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

Laszlo turned on me, glad of someone he could holler at. “Don’t you remember why she got this private car?” he demanded, shaking three fingers at me. “She’s the only one of you with crowd appeal! We need her if we’re going to finish this trip, and we’ve got to finish the trip or explain to the government, in triplicate, why we wasted their time and coal.”

“She can’t travel alone, can she?” Jim demanded.

“Of course not!” Laszlo whirled to shake fingers at him now. “That’s why I cast these two as substitute mothers!”

“I beg your pardon?” I inquired.

“Ooh!” said Sissy. “We can be mommies?”

“It sounds like one of the tougher roles we’ve been offered,” I said. “We’re still too young for the mother parts.”

“Simplest thing in the world,” Laszlo informed me. “All women have natural maternal instincts. Well, most.” He took a step back from the deceased but said no more about that. It’s a rule in our town: never speak ill of the dead... as long as there’s a chance you’ll be picked up for the murder.

I had some doubts about my natural maternal instincts, but when I started to say so, he went on, with those eyes they issue to petty bureaucrats, “That part in Night of Dr. Jekyll is rather motherly; I hope we haven’t been guilty of miscasting.”

“Who’s going to tell Eloise?” Sissy demanded.

“You do that,” our man of decision told her. He jerked a thumb at me. “She can pack your things while you do it; you seem to have more natural instincts.”

“Pack?” Sissy asked.

“You’re going to have to move in here for the duration of the trip,” Laszlo said.

“Ooh, goody!” Sissy clapped her hands. “Be sure to bring my book while I... what was I doing?”

I thought about objecting. Not that I wanted to console The Child Star myself. I just didn’t especially want to have to console Sissy after she did it. But murder upsets Laszlo, and I might easily find myself dropped from the trip, and the company payroll, at the next stop.

Velvet and Olivia were watching from the club car side of the door. When I turned for our sleeping quarters instead, they came charging after me. Velvet’s eyes glittered when she saw me start repacking my suitcase.

“I told you not to write all those things about Jewell in that fan letter,” she said. “I do hope they’re giving you train-fare home. You’d have a terrible time charming the money out of yokels.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I told her. “I’ve already charmed Laszlo into giving me a semiprivate car.”

Velvet’s expression made it all worthwhile. “What?”

Not knowing how much Laszlo wanted to get around, I said, “Mrs. Marr’s the one who’s leaving. Sissy and I are going to escort The Child Star the rest of the way.”

“You?” snarled Velvet. “Why you?”

“My natural maternal instincts,” I informed her.

“Oh well,” said Olivia. “That’ll give us a lot more room. And I’d rather sleep in a bunk here than babysit.” Velvet was showing her front teeth, but she pretended to take this as consolation. “True. I wonder if this will change the panty raid they had on for tonight. I was counting on the... publicity.”

“Yes, if you don’t get a boost soon, you’ll have to put all the pins back in your clothes,” said Olivia.

While Velvet indignantly declared that she had never worked as a stripper and certainly never would again, I packed up Sissy’s things as well. Then I snagged our conductor. “Be a darling and carry these to The Child Star’s car, George,” I said.

George was not inclined to be a darling and didn’t think much of carrying luggage. He was a man in uniform. He did, however, open the door for me between cars while I wrestled the suitcases through. I knew what I would find in The Child Star’s boudoir and braced myself.

Sissy was wailing, “And without my mamma I’d never have met Daddy.” She knelt with her arms around The Child Star.

The Child Star, who had bawled so affectingly over a sick canary in Viva Baby Eloise that four patrons had to be carried griefstricken from the theater, was proving that that stuff was saved for the set. She didn’t try to move, or to stem the flow of Sissy’s mourning. Her expression was that of someone willing to wait out the storm.

I set down the suitcases and jerked my head toward Mrs. Marr’s chair. “They took her out,” The Child Star told me.

I raised an eyebrow. She shrugged. “She was useful to me. But there are plenty of mothers.”

Sissy was trying to pat away The Child Star’s tears, of which there were none. “Oh,” she sobbed, “lots of people in our town are mothers, but you only get one of your very own.”

“Oh, her,” said The Child Star. “She still lives in Fayette.”

“Who was Mrs. Marr, then?” I asked.

“I forget. They told me. Dad’s brother’s wife’s mother or something. Where are we all going to sleep?”