Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

Because he was biddable, a hint-taker, Esme allowed a routine to develop after tea. They’d go into the front room and watch television; they both enjoyed a quiz or a game show, sharing gleeful scorn over the number of ignoramuses and ninnies getting the chance to win absurdly rich prizes. After the nine o’clock news, Esme would say, “I expect you want some time to yourself now,” and Mr. Shale would respond, “Absolutely,” or “Right you are, I am a bit drowsy,” and patter away, taking the used cups to the kitchen. She always made coffee for them, proper coffee, Blue Mountain, freshly ground.

After a time he needed no cue, simply collected the crockery and said goodnight.

Esme came to think so highly of him that she would have done his washing. But Mr. Shale took himself off to the laundrette every Saturday morning, choosing his library books while underpants and socks swirled around, and collecting the week’s supply of shirts from a Chinese laundry. Changed his shirt daily, grubby or not. That had been one of Dad’s yardsticks for a gentleman.

She kept telling herself that it was too good to last. Mr. Shale would unveil or develop new tiresome if not repellent mannerisms, take to drink, or start some hobby — men did — involving hammering and banging, strange smells, Things Left About Downstairs.

Failing that, he might mumble about a hitch at the bank, that infernal computer, and get behind with the rent. Instead, after a year, he said, “Er, about what I’m paying you, Mrs. Huddle...” making her bristle. “All the extra, coffee and that, and you feed me like a lord. I don’t feel right. Let’s round it up to the hundred.”

Astonished, Esme decreed almost gaily, “We shall split the difference, Mr. Shale, and make it ninety.”

The only oddity about him was that Mr. Shale never went anywhere, save work and to town on a Saturday. If friends or family existed, he never visited them and they never called on him. Esme never felt sorry for people, their remedies were in their own hands, yet she experienced a wisp of compassion for David Shale. Silly of her, she conceded. He was well looked after, and contented with small talk and television, reading, and his albums and tweezers — there was a hobby after all: he collected stamps.

Esme shrugged off her concern. She didn’t have much of a life, outsiders would say, yet it suited her perfectly, thank you. Some folk were self-sufficient and her lodger was one of them. She couldn’t deny that being self-sufficient without being wholly alone was... quite pleasant.

Mr. Shale had been with her for two years when the rot set in. In rapid succession he bought a new suit, a pair of unsuitable slacks — floppy, pastel, too young for him — and a yellow tank top, worn over a silly open-neck shirt. She caught him studying himself in mirrors. He failed to understand (men didn’t, for some reason) that growing sideburns drew attention to scanty growth above them.

And he started staying out at night.

Esme Huddle snorted, recognising the signs. A typical man was behaving typically. Pity, for she had nearly accepted him as a companion — not a friend, God forbid, but a human pet requiring just about the same effort and attention as a pedigreed cat.

Neither of them alluded to his conduct, nor acknowledged that a cozy routine had altered. Mr. Shale was implicitly sheepish, somehow, that was all. Diffidently hangdog, despite an occasional unguarded grin while daydreaming. “Makes me feel like his mother,” Esme thought crossly. “As if I cared what he gets up to providing he doesn’t bring his tart back here.”

Unlikely, for David Shale was always home by ten-thirty, conspicuously alone, closer to sulks than his former cheeriness.

Although she didn’t care, as such, Esme assured herself, it was regrettable. “Drat the chap,” she exclaimed one evening. From habit she had ground enough beans for two cups. Sooner than waste the coffee she must drink the lot and be kept awake half the night. No consideration, some people.

It wasn’t as if, she argued for the hundredth time, the wretched man was getting anything out of it. Apart from You Know What, silly devil. Grins or no, he was prevailing downcast lately. Hadn’t touched his stamp album in weeks. She’d had to dust it this morning. And that pitiful array of vitamin pills in his bedside drawer, along with a pamphlet about hair restorers. Twenty pounds for a bottle no bigger than your thumb — and she bet he had sent away for some. Chump!

“It won’t happen again,” Mr. Shale assured his landlady. He eyed her anxiously.

“I’m not your keeper,” Esme snapped. “Got your key, and you’re a grown man.”

“But I was very late, I must have woken you.”

“No must about it, if I’m abed before eleven then I get my eight hours, elephants stampeding wouldn’t wake me,” she lied. And with hardly a pause, “Same old story, all over you when they want your order, but it soon changes.”