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

When he’d nearly disposed of it all, he wondered out loud where she’d gotten all the fish and shellfish it contained. He didn’t remember selling her any yesterday, or even the day before that. He stoked his mouth with the last spoonful. She murmured in reply that he had himself to thank for it, after all. When he raised puzzled eyebrows at that — his mouth being too loaded to open — she explained she had “borrowed” a few of Mrs. Elias’s lunches he had himself prepared to provide some of the ingredients of the paella. After all, he always fixed his wife such an overwhelming amount each day, much too much for only one woman.

Mr. Elias froze. His massive jaws ceased to chew and remained poised in place like a great masticating machine from which someone had pulled the plug. The color fled from his perspiring, ruddy face. He stood there holding the dish close under his chin, in the center of his shop, in a shock his friends couldn’t understand because the paella was no doubt as delicious as he’d said. Just as his eyes had reached the size of golf balls, he swiveled sideways, still not chewing or swallowing, to gaze at his wife. The moment he found her in the back of the crowd, he caught sight of the milkman seizing his bewildered wife and planting on her soft lips a kiss that would’ve brought cheers in the late night movies.

Ike promptly spewed the contents of his full mouth all over his disgusted customers, turned purple in the face, clenched his teeth, then reeled and hit the floor like a felled oak.

Days of hysteria, questions, and long testimonies fraught with suspicions and accusations later, Mrs. Elias attended the funeral of her husband. After a proper two more days, she installed an air conditioner in the upstairs rooms, where she then sat and spent hours doodling designs for a new sign proclaiming “Flower Shop and Nursery.”

It wasn’t long before she decided to visit the witch. She had a few questions she wanted answered.

She waited at the end of the path where the milkman had waited with his truck, although she didn’t know that, and felt sure the witch would know she was there and would come. And she did.

“It’s the oddest thing. I can’t help this feeling I have that somehow you’re connected with the death of my husband. But I can’t quite see how. Or...” She brushed glossy thick hair back away from her face. She sighed. “There was so much — so much going on that you couldn’t have known.”

The witch smiled. “On the contrary, my dear. There was much you didn’t know yourself. I knew it all. Here. Have a little of this.”

“What is it?”

“Carrot juice. You quite need building up. About that, your departed husband was quite right. Tell me, Mrs. Elias. When you began your new preoccupation with gardening, is that about the time Ike began his devoted lunch preparations for you?”

Mrs. Elias gazed with disgust at the orange liquid in her glass, then frowned off into the distance. The witch had taken her back to her house, and they sat on a bench beneath a huge shady tree. The breeze was pleasantly cooling. “You know, I think it was. Isn’t that funny?”

“No, it’s not funny at all. Didn’t you tell me that he insisted that you use pesticides instead of the natural methods I suggested?”

“Oh yes. He said it was bad enough the time I already spent in the garden without doing extra stuff. He wouldn’t permit it. What could I say? He went out and bought the chemicals for me, so I used them. I really didn’t have any choice.”

“Yes. That was another thing. You had no choice. You have no friends, either, I noticed. And you weren’t even permitted to talk with people in the shop. You had things delivered to you, you didn’t shop, didn’t visit anyone, never went anywhere... I noticed.”

Mrs. Elias stiffened. After a long silence, she said, “What are you suggesting?”

“I’m merely answering your questions. Here’s a question for you. Did you ever have your ‘lunch’ analyzed by a pathologist? No, of course not. How silly of me, you weren’t permitted to leave the house. Well, I did. They contained pesticides, not enough to kill you, but enough to make you ill. Increasingly ill, because the doses were gradually increasing.”

Mrs. Elias’s lips moved, but nothing came out.

“Ironically, it was only because of your wonderful constitution that Ike claimed to have been tending that you survived until I managed to get a good look at you that morning a few weeks ago. You looked so pale and drawn—”

Mrs. Elias made a small noise that suddenly exploded into high-pitched laughter.

“Oh, yes,” agreed the witch. “I know that, too. What a collection of poisons you managed to cultivate in that garden of yours. I realized that I not only saved your life from Ike’s loving stranglehold, but I saved you from throwing your life away by murdering your husband. Tell me. Why didn’t you just try to escape along conventional means? Like talking to a divorce lawyer?”