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

At that point, airport security and Ed’s men moved in and surrounded the happy family. A few bolted, but were quickly caught. By then, Ed and I had arrived at the terminal and headed down the concourse to the gate where the family gathering had gone sour.

We immediately spotted familiar faces: Gilbert was there, as was the nervous, twitchy Bob Colvin, and Cliff Dorgan, the former jewelry store employee. Ed noted others whose acquaintance he had made in the course of his work. “Mother” Carver was holding forth in some of the gamiest language I had ever heard. Gone were her engaging smile and her vacant stare. In fluent street language she reviewed the stupidity of some of her “children,” the calumny of the police, and various breeding problems of the rest of humanity.

One of Ed’s men was holding both her bags, and this piqued her no end. She kept announcing her legal rights of privacy and other irrelevancies. We were sure that much of the remaining stolen jewelry was there.

“Do we book the whole group for burglary, captain?” one of Ed’s men asked as we approached.

Ed nodded. “That and murder,” he answered. “Somebody here decided to prune the family tree last night.”

At that several handcuffed individuals started to scream denials and point at Gilbert.

“Mother” Carver silenced them all with some choice verbs from her vast vocabulary of juicy expressions.

Later, by questioning each person separately, we found that they were all unrelated except by their interest in other people’s jewelry. We also learned that Violet had started to set up a spinoff business for herself by stashing some of the loot away instead of turning it in to Mrs. Carver at the nursing home. She intended to use it as a kind of dowry so that she and Reggie could run off to a tropical isle and live happily ever after — after she got Reggie to agree to this plan, which she hadn’t yet shared with him. Apparently her feeling for him was true love after all — in her fashion.

Mrs. Carver had become suspicious of the short returns Violet was bringing in and had instructed the others to put pressure on her to reveal her hiding place. Gilbert, the others agreed, had pressed too hard, forcing the group to make a run for fresh territory.

When it was all over, my worst problem was how to break all this to Reggie before it flashed on the front page of every newspaper. But I needn’t have worried.

After my gentle explanation to him of the basic facts, he sat in my office staring straight ahead and not blinking.

“My emotional responses are a bit flattened by all that has happened,” he said stiffly. “Please understand if I don’t openly exhibit the proper affect. In time I’ll adjust although the trauma will leave an indelible mark on my psyche.”

I concluded that he meant that it had hit him flat in the face and he needed a while to get over the jolt. That Violet was actually part of the gang and had never told him her real occupation seemed to preoccupy him most.

“It must have been due to her unhappy childhood,” he said.

“What happened to her as a child?” I inquired gently.

“I don’t know. She never mentioned it,” he admitted. “But she must have suffered an early-life trauma or she wouldn’t have tried to compensate for it with a life of crime,” he concluded, rounding out his circular logic.

Of the Five Who Came by Fletcher Flora

I think now, looking back, that I had a feeling of trouble from the moment they came, but I had no feeling at first that the trouble was death.

They came early in the afternoon of a day in May. There were five of them. Two pairs and a single. They came in a 1958 Chrysler station wagon with flaring fins and a Kansas City license and a luggage rack on top. Behind the wagon, on a trailer, was an inboard motor-boat, sleek and polished and with a look of power. The wagon stopped in the drive behind my cottage. I went outside and started toward it, and a man got out from under the wheel and started toward the cottage, and we met between starting places.

He was a tall man with a hard, square face and heavy shoulders and big hands with long spatulate fingers. The nails of the fingers were manicured, and the hands looked fleshy and soft; actually they were very strong, and they felt, I noticed when we shook hands, like expensive and pliant cowhide.

He looked familiar. I had a notion he was someone I should remember from another time and place. His name was, I thought, Ira Boniface, for that was the name of the man who had reserved three cottages, and I had never seen him or heard of him before to my knowledge. He was wearing a soft cloth hat with little air vents in each side above the band, and a light leather jacket over a red and brown plaid shirt. His trousers were brown, some kind of tough twill, and his shoes were darker brown and pebble-grained with moccasin toes and thick soles.

“Welcome to Laird’s Point,” I said. “I’m John Laird.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m Dan Grimes.”