Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

An Attractive Family by Robert Arthur

The Farringtons were a rather attractive family, if you don’t mind overlooking a few bad habits — such as committing murder. And it is probably not fair to speak of murder as being a habit with them. After all, they had only committed it twice.

However, they were well on the way to making it a habit. Even now they were planning to make the figure two into a three. But they were not looking sinister, nor whispering to each other. They were discussing the subject frankly and openly as they sat in the parlor of East View, the summer home they had rented on the Massachusetts coast at a spot where the rather steep, rocky cliffs fell away to the brawling waves of the Atlantic.

They were even drinking tea as they talked. At least Marion Farrington was — tea with lemon. Bert Farrington, her uncle, was also drinking tea, but his was laced with Jamaican rum. Dick, her younger brother, was drinking scotch and soda, which looks like tea but isn’t.

“It’s really a pity the child must have her birthday in two weeks,” Marion Farrington said. “It forces us to act.”

Dick, who was thirty-two, well-built, tanned, and handsome, obviously accustomed to living well and spending money freely, glanced out the window. Jinny Wells was visible across the open field, just at the edge of the woods. She seemed, from a distance, almost the child that Marion had called her, although Jinny was almost twenty-one — a twenty-one that, based upon past performance charts of the Farrington family, she was not likely to reach. At the moment Jinny seemed to be searching the ground for small objects which she popped into a basket on her arm.

“She’s quite a pretty thing,” Dick commented. “And I do think she admires me.” He straightened his tie. “If we could only put it off for a little longer—”

“Aha!” Bert Farrington, who was plump and red-featured, twenty years older than his nephew, wagged a finger at him. “Mustn’t get sentimental, Dick. The future of the Family is at stake.” He said it that way, with a capital F, as if he were speaking of the British Empire or the State of Texas.

“Bert’s right.” Marion sat erect, a full-bodied forty-two, attractive if you overlooked the set of her chin and the determination that glinted in her pale blue eyes. “On Jinny’s twenty-first birthday we have to make an accounting of the estate, under the terms of Alice’s will. We might manage to postpone it for a few weeks, but eventually her lawyer would force the issue. You know what the result would be.”

Dick drained his glass in a nervous sort of way while he thought of all the money Alice had left him that was now gone, including half of what she had left Jinny. “Money certainly doesn’t go far these days,” he said.

“The inflation,” Bert said, in a philosophical manner. After all, if anyone went to jail it would be Dick, as trustee of Jinny’s estate, rather than Bert. Just the same, Bert, having sponged off his niece and nephew for fifteen years now, and hoping to continue to do so indefinitely, was willing to go to any reasonable lengths to help keep Dick out of jail. After all, Dick would soon have to find another rich wife to marry, and that was seldom accomplished in jail.

Dick refilled his scotch and soda. “I could take her out for a sail in the bay and capsize.”

Bert frowned. “I think not,” he said. “After all, Alice went by drowning.”

“And Harry too, when we capsized fifteen years ago,” Marion said. “Three drownings would seem entirely too many to be coincidental.”

Harry had been Marion’s first, and only, husband. A wealthy apple grower in Oregon, whom she had married at a time when the family finances were at rock bottom, he had survived only seven weeks of matrimonial bliss. The waters in Puget Sound can also be quite tricky, and when the sailboat overturned Marion had been too concerned with helping her younger brother Dick (who was a splendid swimmer) to give her non-swimming husband a hand. Soon he was out of reach. He had been only forty feet away, but unhappily the forty feet had all been straight down.

Alice, Dick’s only wife — to date — had drowned only two years before, while swimming off a lonely beach at Acapulco, Mexico. Alice had been a dull, rather homely girl with a thin, curveless body, but she had been a splendid swimmer. When she met Dick — whose car had broken down in the small Midwestern town where she lived and who had visited the local swimming pool to while away the time until it was fixed — she had been overwhelmed with wonder that he found her attractive. No other man ever had, though possibly some might have if they had known, as Dick did, that she had a half interest in a two hundred thousand dollar estate, left in trust for her and her sister Jinny by their father.

Dick had been hoping for a better figure, using both meanings of the word, but a balance in the bank has always been worth two on the wing. He had therefore seized the opportunity and eloped with her, and he and Bert and Marion had jointly taken her off to Mexico to honeymoon. Alice had exulted in long swims out into the blue Pacific. Sometimes, when Dick was weary, she had swum alone. From one of these lonely swims she had not returned.

Cramps, said the Mexican authorities when her body finally washed ashore. But it may have been the overpowering lethargy brought on by sedatives mixed with the black coffee she loved to drink before starting a swim.

Anyway, now her money was gone, Jinny was almost twenty-one, and the share Alice had left her pretty sister, and which had been nibbled at, must be accounted for. The Farringtons, if a little provoked at Fate for forcing another murder upon them, were nevertheless facing up to their burden.

“It must be clearly an accident,” Marion said.

“Don’t give any gossip a chance to get started,” Bert agreed.

“Perhaps a picnic out by the old Cliff Point House,” Dick suggested. “It’s a long drop to the rocks.”

“If we can’t think of anything better,” Marion said. “But shhh — she’s coming back now.”

They watched the slender girl come across the field, the basket on her arm. Halfway to the house, she waved to a small man in a large checked cap who rode by on a bicycle. The small man was Mr. Downey, who had rented the next house for the summer. Mr. Downey was a bookish man whose hobby was geology and who rode hither and yon on his bicycle, chipping bits off rocks.

“Speaking of sleeping,” Bert murmured, “do you suppose the girl is psychic?”

“What do you mean?” Marion asked.

“These nightmares she’s been having the last two weeks since she came here to visit us. Every other night. Nightmares about big, dark figures closing in on her, whispering things she can’t make out.” He coughed slightly. “What I mean is do you suppose she—”

“Of course the girl’s not psychic,” Marion said. “She’s just undernourished and nervous, like so many modern girls. Also, she studied too hard at school. Imagine a chit like her, not yet twenty-one, graduating from college. However, no matter what’s causing her nightmares, I’m glad of them. The whole town knows about them, and Dr. Barnes can testify her nerves aren’t strong — that’s why I insisted she go see him. So no matter what happens—”

She broke off as the front door opened. A moment later Jinny Wells entered the room.

Jinny was a slender girl, small-boned, with a delicate, wistful oval face and a slow, soft-voiced manner of speaking. Her cheeks were pink now with heat and exertion, her dark eyes dancing.

“Oh, I found some!” she cried. “Found some mushrooms. Look!”

Her eyes, wide and admiring, smiled at Dick, who smiled back. She handed the basket to Marion, who glanced into it.

“Why, child—” Marion began, then recovered herself smoothly. “You’ve done well,” she said. “You shall have them for supper. Take them out to the kitchen; I’ll fix them myself.”

“Oh, thank you, Marion,” Jinny said. “But we’ll all have them.” She turned to go, and her lashes fluttered as she peeped at Dick beneath them. Then she went lightly out with her basket of mushrooms.

“Well, that takes care of that,” Marion said when Jinny had gone. “She’s mixed in some of the most deadly kind of mushrooms with edible ones that look a lot like it. What is the name of that mushroom, that terribly poisonous one? No matter, there’s quite enough to kill her. And she picked them herself and showed them to Mr. Downey, next door. We’ll be in the clear — quite in the clear.”

At last, Marion thought, her education was coming to some use. Which might still not be the case if it weren’t for that course she’d taken in botany.

The Farringtons were a rather attractive family, but like most of us, they sometimes got into an ugly humor. They were in one now as they sat in the fusty parlor. They were so upset that they could have killed someone.

The clock said eleven at night. The evening had gone badly. Marion had cooked a tasty dinner with wild rice and duckling, including a special side dish of mushrooms just for Jinny. There weren’t enough to go around, she had said firmly. Jinny had picked them and Jinny should have them. And she wished she didn’t have to include the edible ones, but the one portion would have been too skimpy without them.

Jinny had wriggled with joy at the idea of eating something she had actually garnered from Nature all by herself. Half a dozen times she started on them, meanwhile keeping up a lively chatter about her year at college. Each time, as they waited in frozen expectancy, she had stopped to tell them of some other funny incident of school life. But she, finally, put the dish firmly before her and started eating. She had eaten at least three of the mushrooms from her side dish of fatal and non-fatal types when the phone rang. As bouncy as a small boy, Jinny leaped up to answer it. And the dish of mushrooms had fallen to the floor and scattered across the rug.

Jinny was painfully embarrassed, but there had been nothing to do save throw the mushrooms in the garbage can. As for the phone call, it had only been from their tiresome neighbor, Mr. Downey, inviting them to tea the following afternoon.

They had waited hopefully for nature to take its course, if the three mushrooms Jinny had eaten were of the fatal type. But Jinny had gone up to bed quite healthy and now the Farringtons were under the annoying necessity of figuring out some other way to dispose of her. It was really very thoughtless of the girl to put them to so much trouble.

“It will have to be a fall from the cliff,” Marion said. “I told Mr. Downey we couldn’t come to tea because we were going on a picnic. Very well, we will go on a picnic. Jinny will see a very special flower she wants to pick, clinging dangerously to the side of the cliff. She will start down for it and slip and... well, we just weren’t close enough to catch her.”

She spoke very convincingly. It almost sounded as if Jinny were already lying broken and lifeless on the cruel rocks, and as a consequence, they all felt much better. Then suddenly a piercing scream from the bedroom above them made them look up. Again came the scream — and again, a tremolo of horror that made the cut glass chandelier tinkle timorously.

Hope sprang in Marion’s eyes.

“The mushrooms!” she exclaimed.

“Dash it!” Bert said. “She’ll wake the whole neighborhood. Can’t she die quietly?”

Screams from above continued to indicate that she couldn’t.

“Amanita virosa!” Marion exclaimed, with awe. “Why that’s the name I couldn’t think of. It... it just came to me. No mushroom is deadlier.”

There was another scream.

“We’ll have to go up,” Marion told them. “Mr. Downey is sure to have heard her by now. Come on, Dick.”

She and Dick ran up the stairs and flung open Jinny’s door. Jinny was sitting up in bed, her hands pressed to her mouth, trying to stifle another scream.

“Jinny!” Marion hurried to her. “What is it? Do you feel bad?”

Jinny shook her head, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

“No pain?” Marion was eager, rather than solicitous.

“It was — another nightmare. The... the worst of all.”

They heard a window go up. A voice called, “Hello! Anything wrong over there?”

“That you, Mr. Downey?” Dick stepped to Jinny’s window. “Jinny had another nightmare, that’s all. She’s all right now.”

“Oh,” Mr. Downey said. “Oh.”

The window went down again. Dick came back and sat on the side of the bed, holding Jinny’s soft hand in his.

“Tell us about it, Jinny,” he urged. “That’s the best way to get over it.”

Jinny’s breathing was more normal now. She flushed delicately, and tried to pull the sheet up around her.

“It was — so real,” she said. “I was in a great, dark room, in some strange old house all tumbling down and full of shadows. And the shadows suddenly came to life and started creeping toward me. There was a terribly high ceiling and down from the darkness came a rope. It had a noose in the end of it. And the shadows all pushed me toward the noose and I knew they wanted me to put it around my neck, and they pushed closer and closer until I couldn’t breathe. Then all of a sudden the noose twisted itself right around my throat and... and—”

She gasped and began to tremble. Marion produced a pill and a glass of water.

“Take this, Jinny,” she said. “Get some sleep. It was just a dream, that’s all.”

“Yes, of course,” Jinny whispered. “Just a — dream. Thank you, Marion.”

She took the pill, drank, lay back on the pillow. Dick gave her hand a little squeeze.

“See you in the morning, Jinny.”

He went out softly. And Marion and Bert followed him on tiptoe, like loving parents leaving the side of their sleeping child.

It was a perfect summer morning. The horoscope in the daily paper said, “Today is a good day for carrying out projects you have been putting off.” Bert, who always read the horoscopes, showed it to Marion.

“Yes, we’ve waited too long,” Marion said, and frowned. “We’ll finish this thing up today. Jinny’s nightmare last night has given us just the opportunity we need.” She reached for the phone.

“Hello,” she said to the operator. “I want to make a long distance call to Boston. Person to person to Dr. M. J. Brewer. He’s a famous psychiatrist. I don’t know his address, but I’m sure you’ll be able to locate him. It’s very important... Yes, call me back.”

She hung up and turned to Bert.

“I already phoned Dr. Barnes,” she said. “Told him about Jinny’s nightmares and said I was dreadfully worried. He suggested Brewer. I’ll make an appointment with Brewer and explain all about Jinny’s fits of depression and the time she took too many sleeping pills—”

“When was that?” Bert asked.

“Don’t be tiresome, Bert. The thing is, the child is melancholy, subject to depression, thinks of suicide. After all the buildup I gave the call, the operator is sure to listen in and spread the story. So will Mrs. Graves and Miss Bernham, on the party line — I heard their receivers picked up. Jinny is over now apologizing to Mr. Downey for waking him up last night. By evening the whole town will know about Jinny’s dream, her suicidal tendencies, instability, everything. Then this afternoon, for the picnic, we’ll go to Black Point. You know the old house in the woods there?”

“Yes,” Bert nodded. “What about it?”

“Why, it will be the most natural thing in the world — oh, there’s the phone... Hello? Dr. Brewer?... Dr. Brewer, it’s urgent that I make an appointment with you for as soon as possible. You see—”

The Farringtons were a rather attractive family, especially on an occasion such as this, all of them off to a picnic.

Marion had packed a hamper with food, and Bert had packed a small hamper with wine and other drinks. Dick drove the car far out on the lonely cliffs to the region known as Black Point. The evergreens grew tall with cathedral-like shade and quiet beneath them. Dick helped Jinny tenderly over the rough spots. His fingers caressed her bare arms as he helped her sit down on the edge of the rocky cliff, in the sunshine, the Atlantic combers crashing on the rocks far below. Sea gulls screamed; there was a smell of salt spray in the air. Jinny breathed deeply.

“It smells so fresh and clean,” she whispered. “It makes me forget all about last night — that horrible nightmare—” Her eyes clouded, but Dick’s admiring gaze brought her good spirits back. “But there, I’m not going to talk about it any more. Let’s eat. I’m starved!”

They ate. Bert told humorous stories of his travels in Europe, neglecting to mention that he had been in Europe because of an embezzlement in the U.S.A. Marion was witty, and her stories about the townspeople were also malicious. Dick sat close beside Jinny and held her hand whenever he could, leaning close to her and whispering in her ear from time to time that she was lovely. Jinny flushed, and her eyes laughed, and she looked more than ever like a child on the happiest day of her life.

The sun sank behind the pines. Shadows grew longer. A chill seeped into the air.

“Why don’t you two take a walk?” Marion asked. “Bert and I will clean up.”

Dick was on his feet at once, helping Jinny.

“Come along,” he said gaily. “We’ll explore.”

Laughing, Jinny allowed herself to be drawn along. Dick slipped her small hand into his large hand.

“Glorious day,” he said with a wide gesture. “Enjoying it?”

“Oh, yes. Except that — looking at the sea — made me think of Alice.”

“I know.” Dick looked solemn. “She loved the sea — too much. Couldn’t keep her out of the water.”

“Did you love her very much, Dick?” Jinny asked.

“Very much indeed,” Dick said, nodding. “They were the happiest three weeks of my life. Then — she was taken from me.”

“She loved you, too,” Jinny told him. “You should have seen her face when she told me she was going to marry you. It was transformed. She couldn’t imagine what you saw in her. She was so plain.”

“Plain?” Dick was indignant. “I never thought of her as plain. To me she was lovely, lovely...”

“I always thought she was rather dull,” Jinny said ingenuously. “All she could do was swim. She couldn’t talk well and she didn’t like books or music or—”

“Please, Jinny!” Dick’s voice was suddenly brusque. “You forget that we were in love. It upsets me to talk about her. I still — miss her terribly, terribly...”

“Of course,” Jinny said, with swift contrition. “I’m sorry, Dick. Oh, look — isn’t that a house ahead of us?”

“An abandoned house!” Dick exclaimed. “Maybe it’s haunted!”

The house they had come upon, buried in the woods, was huge and a dismal brown in color. Part of the roof had fallen in. The wide verandah was sagging. Most of the windows were broken. An air of dark desolation hung over it, brooding.

Jinny drew in a deep breath. “I don’t like it,” she said. “Let’s go back, Dick.”

But Dick had hold of her hand and was pulling her toward the old ruin with masculine enthusiasm.

“Let’s look inside,” he coaxed. “Say hello to the ghost. No telling what we’ll find.”

Jinny tried to hold back, but willy-nilly she came along with him, half running.

“Dick, it — scares me. It’s so dark — and gloomy. It’s like my nightmare last night—”

“Aw, that was only a dream. Now don’t be a child, Jinny. Come on, let’s see what’s inside.”

Reluctantly Jinny followed him onto the verandah, which swayed and creaked beneath them. Together they peeked through the doorless doorway. Inside was darkness, a smell of moldy plaster and termite-infested wood, the tiny chittering of rats, curious creaks and rustlings.

Jinny shivered. “Please, Dick! I feel — so scared. I know it’s irrational, but please let’s go back.”

“That would be the worst thing you could do, giving in to your fears. Come on inside.”

Dick pulled, and Jinny went in with him.

Inside the gloom was worse. But they could see the holes in the plaster, the leprous stains on the walls, the broken stairway leading to the next floor — and the rope that hung from an old hook in the ceiling.

It was an old rope, a frayed rope, but it seemed to twist and curl gently, as if alive, as if hungry, as if waiting. And it ended in a noose.

“My dream!” Jinny cried in terror. “It’s happening. This old house — this room — the rope. Dick!” She tugged to free herself. “Let’s run!”

Dick held her tightly.

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “This is how to cure yourself. Go over, touch the rope, prove to yourself it’s just an old rope someone left hanging there.”

“No, oh no! See how it — twists.”

“Sure. It’s drafty. The windows are all busted in this place.”

And Jinny found herself almost lifted across the creaking floor, to stand below the dangling noose that waited like an open mouth.

“Jinny,” Dick said softly, gently. “Here’s an old stool. Stand on it — put the noose around your neck. Then take it off again. Do that, and you’ll never have nightmares again. You’ll be too brave for them. I promise you.”

“No, I can’t.” Jinny shuddered and then with a sudden do-or-die effort wrestled free of Dick’s arms. “I can’t.”

“You must, Jinny.” This time it was Marion who spoke. Somehow, Marion and Bert had materialized in the doorway, like two shadows coming out of the woodwork. Soon they stood close behind Jinny, touching her, hemming her in. She stood there, trembling violently, like a wild thing caught in a trap.

“This is for your own good, child.” Marion’s voice was soft, almost gentle. “It will help you get over the nightmare habit. The doctor suggested it. Dick, put the stool in place. Bert, lift her up.”

In a moment the three of them had Jinny on the old stool, the noose around her neck, the rope harsh against her tender throat. Pressed close about her like ugly, waiting shadows, they held her so she could not move — could only tremble uncontrollably.

“You’re going to kill me,” she said, looking down at them, her eyes enormous in her small white face. “You want me out of the way. So you’re going to kill me. And you killed Alice, too. I can see it in your faces.”

“Yes, you tiresome child,” Marion answered. “I put a sedative in her coffee before she went for a swim. But we’re not going to kill you, child. You’re going to kill yourself. You’re moody, inclined to suicide. Last night you had a nightmare. Today you went wandering, found this old house, found the rope, tied it to an old hook in the ceiling, and you acted out your dream. You killed yourself. We should have watched you, but you slipped away from us, and in a fit of melancholy you killed yourself.

“Dick, take away the stool. Bert, lower her gently. This must look natural. Let her grab the rope to support herself — her hands should be abraded — and grabbing the rope would be the instinctive thing to do. She’ll tire soon enough.”

Dick took away the stool. Bert lowered Jinny and then let go of her. Jinny hung there, her small hands clutching at the rope in an attempt to support her weight, but the hemp cut deeper and deeper into her throat. Slowly, her body turned about, throwing crazy shadows on the wall as a final shaft of sunlight broke into the room and as her breath choked in her throat.

“All right, put the stool back.”

But it was not a Farrington who spoke. It was Mr. Downey, who stood in the doorway with a shotgun in his hand. Beside him was Sheriff Lamb, a large, silent man who seldom spoke, but whose expression now conveyed displeasure.

“Put it back, I said!”

Little Mr. Downey’s voice sounded like a trap snapping shut. Bert put the stool back beneath Jinny’s feet. Jinny stood very straight and with steady fingers loosened the noose. Then she stepped down.

“For a frightened moment,” she said, “I almost thought you weren’t coming, Mr. Downey.” She no longer sounded like a child.

“Oh, we were there,” Mr. Downey said. “Right on the dot, just like you said. But what took us a little longer, we were listening at the window and we had to come around to the door so you wouldn’t be between them and us.”

Jinny looked coldly at the three Farringtons, who were like grotesque shadows frozen in the act of trying to move.

“You killed Alice,” she said. “I knew all along you must have killed Alice. I loved her, but she was dull and plain and nobody would marry her, I knew, except for her money. So I promised myself I’d get you somehow. Since you’d killed her in a foreign country, the only way I could get you was by making you try to kill me — before witnesses.

“It was risky. Sure it was. But I studied psychology in college and Mr. Downey is a cracker-jack private detective, and I thought I could do it, one way or another. I pretended to have dreams so you’d think I was a real nervous kid. Last night when you were willing to let me eat poisonous mushrooms, I knew I’d better do something. So I tried putting this hanging idea into your heads. I didn’t want you to try to drown me or push me off a cliff — I might not have been able to stop you if you’d done that. Well, it worked out as I hoped it would. You were so gullible, so easy to lead around. You should have seen your faces when I spilled that dish of mushrooms on the floor. Of course the ones I’d eaten were the harmless ones.”

But she did not laugh at the memory. She only turned to Mr. Downey and Chief Lamb.

“Take them away, please,” she said.

The Farringtons went, followed by the two men with shotguns. Last of all came Jinny Wells. Behind her the noose, stirred by the air currents, twisted and curled.

As was mentioned earlier, the Farringtons were a rather attractive family, if you don’t mind overlooking a few bad habits.

But Jinny Wells was one individual who apparently did.