Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

“I knew it had to be something that gross, but don’t tell me the sight made poor Grover faint and hit his head.”

“Since Zeigler was out of it, Randy jumped all over Grover, wanting to know what they were doing there. Grover told him. Whether his father came out of it or not, Randy knew the story stopped with him. Grover, though, was edging toward the door to tell the world. Randy was about to become national Sleaze-of-the-Month, but there’d be no television interview or book contract. He’d be finished. With his wife and family, at the plant, and especially in the community. The way people felt about his father—”

“—they’d start a movement to bring back tarring and feathering.”

“Furious, blaming Grover for the whole thing, he ran after him, picked up a rock and hit him. It was obvious by then that Zeigler would be no problem for some time, so he and Mrs. Strike-It-Rich worked out the details. Feel smug about bringing him to justice?”

“I don’t give a damn about him. All I was concerned about was Zeigler. Now that the psychiatrists know the real cause of his depression, they should find it a great deal easier to bring him around.”

“What made you realize Randy was lying?”

“Zeigler and I subscribed to the same code. If I’d never lower myself to skulk around in the dark to catch a cheating wife, neither would he.”

“Some code. Look where it got him. But that little bit of information might come in handy some day, so maybe I should change my mind about dinner. Does the code prevent you from taking advantage of a woman who falls asleep over the entree?”

Silverware gleaming, the table set before him. Precise. Perfect. And empty.

“You’re the only exception. Taking advantage of you under any and all circumstances is mandatory.”

“Best clause in the code, Den-bow. Light the candles. I’m on my way.”

An Attractive Family by Robert Arthur

The Farringtons were a rather attractive family, if you don’t mind overlooking a few bad habits — such as committing murder. And it is probably not fair to speak of murder as being a habit with them. After all, they had only committed it twice.

However, they were well on the way to making it a habit. Even now they were planning to make the figure two into a three. But they were not looking sinister, nor whispering to each other. They were discussing the subject frankly and openly as they sat in the parlor of East View, the summer home they had rented on the Massachusetts coast at a spot where the rather steep, rocky cliffs fell away to the brawling waves of the Atlantic.

They were even drinking tea as they talked. At least Marion Farrington was — tea with lemon. Bert Farrington, her uncle, was also drinking tea, but his was laced with Jamaican rum. Dick, her younger brother, was drinking scotch and soda, which looks like tea but isn’t.

“It’s really a pity the child must have her birthday in two weeks,” Marion Farrington said. “It forces us to act.”

Dick, who was thirty-two, well-built, tanned, and handsome, obviously accustomed to living well and spending money freely, glanced out the window. Jinny Wells was visible across the open field, just at the edge of the woods. She seemed, from a distance, almost the child that Marion had called her, although Jinny was almost twenty-one — a twenty-one that, based upon past performance charts of the Farrington family, she was not likely to reach. At the moment Jinny seemed to be searching the ground for small objects which she popped into a basket on her arm.

“She’s quite a pretty thing,” Dick commented. “And I do think she admires me.” He straightened his tie. “If we could only put it off for a little longer—”

“Aha!” Bert Farrington, who was plump and red-featured, twenty years older than his nephew, wagged a finger at him. “Mustn’t get sentimental, Dick. The future of the Family is at stake.” He said it that way, with a capital F, as if he were speaking of the British Empire or the State of Texas.

“Bert’s right.” Marion sat erect, a full-bodied forty-two, attractive if you overlooked the set of her chin and the determination that glinted in her pale blue eyes. “On Jinny’s twenty-first birthday we have to make an accounting of the estate, under the terms of Alice’s will. We might manage to postpone it for a few weeks, but eventually her lawyer would force the issue. You know what the result would be.”

Dick drained his glass in a nervous sort of way while he thought of all the money Alice had left him that was now gone, including half of what she had left Jinny. “Money certainly doesn’t go far these days,” he said.