Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 16 Skeletons From My Closet Read online

  ALFIE'S GUARANTEE

  If you don't shudder with every twist and sudden thrust of these 16 terror tales...

  if you are able to turn off your bedside lamp after closing this volume and drift off to a deep, dreamless sleep...

  if you can drink your morning coffee without thinking there just might be a peculiarly bitter taste to it, or turn your back on your spouse or best friend without feeling a funny itching between your shoulder blades...

  then that lovable old master of menace, Alfred Hitchcock, apologizes and personally guarantees you your full payment in horror. All you have to do is meet him in the cemetery under the next murderer's moon....

  ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS:

  16 SKELETONS FROM MY CLOSET

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION by Alfred Hitchcock 7

  GHOST STORY by Henry Kane 9

  WHERE IS THY STING? by James Holding 28

  THE BUTLER WHO DIDN'T DO IT by Craig Rice 37

  CHRISTMAS GIFT by Robert Turner 49

  THE MAN AT THE TABLE by C. B. Gilford 57

  DEATH OF ANOTHER SALESMAN by Donald Honig 68

  MAN WITH A HOBBY by Robert Bloch 80

  ...SAID JACK THE RIPPER by Robert Arthur 89

  A GUN WITH A HEART by William Logan 103

  ASSASSINATION by Dion Henderson 115

  A LITTLE SORORICIDE by Richard Deming 125

  THE MAN WHO GOT AWAY WITH IT by Lawrence Treat 137

  SECRET RECIPE by Charles Mergendahl 143

  DADDY-O by David Alexander 153

  THE CRIME MACHINE by Jack Ritchie 168

  HOMICIDE AND GENTLEMEN by Fletcher Flora 196

  INTRODUCTION

  Shortly after the completion of shooting on my most recent motion picture, I remember reading about a murder which had occurred the day previous in the city of Chicago. Now, I can hardly think of a better place for the scene of a murder. Chicago has always seemed a perfect locale for such a crime: the cold wind coming in off Lake Michigan, long black cars speeding along major thoroughfares, the sudden, deadly sound of machine-gun fire. The perfect locale indeed.

  However, the murder of which I speak was horribly disappointing. A matron of middle years, supposedly happily married for quite some time, went shopping in the afternoon and purchased a hat. The price for this headpiece was $39.98 "on sale." A fine buy, obviously. She brought it home proudly, and showed it to her spouse, just returned from a most difficult and trying day at the office. He, unfortunately, did not like the hat. Very calmly, then, the woman went to a desk drawer in the living-room, took from it a loaded thirty-eight caliber pistol, and shot her husband dead.

  How dull. One shot and poof. How much better if she had emptied the pistol into the man in hysterical rage - but no, a single shot.

  ***

  It seems to me that when our century was newer the crime would not have happened in so pedestrian a manner. I very much doubt a pistol would have been used, since a pistol is decidedly not a woman's weapon, as so many mystery writers have been quick to point out for so many satisfying years. Perhaps a rolling-pin, a jungle knife brought back from the Amazon country years ago by the original owner who had traveled with Theodore Roosevelt, a dose of poison in the soup, a thin but strong cord across the top of the staircase...

  Such was the grandeur of yesteryear, when murder was done with flair and imagination.

  Of course, we all recall the story of Miss Lizzie Borden, who took an ax and gave her parents forty whacks.

  And then there was the gentleman on December 31, 1913, who stabbed his wife to death, dissected her body, and sent the pieces to friends and relatives with best wishes for a most enjoyable New Year.

  The press would be much enlivened by a good garroting or a woman tied and left on a railroad track (of course, one would have to be sure the trains are still running).

  I cannot promise such excitement in the future, but I can promise you a shudderingly good time in the pages to come.

  ALFRED HITCHCOCK

  Detectives should not be required to apprehend ghosts. It simply takes too much time. Moreover, though clothes may make the man, there's far more to a ghost than his bed sheet.

  * * *

  GHOST STORY

  BY HENRY KANE

  I do not believe in ghosts. Perhaps I do not believe in ghosts because I refuse to believe in ghosts and my mind rejects the possibility and seeks other explanation. In the Troy affair such explanation, for me, involved death-wish, hallucination, guilt complex, retribution, self-punishment and dual personality, but there again I am out of my ken: I am not a psychiatrist, I am a private detective. There are those who disagree with my conclusions, and you may be one of those. So be it, then. All I can do is render the events just as they occurred, beginning with that bright-white afternoon in January when my secretary ushered Miss Sylvia Troy into my office.

  "Miss Sylvia Troy," said my secretary and departed.

  "I'm Peter Chambers," I said. "Won't you sit down?"

  She was small, quite good-looking, very feminine, about thirty. Close-cut wavy russet-red hair was capped about a smooth round face in which enormous dark-brown eyes would have been beautiful except for a flaw in expression almost impossible to put into words. There is only one word - haunted! - and that word, of course, is susceptible to so many different interpretations. Her eyes were far away, gone, out of her, not part of her, remote and lost. She remained standing while I, still seated behind my desk, squirmed uneasily.

  "Please sit down," I said in as cordial a tone as I could muster within the embarrassment of trying to avoid those peculiarly-luminous, strangely-isolated, frightened eyes.

  "Thank you very much," she said and sat in the chair at the side of my desk. She had a soft lovely voice, almost a trained voice as a professional singer's voice may be termed trained: it was round-voweled, resonant, beautifully-pitched, very feminine, melodious. She was wearing a red wool coat with a little black fur collar and she was carrying a black patent-leather handbag. She opened the handbag, extracted three hundred dollars, snapped shut the bag, and placed the money on my desk. I looked at it, but did not touch it.

  "Not enough?" she said.

  "I beg your pardon?" I said.

  "The way you're looking at it."

  "Looking at what?" I said.

  "The money. Your fee. I'm sorry, but I can't afford any more."

  "I'm not looking at it in any special way, Miss Troy. I'm just looking at it. Three hundred dollars may be enough or not enough - depending upon what you want of me."

  "I want you to lay a ghost."

  "What?"

  "Please, sir, Mr. Chambers," she said, "I'm deadly serious."

  "A ghost -"

  "A ghost who has already killed one person and threatens to kill two others."

  I directed my squirming to seeking in my pockets and finding a cigarette. I lit it and I said, "Miss Troy, the laying of ghosts is not quite my department. If this so-called ghost of yours has killed anyone, then you've come to the wrong place. There are constituted authorities, the police -"

  "I cannot go to the police."

  "Why not?"

  "Because if I tell my story to the police I would be incriminating myself and my two brothers in..." She stopped.

  "In what?"

  "Murder."

  There was a pause. She sat, limply; and I smoked, nervously.

  Then I said, "Do you intend to tell me this story?"

  "I do."

  "Won't that be just as incriminating -"

  "No, no, not at all," she said. "I must tell you because something must be done, because somebody - you, I
hope - must help. But if you repeat what I tell you to the police, I will simply deny it. Since there is no proof, and since I would deny what you might repeat, nobody would be incriminated."

  It was coming around to my department. People in trouble are my department. Had there been no mention of a ghost, it would have been completely and familiarly in my department. But it was sufficiently in my department for me to tap out my cigarette in an ashtray, pull the money over to my side of the desk, and say, "All right, Miss Troy, let's have it."

  "It begins about a year ago. November, a year ago."

  "Yes," I said.

  "There are - or were - four of us in the family."

  "Four in the family," I said.

  "Three brothers and myself. Adam was the oldest. Adam Troy was fifty when he died."

  "And the others?"

  "Joseph was thirty-six. Simon is thirty-two. I am twenty-nine."

  "You say Joseph was thirty-six?"

  "My brother Joseph killed, himself - supposedly killed himself - three weeks ago."

  "Sorry," I said.

  "And now if I may - just a little background."

  "Please," I said.

  "Adam, so much older than any of us, was sort of father to all of us. Adam was a bachelor, rich and successful - he always had a knack for making money - while the rest of us" - she shrugged - "when it came to earning money, we were no shining lights. Joseph was a shoe-salesman, Simon is a drug clerk, and I'm a nightclub performer and, I must confess, a pretty bad one at that."

  "Nightclub performer. Interesting."

  "I do voices, you know? I used to be a ventriloquist. Now I'm a mimic; imitations, that sort of thing. Nothing great. I get by."

  "And Adam?" I said. "What did Adam do?"

  "He was a real-estate broker, and a shrewd investor in the stock market. He was a stodgy stingy man - which is probably why he never got married. He was like a father to us but, actually, he never helped us with money unless it was an emergency. But advice - plenty. And criticism - plenty. I can't say he was bad to us, but he wasn't really good to us. I hope I'm making myself clear."

  "Yes. Very clear, Miss Troy."

  "Now about the wills."

  "Wills?" I said.

  "Last wills and testaments. We all have like it's called reciprocal wills. If one dies, whatever he leaves is divided amongst the rest of us. I'm sure you know about reciprocal wills."

  "Yes, of course."

  "All right. Now last year, Adam made a real big win in the stock market and he suggested that we take a vacation together, a winter vacation, and that he would pay for all of it. A couple of weeks of skiing, fun, out-of-doors, up in Vermont. Two weeks in a winter wonderland, you know?"

  I nodded.

  "We, the rest of us, Joseph, Simon, and I - we arranged for those two weeks - the two middle weeks in November - and we all went up to a lodge at Mt. Killington in the Green Mountains of Vermont." She shuddered and was silent. Then she said, "I don't know how it began. Maybe we all had it in our minds, maybe that guilt was like a poison in all of us, but it was Joseph who said it first."

  "Said what, please?"

  "Said to get rid of Adam. Adam was upstairs sleeping and the three of us were sitting around downstairs in front of a big roaring fireplace, drinking, maybe getting a little drunk, when Joseph put out the suggestion and we were with him so fast it was like all of us said it together. I don't want to blame anyone. I say all three of us have the blame together. None of us ever had any money, real money, and all of a sudden it came to us, that we could have just that, real money, while we were still young enough to enjoy it." She shuddered again and put her hands over her face. She spoke through her hands. "From here I'd like to go real quick. Please?"

  "Okay," I said.

  Her hands dropped to her lap. "Next day, dressed warmly in ski suits, we went out on an exploring adventure, up into the mountains. Way up, high, Adam was standing near a crevice, a ravine, about a two thousand foot drop, with a little narrow river running on bottom. Joseph came up behind him, shoved, and Adam fell. That's all. He fell. All the way. There were like echoes coming back, and then - nothing. When we returned, we reported it. We said he had slipped and fallen. The police went up to investigate, there was an inquest, and that was it."

  "What was it?"

  "The coroner's verdict was death by accident."

  I came up out of my chair. I walked my office. I walked in front of her, in back of her, and around her. She did not move. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap. I said, "All right. So much for the incriminating matter. Now, if you please, what ghost killed whom?"

  She was motionless. Only her lips moved. "The ghost of Adam killed Joseph."

  "My dear Miss Troy," I said. "Only a few minutes ago you told me that Joseph committed suicide."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Chambers, I did not tell you that."

  "But you -"

  "I said supposedly killed himself."

  Grudgingly, I admitted my error. "True, you said that. But how can one possibly tell the difference? I mean -"

  "May I tell it my own way?"

  "Please do." I went back to my chair, sat, watched her as she spoke, but my eyes did not meet hers. Somehow, on this bright-white normal afternoon in January, in the accustomed confines of my very own office, I could not bring myself to look full upon this woman's eyes.

  "I live at One-thirty-three West Thirty-third Street," she said.

  "Uh huh," I said and happily business-like, I jotted it down, delighted for something prosaic to do.

  "It's a one-room apartment on the fourth floor. 4 C."

  "Yeah, yeah," I murmured, jotting assiduously.

  "Two months ago, on November fifteenth, exactly one year from the time of his death, Adam came to visit me."

  "Adam came to visit," I murmured as I jotted - and then I flung the pencil away. "Now just a minute, Miss Troy!"

  Quite mildly she said, "Yes, Mr. Chambers?"

  "Adam is the guy who's dead, or isn't he? Adam is the guy whom, allegedly, you people murdered, or isn't he?"

  "Yes, he is."

  "And he came to visit you?"

  "Precisely."

  I sighed. "Where?"

  "On the afternoon of November fifteenth, I had gone out to the supermarket for a bit of shopping. When I came home, he was there, sitting quietly in a chair, waiting for me."

  I recovered my pencil and pretended to make notes. "Are you sure it was Adam?"

  "The ghost of Adam. Adam is dead."

  "Yes, naturally, ghost of Adam. How did he look?"

  "Exactly as he had looked on the day he died. He was even wearing the same clothes - the high-laced boots, the green ski suit, the green ski cap."

  "He talked to you?"

  "Yes."

  "How did he sound?"

  "As always. Adam had a deep booming voice. He sounded sad, aggrieved, but not, actually, angry."

  "And what did he say?"

  "He said that he had returned to visit retribution on us; those were the exact words - visit retribution. He said he was going to kill Joseph first, then Simon, and then me. Then he stood up, opened the door, and walked out."

  "And you?"

  "I called my brothers, they came to my apartment, and I told them just what happened. Of course, they didn't believe me. They told me it was my imagination, that I had been highly nervous of late. They suggested that I go see a doctor. All in all, somehow, they talked me out of it. I did nothing about it - not even when Joseph was killed."

  "Suicide, even supposed suicide -"

  "Joseph slashed his wrists and died. But there was no weapon. No weapon was found near the body; there was no weapon with blood anywhere in his apartment."

  I lit a new cigarette. The flame of the match trembled. I blew it out quickly and deposited it in the tray. I inhaled deeply. I said, "Miss Troy, you did nothing about it then - why are you doing something about it now?"

  "Because Adam came to visit me again last night. When I
returned from work, he was seated in the same chair, dressed exactly as the other time. He said that he had accomplished his purpose with Joseph - and that Simon was next. Then he got up, opened the door, and went out."

  "And you?"

  "I fainted. When I came to, I became hysterical. That passed, and then I put on a fresh make-up, and went directly to my brother Simon. It was late at night, but I didn't care. Simon lives on West Fourth Street, quite near to where I work. I rang his bell until he woke up and let me in. I told him what had happened and again he just didn't believe me. He told me that he insisted that I go to a doctor and that he was going to make arrangements for just that. Today I decided I had to do something about it. I'd heard about you - and I'm here. Please, Mr. Chambers, will you help me? Please. Please."

  "I'll do whatever I can," I said. I inquired and made notes about names, addresses and phone numbers, where she worked, where her brothers worked, all of that. Then I printed my home phone number on one of my business cards and gave it to her. "You may call me here or at home whenever you please," I said.

  "Thank you." She smiled her first smile, gratefully.

  I placed her three hundred dollars into a drawer of my desk and said, "All right. Let's go."

  "Go? Where?"

  "I'd like to see your apartment. May I?"

  "Yes, of course." She stood up. "You're very thorough, aren't you?"

  "That's the way I work," I said.

  ***

  It was on the fourth floor, walk-up, of a six-story, new-fashioned, re-modeled house. It was a tiny one-room apartment: small living room with one tiny closet, a tiny bathroom, and a tiny kitchenette. There was no window in the kitchenette, one window in the bathroom, and two windows in the living room - each window with a secure inside turn-bolt.

  "Excellent," I said. "Did you have these bolts put on?"

  "No. The former tenant."

  "They're good bolts in fine working order." I nodded approvingly, continued my inspection. "I see there's no fire-escape."