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

“He’ll never be governor,” Laura said.

“Of course I’ll be governor. It’s all set, Mr. Laird. Long range planning, you know.”

“No. He’ll never be attorney general, and he’ll never be governor. Dan Grimes will be attorney general, and Dan Grimes will be governor. Jerome Quintin will be nothing.”

“She’s talking too much,” Quintin said. “You’ll please pardon her, Mr. Laird.”

She drank from her glass and looked at me levelly over the rim.

“Yes,” she said, “you’ll please pardon me, Mr. Laird. I’ve been attending a wake for a long time, and I’m a little drunk on scotch and grief. I’m in mourning for a man I knew once and loved. A young lawyer I helped put through law school. He was brilliant, and I thought he had integrity, and I admired him in addition to loving him, but he died. He died of corruption, and he’s dead, and he’ll be buried in the state capitol.”

Quintin stood looking into his glass until she’d finished. Then, without looking at her or me, he simply walked out of the room onto the porch and stood looking out through the screen and the gathering shadows beneath the trees to the darkening surface of the lake.

“I’d better go,” I said. “Thanks very much for the drink.”

“You’re quite welcome,” Laura Quintin said.

I set my glass carefully on the table and went out behind Quintin. He didn’t turn or speak as I opened the screen door quietly and left.

As I crossed in front of the Boniface cottage, Rita Boniface spoke to me from the shadows. I stopped and looked up and saw her dimly on the other side of the screen.

“Come in and have a drink with me,” she said.

“I just had a drink,” I said.

“Come in and have another.”

“If you don’t mind, I won’t.”

“I do mind, however. If you just had a drink, you must have had it with my dreary friends, the Quintins. I demand equal consideration.”

“As a paying guest,” I said, “I guess you’re entitled to it.”

I went up onto the porch. She was standing there in the shadows, but when I entered she turned and went inside, and I followed.

“You don’t sound as if you like the Quintins much,” I said.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “I don’t like them any. Not one bit.”

“To me,” I said, “they seem like a reasonably nice couple having a little reasonably normal trouble.”

“Do you think so?” she said. “How tolerant of you. Never mind, though. The bottle’s on the cabinet.”

Beside the bottle was the glass she’d been using. Two small pieces of ice were floating in the bottom in about a quarter of an inch of water. I emptied the glass in the sink and I rinsed it and made a fresh drink in it. I mixed another for myself in another glass, and then she came over to me, moving out of the light of a small lamp into the fringe shadows of the kitchen area. Taking her glass and drinking from it, she made a face and immediately poured some of the liquid into the sink. She filled the glass again from the bottle.

“You make a very poor drink, Mr. Laird,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Will you have a little more whisky in yours?”

“No, thanks. This suits me.”

“Really? I can’t understand how anyone can tolerate a weak drink. A good strong drink is what I like.”

“I see it is.”

“You needn’t look concerned, however. It’s perfectly all right. I have a remarkable capacity for alcohol.”

“I’m glad to know it.”

“It’s kind of a gift or something. Some people have a capacity for it, and some people don’t, and you’d be surprised who some of the people are who don’t. Do you realize that it’s practically impossible to judge a person’s capacity from his appearance?”

“I’ve never thought about it.”

“It is, I assure you. Take Dan Grimes, for instance. You wouldn’t think a man so big and strong and important as Dan would have practically no capacity at all for alcohol, but it’s true. That’s why he never drinks except when he’s with friends where it won’t make any difference. He always gets drunk almost immediately, and the next thing you know he’s getting sick and passing out. What I mean is, he’s susceptible. Are you susceptible, Mr. Laird?”

“I don’t drink much.”

“How unfortunate. It might make you more entertaining if you did. Are you susceptible to anything else in particular?”

She was standing very close to me, and I could smell the astringent sweetness of her perfume, and feel on my face as she talked the moist warmth of her breath. All at once she put an arm around my neck and put her lips on mine, kissing me slowly. There was a suggestion of a taunt in the way she took her time. I stood quietly with the glass in my right hand, the left hand empty behind her back and carefully not touching her, and after awhile she stepped back past the empty hand and leaned against the cabinet and began to laugh softly as if she were genuinely amused.

“You are also a very poor kisser, Mr. Laird,” she said. “You make a poor drink, and you kiss a poor kiss.”

“I guess I just have no talent,” I said.

“It’s possible. On the other hand, it’s possible that you’re merely undeveloped. You might improve with experience.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.