Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen

The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution Richard Stark

Life in the suburbs, from all reports, is one gay round after another. Week ends are sunny. Commuting is a conversation piece. And among the premiums offered for a book or two of green stamps is tranquillity.

I’m not sure when it was, exactly, that I knew I must murder Janice. Oh, I’d been thinking of it, wistfully, for months, but I don’t know precisely at what moment my idle daydreams metamorphosed into a cold and determined plan.

Perhaps it was the day the mailman brought the bill for Janice’s mink coat, a coat I had not even heard of until then. And when I asked her if I could at least see this coat for which I was expected to pay almost two thousand dollars, a fifth of a year’s wages, she informed me, off-handedly, that she had lost the dear thing on the train, coming home from the city after an exhausting and nerve-racking day spent shopping along Fifth Avenue.

Or perhaps it was before that, the evening I returned to our midtown apartment, wearied from my labors in the advertising vineyard, and learned that in my absence Janice had managed to buy a house in Connecticut. No more were we to be pallid cliff-dwellers in Manhattan. The invigorating air of the ranch style developments for us. It would be good for my health, too, for me to arise an hour earlier each morning and sprint for the train.

Or perhaps it was that evening, out in our little bit of suburbia, when I was poring over our household financial records and discovered that, in the last six months, we had spent more in bank-fines resulting from overdrawn checks than we had spent on food. Janice’s rejoinder, when calmly I shrieked this news at er, was that it was obviously my fault, since I didn’t put enough money into the bank to cover the money she wanted to take back out.

Or perhaps it wasn’t even Janice at all. Perhaps the catalyst was Karen.

Karen, ah Karen! I had finally received the promotion which made it at least possible for me to feel optimistic about catching up with Janice’s spending, and with the promotion had come my own office and my own secretary, and Karen was that secretary.

It was the old story. At home, a wife who was a constant source of frustration and annoyance. At the office, a charming and intelligent — not to say lovely — secretary, with whom I felt I could talk, with whom I could relax. I took to spending evenings in town, telling Janice I was working late at the office, and the inevitable happened. Karen and I were in love.

But ours could not be a dark and furtive office romance. Karen was too honest, too gentle, too good for such a relationship. I knew I had to free myself of Janice and marry Karen. And I knew that, if I were free, Karen would have me.

I considered divorce. I had no doubt that Janice would grant me one, since divorce is quite fashionable in our circle, and Janice wished always to be in fashion. But then I remembered alimony. In any divorce action, I would be the plaintiff, and Janice the defendant. And that meant alimony. And I knew only too well Janice’s insatiable need for money. It was impossible as it was for me to support both Janice and myself. Add Karen, and I would be in debtor’s prison within six months.

No, divorce was out, and for a while the spot I was in seemed hopeless. Then Janice bought one of those little foreign cars, and I waited hopefully for her to demolish both the auto and herself on the Merritt Parkway, but nothing ever came of it. Those cars are mawkishly ugly, but they are also exasperatingly safe.

Our home was brick outside, plaster and linoleum and plastic inside. Not much likelihood of a good flash fire. The commuter trains had their derailments and so on from time to time, but the accidents were almost invariably minor and never on Ladies’ Day.

Finally, I had to admit to myself that it was up to me. If Janice were to make way for Karen’s and my happiness, it would have to be at my instigation.

This conviction grew in me, becoming stronger and stronger until at last I dared broach the subject to Karen. She was, at first, shocked and appalled at my suggestion. But I talked to her, reasoning with her, explaining why it would never be possible for us to wed while Janice still lived, and slowly she too accepted the inevitability of it.

Once decided, the only questions left to answer were when and how. I had four types of murder from which to choose: murder made to look like an accident, murder made to look like suicide, murder made to look like natural death, and murder made to look like murder.

I ruled out accident at once. I had daydreamed for months of possible accidents for Janice, and had finally come to realize that they were all unlikely. If they were unlikely to me, who passionately desired that Janice should have an accident, how much more unlikely would they surely be to the police?

As for suicide, there were far too many of Janice’s suburban friends who would be delighted to volunteer the information that Janice was happy as a lark — and about as bright — and that she had absolutely no reason in the world to want to kill herself.

As for natural causes, I knew far too little about medicine to want to try to outwit a coroner at his own game.

Which left murder. Murder made to look like murder. And I planned accordingly.

My opportunity came on a Wednesday late in May. On the Thursday and Friday of that week, there was to be an important meeting in Chicago, concerning a new ad campaign for one of our most important accounts, and I was scheduled to attend. All I had to do was arrange for Karen to accompany me, an easy matter to justify, and then my plan went into action.

Here was the plan: I had two tickets on the three p.m. train Wednesday for Chicago, due to arrive in that city at eight-forty the following morning. Karen was to take this train, carrying both tickets. We would leave the ad agency together at noon, ostensibly headed for Grand Central, lunch and the train. But while Karen went to Grand Central, I would hurry uptown, to the 125th Street station, where there was a twelve fifty-five train for my portion of Connecticut. I would arrive at my station at two-ten, wearing false mustache, horn-rimmed glasses, and the kind of hat and topcoat I never wear. Our mortgaged paradise was a good twenty blocks from the station. I would walk this distance, shoot Janice with the .32 revolver I had picked up second-hand on the lower East Side two weeks before, ransack the house, take the five-oh-two back to the city, go to a movie, take the twelve forty-five plane for Chicago, arriving at three-forty a.m., and be at the railroad station when Karen’s train arrived at eight-forty. We would immediately turn in our return trip tickets, claiming we had decided to go back to New York by plane. This would necessitate my filling out and signing a railroad company form. It was foolproof. And, after a decent period of mourning, I would marry Karen and live happily and solvently ever after.

The day arrived. I told Janice I would see her on the following Monday, and I brought my suitcase with me to the office. Karen and I left at twelve, and I headed immediately uptown, stopping off only to buy a hat and topcoat. I checked my suitcase in a locker at the 125th Street station, and in the men’s room on the train, donned the horn-rimmed glasses and the mustache.

At two-fifteen, I was stepping from the train at my station, which was virtually deserted at this time of day. I saw no one I knew in the twenty block walk to the house. I let myself in the front door with my key, the pistol an unaccustomed weight in my pocket.

Janice was seated in the living room, on the unpaid for new sofa, reading a slick women’s magazine and being instructed, no doubt, in some new way to spend my hard-earned money.

At first, she didn’t recognize me. Then I removed the hat and glasses, and she exclaimed, “Why, Freddie! I thought you were going to Chicago!”

“And so I am,” I told her. I redonned hat and mustache, and moved forward to close the picture window drapes.

She said, “Whatever are you doing with that mustache? You look terrible with a mustache.”

I turned to face her and withdrew the pistol from my pocket. “Walk out to the kitchen, Janice,” I said. I planned to make it look as though the burglar had come in the back way, Janice had heard him and gone to investigate, and he had shot her.

She blinked at the gun, then stared wide-eyed at my face. “Freddie, what on earth—”

“Walk out to the kitchen, Janice,” I repeated.

“Freddie,” she said petulantly, “if this is your idea of a joke—”

“I’m not joking, Janice,” I said fiercely.

All at once, her eyes lit up, and she clapped her hands together childishly, as she always did when charging something we couldn’t afford. “You old dear!” she cried.

“You did buy me that new washer-dryer after all!” And she leaped to her feet and virtually ran out to the kitchen, her high heels going clack-clack on the linoleum. Even then, in the last moments of her life, all she could think of was that she was going to add yet another possession to the mound of goodies she had already bled from me.

I followed her to the kitchen, where she turned, puzzled, to say, “There isn’t any washer-dryer—”

I shot from the hip. Naturally, I missed, and the bullet perforated a dirty pot on the stove. I abandoned cowboy style forthwith, aimed more carefully, and the second shot cut her down in mid-scream.

Three seconds of silence. And they were followed by the sudden brrrinnnng of the front doorbell, the clapper of which was on the kitchen wall three feet from my head.

I froze, not knowing what to do. My first thought was to stay frozen and wait for whoever it was to go away. But then I remembered the little foreign car, sitting in the driveway, advertising Janice’s presence at home. If there were no answer, the visitor might get alarmed, might call for help from the neighbors or the police, and I would never manage to get away on foot.

So I had to go to the door. With the horn-rimmed glasses and the mustache, and a voice disguised by making it hoarser and deeper than usual, I should be able to avoid recognition. I would say I was the family doctor, that Janice was sick in bed and could see no one.

The bell rang again while I was still thinking this through, and the second ringing unfroze me. Putting the gun back in my pocket, I hurried through the living room and stopped at the front door. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and eased the door open an inch. Peering through this opening, I saw what was obviously a door-to-door salesman. He carried a tan briefcase. He wore a slender gray suit, a white shirt, a blue tie and a smile containing sixty-four gleaming teeth. He said, “Good afternoon, sir. Is the lady of the house at home?”

“She’s sick,” I said remembering to be hoarse.

“Well, sir,” he bubbled, “perhaps I could talk to you for just a moment or two, if you have the time.”

“Not interested,” I told him. “Sorry.”

“Oh, but I’m sure you will be interested, sir. My company has something of interest to every parent—”

“I am not a parent.”

“Oh.” His smile faltered, but came back with redoubled fury. “But my company isn’t of interest only to parents, of course. Briefly, I represent the Encyclopedia Universicana, and I’m not actually a salesman. We are making a preliminary campaign in this area—”

“I’m sorry,” I said firmly. “I’m not interested.”

“But you haven’t heard the best part,” he said urgently.

“No,” I said, and I slammed the door, reflecting that Janice would have bought the Encyclopedia Universicana, and that I had dispatched her just in time.

But I had to get on with the plan. I would now ransack the house, emptying bureau drawers onto the floor, hurling clothing around in closets and so forth. Then, when it was time, I would leave for my train.

I turned toward the bedrooms, and the phone rang.

Once again, I froze. To answer, or not to answer? Once again, as with the doorbell, and for much the same reasons, I decided to answer, and to be, again, the family doctor.

I picked up the phone therefore, said hello, and a falsely hearty woman’s voice chirped, “Magill Communications Survey calling. Is your television set on, sir?”

I stood there, with the phone to my ear.

“Sir?”

“No,” I said, and I hung up.

Doggedly, I turned again toward the bedrooms. And this time, I got there. Opening a bureau drawer, I tossed its entire contents on the floor. I didn’t have to worry about fingerprints. My fingerprints were quite naturally all over everything anyway. The police would simply assume that the burglar, being a professional, had known enough to wear gloves.

I was working on the third drawer, having pocketed three pairs of earrings and an old watch, for realism’s sake, when the doorbell rang.

I sighed, plodded wearily to the living room, and opened the door perhaps an inch.

A short stout woman, smiling like an idiot, said “Hel-lo, there! I’m Mrs. Turner from over on Marigold Lane, and I’m selling chances for our new car raffle at the United Protestant Church.”

“I don’t want any raffles,” I said.

“New car raffle,” she said.

“I don’t want any cars,” I said. I closed the door. Then I quickly opened it again. “I have a car,” I said. And I closed the door again.

On the way back to the bedroom, the echo of that conversation returned to me. I hadn’t been very coherent. Could it be that I was more nervous than I thought?

No matter. In little more than an hour, I would leave here and catch my train for New York.

I lit two cigarettes, stubbed one out in annoyance, and went back to work. I finished the bureau and the one drawer in the vanity table, and was about to start with the closet when the phone rang.

I had never before realized just how shrill, just how grating, that telephone bell actually was. And how long each ring was. And what a little space of time there was between rings. Why, it rang three times before I even took a step, and it managed to get in one more jarring ring for good measure as I was on my way down the hall to the living room.

I picked up the phone and a male voice said in my ear, “Hello, Andy?”

“Andy?”

He said it again, “Hello, Andy?”

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. I said, “Who?”

He said, “Andy.”

“Wrong number,” I said and hung up.

The doorbell clanged.

I jumped, knocking the phone off its stand onto the floor. I scooped it up, fumbling, and the doorbell sounded again.

I raced across the room and, forgetting caution, hurled the door open wide.

The man outside the door was gray-haired, portly and quite dignified. He wore a conservative suit and carried a black briefcase. He smiled upon me and said, “Has Mister Wheet been by yet?”

“Who?”

“Mister Wheet,” he said. “Hasn’t he been here?”

“No one by that name here,” I said. “Wrong number.”

“Well, then,” said the portly man, “I suppose I’ll just have to talk to you myself.” And, before I knew what was going on, he had slipped past me and was standing in the living room, looking around with a great show of admiration and saying, “Lovely. A really lovely living room.”

“Now, see here—” I began.

“Sampson,” said the portly man, extending a firm plump hand. “Encyclopedia Universicana. Little woman at home?”

“I’m afraid she’s sick,” I said. “I was just fixing some broth for her. Chicken — broth. Perhaps some other—”

“I see,” said the portly man. He frowned as though thinking things over, and then smiled and said, “Well, sir, you go right ahead. That’ll give me a chance to get the presentation set up.”

And all at once he was sitting on the sofa. I opened my mouth, but he opened the briefcase faster, dove in, and emerged with a double handful of paper. Sheets and sheets of paper, all standard typewriter size, all gaily-colored in red and green and blue, prominently featuring photographs of receding rows of books. SAVE! roared some of the sheets of paper, in black block print. FREE! screamed others, in red. TRIAL OFFER! shrieked still more, in rainbow hues.

Portly Mister Sampson leaned far forward, puffing a bit, and began to arrange his papers in rows upon the rug, just in front of his pointed-toe, highly polished black shoes. “Our program,” he explained to me, smiling, and lowered his head to distribute more sheets of paper over the floor.

I stared at him. Not five feet from where he was sitting, my late wife Janice lay sprawled upon the kitchen floor. In the bedroom, chaos was the order of the day. In just about an hour, I would leave here and catch the train back to the city. I would leave the .32 in a litter basket, knowing full well some enterprising soul would shortly pick it out again and that by the time the police got hold of it, if they ever did, it would have committed any number of crimes past this current one. And then I would fly to Chicago and see Karen. Lovely Karen. Dear, darling Karen.

And this miserable man was trying to sell me encyclopedias!

I opened my mouth. Quite calmly, I said, “Get out.”

He looked up at me, smiling. “Eh?”

“Get out,” I said.

The smile flickered, “But — you haven’t seen—”

“Get out!” I said, this time a bit louder. I pointed at the door, upsetting a table lamp. “Get out! Just... just... just get out!”

The miserable creature began to splutter. “Well, but... see here—”

“GET OUT!!”

I dashed forward and grabbed all his papers, crumpling them this way and that, gathering them in pay arms, and bore them to the front door. In turning the knob, I dropped half of them. The remaining half I hurled outward, and they fluttered to the lawn. I kicked at those remaining, and turned to glare at Mister Sampson as he scuttled from the house, wanting to bluster but a bit too afraid of me to say anything.

I slammed the door after him and took a deep breath, forcing myself to be calm. I lit a cigarette. I lit another cigarette. Irritably, I stubbed the first one in a handy ash tray, and lit a third. “Tcha!” I cried, and mashed them all out, and stormed back to the bedroom, where I tore into the closet with genuine pleasure. Once the closet was a hopeless wreck, I ripped the covers from the bed and dumped the mattress on the floor. Then I surveyed my handiwork.

And the doorbell rang.

“If that is Mister Sampson,” I muttered to myself, “by Heaven I’ll—”

It rang again. We had an incredibly loud doorbell in that house. Odd I’d never noticed it before.

It rang again as I was on my way to answer, and I almost shouted at it to shut up. But I managed to bring myself under control by the time I reached the door, and to remember to open it not more than an inch.

A tiny girl in a green uniform stood looking up at me; she was bearing a box of cookies.

Life, I reflected at that moment, is unkind and cruel. I said, “We already bought some, little girl,” and I softly closed the door.

And the telephone screamed.

I leaned against the door and let my nerves do whatever they wanted. But I knew I couldn’t stay there. The telephone would only make that noise again. And again and again and again, until finally I gave up and answered it. The thing to do, I told myself calmly, was to answer it now. Then it couldn’t make that noise any more.

A good plan. I was full of good plans. I went over and picked up the phone.

“Hiya, neighbor I” shouted a male voice. “This is Dan O’Toole, of WDEW. Can you Top That Mop?”

“What?”

“This is the grand new radio game everybody’s talking about, neighbor. If you can Top That—”

I suppose he kept on talking. I don’t know. I hung up.

I caught myself about to light a cigarette, and made myself stop. I also forced myself to be calm, think rationally, consider the circumstances. The house, except for my own ragged breathing, was silent.

With waning fervor, I studied once more the tableau I was leaving for the police. The dead woman in the kitchen, the ransacked house. All that remained was to fix the back door to make it look as though the burglar had forced his way in.

It seemed as though my plan should work perfectly well. It really seemed that way.

Slowly, I trudged out to the kitchen. For some reason, I suddenly no longer believed in my plan. All of life was involved in a great conspiracy against me. And it occurred to me that I hadn’t known until today what Janice’s existence at home had been like, and that her reckless spending might simply have been a form of escape.

At the back door, I paused, listening for doorbells and phone bells and church bells and jingle bells, but there was only silence. So I opened the door, and a short round woman was standing there, our next-door neighbor, wearing dress and apron and holding an empty cup.

I stared at her. She looked at me with puzzled surprise, and then her gaze moved beyond me and came to rest on something behind me, at floor level. Her eyes widened. Then she screamed and let go of the cup and went dashing away.

With the scream, I went rigid. I stared at the cup. It seemed to hang there in mid-air for the longest while, and then, very slowly at first, it started to fall. It fell faster and faster and finally splattered with a terrible crash on the patio cement.

And when the cup splattered, so did I. I went all limp and sat down with a bump on the kitchen floor.

And there I sat, waiting. I sat waiting, waiting for the census taker and the mailman with a Special Delivery letter, for the laundry man and the Railway Express driver, for the man from the cleaners, a horde of Boy Scouts on a paper drive, a political candidate, five wrong numbers, the paper boy, the police, a lady collecting for a worthy charity, the milkman, a call from the tax assessor’s office, a young man working his way through college selling magazines...