Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

Returning with two steaming mugs, Dennis Webb explained the trivial riddle. “You mustn’t take it seriously, what I was saying about Rog. Just my fun. He’s a good bloke.” Webb giggled helplessly. “Except, of course, for being a miserable sod with the devil of a temper. So if you’re a mate of his, forget anything I blurted out to the contrary.”

Drifting to the bay window, Flinders said, “I’ve never clapped eyes on him. Matter of fact, he owes me money, through a third party.” As he had hoped, there was a much better view of the yard.

“Don’t hold your breath waiting for it,” Webb advised cheerfully. Slurping coffee, he chattered on. “I’m not a pilot or anything, mind. Except when I’m trying to pull birds. Steward, what the Yanks call a flight attendant. Bit of a come-down, really.”

Obviously he was referring to a medley of photographs encased in a transparent plastic block at Flinders’ elbow. Also obviously, Dennis Webb was fond of and impressed by Dennis Webb. All the pictures were of him, variously dressed in swimming trunks, football kit, a white pajama-like outfit, track suit, or Air Training Corps uniform, and invariably flourishing a trophy cup or shield.

“Interesting job,” Flinders commented abstractedly. He was trying to make out what kind of lock secured Roger Endaby’s office-shack.

Young Webb was a shade patronizing. “It’s all right until I get rid of the flying and travel bug at Allworld’s expense. But the prospects aren’t good if you’re like me and flunked pilot training.”

Neatly he snared the policeman’s empty mug — the coffee had been excellent — and took it with the other to the kitchen. “Like I said, I’m only here off and on... but d’you want me to give Rog a message if I see him?” he called.

Evidently Dennis Webb’s hospitable impulse was withering rapidly, now that he’d offset his blunder in slandering Endaby. Flinders took the hint.

“Ta for the coffee, Dennis. Yes, say Bill Tilden of Dagenham is after him. Tilden Plant Hire, that’ll ring a bell.” Which was unlikely, since he’d invented name, home town, and business on the spur of the moment.

Dick Flinders woke up in the middle of the night. His temple ached slightly, but he wasn’t sure whether that had roused him. Gladys Gray’s pimp had taken violent exception to even discreet inquiries about the missing prostitute’s location; Flinders had slipped the punch without quite escaping it, and had nearly broken his left hand returning the blow with interest.

He switched on the light, opening the Tennyson anthology he’d found in a secondhand bookshop.

Reading and marveling over “The Lady of Shalott,” abruptly he knew that Mary Taylor had been clever and brave and in the oddest way, lucky. Or perhaps providence had decreed that the message she needed to have matched the words of a poet dead for nearly a century. Brave above all though, he thought, eyelids stinging. For she must have made the connection within moments of death darting at her, lethal hand cocked for that single blow...

The odds against anyone’s understanding her symbol were enormous, but Mary wouldn’t have cared. She had said she would leave a clue and had kept her promise.

There was no hurry now, and his man was out of town, anyway. Flinders spent a scholarly day checking records of births and deaths. He took a long train journey, returning with a revolver and six rounds of ammunition, bought from a man who’d spent years under the illusion that Flinders didn’t know about him.

Eventually it was time, and he drove out to Heathrow. The quarry he picked up there took a taxi for the first few miles before alighting, strolling down a side street where parking was not restricted, and getting into a shiny new Mercedes. He drove straight to Roger Endaby’s place of business, unlocked the gate, and maneuvered the Merc through.

Flinders, having passed him at Chiswick, sprinted across Consort Street and was inside the yard almost as soon as the driver got out.

Dennis Webb gasped as the muzzle of the .38 found a snug home against his neck. But staring at Flinders, he didn’t ask what this was all about.

She left the web, she left the loom

...Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side.

All there in the poem, and whether you spelt it with one or two b’s, it sounded the same. The Webb whom Mary Taylor had indicted even flew wide, floating in DC-10’s round the world.

It was fanciful and outrageous, too great a leap and too fragile a bridge of reasoning — Dick Flinders considered — only if one was willing to believe that Mary Taylor had smashed the mirror for no reason at all.

And there was more, as soon as the poem meshed with his mind. Dennis Webb, so full of himself, yet anxious to play down his possessions. He had no family who got things at wholesale rates; he was an only child and his parents, never well off, were long since dead.