband, punching him in the chest with her fist. “You idiot!”

John Luft grew even paler, took another step backward, then looked over at Harry Parker, who seemed to have lost interest in the proceedings now that the illusion he had helped create had been played out. He had taken off his shirt and was removing an apparatus of tubes and blood-filled capsules from around his lower waist. “Actually, I kind of like this house,” the big man mumbled to no one in particular. “It has atmosphere. If the frog’s part of the deal, I may buy it myself.”

Elsie slowly rose from her chair, pointed a finger at the Lufts. Her entire body was trembling with rage. “How could you?!” she said. “How could you be so mean?”

Now it was Linda Luft’s turn to lose control. Her face turned crimson as she stepped toward Elsie and screamed, “You shut up too, you old bitch! What do you want with the house or the money? You’re going to die soon, you hag! Why can’t you let somebody else enjoy it?”

John Luft gripped his wife’s shoulders, pulled her back from the table as he glared at Garth. “You set us up, Frederickson!” he said, his voice shimmering with both anger and fear.

“Set you up?” Garth replied mildly. “You’re damned lucky Elsie didn’t have a heart attack; you’d be facing manslaughter charges.” He paused, nodded toward Jeffrey Bond, who had a deep frown on his face as he stared at the young couple. “I introduced you to Jeff, but I don’t think I mentioned that he’s the Cairn Chief of Police. Madame Bellarossa is his wife, and her real name is Carol. She’s quite a well-known actress. Without her wig and makeup, I’m sure you’d recognize her.”

“You can’t prove a thing!” the man shouted at Jeffrey Bond.

“That remains to be seen,” the police chief replied evenly. “We have a videotape of these proceedings, for what that’s worth. Also, my friend Garth found the fellow you paid to mess up that guy’s house that you’re living in now, and then pose as a building inspector to give him the bad news. It seems he kept the sales slips for the acid you had him buy and inject into the wood joints to make it look like he had termite damage. The police across the river have a warrant out for your arrest. In addition to that, there’ll be a process server around to see you in the morning. You’re looking at a whopping lawsuit, in addition to any criminal penalties. I think I’ll let Westchester have you for now, and that will give me time to ponder all the charges I’m going to hit you with when they’re done.”

The lights in the living room came on. John and Linda Luft started, then wheeled around to see two uniformed policemen and the two young stagehands, friends of Carol Bond, who had handled the special effects for the evening’s performance standing in the archway between the two rooms. The giant frog was over in a comer contentedly munching on what appeared to be a cockroach, a survivor from the exterminator’s visit earlier in the day.

“The charges won’t stick!” John Luft screamed at Garth as he and his wife were handcuffed. “They can’t prove anything! You’re going to be sorry! I swear I’ll get you!”

“Boo,” Garth said.

© 1993 by Edward D. Hoch

One of the things we can always depend on in a story from veteran Edward D. Hoch is careful research. Whether his tale concerns the history of the Old West or conditions on a freighter bound for Istanbul, he’s sure to have come up with interesting facts that we won’t soon forget ...

“She sails at midnight on the Happy Moon,” the man in the striped robe told Rand. “It’s a small coastal freighter bound for Istanbul.”

They were seated in a dingy sailors’ café along the waterfront in Karachi, Pakistan, a city Rand had never dreamed of visiting even in his nightmares. He had come there on a mission for an old friend, a Turkish diplomat who had once done him a great favor. A few days earlier, the diplomat had phoned him at home in England and said simply, “My daughter is in trouble, somehow involving drugs.” Rand had known it was time to pay back his debt.