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

“Why, child—” Marion began, then recovered herself smoothly. “You’ve done well,” she said. “You shall have them for supper. Take them out to the kitchen; I’ll fix them myself.”

“Oh, thank you, Marion,” Jinny said. “But we’ll all have them.” She turned to go, and her lashes fluttered as she peeped at Dick beneath them. Then she went lightly out with her basket of mushrooms.

“Well, that takes care of that,” Marion said when Jinny had gone. “She’s mixed in some of the most deadly kind of mushrooms with edible ones that look a lot like it. What is the name of that mushroom, that terribly poisonous one? No matter, there’s quite enough to kill her. And she picked them herself and showed them to Mr. Downey, next door. We’ll be in the clear — quite in the clear.”

At last, Marion thought, her education was coming to some use. Which might still not be the case if it weren’t for that course she’d taken in botany.

The Farringtons were a rather attractive family, but like most of us, they sometimes got into an ugly humor. They were in one now as they sat in the fusty parlor. They were so upset that they could have killed someone.

The clock said eleven at night. The evening had gone badly. Marion had cooked a tasty dinner with wild rice and duckling, including a special side dish of mushrooms just for Jinny. There weren’t enough to go around, she had said firmly. Jinny had picked them and Jinny should have them. And she wished she didn’t have to include the edible ones, but the one portion would have been too skimpy without them.

Jinny had wriggled with joy at the idea of eating something she had actually garnered from Nature all by herself. Half a dozen times she started on them, meanwhile keeping up a lively chatter about her year at college. Each time, as they waited in frozen expectancy, she had stopped to tell them of some other funny incident of school life. But she, finally, put the dish firmly before her and started eating. She had eaten at least three of the mushrooms from her side dish of fatal and non-fatal types when the phone rang. As bouncy as a small boy, Jinny leaped up to answer it. And the dish of mushrooms had fallen to the floor and scattered across the rug.

Jinny was painfully embarrassed, but there had been nothing to do save throw the mushrooms in the garbage can. As for the phone call, it had only been from their tiresome neighbor, Mr. Downey, inviting them to tea the following afternoon.

They had waited hopefully for nature to take its course, if the three mushrooms Jinny had eaten were of the fatal type. But Jinny had gone up to bed quite healthy and now the Farringtons were under the annoying necessity of figuring out some other way to dispose of her. It was really very thoughtless of the girl to put them to so much trouble.

“It will have to be a fall from the cliff,” Marion said. “I told Mr. Downey we couldn’t come to tea because we were going on a picnic. Very well, we will go on a picnic. Jinny will see a very special flower she wants to pick, clinging dangerously to the side of the cliff. She will start down for it and slip and... well, we just weren’t close enough to catch her.”

She spoke very convincingly. It almost sounded as if Jinny were already lying broken and lifeless on the cruel rocks, and as a consequence, they all felt much better. Then suddenly a piercing scream from the bedroom above them made them look up. Again came the scream — and again, a tremolo of horror that made the cut glass chandelier tinkle timorously.

Hope sprang in Marion’s eyes.

“The mushrooms!” she exclaimed.

“Dash it!” Bert said. “She’ll wake the whole neighborhood. Can’t she die quietly?”

Screams from above continued to indicate that she couldn’t.

“Amanita virosa!” Marion exclaimed, with awe. “Why that’s the name I couldn’t think of. It... it just came to me. No mushroom is deadlier.”

There was another scream.

“We’ll have to go up,” Marion told them. “Mr. Downey is sure to have heard her by now. Come on, Dick.”

She and Dick ran up the stairs and flung open Jinny’s door. Jinny was sitting up in bed, her hands pressed to her mouth, trying to stifle another scream.

“Jinny!” Marion hurried to her. “What is it? Do you feel bad?”

Jinny shook her head, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

“No pain?” Marion was eager, rather than solicitous.

“It was — another nightmare. The... the worst of all.”

They heard a window go up. A voice called, “Hello! Anything wrong over there?”

“That you, Mr. Downey?” Dick stepped to Jinny’s window. “Jinny had another nightmare, that’s all. She’s all right now.”

“Oh,” Mr. Downey said. “Oh.”

The window went down again. Dick came back and sat on the side of the bed, holding Jinny’s soft hand in his.

“Tell us about it, Jinny,” he urged. “That’s the best way to get over it.”

Jinny’s breathing was more normal now. She flushed delicately, and tried to pull the sheet up around her.