Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 25, No. 7, July, 1980

You Get What You Deserve by William Bankier

People saw Carolina in the morning at their own peril...

Had he not been married to Carolina Hagerty, Gabriel Parsons would never have been allowed inside the Mount Stephen Club. Now here he was under a ceiling panelled by Scottish craftsmen brought to Montreal for that purpose in the early part of the century, doing his effortless number with a pint of beer in his hand. Gabe’s specialty was charming people, ladies a little more successfully than men, with his clever conversation and his boyish smile.

“The simple truth is, I may never write another novel,” he said. The ladies frowned and cooed as they sipped their champagne, but Gabe was on firm ground. He was being sincere. “Seriously. Deadly Instruments came out four years ago. Since then—”

“I loved that book! A series of murders in a symphony orchestra!”

“You must do us another, Mr. Parsons!”

“I can’t seem to find the time. All I write these days are newspaper reviews of other people’s books.”

“I never bother to read the novels. A Gabriel Parsons essay is better than the original.”

“For that, sweet lady, a kiss on the cheek. There. And another glass of champagne from this ubiquitous waiter’s tray.” Gabe sent away the pewter mug he had brought with him for a refill of beer. He liked beer. And he felt it placed a subtle emphasis on his working-class origins to have his tankard in evidence among the crystal goblets.

Carolina was drifting from one island of drinkers to another. “I saw that kiss,” she scolded, presenting her cheek so that Gabriel could bestow one on her. She was a tall, handsome woman, with healthy skin and narrow blue eyes. Reduced by half, her features could have been described as baby doll. She paid forty dollars to have her tawny hair cut carelessly short and brushed forward. “Is Gabriel seducing all my friends again?”

“I wish he would. Me anyway.”

“He’s infuriatingly faithful to you, Carolina. Where did you find such a gem?”

“She had him made in her father’s factory. Gabe is too good to be real.”

No credit to Gabriel Parsons, his fidelity was a fact. He was a monogamist. As a single man, he had flirted and courted, occasionally loved, but never more than one woman at a time. Married now and at the ripe age of forty-eight, he could no more carry on an illicit affair than he could chug-a-lug his beer and sing “Roses of Picardy” at the same time.

“You don’t deserve him, Carolina,” one of the younger women said. “If there were any justice, someone would take Gabe away from you.”

The girl was hinting at Carolina Hagerty’s extramarital exploits. It was considered ironic that she divorced her previous husband, Robert Hurst, on grounds of infidelity. A woman of her resources could do as she pleased, of course, but still it seemed unfair that poor Bob was cut adrift only for practicing what his wife had always preached to any of her friends who would listen.

“Look at those calves,” she would say, referring to the legs of a band leader on a raised platform in the Normandie Room at the Mount Royal Hotel. “How would you like to get your hands on those?” Then she d arrange to do just that in her hospitality suite while her husband was left to see the departing guests into the January night.

Now it was almost time to put the bite on this well heeled crew at the charity affair at the Mount Stephen. They knew why they had been invited. Carolina would ask, and it would be given. Receipts would be issued, and the ultimate loser would be the Internal Revenue Department in Ottawa.

“Gabriel, a word in your ear.” Carolina drew her husband into an alcove. He was portly, but he could be steered like a barge on water. “Will you deliver the pitch? Make it persuasive. I want no checks under five hundred dollars.”

“I will, of course. But why?”

“Because Bob is here. He’s in the anteroom. He sent in word he must see me.” Carolina was aggressively open about her meetings with her previous husband. If Gabriel didn’t like it, that was his problem.

Gabe liked it. “Give old Bob my best. Tell him we’d like to see him out at High Heaven.”

“I certainly will not.” Carolina preferred to see Bob Hurst, when it pleased her, at a motel on Upper Lachine Road. “Will you give the pitch?”

“Avec plaisir. Leave it to me. Will I see you in the morning?”

That was a laugh. People did not see Carolina Hagerty-Hurst-Parsons in the morning — or, if they did, it was at their peril. She was a night person.

“Darling, you know better. Just spend your usual industrious morning at the typewriter and I’ll see you after lunch.” A quick kiss and she was gone.

For a change, Carolina went back with Bob to his place — a dismal habitat. He lived in a small apartment across the road from Sir George Williams University on Maisonneuve Boulevard. As they went in, Carolina hoped she would see one of Gabriel’s former colleagues from his years as an assistant professor of English. Not that Gabriel cared, but she enjoyed reminding the world that she needed about ten times as much love as her husband was able to provide.

“This was a good wine when I opened it three days ago,” Bob said. He made a theatrical business of using his strong, sunburned hands to squeeze the last drops from the bottle. “They import it from the Galapagos Islands to sell to the winos in Dominion Square. It’s called Park Bench Reserve.”

“To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Can’t I just be starved for your company?”

“I see ambition in those erotic little eyes.”

“Don’t you want me to succeed?”

“At whose expense? Never mind, what’s the project?”

“My aqua-school. Don’t make a face. I’ve found a perfect location beside the lake in Ste. Agathe. There are crowds of tourists there all summer and they’ll pay through the snorkel for scuba lessons.”

“What will you do in the winter? Fish through the ice?”

“I need ten thousand to get it off the ground.”

“Get off my back.”

“If I did, you wouldn’t like it.”

“Hands off, Robert. I hate being rough-housed.”

In fact, she loved it.

Later, as she was combing her hair with lacquered fingernails, Robert said, “How is the angel Gabriel?”

“Angelic. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve such a blessing.”

“Does he know you came out with me?”

“Yes.”

“What was his reaction?”

“The usual. Live and let live. Tolerance Forever. As long as we’re both happy.” She laughed. “At times like this I can’t understand why I hate him.”

“Why did you marry him?”

“Because it was such a relief to encounter a civilized man after you. Because he graces my entrances and makes all my girl friends jealous. Because I take pride in being married to a published author. Because he’s almost old enough to be the father I always wanted closer to me.”

“Greedy girl. You’ve never been satisfied with having the income from Hagerty Electronics. You wanted Hagerty as well.”

“At least I’m honest about it.”

“Forget your father. He’s dead.”

“And you’re next.” His young neck was muscular but she managed to clamp her hands around it.

She was morose when it was time to go. He was pensive.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked as he poured milk from a quart bottle into their mugs of coffee on the kitchen table.

“Tomorrow. I’ll wake up as usual feeling like hell resurrected. And I’ll hear Gabriel’s typewriter out on the top-floor balcony. It may be nine o’clock. Or ten. You can’t imagine how it makes me feel hearing that productive sound in the morning.”

“It makes you want to kill.”

She sighed. It was midnight, so she was able to be calm. “The girl can’t help it,” she said.

“Why not do it?”

“You jest.”

“Knock him off. Literally. The top-floor balcony at High Heaven has a low railing. It’s a long way down to the patio. The best murders are made to look like accidents. All you do is tippy-toe out there while he’s working, grab the back of his chair, and dump him over the edge.”

“I never tippy-toe in the morning. I creep. Like an iguana.”

“Just as good.”

“Anyway, I’m not a psychopath. I have a conscience. Besides, you just want Gabriel out of the way so you can move back in and get money for your aqua-school.”

“Can’t blame a man for trying.”

Another Thursday, another session in the poolroom. The fact that the snooker table was in the semi-basement playroom at High Heaven instead of in some Montreal back street didn’t make Carolina feel any better about her husband’s addiction to the game. It was the inevitability of it, the predictability. Four o’clock on Thursday afternoon, Gabriel was on the telephone having one of his peppery conversations with Stewart Sunderland at the ad agency.

“Hey, hey, whadya say, Stewie baby! How’s your old straw hat?”

“It’s never been felt, Gabe.”

Carolina could have supplied the other side of the dialogue even if she had not been listening on the upstairs extension.

“Feel like getting your ass whipped at the old snooker table, my son?”

“Careful, Parsons, or I’ll have to come out there and give you another lesson.”

“Why don’t you just jump into that parody of a car and drive out to Beaconsfield tonight? Whenever they let you up the shaft and you’ve brushed the salt from your pant cuffs.”

“I’ll be there. But I’m warning you. I sold my client three full-page ads today. I’m hot, man.”

“See you at seven. You think the rain’ll hurt the rhubarb?”

“Not if we keep it in jars.”

“And well back on the shelf. See you, Stewie.”

Carolina greeted Stewart Sunderland at the door with a kiss on the only bit of exposed face she could find. His brindle hair and beard and scrappy leather jacket matched the rusty MG convertible steaming on the forecourt below the pillared entrance. She saw him to the playroom, where Gabriel was making a production out of practicing shots.

“Have fun, boys. Want me to bring some more beer?”

“I’ll see to it later, love.”

Upstairs, preparing to go out, Carolina heard their chirpy Newfoundland voices and had to smile. Neither of them had been back to the Island in twenty years. But put them together and they began to sound straight off the ferryboat from St. John’s. There was something satisfying about the expensive snooker table being put to use. Her father had installed it and then hardly ever taken the cover off. It became a handy surface on which to pile annual reports and stock prospectuses for gold mines with obscure Indian names. But not any more; these days it was a hustler’s paradise down there.

Carolina went outside and stepped into her Continental. While the engine idled, she glanced at the top-floor balcony. The railing certainly was low. She wondered how Gabriel could bring himself to work out there, but he did. On pleasant mornings, the clatter of his typewriter, heard through her bedroom window on the floor below, was proof of that.

Half awake that morning, she had remembered Bob’s criminal suggestion and had considered it. Now things were back in perspective. To push Gabriel over the edge would be cold-blooded murder, and with very little provocation. If the sound of his typing disturbed her, she could ask him to work inside. But the noise was, of course, only a reminder of his insistence on earning a symbolic amount of money. Gabriel refused to belong to her outright, like the house, the factory down the road, and the various club presidencies she had bought with donations.

Carolina switched on the headlights and drove slowly down the lane between rows of young poplars, toward a spur road leading to the Montreal highway. She wanted very much to be with Bob tonight. The concert at Place des Arts could go to hell. She would tell the girls tomorrow that illness had forced her to cancel at the last minute. She would drive in to Maisonneuve and see if Bob was at home. It was troubling to suspect she might be capable of murdering her husband while in a mood of black depression. It was worse to understand why.

Stewart Sunderland sank the black ball in a corner pocket for his third straight victory, but all the games had been close. Gabriel placed the wooden triangle on the table and began to rack up the red balls while his friend placed the colored ones on their spots.

“It’s a matter of self-respect,” Gabe said, returning to the subject which had been abandoned temporarily as the game reached its climax. “The book reviews keep enough money coming in so that I can clothe myself, take Carolina out for dinner occasionally, and always have cash in my pocket. Without that, I’d be finished as a man.”

“But you live in this mansion rent-free. Why not go all the way? Let her support you while you produce another novel.”

“I can’t. If High Heaven belonged to me I might be able to do good work here, but it’s Carolina’s house, not mine.”

“Then move out.”

“That would be perverse, Stewie. I am the lady’s husband.” Gabe was not quite ready to admit that he was using the situation as an excuse not to risk writing another novel. The last one had been only a small success, even by Canadian standards. The next might be a failure. He was safer turning out criticisms of other people’s work.

By midnight, Stewie had consumed too much beer to consider driving back to Montreal. It would be the guest room for him. And since he was staying, there was no reason not to have another round of cold, foamy quarts. When Carolina returned at one, they were in full voice down in the game room. She stood silently in the doorway, aware of the smell of Bob’s cologne emerging and fading around her, listening to Gabriel and Stewart singing to the tune of “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’.”

She went to bed smiling, feeling at her best. Whatever chemical process would take place in her brain between now and morning, poisoning her outlook and turning her murderous, had yet to happen. Drifting halfway from sleep, she heard them down the hall giggling like schoolboys as they tried to turn down Stewie’s covers.

“You keep a fine hotel here, sir.”

“We aim to please. You aim, too, please.”

“Don’t let me sleep in. Got a client meeting at nine.”

“Have no fear. I’m always up at seven. Best time of the day.”

“Rowing in a dory...”

“Shhhhh!”

Gabriel was romantic when he came to bed. Carolina indulged him. Afterward he said, “I suppose that counts as a superfluous act.”

“Do you care that I still see Bob?”

“Where’s the logic in my caring? I’m forty-eight years old. You’re twenty years younger and so is he. If you were lying to me cheating on me, then I’d be vulnerable. As it is I feel quite secure.”

“My friends are right. I don’t deserve you.”

“You must, or you wouldn’t have me. We all get what we deserve.”

The steady tack-tack-tack of Gabriel’s portable typewriter woke Carolina up. How long had it been penetrating her unconscious mind? For an hour, probably. She made one eye focus on the bedside clock. Yes, it was almost ten.

Black rage surrounded her like a pool of tar. She could barely move in it. The nerve. The smug, self-satisfied nerve. All she wanted was to be allowed to sleep. All she really wanted was oblivion — a few more hours of it, anyway. But no. The little bell dinged, the carriage returned with a slam, the busy hunt-and-peck fingers flashed over the keys. Words, sentences, paragraphs flowed from his mind as he sat up there on the balcony, probably practicing his infuriating deep-breathing while he worked, using the morning to his benefit, living his life without her, despite her.

“Throw the bastard over.” Bob had repeated his suggestion last night. How right he was. What else could she do? And why not? Why the bloody hell not?

She almost tripped on the hem of her nylon robe as she staggered up the stairs. She was half asleep, feeling her way onto the familiar landing by rote, creeping silently into his study with her eyes half closed.

The door onto the balcony was open. She could not see Gabriel himself, only the high round back of the ornate Victorian wicker chair he liked to sit in while he worked. He had not heard her come in. The typewriter chattered on.

As she approached the doorway, still in a state that was half dreaming, Carolina warned herself that she must be quick and she must be strong. Gabriel was a heavy man — a half push would not do.

The back of his chair was within arm’s reach. The typing paused, then continued. Carolina gritted her teeth, grasped the wicker frame in both hands, and charged forward. The last thing she saw on the seat of the empty chair as it fell aside and she toppled over the railing was the tape recorder she had given Gabriel for Christmas, a cassette turning slowly on the spindle.

Gabe heard a heavy thud outside the ground-level window as he was concentrating on cutting the pink ball into the side pocket. When he went to the window and saw Carolina’s body on the patio, his first thought was that she had committed suicide. He knew how depressed she could be in the morning.

He ran outside and determined that she was dead. A servant joined him, then hurried away to call the police. Gabe went up to his study and out onto the balcony. Here, he was able to put two and two together. She must have come up to talk to him, maybe to complain about the noise. Anyway, operating on a quarter of her awareness as she did this time of day, she had lost her balance and gone over.

For just a few moments, Gabe felt guilty about using the tape recording. Then he reasoned the guilt away. He couldn’t work all the time. Yet it was important to him that his image be kept intact; he had wanted Carolina to think of him as a disciplined individual who never played till the day’s work was done. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would ever discover the tape. She was meant only to hear it.

Besides, Stewie had been very arrogant about his snooker triumph last night. This morning before leaving, he had challenged Gabe to a lunchtime match downtown at the Leader Billiards. There would be ad agency friends in attendance, so Gabe was determined to do well. That was why he had been getting in an extra practice session.

The inquest went off in a straightforward way. Gabriel Parsons was sincere. The coroner was sympathetic. The will left large sums to various charities, but Gabe ended up with outright ownership of High Heaven and more money than he could spend in the remainder of his life even if he were to play snooker daily with balls made of Waterford crystal.

Before Stewie could accept Gabe’s invitation to move in, he had to dispose of the lease on his flat in town, but soon the widower and the bachelor were established in the mansion outside Beaconsfield, where Gabe slackened off on his book reviews and Stewie reduced his art direction to a few freelance hours a week. Most days they shot pool.

That is what they were doing when Bob Hurst appeared one evening, keeping an appointment he had respectfully made by letter. He politely refused to take a cue and make the game a three-hander. He was here on business.

“I’d like to open a school that would teach aqualung techniques,” he said, going on to outline his scheme and ending with an appeal for ten thousand dollars to get him off the ground or, more accurately, into the water.

“No problem.” Gabe wrote a check for that amount between shots.

Hurst seemed dazed. “This is terrific of you, Gabe. Terrific.”

“Not at all. A tragic accident has made me a rich man. Maybe you can do me a favor someday.”

A few weeks later, Gabriel Parsons turned his back reluctantly on the carefree life of a book reviewer and began to plot a novel. Now that he was secure financially, there was no excuse not to behave like an author. Since Carolina’s accident, he couldn’t bring himself to work on the balcony. He sat at a desk placed against the locked door, looking out at the morning and feeling a premonition of doom. His book would be published one day and the critics would murder him. Gabriel shrugged. In the end, like everybody else, he would get what he deserved.