Thomas Aldrich: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 68, July 1949

The bus disgorged Mr. Loomis at last and he made his way through the gloom of the familiar streets, past little brick houses, all alike, until he reached the one which was called his home.

He slowly climbed the steps and gave an almost inaudible rap on the knocker. He was not trusted with a latchkey of his own.

The door was opened by his wife, a large, not uncomely woman with a complexion, once peach-like, now purpling to damson plum.

“You’re late, Loomis,” she said in the voice of one who has said the same thing many times before. “Kept late at the office, I suppose?”

“No, no, my dear.” Mr. Loomis pecked hurriedly at the damson of his wife’s cheek. “It’s these bus queues. Really, I don’t know what London’s coming to.”

He moved crabwise to hang his coat and hat in the hall cupboard, fearful lest his wife’s x-ray eye might detect the contraband in his pocket.

“Well, don’t blame me if dinner’s burnt to a crisp.” Mrs. Loomis turned her broad back and flounced into the kitchen, while her husband made his way into the parlor where he drew a box of matches from his pocket and lit the wall gas-bracket. Electricity had not yet reached this particular section of London.

Mr. Loomis sat down gingerly on one of the hard chairs by the small gas fire which he did not dare to light until after the evening meal. He surveyed the room gloomily without noticing that it was, as usual, scrupulously clean and scrupulously tidy. He knew only that it was scrupulously dull.

His eyes settled on the framed wool text above the mantel — THOU LORD SEEST ME.

“Loomis, dinner’s on the table.”

Mr. Loomis rose obediently and after retrieving the manila envelopes from his overcoat in the hall closet, passed into the tiny dining-room. There was a clean cloth on a neatly set table which bore a whale steak smothered with onions. There was also a dish of fried potatoes, another of Brussel sprouts, and bread, and margarine. It was as good a dinner, so Mrs. Loomis averred every evening, as they were sitting down to in Buckingham Palace.

It was also a familiar dinner. And his wife’s dinnertime conversation was equally familiar. Mr. Loomis only half listened as Mabel told of her indomitable prowess in pushing to the head of the butcher’s queue; of her tactical success in wheedling a little extra flour from the grocer; of the shocking moral laxity of her neighbors in general and, in particular, of Mrs. Milton next door.

“... bottles and bottles of beer... men at all hours of the day and night... that brat of hers... it’s my belief she’s no better than her mother. Sitting on our garden wall with her bare legs hanging down... at this time of year... bare skinny legs...”

While Mr. Loomis chewed his Antarctic Steak, vague sentimental pictures passed through his mind of little Dinah Milton on the wall, waiting hopefully for the tidbits that he always tried to bring home for her. Incongruously, the bare skinny legs merged into another pair of childish legs as seen in a discolored photograph snapped at Burnham-on-Sea.

“Bare legs in January!” Mrs. Loomis had risen heavily and started to remove the plates. It was one of her many admirable qualities that she seldom allowed her husband in the kitchen. This virtue, however, rendered far more difficult Mr. Loomis’ task of stealing morsels for his insatiable pet cormorant next door. He took advantage of his wife’s absence to slip a small square of bread and margarine from his plate into the manila envelope in his pocket.

Mrs. Loomis returned from the kitchen bearing a dish of six delicious-looking jam tarts. As she withdrew again for the inevitable custard, her husband made some lightning calculations. Dare he risk stealing a tart now? No, Mabel was not, as he well knew, like the proverbial mother bird who can count only to two or three. Perhaps he could claim that an overwhelming greed had constrained him to pop one of them into his mouth without waiting for her. No, alas. For she knew only too well that greed was not one of his weaknesses and this would only be inviting suspicion.

But his luck was in. Mrs. Loomis was so carried away by the iniquities of Dinah and her mother that she noticed nothing. By the end of dinner Mr. Loomis had been able to secrete one and three-quarter tarts in the manila envelope.

Now every sensible wife will agree — and many who are not so sensible — that there comes a time in a man’s day, usually in the evening after supper, when he should feel free to go around to the nearest pub and discuss a game of darts with the boys over a pint or two of mild and bitter. But Mrs. Loomis believed that the place for the husband, when not safely in his office, was definitely at home. And Mr. Loomis, whether he believed it or not, was obliged to agree with her. This evening he sat in his chair before the now-lit gas fire and pretended to listen to his wife’s daily recital of her own perfections. In fact, he was not listening; his thoughts were wandering along unexpected and incurably romantic avenues.

Lately they had been walking these avenues with increasing frequency, but they had taken the first step into this make-believe land some years ago, after his wife had discovered the doll’s house he had made for little Lucy Green and had insisted on presenting it herself — not to Lucy Green — but to some orphanage which she helped piously to support. Mr. Loomis’ anger had been none the less violent for being unexpressed, t nor had it been quick to fade. The next morning, as he took his ledgers out of the office safe, his eyes had settled on a small green bottle which stood on the poison shelf. On its label they had traced the word Santonin.

Now Mr. Loomis was not a chemist, but he liked to think that his long association with Tinker and Smythe had given him a little more knowledge of drugs than that normally possessed by the layman. Mr. Loomis knew that minute quantities of santonin were used in the firm’s Worm Eliminant. He also knew that it was a poison — a powerful but rarely used poison whose effects might well baffle the normal medical practitioner familiar with the toxic symptoms produced by arsenic, cyanide, or strychnine.

From that day on the small green bottle had become very important in Mr. Loomis’ day dreams. They were nothing but dreams, of course — daring fantasies in which, by some eccentric accident, the bottle of santonin and Mabel... These thoughts remained in Mr. Loomis’ mind as unfinished symphonies.

Now, as his wife’s voice ground relentlessly on, colored reveries floated before him — little Dinah Milton and a jam tart, little Rosie Henderson and the stick of candy rock, Mabel and the little green bottle...

At last the time came for Mrs. Loomis to retire, which left Mr. Loomis a chance to retire also — not at once to the conjugal bed, but to the small den which was the one place he could almost call his own. Here he was planning to prepare the parcels of scraps for delivery to Dinah Milton.

Just as he was entering the den, he heard his wife’s voice from the bathroom.

“Light the gas and the gas fire in the bedroom, Loomis. And shut the windows. It’s turned a bit nippy.”

Mr. Loomis did as he was bid and then, having also lit the gas-bracket in his den, sat down at his small, home-made desk. With one ear cocked toward the bathroom, he drew out the manila envelopes and made two neat piles of the foodstuffs they contained. That done, he returned them to their envelopes which he wrapped around with string. Then, measuring off about ten feet of slack, he lowered the parcels out of the window so that they dangled a few feet above his wife’s chrysanthemum bed below.

With a pleasant tingle of excitement he gave a long, low whistle to signify to his young conspirator next door that the coast was clear.