Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

Someone finally came along — Tony Gregory, a tall, husky, darkhaired, devilishly handsome, forty-six-year-old Lothario who had been married twice plus being involved in many an affaire du coeur. Every single one of Tony’s conquests, including the two ex-wives (rich widows who had bailed him out of a string of bad luck), remembered their time with him as the high point of their lives. Unfortunately Tony was in thrall to only one mistress, gambling. Nothing else mattered.

Bunny was already seated when Tony boarded the plane. It took him less than a minute to recognize quality. He smiled roguishly, she giggled girlishly, it was no contest. By the time the plane landed in Pittsburgh, Tony had learned all he needed to know.

Her name was Elizabeth Ainsworth (“My friends call me Bunny”); she was a widow; had no living relatives; her late husband’s grandfather had owned coal mines; she lived in a small county seat town in a house “much too big”; passed the time “in the usual small town activities.”

Wow, thought Tony. I’ve finally hit the jackpot.

It certainly looked like he had.

An old hand in such situations, Tony struck the right note, modestly describing himself as a cautious international entrepreneur (“I’m not a plunger”) presently interested in putting together a Singapore real estate deal. Further modest revelations finally caused Bunny to interrupt him by saying that he had to be “a wonderfully compassionate human being to cancel an important meeting with your Wall Street bankers” to hurry to Pittsburgh to visit his hundred-and-five-year-old great-aunt before she died.

“Money’s important, but family — what there is left — comes first,” Tony said solemnly. “She’s the only relative I have left.”

Bunny was returning from her annual theater-museum-shopping trip to New York. She and Harold had gone for years, and following his tragic death she had gone alone, to the despair of Clara Hogan, the housekeeper. A healthy, robust, not bad-looking widow in her late fifties (her dear Joe was killed in a mine accident early in the marriage), Clara had it pretty nice.

She had her own spacious third floor apartment, the fine salary, Wednesday and Sunday afternoons off (Bunny dined at the country club on those days). She visited her mother-in-law in the nursing home on Wednesdays, had to endure the inevitable question, “You’re still keeping Joe’s memory alive, aren’t you, Clara?”

Clara did the cooking, supervised the two maids, did some dusting, straightened a lampshade — things like that — nothing too taxing. But she worried. For even though Bunny had assured her that she would be well-cared for in her old age, Clara — well aware that Bunny was a kindhearted, innocent person who regarded most people as true blue, the salt of the earth — feared the worst every time Bunny went to New York. (What if she falls for a fortune hunter, what would happen to me?)

“There goes the poor lamb on her way to slaughter,” Clara moaned to the housecat every time the Hillsdale taxi picked up Bunny for the trip to the Pittsburgh airport. “A babe in the woods, all alone in that wicked city where there’s a dozen wolves in sheep’s clothing ready to pounce on rich widows with their hearts on their sleeves. Mark my words, Midnight, one of these times she’s coming back all aflutter, gigglin’ she’s met Prince Charming.”

At which Midnight — technically a dumb animal but in reality one smart cookie — the trusted confidante of the housekeeper, would meow to say he shared her concern.

Midnight plays a vital part in this tale, which can almost be called a tragedy with a happy ending, if there is such a thing. He is the third Ainsworth housecat. Percy, the second one, was eighteen when it became obvious that the mice were gaining the upper hand. In accordance with Bunny’s tearful instructions, Clara found a home for him with a lonely old couple to whom Percy’s eighty-five-dollar a month pension was a godsend. A replacement had to be found.

Clara went to the County Humane Society, a ramshackle facility slowly sinking into the huge void left when the coal beneath was mined out years ago. There were six cats — clean, shiny, spayed or neutered, with all of their shots — awaiting (a) adoption or (b) the gas chamber.

“No, no, the poor creatures don’t suffer,” insisted the kind people there. “It’s over in seconds. But it’s a crying shame so few are adopted, how many are abandoned.”

Clara picked a long, lean, black male with fiery green eyes and one and a half ears. She and Bunny agreed that Midnight was the perfect name.

Midnight blundered with his first catch. Though thoroughly schooled by Clara — including several trial runs with a toy ball that squeaked — Midnight was so proud of his first catch that he forgot Clara’s repeated warning never to let Bunny see a mouse, dead or alive. He went running to Bunny with a poor little mouse still alive, squeaking pathetically, dangling from his mouth. Bunny had hysterics. Midnight learned his lesson.