Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 36, No. 6, June 1991

A Little Bit of a Jigsaw Puzzle by Pauline C. Smith

Mama never liked me very much. Mostly, I suppose, because with my birth she became a mother, and she certainly didn’t care much about being a mother. Anyway, she never tried it again. Then, when I had the nerve to grow up and have a couple of kids of my own, making her a grandmother, she liked me even less.

Mama, you see, always thought of herself as a winsomely young and frolicsome lass, which Papa, who was almost twenty years older, enthusiastically fostered by calling her “Little Bit” and never allowing a whit of sadness or responsibility to come her way until he died this spring, and he certainly couldn’t help that.

“Oh, hell,” moaned Jeff when we got the news. “She’ll probably have to come here and live with us.”

I was too busy packing a bag and telling the kids, Steve, fourteen, and Carolyn, twelve, to take care of their father and Jeff to take care of the kids to think about the dire probability until I was out on the freeway. Then I thought about it during every one of those three hundred and fifty miles, all through the funeral, and afterward.

When I suggested the new living arrangement to Mama, she stood there, her pointy toes and very high heels solidly dug into her Persian rug in her plush living room, surrounded by her majolica and porcelains, and said in her little-girl treble that she would do very well right where she was, and I realized that now I’d have to worry about her long distance instead of close up.

“But, Mama, not all alone,” I cried.

She could get along great, Mama said, standing there in all her five foot, ninety-eight pounds of bleached blonde black-veiled glory, ticking off on her gloved fingers her pillars of strength: Mr. Merrick to send her monthly check, Joe Gomez to mow her lawn, and Mrs. Herter to flick a dustcloth over the house twice a week. She didn’t even want any help in selling the car, a venerable Cadillac she couldn’t drive; as a matter of fact, she didn’t think she’d sell it at all.

“Why not?” I screamed faintly, and she informed me, with great dignity, that she just might learn to drive it, so I screamed again.

“Now why don’t you run along, Margaret,” she directed me. “Run along to your husband and children...” This right after the funeral! I had spent only two nights and a day and a half at the side of my bereaved mother in mourning for my deceased father! What could I do? I ran along.

Before I ran very far, though, I stopped at the office of Mr. Merrick, who said with a banker’s smile that Mama was in fine shape financially, which was all that mattered to him. It was the same with Mrs. Herter, who considered any widow with a roof over her head a lucky widow indeed, and Joe Gomez promised to mow and fertilize weekly.

Even Jeff, when I arrived home shattered, wondered what all the flak was about. “Sounds to me as if the old girl is taking it very well,” he said in his ad man’s hearty we’ll run her up the flagpole and see if she flies voice.

So I, feeling this genetic responsibility for a wisp of sixty-one-year-old girlhood who still wore pointy stilt-heeled pumps and pointy padded bras, was the only one concerned. “She’s always had someone to take care of her,” I worried.

“It’s time, then, she took care of herself,” said Jeff.

“But she doesn’t know how,” I agonized.

Jeff laughed as he said, “She knows how to get what she wants.”

It turned out, I guess, that we were both right.

Since Mama was the I-won’t-call-you, you-call-me type, I called every week, and our shortwinded telephone conversations went about like this:

Me: “How are you, Mama?”

Mama: “Just fine, dear,” in her tinkling voice.

Me: “Is Mrs. Herter doing her job?”

Mama: “Yes, dear.”

Me: “Is Joe Gomez mowing the lawn?”

Mama: “Yes, dear,” succinct and uninformative until a couple of months after Papa’s death when she let drop a surprising bit of news: “I am learning to drive the car.”

“Mama!” I screamed. “Who is teaching you?”

“Why, a young man from the driving school,” she said.

I told Jeff, “She’s too old to learn to drive,” and he said he’d heard of women older than she who learned to drive, and I said I thought I ought to go down there and see what was going on, and he told me not to be a fool, that Mama was doing her thing and she not only wouldn’t like interference, she wouldn’t stand for it.

I figured he was right, knowing Mama, and knowing how she didn’t like me much anyway.

Our telephone exchanges became a bit more lively with the driving lessons, which she took daily. “How are you getting along?” I asked. “Oh, fine,” she said, and after a couple of months of this, I asked her if she wasn’t about ready to take her driver’s test.

Mama (airily): “There’s plenty of time for that. As long as I have someone to drive me around...”

“What did I tell you?” said Jeff triumphantly. “Your mother knows how to get what she wants, so she signed up for driving lessons and got herself a daily chauffeur.”

Actually, I was somewhat relieved that Mama was putting off the day she would drive alone, and my conversational questions regressed to: “Is Mrs. Herter doing her job?” and “Is Joe Gomez mowing the lawn?” both of which received the submissive if laconic replies of “Yes” for another month or so when Mama unaccountably answered, “I let them go, dear, the two of them.”

“Mama,” I screamed, “why?”

“Because I wanted to, Margaret,” she said.

When Mama changed her impersonal “dear” to the highly personal use of my given name, it meant she wanted me to shut my mouth because what I was using it for was none of my business. “Don’t you have anybody to clean the house and mow the lawn?” I screamed, and she said, with great dignity, “Yes, Margaret, I have.” Period.

“Maybe I’d better go on down there,” I told Jeff.

“What for?” he asked.

“Oh, to look over the cleaning woman and see who she’s got for a yard man.”

“For Pete’s sake,” he said, “let her live her own life.”

I mentioned casually to Mama, the next time I called, “I thought I might come down to see you,” and she said, “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, “just for a little visit.”

“I might be gone,” she said.

“Gone? Where?” I screamed.

Then she came back with a couple of non sequiturs and three or four feminine obliquities that indicated, mostly, an antipathy for guests and questions — me in particular, and mine.

“If you go anywhere,” I said, “on a trip or something, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“Of course, dear,” she answered.

I didn’t believe her. “She doesn’t want me,” I told Jeff.

“Has she ever?”

“She said something about traveling.”

“She’s got a right,” and the following week when I phoned and Mama did not answer, Jeff said, “Well, okay, maybe she’s off on one of those trips she was talking about.”

“She promised to tell me about it first.”

“You didn’t believe her, did you?”

“No,” I said. I also didn’t believe she’d take off on a trip without Papa to hold her hand and make all the arrangements and call her “Little Bit.” Not Mama without Papa.

“Why not?” said Jeff. “She fired the housekeeper and gardener without your father. She took driving lessons and grabbed herself a chauffeur without him...”

I felt a chill step down my spine.

I called again late that night and in the morning, and then I packed and was on my way.

“Aren’t you kind of jumping the gun?” asked Jeff. “Look, if you’re worried, phone one of the neighbors...” (One of the neighbors, hah!)

Mama’s house, pseudo-Spanish, built during that fancy time when they put a fat little towerlike appendage on one corner that always reminded me of an obscene tumor, perches on a hillside between tall, vine-covered walls. The lot extends from one street to the other, with neighbors on each side and above, but Mama never knew a single one of them, and that was one thing that worried me. She could fall flat on her stilt heels and die among her souvenirs without a soul to know.

It was windy dusk when I arrived at the house. The town below looked like a bowl of diamonds; the houses on the hill were cheerfully lighted. I parked in the driveway on the street above, nosed close to the garage door, which I tried to open and found locked.

I could see no light from the back of the house as I walked down the cement steps to the yard. I thought of Longfellow’s lines: “The twilight is sad and cloudy,/The wind blows wild and free...”

I tried the back door, then banged on it, calling, “Mama. It’s me, Margaret.” I went around the house, peering in windows between the draperies, through outside dusk into inside gloom. Dark as a tomb in there, I thought, shuddering, wishing I had not thought in cliche. I ran then, stumbling on the uneven flagstone path, thinking of Mama in her ridiculous tall heels, and tore up the front steps. No light.

I banged the knocker, lifted the doormat, felt along the top of the ornate door — but Mama, of course, was not the type to hide extra keys under mats or above doors as she was not the type to offer an extra key to her very own daughter in case of emergency. I became suddenly furiously angry with Mama, with her immaturity, her secrecies and silly little vanities, as I stood helpless before her closed door while she might be dying inside — or dead.

Then I remembered a trick I had read about and rummaged in my bag for a plastic credit card, ran it down the crack of the door, heard a click, turned the knob, opened the door, and called out, “Mama.”

I felt along the wall, found the switch, and turned on the lights. The hall looked different. “Mama,” I called. I left the front door open behind me and walked hesitantly to the dark living room, flicked the switch, bringing several lamps alight. “Mama,” I called again loudly. “Are you in here?”

Nothing.

The living room looked different, too.

Of course, the whole house seemed to be different without Mama fluttering among her treasures, and tapping those silly heels on hardwood between Persian rugs. I stood there yelling, “Mama” like an idiot, my hand still on the wall switch, when I thought, well now, this is not finding Mama, and I walked determinedly to the sitting room, switching on lights; to the dining room, flashing on the chandelier; then to the kitchen, turning on the overhead lights — two bedrooms, two baths, the desk lamp in the study.

The house was ablaze and empty except for me, quiet except for the sound of the wind outside, and that damn line came back to haunt me: “The wind blows wild—” when the front door slammed, sending me at a dead run through all the alien rooms to wrench it open again.

It must have been the wind. It really must have been the wind. I looked for the bust, a bronze that had always stood in the hallway, to prop the door open — but the bust was not there, nor the pedestal on which it had always stood. That was what was different about the hall as I remembered it.

I tore out then, slammed the door behind me, raced down the stairs and along the flagstone path around the house, up the steps and into my car. Dark now; I could see the shafts of light I had left shining from Mama’s windows down below. The houses across the street above looked warmly bright. The trees whipped in the wind, and diamonds flickered in the town bowl.

I drove down the hill, found a motel, registered and phoned home. Of course there was no answer. I glanced at my watch: seven thirty. Jeff and the kids would be out somewhere to dinner — catch any of them turning a hand to the frying pan or kettle. So I sat down and cried. Then I went out, got into my car, and drove to the police station.

They looked at me, the officer behind the desk and the one leaning on it, as if I were a hysterical female (which I never am, although I was sobbing rather wildly and speaking in an uneven voice), and orated from the heights of their Male and Official Authority, explaining, as if to a child, that I had broken and entered (no matter that I was a daughter), that my mother was an adult (which I questioned), and if she chose to be absent it was strictly her business, certainly not theirs.

I sneered through my tears and raced out, burning rubber as I left to return to the motel. Those officers must have shaken their heads as they debated whether or not to tag me on a speeding charge.

Then I called home again. Thankfully, the family now had its stomach full and Jeff was available for talking — listening, rather, which he does poorly, being an ad man who always has to have the triple word. “She isn’t home?” he said. “Well, like I told you, she probably took off on one of those trips she’s been talking about... You didn’t look under the beds? Oh, for Pete’s sake... No, I will not drive down there to help you look under the beds. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow... Of course the police can’t do anything. If you suspect foul play, get some evidence and then they can help you. But my advice is, go turn off those damned lights and come on home and wait for word from your mother...” So I sneered over the phone and hung up.

After a restless night on a motel mattress made for people who need to sleep on boards, I had a sketchy breakfast and drove on up to Mama’s. I peered through the windows as I walked around the house, and by cupping my hands, I could see the glow of electric bulbs through the faint light of day in shadowed rooms.

The street was quiet except for a boy cycling toward the high school two blocks away. I waited until he passed before I got out my credit card.

I switched off the hall light and left the door open. The Santa Anas had blown themselves out, so it should stay that way. I investigated the rooms, turning off lights, opening draperies wide, looking under beds, into closets and cabinets, searching everywhere except the basement, and I suddenly thought of that.

It was a half-basement, built under the part of the house on the slope, with nothing down there but a furnace, some stored boxes, a couple of trunks, and several pieces of luggage. The basement stairs led down from the kitchen, the door secured by a slide bolt. I switched on the light at the top of the stairs and leaned over the wooden banister. The low-wattage naked bulb lit the basement dimly, leaving the corners in shadow. I put one foot on the second step, then backed up hurriedly, slammed the door shut and shot the bolt. There was no body down there, no shadow large enough in that small space to hide a body unless, of course, one were to consider the dark pocket under the stairway — but I would not consider it, not for a minute!

I went back to the front hall to make sure the door was still open with the sun streaming in. It was then that I saw the shadow of the pedestal, a very faint shadow against the delicate scenic wallpaper — a blurred outline seen from only a certain position to mark where the marble pedestal and bronze bust had stood for so many years. I turned icy in the warm sun of the hall and wrapped my arms around myself. This house had always seemed cold even in the smothering atmosphere of too many things — too, too many things — and now I knew what was wrong, what was different. Some of those things were missing.

I went through the house again, this time trying to remember what my eyes had been accustomed to all my life, to particularize objects that should be there and now were not: a vase, an urn, a figurine, of Wedgwood, cloisonné, Dresden; jewel boxes, cut crystal... I don’t know that Mama truly loved them, but they were her backdrop, a part of her image, tinkling-voiced conversational pieces, prized for their rarity, for they were her vanity.

She would not, willingly, be separated from them.

I ran, then, for the front hall and the telephone. I yanked open the drawer of the stand. The telephone directory lay there, open to the yellow pages, headed on the left AMBULANCE-ANSWERING, on the right ANSWERING-ANTIQUES. I held the place with the flat of my hand while I searched for Mr. Merrick’s office number.

I dialed and asked him questions. Did Mama need money? Had she asked him for extra funds?

The questions caused him to rise defensively belligerent in justification of his position as trustee and executor, explaining the duties of his office in wordy righteous condescension. Mama, according to the terms of the will and the trust account, had been allotted a generous monthly income. Should she desire additional funds, she needed only to apprise Mr. Merrick of her wants and the amount, a stipulation set down for the purpose of protection — her protection. Mr. Merrick’s already high voice rose with the outrage of a man whose veracity and honor have been viciously attacked.

I finally said, “Oh, hell,” and hung up.

Then I returned the directory to its original position, open at the yellow pages, and ran my finger down the three antique dealers listed under antiques. The sun had reached its eleven o’clock position, so that it shone through the open front door directly onto a thumbnail crease under the Main Street address of Truesdell’s Treasure Trove. I closed the directory, shut the front door, and climbed the steps to my car up above.

The Treasure Trove turned out to be an elegantly unobtrusive slot between a cutesy gift shop and a brazen furniture store. I found a parking place, walked inside, and was stopped dead by the bronze bust atop the marble pedestal so familiar to me in these very unfamiliar surroundings. The proprietor (probably Mr. Truesdell) advanced upon me, rubbing his hands together, murmuring greetings. I waved him off as I wandered through his trove of treasures, noting here and there remembered objects. Then I turned and asked how he had acquired my mother’s belongings.

After a first shocked silence, followed by guarded argument, Mr. Truesdell blinked his eyes and swallowed his alarm as he told me about the man of just two days ago who brought to his shop a car full of art objects. “Young, not yet thirty, about five feet ten, slim. Can’t remember whether he was cleanshaven or not. Curly brown hair, sideburns. Well-dressed. Name? Oh, no, I didn’t get his name. It was a cash transaction.” He looked at me with despair as he added, “His knowledge of antiques seemed to be fairly extensive, so why would I think he didn’t belong to those treasures he brought, especially since he brought them in that big old Cadillac?”

Why indeed, I thought, remembering Mama’s ever-constant tinkling-voiced descriptions over the objects that formed her backdrop and made her image — remembering too, with startling abruptness, the big old Cadillac she had set out to learn to drive...

I was out of the shop and into my own car, edging my way from the parking spot, knowing I should seek a telephone directory to look up the driving schools in town, when I saw the sign, ADULT DRIVER EDUCATION, and swung into the parking lot.

It was noon, and the girl in the office was eating her lunch from a brown paper bag. She stuffed the bag into a bottom drawer and rose when I asked my questions about Mama.

“What was that name again?” she asked. “Mrs. Mossby? Mrs. Veronica Mossby?” and drew out an account book from under the counter. “Yes,” she said, “she did take our driving course,” and looked up. “But she didn’t finish. Many of them don’t. You see, most of the students we get are older women just learning to drive, like widows and stuff who’ve always had someone to get them around and now they don’t.”

I nodded.

“Well, they cop out. They decide they’ll use their legs after all — take taxis...”

“Or get someone else to do their driving for them,” I said.

“Right.”

“Who taught her?” I asked.

The girl’s finger traveled. “That was the new man. His name was Ralph...”

My heart began to beat hard and fast against my chest.

“Ralph Overholst. He walked in here with some good references from up north at a time Mr. Barnard needed another instructor, so he put him on. He wasn’t here long, couple of months, then he just didn’t show one day...”

“And that was?”

“About a month ago. No, month and a half. Same time Mrs. Mossby phoned and said she’d decided not to take more lessons...” She looked up, startled. “Hey, is that why...”

“What did he look like?” I asked. “This Ralph Overholst?”

“Oh, let’s see. Medium tall, medium thin, about thirty, maybe older or younger. Brown hair... Why are you asking? Has he done something?” She leaned on the counter, woman-to-woman.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“They try to be careful here when they hire instructors, check references and stuff, you know?”

I nodded. They probably were careful. However, Mama was not. “Was he cleanshaven?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. They have to be. Mr. Barnard insists on it. Older women don’t trust men with beards, that’s what he says, and our clientele is mostly older women.”

“You told me.”

“So Mr. Barnard said he’d have to shave before he came to work.”

My hardbeating heart jounced in my chest. “So this Ralph Overholst had a beard when he applied?”

“Hairy! You wouldn’t believe.”

“Thank you,” I said, and ran out to my car.

I stopped at a drugstore and got a small bottle of brandy, then at a lunch counter I picked up a carton of takeout coffee. I drove back to the motel, laced the coffee with brandy, and dialed Jeff’s office. It was twelve thirty. He wouldn’t go out to lunch for another half hour or so, and I planned to give him something to chew on. “Jeff?” I yelled into the mouthpiece... “No, I am not home. I’m still here... Yes, I turned off the lights. And looked under the beds... Oh, shut up a minute and listen...” Then I laid it all out for him — Mama’s things in the antique shop, the young man in Mama’s Cadillac, Ralph Overholst of the Adult Driving place who quit when Mama did, and what did he think of that?

What he thought of it was the weirdly contrived logic of an ad man. “For Pete’s sake, Margaret,” he said impatiently, “your mother probably asked this young man to sell a few useless things for her, then she probably hired him to drive her someplace — on one of those trips she’s been talking about... Why don’t you stop fooling around and come on home?”

I hung up, poured some more brandy in the coffee, and drank it down. I thought, for one cynical moment, of the police, discarding the thought immediately with the certain knowledge that they would regard my suspicions with the same cavalier dis-passion as had Jeff.

I jumped into my car and drove to Mrs. Herter’s daughter’s house.

Mrs. Herter was there, shoes off, varicose veins swollen, serving her grandchildren a peanut butter lunch and hating me for being my mother’s daughter.

“Why did she let you go, Mrs. Herter?”

“Because she had that young dude there and you can’t tell me any different.”

“Young dude?” I asked.

“The way she simpered around him was enough to make anyone sick and him young enough to be her son, maybe young enough to be her grandson...”

“About how old?”

“At first, she made a pretense. Well, at first, I guess, he actually was teaching her to drive. He’d come after her on the days I worked there and she’d go trip-pin’ out on those heels of hers to the car he brought in front — you know, the one with two driver’s things...”

“Dual drive.”

“But later, he was teaching her in her own car — and I’ll bet that wasn’t all he was teaching her, either. I found some of his clothes in that other bedroom...”

I turned my face away.

“The day she told me she didn’t need me any more, I figured she didn’t want me nosing around. She was probably ashamed. If she wasn’t, she should have been.”

“And that’s all she said? That she just didn’t need you any more?”

“She said she could get along without me. Who knows? Maybe he was going to do the housework. He was already starting to do the yard work.”

“What did he look like?”

“Just young. All young people look alike.”

It was one o’clock. I knew a lot now that I had not known this morning, but not enough to know where Mama was and why. Enough only to know that her driving instructor, Ralph Over-hoist (or one who called himself by the name), a hairy, then cleanshaven man, finally neither, but looking like everybody else, had sold a number of Mama’s antiques.

I drove from Mrs. Herter’s daughter’s house across town and down a street of tiny look-alike houses to the one on the corner where Joe Gomez lived. His truck was not parked in the driveway, so I drove on. He was probably out clipping grass, and any question and answer game I might attempt to play with Mrs. Gomez would come out pure Spanish, which I cannot understand.

I turned toward the hills.

Mama’s street and the one above were as quietly austere, as uncommunicatively introverted, as always. I nosed the car onto the slanted driveway but short of the garage door. Then I opened the trunk of the car and rummaged around and found what I think is called a tire iron. The garage door was locked with a padlock. I pushed the end of the tire iron in behind the padlocked bolt and pulled. I heard the groan of old, termite-eaten wood as the bolt broke through. I pulled open the door onto an empty garage. Neat and empty. Tools hung on peg-boards, waxes, polishes neatly capped and lined up on the workbench, chamois in a basket.

I put the tire iron back into my trunk and slammed it shut. I walked down the cement steps into the yard below and noticed now that it looked better than it ever had during all those years Joe Gomez had taken care of it — more formally pruned, clipped, and manicured, the flagstones swept and edged — as if whoever was doing it was either taking pride or making mileage.

Just as I reached the front of the house, the mail truck was moving away from the box down at the curbing. I had forgotten about the mail! I ran down the front steps, opened the box, and drew out a couple of bills — one, the electric bill, postmarked the day before, probably today’s delivery — the other, a gas bill postmarked the day before that, yesterday’s delivery. The precanceled Occupant mail carried no date, but an envelope addressed to Mama from a local travel agency showed a postmark of three days ago. I tore it open upon brochures for “Romantic Hawaii,” climbed the front steps, inserted my credit card, and let myself in the house.

I left the door open, put the mail on the telephone stand, opened the drawer, looked up the number of the travel agency, and dialed.

“Why, yes,” the sweet young voice answered my question, “that was in reply to a telephone request from Mrs. Mossby. The request?” She seemed to be consulting some notes. “Why, it was the twenty-fifth, three days ago, the same day I sent out the brochures. She said she and her fiancé — I believe that’s who she said — would want to look them over before making a decision.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Well, would Mrs. Mossby...” she began, and I said, “I’m afraid not.” My throat closing, I hung up.

Mama had sat here three days ago, girlishly giddy, apparently alive and well, and made her telephone call — her fateful call, of that I was sure. It was all beginning to come together. I thought of those personal jigsaw puzzles so popular about ten years ago — Jeff had the account of a game company that manufactured them, and he was enthusiastic, so the company enlarged photographs and mounted them of each of the kids and cut them into jigsaw puzzles, big pieces for small fingers to put together, and Jeff brought them home, watching the kids with an ad man’s perceptive frown, and got the surprise of his life. Steve, four, slapped his together in nothing flat and screamed in terror at all the cracks in his face. Carolyn, two, managed to get her hair and part of her face locked in, then abandoned the project, which was exactly the position I was in at that moment. There was a big hole in Mama’s personal jigsaw puzzle and I didn’t want to find those remaining pieces.

A sudden gust of hot wind swung the door to shadow the hall. The Santa Anas were back. I opened the door wide again, took the telephone book and wedged it, open to the yellow antiques section, under the door. I stood there a moment, looking out and across the street at one of the few orange groves left in town. There was no one over there to see anything over here. Nor was there anyone on either side to see anything between the tall, vine-covered walls. I felt a little sick.

It was almost two o’clock. Food, I thought. I needed food; the brandy sloshing around in my stomach was making tidal waves.

I went into the kitchen. The sun, slanting between fluffy curtains, was September hot, Santa Ana dry, the kitchen shone. Then I noticed its shine — not ordinary kitchen sunshine, but scrubbed bright, fussy neat, nothing left on the counter tops, nothing in the polished sink. Mama, now, Mama tended to be careless, as would be expected from a “Little Bit.”

I opened the refrigerator and was surprised at the milk and cream, butter, eggs, cheese on the shelves — a well-stocked refrigerator as Mama’s had never been. I poured some milk into a glass and sipped it as I leaned against the sink, looking out the back windows toward the cement steps. The only people who could have seen anything, had there been anything to see, would have been those across the street from the garage up above.

I carried the glass of milk through the house, the carefully dusted, well-polished house, setting it down to open closet doors and cabinet drawers I had opened before. I looked through the guest room and if some of the “young dude’s” clothes had been in “that closet,” there wasn’t a button, not a thread or piece of lint, to be found there now... nor any missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. But those I had were coming together, forming a part of a picture. I almost knew. I almost knew what had happened and why.

The milk had not settled my stomach. I took the glass back to the kitchen and set it on the counter; then I turned to the basement door, unlocked and opened it, bent over the banister, and leaped back. The light was on! The light was on down there! I slammed the door and shot the bolt. Then I remembered that I myself had turned on the light; only this morning, a century ago, I had turned on the light.

The milk threatened to come up, with a chaser of brandy.

I went to the open front door and breathed deep of the hot Santa Ana wind. I knew I had most of the pieces of the puzzle, and my mind picked them out, fitting them loosely together with cracks running through the picture so that Mama came out a frightened half-old, clutching half-young Little Bit, attempting to relive her happily indulgent married life, starting all over again with an identical Hawaiian honeymoon and a doting husband.

The wind was suffocating, so hot and heavy that when I breathed it in it acted like a plug to hold down the milk and brandy, and the horror of the cracked jigsaw puzzle I was putting together.

She must have known she’d have to parry and connive to turn such a young man from instructor to chauffeur to yard-and-house-man to husband-and-lover... and quickly, because she was old, and she must have known, deep down, that she was old so she had to hurry — too fast for a man who had fallen into plush surroundings, needing time to plan for the ripoff.

I breathed in the wind that corked the milk and brandy, knowing how it was, because I knew Mama, the frolicsome lass, the forever bride, reluctant mother, who wooed a man young enough to be her son. So she had to hold back — and another piece of the puzzle fell into place, cracked across the character. She had to hold back on the money from Mr. Merrick... “We can travel,” I could hear her tinkling voice. “Oh, we can travel anywhere. All I have to do is ask Mr. Merrick for the money — when the time is right...” and I wondered if Ralph Whoever knew what she was holding out for while he clipped the lawns and polished furniture, holding out himself.

Mama had to hurry, so she called the travel bureau to ask for the Romantic Hawaii brochures that she and her fiancé could study.

Three days ago.

I walked out into the wind. It was almost three o’clock and the sun slanted so that it shone against the basement windows on the west and I had to cup my palms around my eyes against the pane as I knelt on the finely clipped grass to see through. It was a moment or so before I could focus my eyes through the shadows of the dimly-lighted basement to the dark well under the staircase and see one pointed toe and stilt heel in the dust-filtered light.

I knelt there screaming, my screams bouncing with the wind against the garden walls, with no one to hear.

I lost the milk and the brandy at last, and fitted the final pieces of puzzle in place satisfactorily.

I walked back into the house and looked at the telephone book that wedged the door open. Then I dialed the operator and asked her to get the police department. “You can come now,” I told them. “I have found the body.”

The police have a case now — a three-day-old body and two-day-old clues.

I can tell them whom to search for — a young man with brown curly hair and the beginnings of a new beard (so new that one might not notice or remember), slim, about five feet ten, driving a Cadillac or a trade-in for a Cadillac, with some money — not a ripoff bundle, but a slice of panic; a murderer if he pushed Mama down the basement steps, or an accessory if she fell down them on her stiletto heels as she pointed out their Hawaiian Honeymoon luggage.

As soon as I lay it all out for the police, I shall phone Jeff so he can run it halfway up the flagpole and see how it hangs.