Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 10, October 1960

Bodies Just Won’t Stay Put by Tom MacPherson

This story might well have been titled, The Green-Thumb Burials, or The Case of The Well-cared-for Lawn. Those of you who must mow lawns — and your number is legion — will surely see the relationship between this arduous sport and murder.

This will be the last season that Dorothy goads me into turning over the back lawn. I’ve lost count of how many successive Septembers she has gotten me to sow new lawns, back or front or both. Each fall I gripe that it’s me we’re killing, not the crabgrass. It was inevitable that one day I’d realize that her gardening would kill me if I didn’t kill her first. So this year we will turn over the back lawn again, but when I seed it, Dorothy will be lying underneath.

My twist to this familiar plan is so foolproof that I’m sorry I didn’t think of it one, two, five years ago. Each year Dorothy nags until I agree to hire old Krajewski to bring in his rotary plow and turn over either or both lawns. Then, while she spends the next four days at the flower show in Newark, I spread fertilizer and seed, and water every four hours. This September I’ll help her pack her bags, then just before she leaves I’ll rap her over the head. I will dig a trench in the newly turned-over lawn, put her in, then the next morning I’ll do my seeding. The quick germinating ryegrass in the seed mixture will sprout within three days. By the fifth day, when I will have to report her missing because she didn’t return from the flower show, the lawn will have a uniform stand of young grass.

Old Krajewski turned over the back lawn just before supper. We knew he’d do it late, for he forces himself to give his truck farm a full day’s work before he hires out for odd jobs. By the time he had it raked smooth it was getting dark.

After supper I carried Dorothy’s bags out to the garage and put them in the car. I didn’t back the car out; instead I abused the starter while alternately flipping the ignition key off and on, off and on. As I knew she would, Dorothy got impatient waiting on the driveway.

“Oh, Miller,” she snapped, “you flooded it.”

As I slipped out of the driver’s seat, I heard her clacking into the garage, her hard-hitting heels spelling out her exasperation. It was now 7:31. I knew Marion Gorton would have sprinted to her kitchen window, for the ninety seconds duration of the first commercial on Wagon Train. She would have heard me working away at the starter, and most likely she had seen Dorothy make her bad-tempered entrance into the garage.

I moved around the front of the car to open the door on Dorothy’s side. As she stooped to climb in, I hit her one solid crack with the oscillating sprinkler. It wasn’t through a diabolical sense of revenge that I used the sprinkler; it just happened to be handy, hanging on the exposed 2x4 studs. Dorothy went down soundlessly, and I slammed the car door shut.

“I guess I did flood it, dear,” I called out, “but if we wait a few minutes it’ll turn over.”

I dragged Dorothy over to the corner and covered her with the burlap bags we had accumulated over the years for covering new seed. J climbed in behind the wheel, pulled the door quietly onto the first latch, and started the motor. I headed in the general direction of the railroad station, but just outside of town I detoured to the town dump where small mountains of refuse were smoldering. Dorothy never spent money on anything but her garden, so the suitcases were nothing but composition-board and would be ashes by morning. Just to be sure, I had brought along the gallon can of gasoline we used for fueling the lawn mower. I poured gasoline over the opened suitcases and her clothes, and touched them off with a match.

When I got back to the garage, Marion Gorton was putting out a milk bottle.

“Hi, Miller,” she said, “Dorothy off to the flower show?”

The first thing I noticed about the little detective with the gray and saffron walrus mustache was that no one else seemed to notice him. But I knew, right off, that he was the one I had to be careful of. He was on the front walk with Detective Lieutenant Delaney and the other two plain-clothes men. When they arrived, they didn’t come right up to the house. I watched through the blinds of the window in the front bedroom as the lieutenant huddled with the other two. Little Whiskers stood offside a few feet, peering at the clusters of azaleas Dorothy had set out as a skirmish line in front of the house. He held a small open notebook in one hand, a pencil in the other. The way his left arm was crooked, I was surprised not to see an umbrella hooked on it. When the huddle broke up, Delaney turned to Whiskers while the other two went to the front doors of the houses flanking mine.

As I came down the stairs I heard the knock on the front door.

“Mr. Davis?” Delaney asked, showing his identification card. I was surprised that he didn’t recognize me, for I had noticed him sizing me up when I was at headquarters reporting Dorothy missing. That was on Thursday, only two days ago. I opened the door all the way and he walked in. Little Whiskers hung back, then noticing that I kept holding the door open he nodded sharply, broke loose from where he was standing with a little jig step, and walked briskly in and past Delaney.

“I know you told Missing Persons that Mrs. Davis didn’t make any hotel reservation,” said Delaney, “but Newark police checked and they report she didn’t register at any hotel there. So that brings us right back here, to start looking from where she was last seen.” I almost waited for him to add alive.

Dorothy never reserved a hotel room when she went to the flower show. She always found a room somewhere. Maybe I should have made a reservation for her this time, but I was afraid to introduce any action contrary to her normal habit. That may have been a mistake on my part, for even when I had told them down at headquarters that she never made advance hotel reservations, they obviously hadn’t been convinced.

Delaney wanted some answers about Dorothy’s habits, hobbies, and whether she had any friends or relatives in other towns. I said her habits and hobbies were all dirt gardening, and gave him the address of her sister and male cousin, both in California. Then he asked did I mind if they looked around the premises.

Little Whiskers had been standing at the dining nook window, looking out at the back lawn. When Delaney and I walked to the side door in answer to a knock, Whiskers executed an about face with that little break-away jig and trotted over. I opened the door and the other two detectives were standing in the driveway. Delaney beckoned them in. All except Whiskers went down into the basement. With his grimy little notebook in his left hand, the little man went out the side door and walked around the back. I went over to the window where he had been standing, and from there I watched his movements.

Whiskers was careful to stay on the slates and not step on the new grass. I watched him circle the back lawn twice, slowly. Then the lieutenant’s voice, right at my shoulder, made me jump.

“What’s that mound out there?” he asked, pointing to the southeast corner of the backyard.

“That? Uh, why, uh, that’s a compost heap.”

My stuttering did it. He looked at me — I guess you’d call it piercingly. “Compost heap, hub? I think we’ll take a look at it.”

I tried not to look too relieved, for I didn’t want him to realize that what had actually made me jumpy was Whiskers squatting and peering at different sections of the new lawn.

Delaney got a rake and shovel from the garage. While the compost heap was brought down to ground level, I tried to appear nonchalant and disinterested. I gazed everywhere, but at the digging operation. I looked at the houses surrounding our three-quarter acre plot, and could imagine slats of window blinds being held apart for inquisitive eyes.

“Want us to keep digging, Delaney?” one of his men asked.

I was surprised by how close to me the lieutenant was when he answered. He was studying my face, and I guess my confidence was showing. “No,” he said. “Knock off.”

The two men leaned on the handles of their shovel and rake and looked unhappily at the several small piles they had made of the compost heap. I felt sorry for them and gallantly offered to take care of the mess later.

“No,” said the lieutenant. “Leave it just as it is. We’ll send out some men to shovel it hack. Or we may be out again.”

The three men walked out front, while Little Whiskers hung back. So did I. He lifted his notebook to within eight inches of his nose, and made some marks in it while he mumbled, “did... quad... S four... first.” He peered again at my new lawn, then suddenly pocketed his notebook as though surprised to find the others had left. I was so close to him that his break-away jig dumped me smack into the zinnia patch.

Another too frequent and maddening chore I usually got out of my wife’s gardening was transplanting her zinnias. As Whiskers apologetically helped me to my feet, I realized my wife was still capable of making me dig dirt. Now I had to transplant Dorothy, because Whiskers had made a map of the lawn and gridded it like a road map. I didn’t know where S four might be, but I knew for certain that the whole lawn would be torn up until the police either found Dorothy or gave up.

I was thinking of my precarious situation, standing there where Whiskers had left me, when my nervous system got jolted again by a voice beside me saying, “Can’t see any sign of the old crab, huh Miller?”

“What? What’s that?” I whispered hoarsely, turning, seeing the grinning face of Herb Gorton.

“The crabgrass. You finally got it licked. I don’t see a sign of the old crab.”

Some people never are convinced that turning over a lawn sends the crabgrass underground, millions of seeds waiting for next year. I never could convince Dorothy of that — “You’re just lazy!” she’d always say — so we still turned over one or both Davis lawns every fall. The Gortons and their crabgrass, on the other hand, lived amicably side by side.

Herb had come over to ask, “What’s with the two carloads of cops?” Of course, he and the rest of the neighborhood knew what the police were looking for, but I was glad to see Herb. I wanted to find out whether my staging of Dorothy’s departure had fooled his wife. It had. Herb told me that Marion swore that she had seen me take Dorothy off to the station and that Dorothy had waved to her from the car as we backed out. That bonus cheered me up plenty. But I was still facing the problem of “S four.”

I couldn’t risk transplanting Dorothy to a spot under the compost heap. I wasn’t sure whether Delaney had been considerate or suspicious when he’d discouraged me from shoveling the small heaps back into a single mound. I walked around the lawn and in and out of the garage without getting any inspiration. Inside the house I paced through all the rooms, but it was in the basement that I found the ideal spot. We had two of those old wood barrels, used by movers and so hard to find these days. Dorothy had intended to have me plant strawberries in them some spring, but right now both were half full of miscellaneous junk. The old cotton-crepe bedspread that Dorothy used to cover them was inside out, and Dorothy would never have covered them that way, so I knew the detectives had uncovered the barrels and probably had searched carefully through their contents.

The Gortons had planned a Saturday night block party. One of the things Herb came over for, was to ask if I would prefer that they call the party off so that I might have some quiet. I had talked Herb out of canceling the party, feeling that it could help me in getting Dorothy moved unnoticed. I set my alarm for four in the morning. I knew the party would break up between two and three, and that all the neighbors who didn’t get invited to the Gorton’s parties, would certainly be catching up on lost sleep by four o’clock.

Before daylight, Dorothy was in the strawberry barrel down in the basement. I had used the spade to lift the divots of new grass carefully before doing the serious digging. When I finished, I replaced the divots. In full daylight, the next morning, I opened a bale of peat moss and began laboriously breaking it up and spreading it thin over the top of the lawn. Thus I covered up any possible indications of what I had done.

When Herb came over about noontime, I sanctimoniously explained that for Dorothy’s sake, wherever she was, I would do my utmost to create a perfect lawn. Herb sighed, placed a consoling hand on my shoulder. After a moment of silence, he headed back to his own place — for breakfast, I supposed.

Although I saw Whiskers driving slowly by in a ’51 Ford late Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t until Tuesday that he and Delaney came out again. Delaney said he just wanted to check on whether I had heard from or about my wife. He told me they had contacted her sister and cousin through the police out in California, and that neither knew anything about Dorothy’s whereabouts. He reminded me to call headquarters if I heard anything. Neither he nor Whiskers looked at the lawn.

As he was about to leave, Delaney remembered the compost heap. He apologized for forgetting to send some men out to put it back together, and promised they’d be out in the morning. Whiskers put his notebook up to within eight inches of his nose, and as he scribbled I heard him mumble, “Cesspool.”

That made me jump, and I was glad the lieutenant was already walking away so he didn’t see I’d been startled. Earlier in the day I had plugged the drain under the basement wash tubs. I was going to fake a cesspool stoppage and get old Krajewski to dig up the front lawn and uncover the cesspool. I knew Krajewski would arrive just in time to dig down to the cesspool cover before dark. Then during the night I’d drop Dorothy in, replace the cover, and start shoveling on the dirt myself. By daylight, I’d resume shoveling openly and if anyone asked, I’d tell them it had been a drain stoppage all the time. Now, with Whiskers thinking cesspool, I’d have to unplug the drain and try to come up with a better hiding place for a body that just wouldn’t stay down.

By Thursday no one had come to dig up the back lawn, nor did any police arrive to do anything about the cesspool. Dorothy was getting pretty strong in the strawberry barrel, and the sprays and wicks that I had around weren’t too much help. Three men did come out late in the day, however, to work on the compost heap. First, they dug about three feet below the surface under the spot of the original heap. The lieutenant had ordered that, they explained. They were about to start shoveling everything back, when I decided to take advantage of their muscle. Herb had come over to watch. And while we were all guzzling the beers I’d brought out, I asked the diggers to leave the hole open.

“The wife always wanted a big weeping willow tree,” I told them, “and since I now got a hole all dug, I can put one in,” I almost said in memory, “as a surprise for her when she comes home.”

I knew I could get Dorothy into that hole and well covered during the night. And the next day, I could leisurely replace the compost heap. If the police diggers reported to Delaney that they had left the hole open, so I could plant a willow tree and he got suspicious as to why I’d changed my mind, I could always tell him the willow-idea had been sort of an impulse that I’d dropped after a little thought. The next day, when Herb helped me shovel the compost heap back, I told him I had reconsidered putting a tree in. I’d realized that it isn’t right to plant a large tree close to a neighbor’s plot, since its branches would hang over his, Herb’s, property.

Whiskers came out alone the next day. But not before I had the compost heap all neatly piled up, covered with a bag of manure, and watered until the aroma was much stronger than Dorothy had been when I’d rolled out the barrel. Whiskers didn’t talk at first. He just walked around the backyard, occasionally squatting to peer at the lawn or the flower beds. Then out came that dog-eared notebook again and up it went to that spot eight inches short of his nose.

“The police didn’t dig up your cellar floor yet, did they?” he asked.

When I heard my jaws snap, I realized my mouth had dropped open as far as it would go. I looked at him for a good long moment, then swallowed some saliva and shouted, really shouted, “The who didn’t what?”

He blinked his eyes, pulled down his notebook and looked a little hurt. Then he repeated it, haltingly, “The police didn’t dig up your cellar floor, did they?”

“The police!” I bellowed. “You’re talking about them as if you’re not one of them!”

He answered with a soft “Oh.” While I stood with my eyes bugging, he got into his unmarked ’51 Ford and drove away.

The lieutenant was laughing. I laughed, too. When I’d started downtown, I was going to storm into headquarters screaming my indignation. But as I got closer to the police, I cooled off considerably.

“ ‘Whiskers’, as you call him, has never been on any police force,” said Delaney. “Maybe he took a correspondence course somewhere. I wouldn’t know. You’ve heard of fire buffs, well I guess we got us a homicide buff. The first time he followed us on a case, we didn’t even realize he was along until one of the boys spotted him making one of those crazy grid maps of a backyard. We chased him away, but that night we got a phoned-in tip that our suspect was out in the dark digging up his yard. We sneaked out and let him finish the shovel work before we grabbed him and the corpse. Naturally, now we don’t feel the same way about Whiskers following us around. Say, that’s a good name you got for him — Whiskers.”

“You know, Mr. Davis,” Delaney continued, “we almost came out to tear up your lawn. But, when we found there wasn’t much insurance on your wife, and you had no other motive we could tumble to, we decided against crowding you just yet. Then when your neighbors told us how you worked like a dog every year and this was your best lawn yet, we figured to let the whole thing ride. Besides, we still don’t know that anything has happened to Mrs. Davis. All we know right now is that she’s missing.”

When I left headquarters, I felt so good I had to stop the car a few blocks from home and work my face into a harried look again. Just as I drove up to the door, I noticed a huge flatbed truck from Wilton Nurseries backed up on the Gorton driveway. A big tree hanging over the tailgate extended to our back lawn near the compost heap. Or, rather, to where the compost heap had been.

Herb Gorton intercepted me and placed both hands on my shoulders, in a fatherly fashion, while he chokingly explained, “Miller, after you said how Dorothy always wanted a weeping willow, your neighbors decided to chip in and buy one. It’s sort of a token of our feelings for you and Dorothy, wherever she is, while you are both going through this trying time. We don’t mind a bit if it hangs over into our yard. What do you say, we go over and watch those nurserymen dig? At the rate they’re going, fella, won’t be able to watch them long...”