Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 9, September 1962

“This is different,” his wife said defensively. “Besides, Holly needs something unusual like this to stimulate her imagination. That’s the whole trouble, Phil. She’s never been given a chance to pretend anything. We’ve just always gone along with that matter-of-fact side of her.”

“But that is Holly.” As if to end the discussion, Phil walked over to the hot water heater. “This thing’s leaking again. You’d better give the company a call before long. The warranty’s up in a couple of months.”

Ann was determined to justify her reason for buying the doll house, so disregarding his last remarks, she said, “I’ve never been able to share anything much with Holly. She’s not the way I was at her age or like any other child I grew up with. She’s never known the fun of pretending the way we did, and she’s growing up so fast.” Ann bent over the doll house and very gently fingered a miniature steamer trunk in the attic. “I’ve been looking for something the two of us could enjoy together. I knew this was it the minute I saw it.”

Phil returned to her, and patted her on the shoulder. “Okay, if you think it’ll make her happy. Come on upstairs now, honey. It’s cold down here.”

With his saying it, she shivered. Suddenly she felt depressed. Tomorrow was Holly’s birthday. It was too late to get her anything else. She wondered if Phil could be right in doubting that Holly would like the doll house. No, Ann concluded shortly. It must appeal to her. It simply wasn’t possible for a daughter of hers to be totally lacking a sense of imagination.

The next morning after Holly left for school, Phil and Ann moved the doll house upstairs to their daughter’s room. “Should I try to keep her downstairs until you get home?” Ann asked her husband.

“The suspense would kill you,” Phil grinned. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Don’t wait for me. Go ahead and show it to her the minute she gets home.”

Holly looked exactly like Phil, Ann thought that afternoon as she watched her daughter scrutinize the doll house for the first time. She had the same even expression in her deep-set brown eyes, the identical composed shape of her mouth. And as her mother had expected, Holly made a thorough inspection of each room before she stated an opinion. “This is different from Sara’s. It’s supposed to be in the olden days, isn’t it?”

Ann smiled, and stooped beside her. “The style of it is called Victorian. It’s about eighty or ninety years old. Things were very different then. Look at the kitchen pump. It really works, too.” She showed Holly how the handle moved up and down.

“I see,” Holly nodded.

Ann couldn’t wait any longer. “Do you like it, darling? Isn’t it lots better than a microscope?”

Holly noted the elation in her mother’s vivid blue eyes. “Well,” she answered carefully, “it’ll give me lots to learn about.”

Some hours later when Ann went into Holly’s room to see if she was reading in semi-darkness as usual, she found Holly lying on her side, staring at the doll house. The small tole lamp shining opposite it almost spotlighted the rooms so that they gave the impression of stage settings for an Ibsen play. Ann reached to turn off the light.

“Please leave it on,” Holly said without turning her head.

Ann smiled, and answered lightly but with purpose, “You know, you’re keeping the Joneses from retiring.”

Holly looked up at her mother. A puzzled frown wrinkled her forehead at first, then it disappeared. “Oh, you mean them.” She faced the doll house again. “Their name is Pettingill.” She yawned. “The Bartholomew J. Pettingills. And the maid’s name is Clara Fischer.”

Though the following day was Saturday, Phil went to his office at the Bureau of Standards. Before he left, he murmured something about having to get the notes for his next lecture, but Ann was too preoccupied to pay much attention. Holly had already finished breakfast, and had gone back up to her room. On a pretext of starting the upstairs cleaning, Ann took a dust cloth to Holly’s bedroom. Her daughter was sitting quietly in a rocker before the doll house. “Do you suppose,” she asked her mother, “you could make them some new clothes?”

“I’d love to.” Ann bent down and started to pick up Mrs. Pettingill.

“Don’t, Mommy!” Holly’s voice was sharp. “She hates to be touched.”

Ann hastily withdrew her hand. “Oh, really?” The tiny figure’s china face was rather proud and stern. Then Ann studied the father doll. “Mr. Pettingill seems pleasant enough.”

“He is.” Holly removed him from a Lincoln rocker in the parlor. She rubbed her finger over his black painted moustache. “That’s the trouble.”

“What do you mean... trouble?” Ann sat down on the floor, completely enthralled.

“Well, you see,” Holly explained very seriously, “she thinks he’s not strict enough with Charlie, for one thing.”

“Their little boy?” Ann pointed to the doll in a sailor suit astride a hobby horse in the second-floor nursery.

“Mm-hm,” Holly nodded. “He’s really a nice little boy, but he does things that make his mother mad.”

“For instance?”