Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

For the first time in weeks Homer didn’t retreat into his world of fantasy. For now he had the reality of definitely planned action to replace his dreams. He was in such a state of anticipation all weekend he could hardly wait to get home Monday evening.

If there had been any lingering qualms in Homer Withers’ mind about committing sororicide, they were extinguished by Samantha’s reception. Her normal unpleasantness had been aggravated by her cold until she was impossible.

She greeted him with an ominous, “I suppose you forgot to mail the insurance premium again.”

Time had on more than one occasion flitted by Homer unnoticed—it was a genuine surprise to him that a full month had passed since he had belatedly mailed the last premium.

Samantha launched into such a blistering attack on his mental shortcomings, he retreated headlong up the stairs in the middle of her tirade. His hands shook as he wrote the check. He was downstairs again and on his way to the mailbox before his sister could get her second wind.

The incident spoiled all chance of their last evening together being a pleasant one. Dinner was accompanied by a monologue by Samantha on her favorite subject: why didn’t Homer do her the favor of dropping dead? Afterward, as they sat in the front room, she froze him with a silence so forbidding, he was afraid to open his mouth.

It was a relief when she finally indicated it was near bedtime by saying, “I’ll have my chocolate now, if you think you have sense enough to put it together properly.”

Homer had the hot chocolate all made and poured into a cup before he realized his oversight. It would have been better to have crushed the thirty codeine tablets into a powder so that they would dissolve more easily. He swore mildly at his chronic forgetfulness. Pouring some of the tablets into his hand, he stared at them blankly for a moment. Then he got down an empty cup and began crushing them one at a time with a spoon.

It was a slow process; he was but two-thirds finished when Samantha’s impatient voice called from the front room, “What are you doing, dreamer? Staring off into space?”

His heart hammering in fear she would enter the kitchen, he called back, “It’s almost ready, Samantha. Just one more minute.”

As rapidly as possible he crushed the remaining tablets, scraped the powder into the chocolate and stirred it vigorously. When it was completely dissolved, he touched his tongue to the solution and was panic stricken to find it faintly bitter. He shoveled in two extra teaspoonfuls of sugar, stirred it and tasted it again. It now tasted normal.

He carried the cup and saucer out to Samantha who, after accepting it with a grunt, went through her usual ritual of pouring some into the saucer for Roger.

Immediately the cat dropped from his favorite spot on the window ledge, padded to the saucer and tentatively explored the chocolate’s temperature. Then, instead of sitting back to wait for it to cool, he lapped the dish clean.

Homer stared in horror, realizing that the time consumed in crushing the codeine tablets had allowed the chocolate to cool sufficiently to please the cat. Homer watched, fascinated, as the animal licked its whiskers, stretched and mooed itself against Samantha’s calf.

Samantha took a sip from the cup, and exploded.

“You idiot!” she screamed at Homer. “Can’t you do anything right? This chocolate is merely lukewarm!”

Homer gulped, his eyes on Roger. Roger looked up at him.

“Take it back to the kitchen.” Samantha ordered. “Heat it up. You know I want hot chocolate.”

Homer took the cup and carried it to the kitchen. Dumping the contents into a sauce pan, he turned the gas on full. Just before it boiled he removed the pan from the flame, poured the chocolate back in the cup. He got back to Samantha just as fast as he could.

For once Homer did an efficient job. Too efficient. The chocolate was too hot to drink. After sampling it by taking the barest sip, Samantha set the cup aside to let it cool.

As Homer watched the cat in an agony of apprehension, precious minutes dragged by. He knew he could never get Samantha to pick up the cup.

Roger was back on the ledge, purring, begging, Homer felt sure, for more chocolate. If Roger would just die quietly there, Samantha would never know.

Homer took a deep breath as Samantha finally raised the cup to her lips. She paused, said in an impatient voice, “Oh, all right, Roger, you may have a drop more.”

The cat sprung off the window ledge, wobbled on his feet, looked up once more at Homer. The animal took a step toward the saucer, and suddenly his front legs collapsed.

Samantha stared at Roger in puzzlement, and Homer watched in terror, as the cat struggled to his feet, took another aimless step and fell over on his side. His eyes rolled and his breathing began to grow heavy.

Samantha glanced from the cat to her brother. Her eyes narrowed, and she said, “You drink my chocolate this evening, Homer.”

Homer gibbered an unintelligible refusal. Roger’s heavy breathing stopped.

“You actually meant to kill me, didn’t you?” she said in a tone of soft satisfaction.

Homer gazed at her without immediate understanding. She added gently, “My dear brother, two can play at that game.”

He understood her sudden air of satisfaction then. His act had given her the moral excuse she needed to turn her often-expressed hope into reality, and Homer knew he was lost. He had no idea of where to obtain more poison, and no murder plan aside from poison.

But Samantha was different. She was efficient. She would be able to devise any number of alternate plans.

Any of which would work.

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , March 1964.

Harry Cannon always cased his jobs carefully. For ten days he had studied the layout of Gilbert’s Liquor Store. He knew what time the place opened in the morning and when it closed at night. He knew the busiest hours of the day, and that the period just before the nine p.m. closing was the deadest. He knew what hours the two clerks worked and that the second-trick clerk left at eight p.m., leaving proprietor Arthur Gilbert alone for the last hour. One night he had even followed Arthur home to Long Island, so that he knew where the man lived.

But best of all he knew that Arthur Gilbert went to the bank only on Friday morning. Which meant that Thursday night, somewhere in the place, an entire week’s receipts were hidden.

Cannon pulled up in front of the liquor store at exactly 8:55 p.m. Through the glass front window he could see the plump, balding proprietor checking out the cash register. There were no customers in the place.

From the seat alongside of him Cannon lifted a false rubber nose attached to some black frames without lenses. When he fitted the frames over his ears, his appearance totally changed. His thin face seemed broader, and the contraption gave him a bulbous-nosed, owlish look in place of his usual pinched, scowling expression. It also added ten years to his bare twenty-eight.

It was both an effective disguise and a safer one than a mask, for from a distance it didn’t look like a disguise. There was always the danger of a mask being spotted from some nearby window or passing car. As he was, casual passers- by, unless they got too close, would merely take him for a rather ugly man.

Slipping from the righthand door of the car, Cannon shot a quick glance in both directions, straightened his lanky form and strode briskly into the liquor store. The plump proprietor glanced up from his register with a customer-welcoming smile which disappeared the moment it began to form. His expression turned wary and he slowly raised his hands to shoulder height even before Cannon drew the thirty-eight automatic from his pocket. The instant reaction made Cannon feel a bleak sort of pride in his growing reputation.