Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 1, February 1961

And as the years marched on, she watched the accompanying march of the flowers, conquering the greensward, pushing the grass toward final extinction. She did not relent for one day, one hour. Always she had plans for new flowers. She must have realized, of course, that each new bed, border, and bank multiplied her gardener’s work, for each new plant had to be carefully tended, trimmed, watered, weeded. Nine acres of flowers need infinitely more care than nine acres of grass.

Nine acres of flowers! Yes, one day it happened. And it was an early summer day, with all the flowers in riotous bloom. A rainbow, a jungle of colors, the breeze audible with the movements of thousands of fragile petals, the air steamy with their multitude of fragrances. All except for one tiny space. The last little patch of level green, right beneath Harriet Kopping’s bedroom window.

“I want another red rose bush right there,” she instructed Anton.

He had long ago ceased to argue against her commands. In fact, he was only dimly aware that this was the last of the grass, or that when he folded this final bush into the earth that except for the space which the house and the driveway occupied, he had turned over every last square inch of Harriet Kopping’s nine acres.

But the lady herself was exquisitely aware of the occasion. She celebrated it by having a heart attack.

The housekeeper phoned for the doctor, and the doctor came. Shortly afterward a nurse followed, and several deliveries from the pharmacy. But in the midst of all the hubbub, the mistress of the house asked to see Anton Vandrak.

He was admitted to her bedroom — for the first time in his life. And according to her insistent instructions, he was alone with her. He found her very quiet, very pale, almost completely recumbent, her head raised by only one pillow. Yet he was so accustomed to her mastery over him that she was to him just as awesome as ever.

“Anton,” she began, “we have some unfinished business, you and I.”

“I have planted the rose bush,” he said, not understanding.

“But have you found Stella?”

Stella? Of late he had thought of Stella very seldom. But now he remembered her. His wife, whom he had hated and had murdered.

“No,” he said, “I haven’t found her.”

“Do you still want to know where she is?”

He hesitated. He wasn’t sure. For a time it had seemed that his whole life had been devoted to finding Stella. Now he was no longer sure. What did it matter now?

“I want to tell you,” Mrs. Kopping said. “I want to reward you for your years of faithful service.”

He listened passively, unaware of any emotion, pleasant or unpleasant.

“You should be proud, Anton. I think you have made it up to her. Never has any man so cared for, so beautified, his dear wife’s final resting place. There is no cemetery in the world, Anton, as lovely as the one which Stella has all to herself. She lies under a living monument of flowers.”

“She is buried in the yard then?” He asked it calmly.

“She has always been buried in the yard, Anton. You put her there with your own loving hands.”

He did not understand. But for the first time he felt a quickening of the old interest, a resurgence — perhaps only a memory — of his former desperation.

“But you moved her,” he argued.

“No, Anton. How could I move an object as heavy as Stella? I’m a frail old woman. I was a frail old woman then.”

He blinked his tired eyes, concentrating on the problem. “I opened the grave I had dug... between the fourth and fifth bushes. And she wasn’t there.”

“You dug in the wrong place, Anton. You dug between what were really originally the fifth and sixth bushes. You see, all I dug up and removed was one rose bush, the first in the line. I brought it into the house here and burned it in the fireplace.”

He nodded, comprehending only vaguely. He was a stupid old man, he realized. He had always been stupid.

He waited now for Mrs. Kopping to give him further instructions. Now that there was no more space to plant new flowers, should he just go on tending the old ones? But Mrs. Kopping didn’t tell him. In fact, she didn’t say anything more. Her eyes were closed. Perhaps, he thought, she’d fallen asleep.

So he left the room quietly, went back downstairs, and outside again. The pain in his back was severe today. But that mustn’t stop him from working. He had his job to do. He sank to his knees wincing at the stabs of fresh pain, and grasped his trowel. The roses needed tending. He’d been neglecting these old plants by the driveway.

As he worked with the trowel, his mind somehow refused to forget Stella. She seemed very close to him.

How Much to Kill? by Michael Zuroy

“Money talks,” said Cummins. “A man will do anything if the price is right... even kill.”

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