Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 16 Skeletons From My Closet

Where Is Thy Sting? BY JAMES HOLDING

To say I was flabbergasted when I found out about Doris and that bachelor writer across the hall is putting it mildly.

Doris and I had been married four and a half years then, and I still couldn't believe my luck. She was medium tall, with high color in her face and jet black hair that had a shine to it, and a lovely soft mouth that smiled easily and often. Her eyes were electric blue, and with that black hair of hers, they really looked terrific. And her figure was for happy dreams… other guys' dreams. I had the girl herself. My wife, Doris.

So you can understand I was quite upset when I learned about her and Wilkins. If you really love your wife, as I do, and trust her, as I did, and she's just about the living end in beauty of face and figure, and you're sure she thinks the sun rises and sets on you, it's a definite kick in the teeth when you suddenly discover that while you're out of town covering your sales territory two weeks out of each month, your wife is playing house with the detective-story writer whose apartment is across the hall from yours. Especially, when he's a nothing-type guy like Wilkins was — tall, skinny, no visible means of support except a battered typewriter, and even beginning to lose his hair, for God's sake!

I'm no Adonis, understand, but on the worst day I ever lived, I'm a better man than Wilkins was. Believe me. That's why I was so burned when I found out that Doris whiled away her time during my absence with this Wilkins clown.

I made excuses for Doris, of course. I still loved her, despite her expeditions to the other side of the hall where the grass looked greener. A girl as beautiful as Doris, I told myself, as full of life and crazy for fun, naturally becomes a target for the wolfishness of every predatory male within a six-mile radius. And she's understandably lonesome while I'm away. Poor Doris.

I could make allowances for her. But not for that rejection-slip Casanova across the hall. No, sir. Him I was going to fix, and fix right.

But not in hot blood, Jim, I warned myself. Wait until you're calmer. Wait till you can cream him without any chance of being tagged for the job. Otherwise, what will it get you? Nothing but an overcharge of electricity from the state. I'd be dead, and Wilkins would be dead, and Doris would be left all by her lonesome.

So I didn't let on to Doris that I knew a thing about her and Wilkins. I behaved just as usual, and so did she, the clever little actress. And when I ran across Wilkins at the mailboxes in the apartment house lobby, or in the elevator, or dumping trash into the communal incinerator at the end of our third floor corridor, I nodded and smiled in neighborly fashion and he doubtless thought me a very pleasant fellow, as well as a blind fool.

That was all right with me; I just kept my own counsel and watched Wilkins at every opportunity. I was confident that if I had patience enough, and was smart enough, I'd find the proper way to fix his wagon and still appear as innocent of fixing anything as the average garage mechanic.

This went on for several months. And sure enough, early in August, when the weather was pure hot hell outdoors and I was coming home from the public golf course one Saturday after a morning round, I found the handle I was looking for.

I pulled up to park before our apartment house, and when I'd got my car nuzzled into the curb the way I wanted it, I looked through the windshield and there was Wilkins, getting out of his secondhand jalopy three cars ahead of me, with a big paper sack of groceries in his arms.

He nudged his car door shut with an elbow and started up the drive to the apartment entrance, carrying the bag. As he approached the bed of zinnias and snapdragons that bordered the drive on his left, he suddenly shied like a startled horse and stopped in his tracks. After a momentary hesitation, he began to make a wide circle to his right around the bed of flowers to get to the apartment entrance, clutching the groceries tightly and looking with terrified eyes toward the flowers. And just then, a bee that had been prowling around the flowerbed left his work and buzzed toward Wilkins to investigate him. I could see the bee's wings winking in the sunlight. And that's when Wilkins really flipped.

He'd been watching that bee all along, I guess. And when he saw it coming over to say hello to him as he went by, he came all apart at the seams in one shattering instant. You'd have thought all the fiends in creation were after him, instead of a harmless little honeybee. He yelled something in a strangled voice, dropped his paper sack of groceries on the concrete drive with a grand splash of breaking milk-bottles, and took to his heels like an hysterical woman frightened by a mad dog.

He swung his arms around him desperately in shooing motions as he ran; he rolled his eyes over his shoulder at the bee to gauge its flight; he fled up the drive in a galvanic tangle of arms and lanky legs and didn't pause until he shot through the apartment entrance and slammed the door shut behind him.

I sat in my car and watched the whole bit. What a jerk, was my first thought, what a colossal, all-American jerk for my wife to fall for — a grown man that's scared of honeybees! And then my second thought came along and slapped me and I knew that this was it, this was what I needed to know about Wilkins.

For no sane adult is as scared of bees as Wilkins seemed to be — not without good and sufficient reasons. It just didn't figure.

I've mentioned that I'm a traveling salesman. But did I tell you what I sell? I guess not. Pharmaceuticals. I travel for one of the big midwestern pharmaceutical houses. And although I'm no M.D., I knew enough medical jazz to dope out Wilkins so he did figure.

And I had a nice warm feeling of satisfaction, right away.

I was leaving for my regular August swing around the territory the next day. I'd be gone two weeks, as usual. I looked deep into Doris' wonderful sapphire-colored eyes when I kissed her good-by, and I held her close with more than my usual affection when I left her.

I tended strictly to business for the next ten days, though it was a hard thing to do. I kept remembering that while I was away, that mouse of mine was probably playing like mad with that cat across the hall. But this is the last time, Jim, I told myself. Consolingly.

On the tenth day, I turned aside from my regular route and drove fifty miles out of my way to a little hick town in the northern part of the state. I wandered into the sleepy, half sporting goods, half hardware store there, and bought a dusty butterfly net from a clerk who was either on dope or mentally retarded, I couldn't tell which. I was pretty sure of one thing, though: he'd never remember me or what I bought from him.

I took the net and drove out of town on a country road for a few miles until I spotted a honeysuckle vine blooming on a stone wall that bordered the road in one place. I pulled up on the shoulder, put on an old pair of work gloves I kept in the car's glove compartment, climbed out and lifted the hood of my car as though I was having engine trouble. I waited until there wasn't another car in sight in either direction on the road. Then, with the butterfly net in my hands, I jumped across the little ditch between the berm of the road and the wall. I made one pass with the net over the honeysuckle vine. That's all I needed. That one scoop netted me six lively honeybees.

Carefully, I shook them out of the net into an old one-pound candy box I'd swiped from the dump in another town, threw a handful of honeysuckle leaves and blossoms in on top of them and clapped on the lid. I cut a few slits in the box for air, wrapped it loosely in a piece of porous brown wrapping paper, tied it with string and addressed the package to Wilkins. I didn't put any return address on it. The whole operation didn't take ten minutes.

I slapped enough stamps from my wallet on the light package to carry it first class mail, and on my way back through the village, I dropped it into the curbside mail box outside the village post office. I didn't even have to get out of my car. I just reached over and flicked the package into the chute and was rolling again almost before I'd stopped.

That was Wednesday. It was Friday afternoon when I got home from my trip. I parked the Galaxie and climbed out, stretching the kinks out of my muscles after my long drive. I started for the entrance to the apartment house and only then noticed that something unusual was happening.

A police ambulance stood in the driveway, motor running and back doors open. A cop was kicking moodily at a rear tire. He was obviously the driver, waiting for his buddies to bring him a passenger. I nodded to him and went into the apartment and pushed the button for the automatic elevator.

Nothing happened for a minute, but when the elevator finally dropped down to the lobby, the door was pushed open and a couple of cops came out carrying a stretcher. Somebody was lying on the stretcher, but I couldn't see who because a sheet covered him all up, even his face. A fussy little guy with a black bag got out of the elevator after the stretcher, a doctor I supposed. I stood back while they maneuvered the stretcher through the door and out to the ambulance. Then I took the elevator up to my floor.

Doris was waiting for me at the door of our apartment. Her eyes were big; she looked scared. But she looked so wonderful to me that I didn't think of anything else for a second except her.

"Hi, baby," I said, folding her into my arms before we even had the door shut.

"Hi, traveler," she said, kissing me. She called me traveler sometimes because of my job. "I'm glad you're home, dear."

"Me too." It was the understatement of the week. I sniffed. "Spare ribs?"

She nodded, thinking of something else.

"Good," I said, and threw my hat at the closet shelf. She kept her arm around my waist as we went toward the kitchen together. It was our routine. My first act when I got home from my trips was to mix a martini for us.

I said, "As I was coming in downstairs, they carried somebody out of here on a stretcher. Who's sick?"

She got down the gin and vermouth for me. "Not sick," she said in a shocked voice. "Dead, Jim. It was Mr. Wilkins, the fellow who lives — lived — across the hall from us."

"No!" I said. "What happened to him?"

"They don't know for sure." Doris passed me a tray of ice cubes. Her hand trembled. "He just died."

"What a lousy break. Nice, quiet neighbor, too." I started to measure out the gin into the pitcher. I looked up and caught her eyes on me, and she seemed pretty close to tears. "Why, baby!" I said, turning to put my arms around her. "You're upset. You can't let a neighbor's death get to you like this. That's the way these things happen sometimes, that's all."

"B-but I'm the one who missed him," she explained haltingly. She shivered in my arms. "It j-just occurred to me this afternoon after lunch that I hadn't seen Mr. Wilkins in the hall or elevator the last day or-or two" — she cut her eyes at me to see how I took this explanation — "and when I went out on the landing, past his apartment door, I didn't hear his typewriter tapping, either. You know how the typewriter was always going. You could hear it through the door."

"Sure," I said.

"I went across the hall and rang his bell. Several t-times. When he didn't answer, I thought at first he was out. But then I remembered that he hardly ever went anywhere, especially in summer" — she didn't explain how she was so sure of a peculiar fact like that — "so I called the building superintendent and asked if Mr. Wilkins was away. He said not that he knew of. So I told him I was worried, and asked him if he didn't think he'd better investigate."

"I see. And the Super went in and found him."

"Yes. He used his passkey. I went in with him. And we found poor Mr. Wilkins lying on his sofa in the living room and not b-breathing at all!"

"Just like that, eh? Boy, that's the way to go. In your sleep."

"But he wasn't lying straight and flat, Jim. Not like sleep. More like he fell on the sofa when he was dying. His eyes were wide open and looked terrified, somehow." She hugged me tightly. "It was h-horrible!"

"Sure, baby. I wish you hadn't seen him like that. A man knows he's dying, he gets that scared look in his eyes. I saw it in the service. It's natural."

"The superintendent called the police emergency squad. And the police doctor came and they took Mr. Wilkins away just now."

"What'd the doctor say? Heart attack, I suppose."

"He didn't know," Doris said. "He couldn't tell for sure without one of those — you know — examinations after you're dead."

"Autopsy," I said. She nodded miserably. My heart was hammering with excitement. I was afraid she'd notice it. "I'm going to look at Wilkins' apartment, Doris. I guess I'm morbid. I want to see where you found him, poor fellow. Want to come?"

"I certainly don't!" Doris said. "I've had all I want of that dreadful place today!"

"Pour out the drinks," I said. "I'll be back in a minute."

I went across the hall to Wilkins' door. I intended fiddling with the lock, using the key to my own apartment. But I was pleasantly surprised to find the door open. I looked at the sofa where they'd found Wilkins' body. But my eyes didn't linger there a second. They went right on past to the end table beyond, where my candy box lay in the midst of its discarded wrappings, its lid fallen off the table onto the floor.

I grinned, picturing vividly what had happened when those imprisoned bees, innocently released by Wilkins as he opened his mail, had come boiling out of the box. It couldn't have taken long after he panicked and began shooing and striking at them as he almost surely did, because when you're allergic to bee-venom the way Wilkins was, one good dose of multiple bee-stings will collapse your circulatory system and stop your breathing so quick you wouldn't believe it.

I found them in the kitchen.

Wilkins had a row of African violets blooming in pots on the kitchen window sill, and the bees were buzzing drowsily against the screen over the open window behind the violets, anxious to get out into the warm August air again.

Nobody will ever figure this one out, I told myself. I allowed myself a wise smile as I opened the screen behind the violets and watched the little yellow murderers stream gladly through to freedom.

I went back to Doris and my martini. I took her into my lap as we drank. I thought how nice it would be to have her all to myself again. What a doll! I looked at her fondly. So maybe she was inclined to take up with other men when I was away. Out of sheer boredom only. Just to dilute her loneliness. Nothing else.

Suddenly it occurred to me that there was one good way to put a stop to that: quit this crummy selling routine that kept me on the road half the time.

I put down my empty martini glass and turned her face to me and kissed her. I kissed her good. I said, "Baby, I've decided to quit my job."

"You what?" She was thunderstruck.

"Yeah. I want to be home more, Doris. With you. I get so lonesome on the road."

"I get lonesome, too, Jim," she murmured contritely into my shoulder.

"Sure you do, honey. And you know what? I've thought of a job that would let me stay right here with you all the time."

She raised her head. "What?"

"Writing detective stories. Like poor old Wilkins across the hall. I think I'd like to try my hand at that." I kissed her again. "I have an idea I might be pretty good at murder."

Her arms tightened around me. "Darling, I'd love having you home with me," she said, "but you've never written a story in your life!"

"You've got to start sometime," I said.

So this is the first one.

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