Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense Read online

  “Oh, Aunt Sarah,” said Karen with gentle woe, “how can it be an insult to try not to keep talking about unhappy things?”

  “I don’t want to talk about unhappy things because they are unhappy,” said Sarah. “I know how Alice trained you all—to keep unhappy things outside her door. But I don’t like things kept outside my door—any things. And, as far as I know, I don’t deserve to be treated this way.”

  Jeff was looking stricken and his wife put her hand on his knee. “Oh, Aunt Sarah, dear,” she said softly, “you mustn’t, you really mustn’t. I’m so sorry that you feel as you do. I wish you didn’t. Del?” She looked to Del for help.

  But Del said, “I don’t know what Mom’s talking about.”

  “Neither do I,” said Suzanne abruptly, from the heap she was on a floor cushion.

  Mrs. Brady kept sternly to her course. “I want to know why you are all handling me with kid gloves. In fact, I think I want to know exactly what happened here on Monday.”

  “Children,” said Karen, “she’s had a shock. She’s—”

  But Bobby sat up in his chair and used his spine. “I know what she means,” the boy said.

  Mrs. Brady nodded to her unexpected ally. Karen’s hands were moving in a protective flutter, but now Jeffrey said, “The fact is, we can’t be quite sure what did happen. If we chose not to tell you of a certain possibility, that was because it is very distressing to think about, and it certainly need not be true.”

  “There,” said Karen. “Now, surely, that is no insult. When is it an insult to be kind? Del, dear, would you like something to eat or drink, before bed?”

  Del said cheerfully, “You won’t brush her off that easily.”

  And Jeffrey said painfully, “No, I guess not.”

  Karen said, “Oh, Jeff, this is too bad. Oh, please, all of you. Let it go. It’s all over. There is nothing anybody can do or even really know.”

  But Bobby said, “I guess you’d better tell us, Dad.”

  And Suzanne said, with a burst of anger, “Don’t you think we can take it?”

  And Mrs. Brady was nodding and sparkling her approval. These kids will do, she thought.

  So Jeffrey lifted his head and spoke in a blurting way. “All right. There is a possibility that my mother took her own life.”

  “Doesn’t the doctor know that?” asked Del, breaking the silent moment of shock with an air of intelligent interest.

  Karen said, “No, No. That is, he suspects that she may have had too much of her medicine. By accident. Or just in ignorance. He doesn’t know, you see, that she happened to be feeling rather upset and hurt that day.”

  Bobby was on his feet. “Oh, come on, Dad! You know darned well Grandmother never would have cared that much. So you told her you were taking off to Europe—so what? Listen, she knew she’d have a ball, bossing a crew of nurses and telling everybody how you ran out on her. Well, it’s the truth!” He looked around, belligerently.

  Suzanne said, “She was spoiled rotten—we all know that. But nothing was going to get her down.”

  Karen said, “Oh, my dears. Oh, I don’t think this is very kind. You are making your father feel very bad. None of us want him feeling any worse. Please?”

  Del said, “I don’t see what you’re all so upset about.”

  And Karen said, “There now. That is very sensible. Isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is,” snapped Mrs. Brady. “You haven’t said a word so far that was worth keeping secret. You think she might have, in one of her moods, taken too much medicine on purpose? But the doctor thinks not? I can’t see anything in that worth lying to me about.”

  “But we can’t know,” said Karen, “and why should you be worried?”

  Mrs. Brady answered in ringing tones. “Why not? I’m alive.”

  Her nephew looked at her and said, “I beg your pardon, Aunt Sarah. We should have told you. I think you knew that your heart medicine is the same as hers? And you knew that her pills were very much weaker than yours—almost placebos, in fact? Karen spoke to you of that, didn’t she? The day you unpacked.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, my mother evidently crossed over to your room on Monday, took your bottle of pills, got back into bed, and then swallowed enough to be too many for her. She took them herself—no doubt of that. So it just seemed—after the doctor had gone—”

  Jeff began to flounder. “When we found—we didn’t want to—we felt—” He put his hands over his eyes. “For Bobby’s sake, who didn’t notice that she crossed the hall, and for your sake, Aunt Sarah, who did encourage me to tell my mother I was going away—well, we saw no reason, since we can’t be sure of the truth, why you should be tortured by this doubt.”

  “By which you are being tortured?” said Mrs. Brady. Then she closed her mouth and set herself to manage her treacherous heart.

  “It is perfectly possible—in fact, it is probable,” Jeff said, straining to believe, “that she forgot. Or never realized that your pills were so much stronger. It may have been just that her own supply was low—”

  Del said alertly, “Mama?”

  Sarah Brady had shrunken in the chair. She was hunched there like a little old monkey, and the agitation of her heart was now visible to all.

  Her daughter came to her and said again, “Mama?”

  “Get my handbag—pills,” Mrs. Brady mumbled through numb lips.

  Karen said, “Oh, Aunt Sarah!” She clapped her hands and called, “Henny! Bring a glass of water—quickly.” She stood by Mrs. Brady and her nurse’s fingers felt for the pulse. Sarah kept breathing as slowly and as deeply as she could.

  Bobby said, “Listen, everybody! If I’d seen her, which I didn’t, I wouldn’t have known to do anything. It’s a lot of malarkey! Keeping stuff from me.”

  Suzanne said, “Listen, if Grandmother had wanted to kill herself she’d have done it. What’s the difference how? But I’ll never believe she did do it.”

  Henny was there and Del ran up with the handbag. Del grabbed the glass of water, pushing Karen away. Mrs. Brady swallowed a pill, then some water, and sighed.

  In a few moments she said, “How do you know she took my pills?”

  “Oh, Miz Sarah,” wailed Henny, “why did you have to find out about that? It was me who saw your bottle under her bed—after the doctor went.”

  “And who,” said Mrs. Brady, lifting her voice a little, but not looking up, “put it back in my room?”

  “Me,” said Henny. “Miz Karen, she recognized it. And she said—and Mr. Conley, he felt so terrible—so they both said, Well, the least said the better. I didn’t want you to feel bad, either.” Henny was ready to weep. “Listen, you got to pray Miz Alice didn’t sin, not that way.”

  Mrs. Brady shook her head. “Jeff, did you see this bottle, my bottle, on Monday?”

  “Yes, I saw it.” Her nephew bent forward, alarmed for her. “Now, don’t worry, Aunt Sarah—forget it. We shouldn’t have told you.”

  Mrs. Brady could feel her blood beginning to flow less turbulently.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t forget it. My bottle was downtown when Alice died—I know it was!”

  “Why, no,” said Jeff. “I’m sorry, Aunt Sarah, it couldn’t have been—it was under Alice’s bed.”

  “I was surprised,” said Mrs. Brady in a stronger voice, “to see so many of my pills gone at noon. But I carry Dr. Crane’s prescription with me all the time, so after Karen left me and went to the dentist, I dropped into Mr. Fredericks’ drug store.”

  In the silence that followed, she looked only at Karen.

  “Oh, but then she must have—” said Karen. “Poor Alice must have—”

  Mrs. Brady sighed again. No. Definitely not. Alice, dead, had put no bottle under her deathbed.

  She said, without anger, “I guess you wouldn’t have talked
them quite so desperately into ‘sparing’ me if you hadn’t finally noticed Mr. Fredericks’ name and Monday’s date on this label? Oh, Karen, I told you I had an errand to do on Monday!”

  No one spoke.

  “When did Henny find it where you put it?” Mrs. Brady pressed on. “After I’d brought it back from Fredericks’ drug store, of course. But by that time Alice was already dead of what you’d given her. At noon, was it, before we went downtown, when you took away her tray?”

  “No,” said Jeff. “No. No!”

  “If there is another secret around,” said Aunt Sarah sadly, “please trot it out.”

  In a moment Karen said sullenly. “She’s buried. Now we can go to Europe. We can all live, for a change.” The skin of her face was suddenly mottled, and her eyes had clouded over. “She was going to raise such a fuss. Jeff wouldn’t have stood up to it—he’d have given in, the way he always did. She wasn’t any good, even to herself. You all know that. I had to take it, all day, every day. You can call it mercy.”

  But no one was calling it mercy. The two children had drawn close to their father. Henny went to stand behind them. Jeffrey Conley stared at his second wife with wide and terrified eyes.

  “You can do what you want,” whined Karen viciously, “but you had all better stop and think. What good will it do to let the truth out now?”

  The room was still, without an answer.

  Mrs. Brady took another sip of water, although her heart felt steadier now as she sensed the old familiar comfort that always sustained her.

  “The quality of truth,” she said, “is that it’s really there. Poor Alice taught me that.”

  It was Del who said, “I’ll call the police—it has to be done. I’ll do it.”

  Poor Karen.

  DOROTHY SALISBURY DAVIS

  ___________________

  1916–

  DOROTHY SALISBURY DAVIS is the lone author in the collection who is still alive, and at ninety-six years old, Davis’s spirit remains unimpeded—she described herself as “gregarious and socially vibrant” in a May 2012 interview. Born and raised in Illinois, Davis worked as a research librarian in the advertising world and as an editor for Chicago-based magazine The Merchandiser before finding her calling in fiction. Though she published two short sets of series novels, one featuring the housekeeper Mrs. Norris and police detective Jasper Tully, along with another starring a different sleuth, Julie Hayes, Davis’s stand-alone novels, including The Judas Cat (1949), The Pale Betrayer (1965), and, most recently, In the Still of the Night (2001), feature her very best work.

  Sara Paretsky, one of the pioneers of female private-eye fiction and a fellow Illinois author, hailed Davis for her hallmark “awareness of how easy it is for ordinary people to do nasty or wicked deeds . . . She lived among bootleggers, immigrants, sharecroppers, and itinerant workers in her early years, and there’s a richness to her understanding of the human condition that is missing from most contemporary crime fiction.”

  That deep well of understanding and empathy suffuses Davis’s short fiction as well, much of it collected in Tales of a Stormy Night, published a year before she was awarded the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master designation in 1985. Instead of being concerned with black-and-white notions of good and evil, Davis’s characters are flawed, doing their best to transcend their failings even when, more often than not, they cannot do so. They act with sincere motives and deep feelings, even when events conspire to turn out very badly or dampen success with a terrible but necessary sting in the tail.

  “Lost Generation” may seem an unorthodox choice for the anthology, at least at first blush, since it’s told from and features the perspective of men, a perspective Davis renders with unfailing and subtle insight. It disturbs in the way that only quiet, stomach-clenching horror can, as it roots out a mother’s darkest nightmare and makes it feel utterly real. Upon first publication in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in September 1971, editor Fred Dannay flat-out told readers, “this is not a pleasant story, we warn you. . . . you’ll find no ‘sheer entertainment,’ no ‘escape fiction’ . . . But if you want to look into the hearts of men—rather, into the heart of a man—into the confusions and contradictions of today’s prejudices, then we urge you not to skip the next six pages.” Today, I urge readers as strongly as Dannay did more than forty years ago.

  LOST GENERATION

  ___________________

  THE SCHOOL board had sustained the teacher. The vote was four to three, but the majority made it clear they were not voting for the man. They voted the way they had because otherwise the state would have stepped in and settled the appeal, ruling against the town . . .

  Tom and Andy, coming from the west of town, waited for the others at the War Memorial. The October frost had silvered the cannon, and the moonlight was so clear you could read the words FOR GOD AND COUNTRY on the monument. The slack in the flagpole cord allowed the metal clips to clank against the pole. That and the wind made the only sounds.

  Then Andy said, “His wife’s all right. She came up to Mary after it was over and said she wished he’d teach like other teachers and leave politics alone.”

  “Politics,” Tom said. “Is that what she calls it?”

  “She’s okay just the same. I don’t want anything happening to her—or to their kid.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to them,” Tom said.

  “The kid’s a funny little guy. He don’t say much, but then he don’t miss much either,” Andy said.

  Tom said nothing. He knocked one foot against the other.

  “It’s funny, ain’t it, how one man—you know?” Andy said.

  “One rotten apple in the barrel,” Tom said. “Damn, it’s getting cold. I put anti-freeze in half the cars in town today, but not my own. In his even.”

  “The kid—he’s just a kid, you know,” Andy said.

  Tom wiped the moisture from beneath his nose. “I told you nothing’s going to happen to him.”

  “I know, I know, but sometimes things go wrong.”

  The others came, Frankie and Murph, walking along the railroad tracks that weren’t used any more except by the children taking a short cut on their way to and from school. You could smell the creosote in the smoke from the chimneys of the houses alongside the tracks. One by one the railroad ties were coming loose and disappearing.

  The four men climbed the road in back of what had once been the Schroeders’ chicken coops. The Schroeders had sold their chickens and moved down the hill when the new people took over, house by house, that part of town. One of the men remarked you could still smell the chicken droppings.

  “That ain’t what you smell,” Tom said. “That coop’s been integrated.”

  Frankie gave a bark of laughter that ricocheted along the empty street.

  “Watch it, will you?” Tom said.

  “What’s the matter? They ain’t coming out this time of night.”

  “They can look out windows, can’t they? It’s full moon.”

  “I’d like to see it. I’d like to see just one head pop out a window.” Frankie whistled the sound of speed and patted the pocket of his jacket.

  “I should’ve picked the men I wanted,” Tom said, meaning only Andy to hear. “This drawing lots is for the birds.”

  “You could’ve said so on the range.” The town’s ten policemen met for target practice once a week. They had met that afternoon. After practice they had talked about the school-board meeting they expected to attend that night. They joked about it, only Andy among them having ever attended such a meeting before.

  “I’d still’ve picked you, Andy,” Tom said.

  “Thanks.”

  Frankie said, “I heard what you said, Tom. I’m going to remember it too.”

  Andy said, “You might know he’d live in this part of town. It all adds up, don’t it?”

 
; No one answered him. No one spoke until at the top of the street Murph said, “There’s a light on in the hallway. What does that mean?”

  “It means we’re lucky. We can see him coming to the door.”

  Tom gave the signal and they broke formation, each man moving into the shadow of a tree, except Tom who went up to the house.

  • • •

  The child was looking out the window. It was what his father made him do when he’d wake up from having a bad dream. The trouble was, he sometimes dreamed awake and couldn’t go back to sleep because there were a lot of people in his room, all whispering. What kind of people, his father wanted to know. Men or women? Old people or young? And was there anyone he knew?

  Funny-looking people. They didn’t have any faces. Only eyes—which of course was why they whispered.

  His father told him: Next time you tell them if they don’t go away you’ll call your dad. Or better still, look out the window for a while and think of all the things you did outdoors today. Then see if the funny people aren’t gone when you look around the room again.

  So at night he often did get up. The window was near his bed and the people never tried to stop him. Looking out, he would think about the places he could hide and how easy it would be to climb out from the bottom of his bed. He had a dugout under the mock-orange bushes, and under the old cellar doors propped together like a pup tent in the back of the garage; down the street were the sewer pipes they hadn’t used yet, and what used to be the pumphouse next to Mrs. Malcolm’s well, which was the best hiding place of all; the big boys sometimes played there.

  Tom passed so close that the boy could have reached out and touched him.

  The doorbell rang once, twice, three times.

  • • •

  The man, awakened from his sleep, came pulling on his bathrobe. He flung open the door at the same time he switched on the porch light.

  A fusillade of shots rang out. The man seemed frozen like a picture of himself, his hand stretched out and so much light around him. Then he crumpled up and fell.