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

Oh, it was all very clear then. With Harold out of the way and me certified as a dangerous lunatic, Rhoda would get herself appointed my guardian and she’d have the money and the house all to herself. This was what she’d been aiming at all these months. I tried to think. I would have to fight, but what was there to fight with? Maria would be on my side, but she hadn’t seen it happen. Besides, her testimony would be disregarded because she was uneducated. Dr. Stanhope would be on my side too, probably, but he only saw me about once a month, and by the time Rhoda had further exaggerated the odd spells I had and had given a graphic description of what she had “seen,” I’d be a dead duck. Maybe there were medical tests, but I didn’t know, and I couldn’t wait for that. I had to do something now. Then suddenly I had an idea — not a very good one, perhaps, but something.

Rhoda was still on the phone, talking to the police this time. I leaned over the balcony and dropped the cigar end down. As I’d hoped, it landed on top of her hair. She didn’t seem to notice it, thank goodness. I tiptoed back into my room and lay down on the bed. I didn’t weep — I had used up all my tears when Tom died — but there was a vast hurt inside me, and a terrible fear.

Maria came rushing up the stairs. “Oh, señora,” she cried, gathering me into her arms and rocking me a little, as one comforts a sick child. “I hear her. And I know it is not true. You do not kill him! Nunca!”

“I know, and we’ll prove it somehow, Maria,” I said, heartened by her love. “There, there’s the doorbell. That will be the doctor. And I hear sirens.”

I lay up there waiting. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but no doubt Rhoda was giving a full account. Then I heard them coming up the stairs. I got up off the bed and stood, leaning on my cane.

Dr. Stanhope came to my side, anger and sympathy commingled in his expression. He took my pulse, looked at me sharply, and demanded, “Are you all right, Tess?”

I nodded and he said bluntly, “Tess, Rhoda says you pushed Harold down the stairs. Is that true?”

I was equally blunt. “She’s lying. She did it herself. Crept up behind him and pushed. That mirror was just that way — I was sitting in that chair and I could see the hall and the top of the steps. I watched her do it.”

The chief of police, Oliver Smith, looked doubtful. Rhoda belonged to his church and no doubt he was aware of her little insinuations about my sanity. Finally he said, “Perhaps we’d better call Rhoda up here.”

She came up and sat herself down in the chair farthest away from me, trying to look afraid.

I said coldly, “Don’t make such a play of being afraid of me, Rhoda. I won’t hurt you even though you’ve lied about me.”

She straightened up. “You did it. I saw you with my own eyes. I’ve been afraid of you for a long time. You’re nuts. A lot of old people get that way.”

I turned to the chief. “I’ll tell you what happened this afternoon.” I went through what I’d told Harold about the hamburger and the gardener, and Maria suddenly interrupted, “She no pay me what the señora did. I only stay because I love the señora and I am afraid of what this malcriada do to her.”

“Rhoda probably overheard what we said. The door was open,” I went on. “And I told Harold that I had had a phone call from Nellie Blair yesterday morning, and she told me that Rhoda was intimating that I was losing my mind.”

“I never said a word,” Rhoda said indignantly. “Besides, you didn’t have a phone call yesterday morning.”

“Oh, yes, I did. Nell called while you were in town marketing. Anyway, Harold was furious about that. He got up and started to go fire her right then, but finally he decided to send her a letter of dismissal and a final check from the office in the morning. So she crept up behind him and pushed.”

“Why, you lying devil!” she screamed at me. “I wasn’t anywhere near when he fell. I was at the door of my room and that’s a good twenty feet away.”

“Then what’s that in your hair?” I asked, moving closer to her. “It looks like the end of a cigar. Harold’s cigar. If you were so far away, how did it get into your hair?”

She yelped and started to reach up, but the doctor grabbed her arm. “Look at it, chief. It does look like a cigar end.”

Very carefully the chief picked it out of her hair. “Hell, that’s what it is, all right.”

“It isn’t, it can’t be,” she cried. “I wasn’t anywhere near him. You put it there, Tess. You must have.”

“I wasn’t anywhere near you until five minutes ago when you came into this room. Maria can testify to that,” I pointed out coldly.

Maria nodded vigorously. “The señora stay up here. The other one,” there was infinite scorn in her voice, “stay downstairs.”

“Then it must have flown back and hit my hair,” Rhoda insisted desperately.

“The cigar was at the top of the stairs, the cutter a few steps farther down,” Oliver Smith said. “That cigar end wouldn’t have gone very far. Too light.”