Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

She plucked the petal and held it to her nose, then let it fall to the table. “He didn’t talk to me much, Jim. Not about anything. But recently he had started taking Valium. I don’t even know the doctor who gave him the prescription.”

“Do you know when he last took any?”

She shook her head. “The bottle is in the bathroom. Do you want me to get it for you?”

“No, that’s okay, I’ll take a look at it in a minute. Did you see him again after you came in from the garden?”

“No — I mean, not alive.” She reached up and took another petal from the rose. “This is the part I feel the worst about,” she said softly. She looked over at him.

What is she looking for?

She dropped the petal, reached for another one. “I didn’t know he was out there. I was out in the garden, then cutting flowers and arranging them in this vase. I thought he had gone out, or that he might have gone to bed early. Then I heard the explosion over at the refinery, and I stood out on the porch and watched the flames for a little while. I turned on the radio and listened to the news about it, listened while I washed dishes, cleaned the counters, and mopped the floor. Then I went into the bedroom, where it was cooler. I can’t say I was especially surprised that Joseph wasn’t there. I go to bed alone quite often. Sometimes he comes in late.”

Jim found himself staring at the door to the garage.

“I didn’t go out there until much later,” she rushed on. “I had some laundry to do. That’s when I found him. I came back inside and called you — I mean, called the sheriff’s office.”

Emma had logged the call in at about nine, when things were still hopping from the fire. “So the last time you saw him was about when?”

“I guess it would have been about six thirty.”

“And do you know what time it was when you came in from the garden?”

“A little before sundown; before eight, I suppose.”

He looked at his watch. It was just after one o’clock in the morning; the refinery had been burning since eight thirty. The man could have been out there in the garage for a long time. In this heat, even the coroner might find it difficult to set a time of death very accurately. He did as much of the paperwork as he could, then asked if she would mind if he looked around.

She didn’t object but asked him if it would be all right if she waited back in the bedroom. “It’s cooler in there,” she explained.

Remembering the air conditioner, he understood.

He looked over the living room and the professor’s study. If Joseph Darren had left a suicide note, it was not on any of the clean and tidy surfaces of either room. There was, in fact, nothing very personal in them. Next he looked through the bathroom. Towels and washcloths neatly folded on the rack; chrome on the fixtures shining, toothbrushes in a holder, toothpaste tube rolled from the bottom. No thumbprint on the bottom edge of medicine cabinet, like you’d see in his own house.

All the contents were in well-ordered rows. The medications were lined up, labels facing out. Nonprescription on one side, prescription on another. The Valium bottle was there, half empty even though it had been recently refilled. Maybe the professor had considered pills before he decided to stick to family tradition.

The other prescriptions were mostly leftover antibiotics; none past its expiration date. There was only one made out to Kaylie. Premarin.

Premarin. Where had he heard of that before? He stretched and yawned. Premarin. Oh, sure — his mom had taken it. Estrogen, for menopause.

Menopause? Kaylie? Maybe she needed it for some other reason. She was only forty, for godsakes. Some women went through it that early, he knew. But Kaylie?

Well, if she was going through it, she was. It didn’t really bother him. No children, but at forty, maybe she didn’t want to start a family. Hell, she was going to be a grandmother. Stepgrandmother.

He felt a familiar sensation. Tugging at a mental thread.

Something had bothered him, earlier. In the garage. The light being on? No, he could understand that. She wouldn’t turn it off, not with him in there. She walked in, saw him hanging there, probably was so shaken she ran back out and didn’t venture back in.

But she had ventured back in. He knew then what it was that had bothered him. The dryer. Lord almighty.

He leaned against the sink, suddenly feeling a little sick at his stomach. What kind of woman washed a load of laundry in the same room where her husband was hanging from the rafters?

Slow down. Slow down, he told himself. It was weird, no doubt about it. But not necessarily meaningful. Maybe she cleans when she gets upset. The house was so immaculate it was almost like being in a museum.

He would just ask her about it. He walked to the bedroom door and knocked.

“Come in,” she called.