Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

A powerful gust of wind hit her in the back, causing Casey to lose her balance on the wobbly wooden crutches. She dropped one crutch, stumbled forward. “Yikes,” she commented.

Wes lunged ahead to catch her. “Easy now,” he cautioned, getting hold of her beneath her arms.

The other crutch fell away, and she and Wes went staggering into his small living room.

He managed to hold onto her and remain upright. He guided her — she was limping, favoring her left leg — over to his sofa. “Sit,” he suggested, untangling himself from her and letting her topple back into a seated position. “Before you explain — or rather, before you spin some incredible falsehood to account for your whereabouts since last we met, Casey, tell me about these crutches.”

“I sprained my ankle.”

“How?”

“Jumping out a window.”

“Um.” He brought the crutches in from where they’d fallen on his porch, shut the door, and laid them out side by side against the living room wall. “And what tall tale have you concocted to account for jumping out a window? How high up was it, by the way?”

“Two stories,” she answered, frowning up at him. “Listen now, Wes, I really am a changed and reformed person. I admit that in the past, in spite of the lovely times I had while living with you here in your cosy little place in Santa Rita Beach, I tended on occasion to stretch the truth a bit. But, and it’s ironic that the very man who helped me to reform and turn into a morale person, is the very same one who—”

“Moral,” he corrected.

“Exactly,” she said, nodding and then bending to massage her bare right ankle. “What I’m attempting to convey is that while I may’ve fibbed some in the past, I don’t do that now.”

“Fibbed is hardly an adequate word to describe the monumental lies and downright falsehoods you’ve told me during the various times we’ve lived together, Case,” he told her. “You are a master of duplicity and deceit, a world class prevaricator, a—”

“But basically we love each other and that’s why I always return to—”

“Return to the scene of your crimes,” he cut in. “And granted you may love me, Casey, but there have also been dozens of other fellows who also—”

“There you go, exaggerating.” She held up her left hand and began ticking off the fingers. “There can’t have been more than five or six men I was unfaithful to you with during our whole and entire relationship to date. Let’s see, there was Roy, Carlos, Scott, and that—”

“Never mind,” he said, scowling at her. “Fidelity isn’t a matter of quantity anyway. Even one clandestine affair is sufficient to — who the hell was Scott?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I thought you knew about him,” Casey said. “No matter. Let’s move on to the serious stuff. I want to explain why I’ve come back to you — come back to stay.” She tried a small smile on him.

“Stay? You intend to squat here with me again?”

“Well, isn’t that what sweethearts do? After all, Wes, you’ve been the love of my life ever since—”

“One of a herd of loves of your life,” he said, making a but-never-mind gesture. “Get back to telling me why you jumped out a window.”

“Well, ninny, why do people usually jump out of windows? To escape pursuit from an assassin, obviously.”

“No, some people jump because their houses are on fire, others because they’ve been driven to suicide by an unfaithful mate,” he said, sitting on the farther arm of the sofa. “Who was attempting to assassinate you this time?”

“You make it sound as though I’m trying to con you, when actually I came damned close to having my throat cut,” she said, angry.

“Someone attacked you with a knife?”

“Well, they had knives when they broke into the mansion,” she replied. “I assumed, from the way they were waving them around, that they sure as heck were going to use them on—”

“What mansion?”

Sighing, Casey leaned back. “Suppose you control your compunction to keep interrupting and—”

“Compulsion,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s neurotic of me to be skeptical about the details in these fantasies you concoct.”

“Here I completely change my character for you. I struggle to be completely open and honest, Wes, and you turn a deaf ear.” Casey sniffled twice, smoothed down her short skirt. “If you could simply quit hassling me for a minute or two, I’ll tell you the whole sorry story. And, I guarantee, it’ll be the complete and absolute truth.” She drew a cross on one of her breasts. “Cross my heart.”

“Your heart is on the other side,” he pointed out, lowering himself to a sofa cushion. “All right, okay. Tell me and I’ll try not to cry out in pain every time you try to drag in some momentous he.”

Casey gave him a sideways glance. She smoothed her skirt again.

“Well,” she began, “while I was in the Bahamas two and a half months ago, I happened to meet—”

“Is that where you were making your movie?”

“What movie?”

“In your most recent farewell note, Case, you mentioned that you were planning to make a movie with the money you had left over from—”