Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 24, No. 3, March 1979

The Right Circumstances by Robert Edward Eckels

Fraser sat at the curve of the bar, watching the small comedy unfolding on the other side of the room. A woman had come in to sit alone at one of the tables clustered across from the bar and almost immediately afterwards a short man with a knobby, weak-chinned face and maybe one drink too many under his belt had decided to move in.

What intrigued Fraser was the woman herself. She wasn’t the kind you’d normally expect to find in a bar. Not that she wasn’t attractive enough. She was, in a late-thirtyish, early-fortyish kind of way. It was mainly that there was nothing flashy or smart about her. She was, Fraser decided, a lady, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. A little severe about the mouth maybe, but that might just be a reaction to the creep trying to pick her up. She was trying very hard to brush him off without creating a scene and not having very much luck.

Under the right circumstances, Fraser was willing to bet, her mouth might not be very severe at all. The trick would be finding the right circumstances.

He was still speculating on that when the waitress appeared at his elbow.

“Your table is ready in the dining room, Mr. Fraser,” she said.

Fraser hesitated, looked back at the woman and her unwanted suitor, then on impulse slipped the waitress a folded bill and slid off his stool. “Tell me again in five minutes,” he said and went over to tap the small man on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said with heavy sarcasm, “but if you don’t mind I’d like to sit with my wife.”

The look of sudden irritation on the small man’s face died as swiftly as it had come. His eyes slid away from Fraser’s. “Sorry,” he stammered. He looked back at the woman, then as quickly away again. “Uh — you know — sorry.” He almost upset a chair at the next table in his haste to escape.

Fraser laughed and sat down across from the woman. “I hope you didn’t mind,” he said, “but I’ve always admired that line and this is the first time I’ve ever had a chance to use it. Frankly, the opportunity was just too good to pass up.”

The woman smiled faintly. “It was effective anyway,” she said.

“Oh, of course,” Fraser said. “It had to be. It’s how Clark Gable rescued Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night, and the movie won an Academy Award. Are you an old movie buff?”

The woman shook her head. “No.”

“Neither am I, really,” Fraser said. “I just watch ’em on late television. Which goes to prove, I guess, that even insomnia can pay off.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “But if we’re going to be married, we at least ought to know each other. I’m Sam Fraser.”

“Helen Leonard.”

“Pleased to know you, Helen Leonard,” Sam said. He raised his glass in salute, then looked up as the waitress approached again.

“Your table’s ready, Mr. Fraser,” she said. The bill Sam had given her had been a five and she kept her face carefully straight.

Sam nodded but made no effort to rise. He looked thoughtfully over at the bar, where the small man had found a seat.

Helen smiled wryly. “It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll be back. Not after what happened.”

Sam shook his head. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said. “But, look, you’re waiting for dinner too, aren’t you? Why not join me?”

Helen smiled faintly and shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“Why not? You’re not meeting anyone, are you?”

“No.”

“Then two’s better company than one any day. Besides—” he held up a warning finger — “it could be a lot worse. In the movie, Claudette ended up having to share a motel room with Clark. And if you don’t think that was a big deal back in the thirties, think again.” He snapped his fingers. “I know. Clark solved that by hanging a blanket between them. We can use our dinner napkins. They’re very large here. And I promise to let you pay for your own dinner if you insist.”

He had her laughing now. “When you put it that way,” she said, “how can I refuse?”

As he followed her to the dining room, Sam deliberately caught the small man’s eye. The man looked away.

Sam grinned to himself.

Helen sat quietly at first, busying herself with the menu and the trivia of ordering, afraid of the awkward silences that could grow up between two strangers thrown together — afraid too of what she felt were her own inadequacies in coping with the situation. Sam, however, was an infectious extrovert, with a well-developed knack for sensing when a conversational subject needed to be switched and a wide range of topics to turn to. By the end of the meal Helen found herself laughing and chatting as if they were better-than-average old friends.

When the check came, Sam paid it without comment. It seemed natural, and Helen didn’t object. Afterwards, he walked her outside, waited while the attendant brought her car, then escorted her around to the driver’s side, kissing her lightly on the cheek as they said goodbye.

“Good night, Helen,” he said. “It was a short marriage — but a happy one.” Then he stepped back and watched her drive off.

When she got home, Helen sat in front of her mirror for a long time, trying to sort out her emotions. She’d acted very much on impulse in going out alone tonight. It was something she rarely did. But Frank was on the road. A salesman’s wife was supposed to get used to that, and she supposed she had, or she wouldn’t have stayed his wife this long. But now the children had gone — Steve to college downstate, Beth to Atlanta with her new husband — and the walls had suddenly seemed to press in on her. And she had known that unless she got away from them — somehow — they would continue to press in until they literally drove her mad.

And what had been the result of her desperate venture? She smiled wryly at her reflection in the mirror. She’d been picked up, and, to top it off, in a bar of all places. How Frank would laugh at that.

Her smile faded and she touched her cheek where Sam had kissed her. And she knew she wasn’t going to tell Frank.

The package came shortly after noon the next day, and after she had tipped the messenger who brought it Helen carried it into the house and, her curiosity more than a little piqued, opened it. Inside was a paperback book, Karate Self-Taught, and a note: “Just in case there’s, no ‘husband’ around the next time you get in trouble.”

She laughed. The note wasn’t signed but it had been written on the back of a business card: “Samuel Fraser, Investment Counselor.” A phone number was printed in one lower corner and on impulse again, and quickly before she could change her mind, Helen dialed it. Sam answered on the third ring.

“I just got your present,” Helen said. “Thank you, though I hope I never need it.”

“I hope you didn’t mind,” he said.

“Mind? No, I think it’s funny. Only how did you know where to send it?”

“How did you know where to call?”

“Your phone number was on your card.”

“And your number was on your car last night. Your license number.

I simply memorized it and called a friend of mine in the police department, who in turn called a friend of his with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Voila, mystery solved. Now, will you have dinner with me again tonight so I can continue to dazzle you?”

Helen was silent for a long moment. “I’m married, Sam,” she said at last.

“I know,” Sam said quietly. “I didn’t miss the ring. But this isn’t 1900 and I’m only asking you out to dinner — not to run away with me to Pawtucket or some equally exotic place. So how about it? That good old napkin wall is still as strong and as high as it ever was.”

Helen smiled and in the end said yes, as she had known she would all along.

Sam had arranged for them to have the same table as before. This time, though, they spoke less during the meal. And afterwards, when the boy brought her car, Sam put Helen in the passenger seat and walked around and got into the driver’s seat himself.

He drove quietly and swiftly back through the city, finally turning into a deserted parking garage below what appeared to be a small office building. Helen looked around apprehensively.

Sam cut the motor. “It’s not sumptuous,” he said, “but all mine just the same. I came into a little money some time back, so I bought this building, rented the bottom two floors to a couple of doctors and an optometrist, and converted the third into a mini-penthouse for myself. That way I get the income but never have to worry about seeing my tenants. Or vice versa.” He got out and came around the car to open the door for her. “It’s better upstairs,” he said. “I guarantee it.”

Helen sat without moving. “This isn’t what I want, Sam,” she said.

“What isn’t?”

“A one-night stand in a bachelor’s pad.”

Sam shook his head. “It wouldn’t be that,” he said. “Even if it never happened again, it wouldn’t be that.”

He held out his hand. After a long moment, Helen took it.

Much later she sat on the edge of his bed looking out at the darkened city through the huge panes that took up most of one wall. There had been a heart-pounding excitement to their love-making that she hadn’t known in years and it had almost overwhelmed her in its intensity, but now in the aftermath her face was pensive. Sam lounged behind her in his dressing gown.

“A penny for your thoughts,” he said.

“Frank,” Helen said. This time she didn’t rise to his teasing tone. “My husband. He’s due home tomorrow.”

Sam shrugged. “Then we won’t see each other for a while,” he said. “It won’t be forever.”

“That’s not the point,” Helen said. “How do I face him? What do I say?”

Sam sat up. “I’ll tell you what you don’t say,” he said. “You don’t say I’m sorry, I’ve sinned, please forgive me. All that would do is louse everything up. For everybody — you, me, him.”

“Would you marry me, Sam, if it did?”

He looked away. “Is that what you want?” he said. “For us to get married?”

Helen looked at him soberly for a long time, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “You’re wonderful and exciting and fun and I love you. But, no, I don’t want to marry you.”

“Then why not keep it like it is?” he said. “Wonderful and exciting with me, and solid and safe with Frank. That’s what you really want, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Then there’s no reason you shouldn’t have it,” he said, grinning. “Like I said, this isn’t 1900. Women are liberated now. Or aren’t they?”

Helen didn’t smile back. “I don’t want to hurt Frank,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“So then don’t,” Sam said. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close. “There are many kinds of love,” he said, “and what we have between us isn’t taking anything from anybody, because it was never theirs. It’s ours — for as long as we want it.”

Time seemed to prove him right too. There was a brief moment of dread when Frank came home. He would, she was sure, see something different in her. He would know. But if she did betray any of her apprehension, he was too tired and preoccupied — or too trusting — to notice. That last part bothered her, but not for long, and she found herself slipping easily back into the old patterns as if Sam didn’t exist, or existed on some other plane away from their comfortable world. So when the trouble came, she really wasn’t prepared for it.

It was two months later. She and Sam had driven up the previous week to a little place he said he knew in Wisconsin where they could bask in the sun all day and make love all night, just the two of them together. It meant deceiving Frank, which she didn’t like, because it brought her two worlds into uneasy collision. But as Sam kept reminding her, the opportunity was too good to pass up.

In the days that led up to their leaving she built up in her mind an image of a small cottage on a tree-lined slope and the two of them running on a white crescent beach at the foot of the slope. But as it turned out, Sam’s “little place” was a motel — a nice one, with a big pool that was never crowded and a quiet lounge and restaurant where they had their own special table — and she told herself it didn’t matter. But it did.

It mattered even more when she got home and received a brochure describing the motel in Monday’s mail. At first she thought it was from Sam, a souvenir and reminder of their days together. But then she turned the envelope over and saw it was addressed to Frank.

The man called that afternoon. At least she assumed it was a man. The voice was garbled beyond any normal telephonic distortion.

“Mrs. Leonard? Tell me, Mrs. Leonard, do you open your husband’s mail?”

Helen drew in her breath sharply. The voice chuckled. “I see you do. Not that it really matters. The message this morning would have puzzled him at best. On the other hand, there are photographs I could have sent, quite explicit photographs. They wouldn’t puzzle him at all.”

“Who are you?” Helen managed to say. “What do you want?”

The voice hardened. “Who I am doesn’t matter, now does it, Mrs. Leonard? What counts is the pictures I have and whether you want your husband to see them. I’m not bluffing about the photos, Mrs. Leonard. I have them, and if you don’t want them sent to your husband — at his office, say, where he’ll be sure to receive them — you’ll put five thousand dollars in small bills in a plain envelope and drop it off at the phone booth on the corner of Kennilworth and Ames at midnight tonight. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” Helen said. Sudden panic hit her. “No, wait—” But she was speaking into a dead phone.

For several long moments she stood unmoving. Then she reached out reflexively to break the connection and dial Sam. He answered almost immediately.

“I have to see you,” she said. “Now.”

Sam turned the motel brochure over carefully and studied the back.

“It came in the mail this morning,” Helen said. It was later that same day and they were in his apartment. It was the first time Helen had been there in the daytime and the view from the windows was grey and dingy. “The man who sent it says he has photographs of us — together.” She stumbled slightly over the word. “He says he’ll send them to Frank unless I pay him five thousand dollars.”

Sam continued to study the brochure. “Do you have the money?” he said.

“In savings. But, my God, Sam, a withdrawal that size would wipe out the account! Frank would find out sooner or later, and I could never explain.” She looked at him pleadingly. “It might be better to face it now. At least it would be honest.”

“No,” Sam said sharply. “We can’t do that.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I never brought this up,” he said, “because it had nothing to do with us. But I’m married too. Neither of us has worked at the marriage for a long time now. There’s never been a divorce, though, mainly because any fault that could be proved would all be on her side. But this kind of a scandal — with me involved — would be all she needed to go into court and take me for everything I have.”

“What am I supposed to do,” Helen said bitterly, “feel sorry for you?”

“No,” Sam said. “The point is we’re in this together. And we’ll get out of it together.”

“How? By paying him what he wants?”

“Exactly,” Sam said. He shrugged. “I can scrape up a couple of thousand, but you’ll have to put up the rest. There’s no way around it.”

“And when he asks for more?”

“That’s what we’ve got to prevent,” Sam said. “But we need time and we need something to go on. The way it is right now, the cards are all stacked in his favor. He knows us, but all we have is a voice on the telephone that could belong to anyone. But he has to expose himself when he picks up the money. Where did he tell you to make the delivery?”

“By a telephone booth near Kennilworth and Ames at midnight tonight.”

Sam nodded. “Good,” he said. “I know the area. It’s not far from here. Small businesses mainly, so at that time of night it’ll be deserted. There are plenty of doorways and alleyways around for me to hide in and get a look at him when he makes the pickup. At the very least I’ll get the license number from his car and that will be a good start toward tracking him down.”

“And when you do,” Helen said, “what will you do then?”

Sam looked at her curiously, then grinned. “Nothing desperate, I assure you,” he said. “I’m no killer. But I don’t have to be. Once we know who he is, it becomes a Mexican stand-off. If he exposes us, we expose him. And blackmail’s a felony in every jurisdiction I know.” He rose and went over to her. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “Believe me.” He put his arms around her, and after a moment the tension left her shoulders and he pulled her close against him.

Shortly after, Helen drove home to pick up her bankbook so she could make the withdrawal before the bank closed for the day. Almost as an afterthought, she picked up the pistol that Frank had bought her years before for protection while he was away. It was a .22 automatic, very compact. It fit easily into her purse.

Sam approached the telephone booth warily, stopping just outside the small area of semi-brightness. It was 11:30 and as he had predicted the intersection was deserted. He continued to stand where he was for several moments, then, finally satisfied there was no one to observe him, he cut across the street into a dark doorway with an unimpeded view of the booth. He lit a cigarette, cupping his hands around the match to hide the flame, and settled down to wait.

The sound of tires on pavement brought him alert, and he glanced automatically down at his watch. He could just make out the luminous dial. Five minutes to twelve. Was it Helen coming early — or someone else? Not sure, but alert for either possibility, he ground out the cigarette and crouched farther back into the shadows.

Moments later Helen’s car pulled to a stop beside the booth and she got out. She stood for several seconds looking nervously up and down the street, then stooped to deposit her package. Sam was suddenly aware of his heart pounding wildly in his chest. The flow of adrenalin made his hands tremble, but he held himself back until Helen had driven off and he could no longer hear the car. Then, as if released from a spring, he dashed out across the street, snatched up the package, and ran back to the shelter of a different, closer doorway.

Twenty-six hundred dollars. He knew the exact amount because they’d counted it together earlier in his apartment after Helen had brought it back from the bank. He breathed heavily. It wasn’t as good as five thousand, of course, but it was better than nothing. Much better than nothing.

Gradually he brought himself back under control and when his hands were steadier he opened the package and broke the money down into packets that would fit unobtrusively into his pockets. Finished, he crumpled the wrapping to throw it away, then on second thought carried it with him to deposit carefully in a trash bin several blocks away.

He was glad it was over. He hadn’t really liked doing this to Helen — just as he hadn’t liked doing it to Ceil or Mary or any of the others. But the affair was bound to end sooner or later anyway, and expenses on the building were running higher than he’d expected. And they had all practically asked for it anyway.

By the time he reached his car he was whistling.

Helen was waiting for him at his apartment, sitting on the sofa, a jumble of cigarette stubs in the ashtray before her.

Sam shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I had it all psyched out. But whoever he is, he’s a lot smarter than we gave him credit for. He must have figured we’d try to make him, because he was wearing a ski mask. A goddamn ski mask this time of year!”

“You got the license number though?”

Sam shook his head again. “It was smeared with mud. Completely unreadable. Next time though—”

Helen’s eyes came up to meet his steadily. “There isn’t going to be a next time, Sam.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there shouldn’t even have been a first time. But I wanted to give you every chance to prove I was wrong.”

“Wait a minute,” Sam said.

“No,” she said. “You made one mistake this afternoon, Sam. You said all we had was a voice on the telephone that could belong to anybody. But I hadn’t said anything about a phone call. So how did you know that’s what it had been, and not a note or a letter?”

Sam wet his lips. “Hey, come on,” he said. “You can’t hang a guy for jumping to a conclusion.”

“No, but I can wonder. So I didn’t just drive off tonight after leaving the money. I cut over onto a side street and parked where I could watch. I saw the whole thing.”

Sam shook his head. “No,” he said, “you were gone. I made—”

He broke off as Helen continued to look up at him.

“That was your second mistake, Sam,” she said. She took the gun from her purse. “I want my money back,” she said.

Sam hesitated for several long seconds, then shrugged. “No point beating a dead horse, I guess,” he said. He took out the money, except for six hundred in his inside jacket pocket, and set it on the coffee table next to the ashtray. “I guess you were smarter than I gave you credit for, Helen,” he said.

Helen looked at the money without moving to pick it up. “Why did you do it, Sam?”

Sam shrugged again. “What can I say?” he said. “I needed the money. I wish it was different. But the opportunity was there and I just couldn’t pass it up.”

Helen looked past him. “Like that night in the bar,” she said, “when that little man tried to pick me up.” Her face began to work. “Damn you,” she cried. “That’s all I ever was to you, wasn’t I? An opportunity.”

Sam thrust out his hands defensively. “No,” he said. “No, I—”

But her finger had already tightened around the trigger and the sharp crack of the automatic cut him off before he could finish.