100 Malicious Little Mysteries

Trick or Treat by Judith Garner

I was sitting with my American friend Bambi in our basement kitchen when the front doorbell rang. As the caretaker, I immediately rose to answer it, not for the first time cursing the necessity of taking on this job for the rent-free quarters.

It was October 30, and Mrs. Adams, my niggardly employer, had forbidden fires so early in the season. But already the chill and damp promised a fierce winter. I opened the street door to a grotesque little figure outlined against the yellow fog.

It was a small girl, about eight or nine years old, dressed as a witch in a long black university gown and pointed Welsh hat. She was not one of the tenants of our service flats, but I vaguely thought I had seen her playing in the Gardens with her Nanny and a pram. I had an idea she was an American, that her father had something to do with the Embassy. Not a pretty child, she had an old-fashioned rubber doll in a very dilapidated push-chair.

“Trick or treat?” she asked.

“Treat,” I said firmly, thinking I was being offered a choice.

She looked at me expectantly, but when I made no move, she inquired, “Well, where is it then?”

“What?”

“My treat,” she said patiently. “If you don’t give me a treat, I’ll play a trick on you.”

“You be off now,” I said crossly. “Why, it’s extortion! You Americans are all gangsters at heart!”

I closed the door in her hostile little face and went down to the basement, where Bambi was lighting yet another of her cigarettes.

“Trick or treat,” I explained.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know you had that custom in England.”

“We don’t. What is it, American?”

“Yes, indeed. We always used to go out in costumes trick-or-treating in New York.”

“What kind of trick can I expect?”

“Well, my mother used to let us take a sockful of flour. If you hit it against the door it leaves a lovely mark.”

“I thought I heard some sort of thud as I came downstairs,” I said, “but it didn’t sound like a sockful of flour, more like a kick.”

“Well, they say things are very unpleasant in the States at Halloween nowadays. How gangs will break your windows or slash your tires if you don’t give them at least a dollar.”

I thought the custom simply encouraged hooliganism and I said so. “Anyhow, Halloween isn’t until tomorrow.”

Bambi looked put out at my unfriendliness about her national customs. “Good lord!” she said. “I’ve been giving away pennies for the Guy for the last month. I do think Guy Fawkes is just as peculiar. Fancy burning a human figure!”

I couldn’t see it that way, but I held my tongue. Tonight I resented Bambi; poor though she was personally, I envied her the affluence of her background. Besides, I had always wanted to travel myself.

I poured her another cup of tea, and she reverted to her show-business anecdotes. Then Ron, my husband, joined us, and we played dominoes with the gas money until eleven.

I was up at six the next morning, bringing Ron his tea and stoking up the boiler for the hot water. At 7:30 I went up to the ground floor for the milk. The milkman was just leaving.

“Curious decorations you have around here,” he said, gesturing at our front door. It certainly was odd. Nailed to the door was a doll’s hand. It had a rubber skin filled with cotton; the stuffing was coming out. It looked ugly and perverted.

“If I’d seen that in Brixton or Camden Town,” the man said, “you know what I would have thought? That someone was practicing voodoo. But you don’t get that sort of thing around here. Not in Gloucester Road, you don’t.”

I pulled the dirty thing off the door and chucked it into an open dustbin. “It’s all up and down the Gardens,” he continued. “Bits of a doll, nailed to the doors.”

Not being superstitious, I just shrugged and went upstairs to distribute the milk. Later, having got my son off to school, I began cleaning the flats and the halls.

I did not associate the mutilated doll with my small visitor of the previous evening until, Mrs. Adams having sent me out shopping, I saw the torso just being removed from Professor Newton’s door.

“Creepy, isn’t it?” I greeted him.

“It’s that wretched Halloween child who did it. Trick or treat indeed! Something disturbing about that family. Too much sibling rivalry is my diagnosis. I shall make a formal protest to the parents. Better yet, I shall write a letter to the Times, protesting about the importing of foreign customs — noxious foreign customs!” Having with some difficulty removed the nails, the Professor took the grisly souvenir into the house with him and indignantly slammed the door.

The head of the doll was impaled on the railings at the corner. There I found Lady Arthwaite studying it with interest. “I wonder what the poor thing has done to be decapitated,” she murmured to me as I passed. “Positively medieval, isn’t it? Or, to be precise, it’s — well, I haven’t seen a doll like that since before the war. The skin texture is so much more lifelike than this disgusting plastic you get nowadays. I would have liked one like it for my little granddaughter.”

But as it was chilly I could not wait around. Nevertheless, her homely words took something of the horror out of the incident. I did my shopping, and made Mrs. Adams’ lunch. I worked until it became dark, which was very early.

A storm was brewing. The sky was very dark and threatening. My son got home from school just in time, but I made him a nice cup of hot cocoa anyhow, in case the chill had entered his bones. He is a delicate boy.

The rain came pelting down just after five. Ron was drenched when he came in half an hour later. “Halloween,” he said. “I need a drink.” I mixed the whiskey and hot lemonade the way he liked it.

He sat crouching over the newly stoked boiler in his second-hand smoking jacket. I began preparing the dinner — chops, chips, and peas, with fruit salad and custard for dessert.

We began to eat. Suddenly the front doorbell sounded again. Muttering angrily, I climbed the stairs.

The little American stood there, dressed like a pirate this time.

“Trick or treat?” she said.

This time she had her baby brother in the push-chair.