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

“Cloze,” said Percy, “locked in Dick’s cold store... oh, I feel bad.”

Everything was going black and the house was on a roller-coaster...

Percy woke in the morning and reached across the bed for Pauli. She wasn’t there. A sudden vision of her locked in Dick’s cold storeroom sent him racing to the phone. He had already dialed the first two digits when he heard Pauli making tea in the kitchen. “Pauli! Thank God you’re here.”

“Where did you think I’d be?”

“In the freezer.”

“Now you just pop back into bed and I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea and some aspirin and when you’re feeling better you can tell me all about it.”

“Ow, my poor head,” he said and obeyed her instructions. He thought a lot about how much he should tell her, and eventually, over breakfast, he told her everything — well, as much as he could remember.

Pauli thought it all very funny. She didn’t believe Percy had really seen a foot in the cold room.

“What an afternoon you had, my poor darling! What are you going to do now?”

“Nothing,” said Percy, whose aching head took all the fun out of the episode.

“You’re probably right,” said Pauli. “You drank so much whisky that you couldn’t be sure what was going on.”

“No, it’s all very confused. I just wish I’d never noticed that smell. Do you know, I can still smell it.”

Pauli sniffed the air. “So can I, it’s coming from outside.”

She went to the front door and came back with a carton that had an unmistakeable effluvium about it and a note taped to it.

“Dear Percy (he read), I’m going bush for a few days. Here’s the venison I promised you. It’s just nicely ripe now so you needn’t hang it any longer. Sorry I teased you and got you so drunk. You’re a good sport. Dick. P.S. I’ll come and see you if I get back.”

“He means when he gets back,” said Pauli.

“Yes,” said Percy.

Percy opened the carton. Inside was a haunch of “nicely ripe” venison and beside it a plastic foot. On the foot was written “A souvenir from Mag.”

Pauli saw the funny side of it. “What a character. What a weird sense of humor! My poor old muggins, he certainly had you on a string. He must have had it all lined up for Mrs. Pew or whatever the busybody’s name is, only you came along and copped the lot.”

Percy found it more difficult. “I was the sucker all right. Never mind, we’ll have roast venison for dinner. It’ll make a nice change.”

“Pooh,” said his spouse, “we will not. You go and bury it in the garden.”

Percy dug a deep hole in the old strawberry patch, a place he thought fitting, and dropped the venison in it. “In you go, you stinking flesh. Dust to dust... Poor Dick. Are you digging a grave for your old mate somewhere out there in the forest? And who will bury you, Dick? Tane will take your spirit and cover your body with leaves. Such a strong old body. Such a waste... In you go, poor foot. Such an elegant pink foot. Not a bit like that old bluey-white one with the big bunion that’s punched forever on my memory tapes. But I won’t tell Pauli. Not ever.” He made a two-fingered salute. “Shcouts’ honor.”

Denbow’s Code by Stephen Wasylyk

Zeigler beside him, Randy drove by without even glancing at Denbow, the blue Caddy leaving a little plume of dust as it went down the lane and disappeared into the trees.

No question of where he was taking his father.

It was about time.

When a man like Zeigler sits in his house for three months because his second wife has left him, closing out everything outside its walls including the business it had taken him years to build, it’s obvious that a fulltime caretaker and a once-a-week doctor aren’t enough.

Perhaps even where he was going wouldn’t be enough.

Denbow looked up at the now-empty house at the top of the hill, gleaming white in the morning sun against a Kodachrome sky dotted with immature puffs of clouds, a cool breeze rippling the grass and caressing his skin.

New listing! Beautiful hilltop home in superb, secluded ten-acre suburban setting w/bonus of rental home for income—

Denbow didn’t want to think about that, not because he’d have to move if that was the outcome, but because it would mean Zeigler was through.

He filled a scoop with birdseed and emptied it into the platform feeder on a post thirty feet in front of his study window, wings whirring behind him before he reached the house. Acres of woodland to feed from, but the birds preferred the fast food served up in his front yard.