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

Mrs. Elias gazed at the witch long and carefully. Then she said, “I really hate this carrot juice. May I have some of that wine you’re drinking?”

“No, dear. Not until you’re better. Give it another month.”

Mrs. Elias sniffed at her glass and made a face. “To answer your question, because he said that if I ever tried to leave him, I’d be dead within the day. He said I was his, only his. He was terrifying. He never threatened... idly. So I believed him. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

They sipped composedly at their respective drinks. Finally Mrs. Elias said, “So you poisoned Ike with his own concoction?”

The witch looked scandalized. “Of course not. I would never make paella with days-old reheated food. For pity’s sake. How disgusting.”

“You mean it was all fresh and — and poison free?”

“Every bite. Ike’s not the only fishmonger in town. How could I poison a living creature, anyway? How disgusting, making paella with leftovers. Those atrocious lunches. Tcha.” The witch made a face.

“Then how did you kill him?”

“Kill him? I certainly killed nobody. It was his obsession with you that killed him. His pathological jealousy made him imprison you in that house and ultimately drove him to destroy you. He was afraid he couldn’t hang on to you much longer, and if he couldn’t have you, no one would. He knew about the milkman, you see.”

Mrs. Elias began a protest that the witch held up a palm to forestall. “I know. I know there was nothing going on between the milkman and you. But to someone like Ike, just the mere existence on the same planet of another male was more threat than he could handle.” She smiled suddenly. “You know, I’ve never agreed with that movie song that Sam played again. About kisses. Do you know the one I mean?” She glanced at Mrs. Elias, who gazed back with equanimity. “Charlie showed an unexpected flair,” I thought.

“And don’t forget: Ike had also just received the shock of thinking he’d swallowed a few days’ worth of the poisons he’d been feeding you. I think by then he must have been adding fatal doses. I wonder what he thought when you kept living? Well, never mind. Fear plus rage, my dear, compounded by a macho stupidity he had of not taking care of his blood pressure properly. He killed himself.”

Together they gazed out over the water companionably for a while. Then the witch said, “By the way, I think it’s rather deplorable that the only thing you could think of to get yourself out of trouble was to murder. I think you need to learn other methods of surviving in this world, my dear.”

Mrs. Elias smiled at the witch and stretched her young, robust, and not visibly depleted body. “Please don’t call me Mrs. Elias any more. That name brings back memories of my stomachaches. My name is Rachel.”

“Very well. Rachel Elias.”

“No, just Rachel.”

The witch nodded. “My name is Mrs. Risk.”

“What can I call you?”

“You can call me Mrs. Risk, Rachel. Fetch me that volume by that log, dear. We have a lot to do.”

Nobody Wins by Charles Ardai

Leon Culhane was one of those men you look at twice when they pass you on the street, the sort who looks as though he stepped off a poster for a horror movie once and couldn’t figure out how to step back on again. He had the kind of face that would scare small children, and more than a few adults.

When he came into my office, he had to duck, and even so, the top of his head brushed the lintel of the door. I offered him a seat across from me, but we could both see he wouldn’t fit in the chair. I only wished I had seen it before I had offered. He didn’t take offense; he just leaned one elbow on top of my filing cabinet, put his chin in his hand and started telling his story.

I tried to listen without looking. I tried to — I couldn’t. His face was flat, as though someone had smashed it with an iron, and when he talked, the words came out of a pair of lips that looked drawn on — they never moved. His eye sockets could have held golf balls with room to spare, and if there was an inch of skin on his face that wasn’t pocked with acne scars, I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t a face you wanted to look at, but it wasn’t a face you could do anything but look at, either.

When he came to a pause, I shook my head and asked him to start again. I hadn’t heard one word.

“Carmine Stampada gave me your name,” he said slowly, and this time I just looked down at my notepad and listened. “He said you know your way around a missing persons case, that you found his wife when she took off for the Keys.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I found her facedown in a swimming pool.”

“You found her,” he said. “Now I want you to find somebody for me. Her name is Lila, and she’s my fiancée. I have a picture that I’ll show you if you look up.”

I looked. He held out a four-by-five still of a lovely girl with auburn hair. I couldn’t imagine her marrying him in a million years. But imagining isn’t my job. I handed the photo back. “Attractive,” I said.