Richard Deming: Gallows in My Garden

The reason so many people catch me in bed is not that I spend more time there than anyone else, but only that between jobs, which is most of the time, my slumber hours are odd, being roughly contingent on the closing-hours of taverns. In addition it was a Saturday in the middle of July, and the brick courtyard next to my bedroom gathered all the heat it could absorb from a bright sun and shoved it through my window.

I was therefore sleeping naked without covers when the most beautiful woman I ever met dropped in at high noon.

It takes me longer to get from bed to the door than most people, because I first have to strap on an intricate contrivance of cork, aluminum, and leather which substitutes for the lower part of a right leg I contributed to the war effort. As a result I was still nude when a soprano voice from the front room called, “Anybody home?”

“Stay where you are!” I yelled, then added in a lower tone, “Unless you’ve had children and are over seventy.”

A girlish giggle indicated my caller was somewhat less than seventy, so I advised her to wait ten minutes while I made myself presentable. It was closer to fifteen before I accomplished this chore, including a rapid shave. I always shave before investigating female callers who get me out of bed, because a bent nose and one drooping eyelid is enough handicap for a face, without adding whiskers.

When I finally emerged from the bedroom, I found her standing before the mantel in my front room. It is hard to describe the first impact of her beauty, and useless to try to catalogue its details, for no one of her attributes would have been outstanding in a crowd of any hundred college-age girls. She was about nineteen or twenty, of average height, average slimness, average blondness of hair and blueness of eye.

Yet some wondrous alchemy combined her various average features into an effect which was shattering. Perhaps it was partly her appearance of crisp coolness in an oppressive heat which had already begun to wilt my fresh collar, or perhaps it was simply personality bubbling within her, for the difference between prettiness and beauty is mainly a thing of poise and manner. Whatever it was, it caught me between the horns like a club, although from the advanced senility of my thirty-two years I rarely glance twice at women under voting age.

When I finally got my mouth closed, I realized she had said something.

“I didn’t catch that,” I said.

“My name is Grace Lawson,” she repeated. “You’re Mr. Moon?”

“I think so,” I said, still off center. “Sit down so you won’t break.”

I led her to my favorite chair and released her hand only after she sat down.

“Have a drink?” I asked, fumbling with the rye decanter, then changing my mind. “No, you’re too young. Smoke?” I lifted the lid from my cigar humidor and dropped it on the floor.

“No, thanks,” she said, smiling. Apparently she was used to men stumbling over their own feet when they first met her.

I said, “Pardon me,” poured breakfast into a shot glass, tossed it off, lit a cigar, and regained my equilibrium. When I took a seat on the sofa across from her, I found I could regard her without shooting any embolisms.

“You’ve come on business,” I said. “That’s a deduction.”

She smiled again. She had a smile that made you want to do something about her. Nothing drastic, for she was not the bedroom-eyed type. You didn’t want to take her in your arms; you wanted to pat her on the head.

She asked, “How did you deduce that?”

“Elementary. Pretty girls never call on me socially.”

“You’re probably being modest,” she said, “but I did come on business. Do you charge much?”

“More than I’m worth. Tell me what you want before we discuss rates.”

“I couldn’t pay very much,” she said. “I don’t get my money until I’m twenty-one, and all I have is five hundred a month allowance.”

I blinked. “You’re virtually a pauper. How old did you say you are?”

“Going on twenty.”

“In school somewhere?”

“The state university summer session. I had to make up two courses I dropped. I’m a junior.”

“Where’d you hear of me?”

“The woman who owns El Patio recommended you. The night club, you know.”

“Fausta Moreni?” I asked.

“Yes, Fausta. Arnold and I have dinner at El Patio now and then. We were telling Fausta about the attempts on my life, and she recommended I see you.” Her lip corners lifted in a light grin. “She said if I made eyes at you, she’d cut my heart out, but she was only fooling.”

“You don’t know Fausta,” I told her. “Let’s start at the beginning. Somebody’s trying to kill you?”

“I think so. Once the saddle girth on my riding-horse was cut, presumably so I’d fall, and once my milk was poisoned, and once a flowerpot fell from an upper window when I was coming in late at night, and it broke right next to me.”

I sat up straight. “You think so! You’re lucky you’re alive. How’d you escape all that?”

“Just luck, really,” she said. “The saddle girth was cut so far it snapped soon as my weight hit the stirrup. And the milk was poisoned with something that smelled strong, so I didn’t even taste it. Uncle Doug had it analyzed — he’s a doctor, you know — but I’ve forgotten what the poison was. Of course maybe the flowerpot was just an accident. It missed me several feet.”

“You report all this to the police?”

“Oh, no. You see it almost has to be someone in the house, so we wouldn’t want the papers to get it. Uncle Doug has been sort of investigating, but since Don ran away last week, Arnold and I have been wondering if that’s enough. We think maybe someone tried to kill Don, too, and he ran away because he was scared.”

“Who is Don?” I asked, somewhat numbed by the barrage of names she had just thrown at me, and deciding to sort them out one at a time.

“My brother.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Your name is Grace Lawson? The kid who disappeared last week is your brother?”

“My older brother, though not much older. Don was born just eleven months before I was. Last Sunday he left a note and ran off without even taking a suitcase.”

I asked, “Aren’t you and your brother scheduled to inherit Fort Knox or something at twenty-one? I didn’t read the news item on it very carefully.”

“We each get some money at twenty-one,” she admitted. “Unless whoever is after us succeeds in killing us. Then it goes to Ann.”

I held up one palm. “For some reason you only confuse me, the more you talk. Maybe it’s because you run in names and act like I ought to know them, or maybe it’s only your dazzling smile. But let’s go back and start over. Begin by telling me all about yourself and your family.”

“Well, there’s not very much about me,” she said. “I go to State U., but I live at home and drive back and forth. It’s only fifteen miles, you know. We live in Willow Dale. My mother died when I was born, and Daddy was killed in an auto accident a year ago. Ann is my stepmother, but I call her Ann because she’s only twelve years older than me, and more like a pal than a mother. Uncle Doug is Doctor Douglas Lawson, Daddy’s younger brother. He’s a bachelor and a regular dream, and if he weren’t my uncle and I weren’t in love with Arnold, I’d marry him even though he is an elderly man of forty.”

Momentarily I contemplated the eight years remaining between me and the wheelchair, then asked, “Uncle Doug live in the house?”