Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 9, September 1962

Murder in Miniature by Nora Caplan

The world of make-believe is a fascinating one, to adults as well as to children, hence the popularity of puppets, films, and theatre. There are those who think the spectators identify with the characters, acting out their own aggressions.

Ann waited eagerly for her husband’s response, but he said nothing for a long while. He remained standing, his face speculative as he looked down at the large doll house in the basement closet. It was pure Victorian... a three-storied wooden structure painted dark green with a mansard roof centered by a cupola and white gingerbread scrollwork ornamenting the front porch. Finally he commented, “I thought you said Holly wanted a microscope for her birthday.”

“Oh, Phil.” Both annoyance and amusement were in her voice. “A microscope for an eight-year-old girl? This is what she needs. Have you ever seen anything like it?” Ann’s delight was obvious as she pointed out the rooms, furnished to the last detail in authentic period pieces. “And when I saw the dolls... look, there’s even a maid.” She sighed, “Well, I couldn’t resist it.”

Phil shrugged. “Maybe she’ll like it. You know more about that than I do. I just don’t want her to be disappointed, that’s all. She’s never cared much about dolls before, has she?”

“This is different,” his wife said defensively. “Besides, Holly needs something unusual like this to stimulate her imagination. That’s the whole trouble, Phil. She’s never been given a chance to pretend anything. We’ve just always gone along with that matter-of-fact side of her.”

“But that is Holly.” As if to end the discussion, Phil walked over to the hot water heater. “This thing’s leaking again. You’d better give the company a call before long. The warranty’s up in a couple of months.”

Ann was determined to justify her reason for buying the doll house, so disregarding his last remarks, she said, “I’ve never been able to share anything much with Holly. She’s not the way I was at her age or like any other child I grew up with. She’s never known the fun of pretending the way we did, and she’s growing up so fast.” Ann bent over the doll house and very gently fingered a miniature steamer trunk in the attic. “I’ve been looking for something the two of us could enjoy together. I knew this was it the minute I saw it.”

Phil returned to her, and patted her on the shoulder. “Okay, if you think it’ll make her happy. Come on upstairs now, honey. It’s cold down here.”

With his saying it, she shivered. Suddenly she felt depressed. Tomorrow was Holly’s birthday. It was too late to get her anything else. She wondered if Phil could be right in doubting that Holly would like the doll house. No, Ann concluded shortly. It must appeal to her. It simply wasn’t possible for a daughter of hers to be totally lacking a sense of imagination.

The next morning after Holly left for school, Phil and Ann moved the doll house upstairs to their daughter’s room. “Should I try to keep her downstairs until you get home?” Ann asked her husband.

“The suspense would kill you,” Phil grinned. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Don’t wait for me. Go ahead and show it to her the minute she gets home.”

Holly looked exactly like Phil, Ann thought that afternoon as she watched her daughter scrutinize the doll house for the first time. She had the same even expression in her deep-set brown eyes, the identical composed shape of her mouth. And as her mother had expected, Holly made a thorough inspection of each room before she stated an opinion. “This is different from Sara’s. It’s supposed to be in the olden days, isn’t it?”

Ann smiled, and stooped beside her. “The style of it is called Victorian. It’s about eighty or ninety years old. Things were very different then. Look at the kitchen pump. It really works, too.” She showed Holly how the handle moved up and down.

“I see,” Holly nodded.

Ann couldn’t wait any longer. “Do you like it, darling? Isn’t it lots better than a microscope?”

Holly noted the elation in her mother’s vivid blue eyes. “Well,” she answered carefully, “it’ll give me lots to learn about.”

Some hours later when Ann went into Holly’s room to see if she was reading in semi-darkness as usual, she found Holly lying on her side, staring at the doll house. The small tole lamp shining opposite it almost spotlighted the rooms so that they gave the impression of stage settings for an Ibsen play. Ann reached to turn off the light.

“Please leave it on,” Holly said without turning her head.

Ann smiled, and answered lightly but with purpose, “You know, you’re keeping the Joneses from retiring.”

Holly looked up at her mother. A puzzled frown wrinkled her forehead at first, then it disappeared. “Oh, you mean them.” She faced the doll house again. “Their name is Pettingill.” She yawned. “The Bartholomew J. Pettingills. And the maid’s name is Clara Fischer.”

Though the following day was Saturday, Phil went to his office at the Bureau of Standards. Before he left, he murmured something about having to get the notes for his next lecture, but Ann was too preoccupied to pay much attention. Holly had already finished breakfast, and had gone back up to her room. On a pretext of starting the upstairs cleaning, Ann took a dust cloth to Holly’s bedroom. Her daughter was sitting quietly in a rocker before the doll house. “Do you suppose,” she asked her mother, “you could make them some new clothes?”

“I’d love to.” Ann bent down and started to pick up Mrs. Pettingill.

“Don’t, Mommy!” Holly’s voice was sharp. “She hates to be touched.”

Ann hastily withdrew her hand. “Oh, really?” The tiny figure’s china face was rather proud and stern. Then Ann studied the father doll. “Mr. Pettingill seems pleasant enough.”

“He is.” Holly removed him from a Lincoln rocker in the parlor. She rubbed her finger over his black painted moustache. “That’s the trouble.”

“What do you mean... trouble?” Ann sat down on the floor, completely enthralled.

“Well, you see,” Holly explained very seriously, “she thinks he’s not strict enough with Charlie, for one thing.”

“Their little boy?” Ann pointed to the doll in a sailor suit astride a hobby horse in the second-floor nursery.

“Mm-hm,” Holly nodded. “He’s really a nice little boy, but he does things that make his mother mad.”

“For instance?”

“Oh, just little things. Getting his shoes muddy and forgetting to put his things away.”

Ann’s eyes twinkled. “What’s so wrong with that? As a matter of fact, she doesn’t sound very different from me, or any other mother.”

Holly continued in the same earnest manner, “But she won’t let him alone, She always wants him to do what she thinks is best for him and not what he’d really like to do at all. And another thing, she can’t stand a bit of dust anywhere. She really works poor Clara... the maid... terribly hard. I think Clara would’ve left a long time ago if it hadn’t been for Mr. Pettingill and Charlie.” She stroked Clara’s blond pompadour. “I want you to make Clara a beautiful dress with a parasol to match.”

Ann’s mouth turned up. “But, darling, she’s the maid.”

Holly said stubbornly, “I don’t care. Besides, she doesn’t have to work on Sundays, and she always takes Charlie for a walk in the park after church. Sometimes Mr. Pettingill goes along with them, too. So she needs a pretty dress.”

“And what about the new clothes for Mrs. Pettingill?”

Holly was indifferent. “Oh, you don’t have to bother with her. What she has on is all right.”

Ann felt curiously defensive about the mother doll. She couldn’t understand Holly’s hostile attitude toward Mrs. Pettingill. More to herself than to her daughter, Ann replied, “The mother’s dress could be dark blue... taffeta, I think. With a white lace collar.”

“I think I’ll read for a while.” Holly rose, and went over to the bookcase under the dormer window.

Ann knew that she was being dismissed. She got to her feet and started to leave when Holly added, “I’d like Clara’s dress to be pink with a real full skirt and ruffles around the bottom. Charlie and Mr. Pettingill would like that, too.”

As Ann changed the linens on the bed in Phil’s and her room she kept thinking about her conversation with Holly. She was pleased, naturally, that her daughter’s imagination had apparently begun to emerge. And yet, it had taken such a strange turn. There was something so... real about the Pettingills. They weren’t at all like the improbably good, pretend families she remembered from her own childhood. Still, they were far more intriguing, and evidently real to Holly.

She went over to a chest, and pulled out the bottom drawer. She rummaged through it, and finally came up with a scrap of Alençon lace. There was more than enough of it for a collar, but the taffeta... She found a piece of dark blue satin. That would do even better. Mrs. Pettingill would be a model of good taste compared with the frilled pink organdy flounces of Clara, with matching parasol.

The following Monday afternoon Ann was in the kitchen making seven-minute frosting when she heard Holly come home from school. Her daughter called from the living room, “Mommy, Sara’s here. Her mother said she could stay ’til five o’clock.”

Ann raised her voice over the clatter of the beater. “Hang up your things in the hall closet.” She expected the girls to come into the kitchen, but shortly she heard them run upstairs. Abruptly she turned off the mixer. Sara was such a helter-skelter sort of child, there was no telling what she might do to the doll house. And there were the new clothes on the Pettingills and Clara. She’d planned to surprise Holly with them, but it wouldn’t be the same now with Sara around. Her face hardened. She would go upstairs anyway.

The two girls didn’t notice her when she came to the doorway. “It’s sort of funny looking,” Sara was saying. “I like my doll house better. Mine’s got electric lights, too.” She seized Mrs. Pettingill by one arm, crushing the leg o’mutton sleeve that Ann had struggled over.

“Put her down,” Ann commanded. The girls started. Ann removed the doll from Sara’s sticky fingers, and as she tried to fluff the sleeve into fullness again, she said coldly, “You’d better play down in the recreation room.”

“But, Mommy,” Holly protested.

“Go ahead. Do as I say.” They left, subdued and silent, but she stayed by the doll house for a time. Finally she returned to the kitchen. Thanks to Sara, the frosting was ruined. She dumped it into the sink, and turned on the water with such force that it soaked her apron.

Holly was so constrained at dinner that night that Phil asked her, “What’s the matter? Something happen at school today?”

“No.” She avoided looking at her mother and addressed Phil, “Can I be excused now?”

He glanced at her plate. She’d hardly touched her food.

“It’s all right.” Ann made the decision for him. As soon as Holly slipped from the dining room, Ann explained, “Sara was over this afternoon. She always overstimulates Holly.”

“I’ve never noticed it before,” he said.

“Well, she does.” Ann pushed back her chair, and began stacking the plates.

“You think Holly might be coming down with something? She’s seemed pretty quiet the last couple of days.”

“I don’t think so. She’s just tired, that’s all.”

After she’d finished the dishes, Ann carried a cup of coffee into the living room. Phil was watching a news report on TV. She drank the coffee thoughtfully. Maybe she had been a little too sharp with Holly this afternoon, but Sara had grated on her nerves so. She didn’t see what there was about the child that attracted Holly to her. Then Ann remembered that she hadn’t had a chance to discuss the new doll clothes with Holly. By now she’d probably got over her moodiness.

She found Holly stretched out on her bed, face-down. Ann smoothed the child’s hair. “You’re not asleep, are you, baby?”

“No.”

Ann sat down beside her. “I forgot to ask you what you think of the Pettingills’ and Clara’s new outfits.”

“They’re okay,” Holly replied in a monotone.

“I had a terrible time with Mrs. Pettingill’s dress. The sleeves still don’t fit quite right below the elbows, but it’s so hard to work on anything that small.” Ann questioned gently, “Do you suppose she’ll mind?” Holly didn’t answer. Ann supposed that she was still resentful about not being allowed to play in her room. “I’ve been thinking that maybe we should fix up Mr. and Mrs. Pettingill’s room. It’s so drab compared with the rest of the house. I have some lovely pale green silk that I could make into draperies and a bedspread, and...”

“I don’t want you to,” Holly interrupted shrilly, and sat up on the edge of the bed. Her shoulders were rigid.

“But why not, sweetie?” There was a soft insistence in Ann’s voice.

Holly repeated uneasily, “I don’t want you...” She swallowed. “I mean, I don’t think Mrs. Pettingill would like that.”

“Of course she would,” Ann argued more firmly. “Pastel green was just the sort of color that was fashionable in those days, and it would do a lot more for that dark walnut bed and highboy than that dingy lace.”

Holly picked at one of the yarn ties on her comforter. “But it would make Clara feel bad.”

“What’s she got to do with it? She’s only the maid.” Ann glanced with annoyance at the uniformed figure in the kitchen. Clara’s blue eyes stared back at her. At that moment there seemed to be something challenging about her vapid smile.

Holly misinterpreted her mother’s silence as interest. “Clara’s so much nicer than Mrs. Pettingill. She understands Charlie and Mr. Pettingill. I think they really like her better.”

Ann was rather shocked. “But, Holly, that’s not natural.”

“I want to go to bed now.” Holly untied one shoe slowly, then placed it on the floor beside her bed.

“All right, chicken.” Ann kissed her daughter’s cheek.

Holly kept her eyes on the floor. “Don’t do anything more to the doll house. Please, Mother.”

“We’ll talk about it later, dear. You’re tired now. Go to sleep.”

For the next week the Pettingills weren’t mentioned. Holly played at Sara’s house every afternoon until dinnertime. Afterwards, she did her homework, read, or watched TV until bedtime. Phil was having Ann type a draft of his lecture, and she didn’t have time to talk much to her daughter. She grew increasingly keyed-up, with Phil’s demands that the copy be absolutely accurate, in spite of her having to decipher his illegible handwriting. And all the time she was bothered by Holly’s strange reaction that last particular night.

She finished Phil’s report Friday morning. At lunch she said to Holly, “I’m all through with Daddy’s work now. Let’s do something special this afternoon.”

Holly captured a bit of carrot from her spoonful of vegetable soup, and put it aside on a plate. “I promised Sara I’d go over to her house. She told me she has a surprise for me.”

Ann felt that she had to make a compromise in order not to estrange her daughter further. With resignation she said, “Well, bring Sara here then.” When Holly hesitated, Ann added, “You’ve been at her place so much lately, I’m sure her mother needs a rest by now.”

“Okay,” Holly agreed. She glanced at the clock over the refrigerator. “I’d better go now. Sara said she’d meet me at the corner at 12:30.”

Ann resolved to be as pleasant as possible to Sara that afternoon. She baked some brownies, and made a pitcher of lemonade. She set the kitchen table for a tea party. Holly would like this. Ann went upstairs to the spare bedroom, took from the closet a box of clothes to be mended, and sat down at the sewing machine.

“Mommy,” Holly called from the foyer an hour or so later, “we’re here. Come and see what Sara gave me.”

Ann smiled at the two of them as she came down the stairs. Holly held out her hand. In it was a tiny circlet of white fur.

Sara’s freckled face was exuberant. “It’s a muff for Clara. I made it all by myself.” She stopped abruptly as she saw the change of expression in Anne’s eyes. She looked down. “Well, my mother did help a little. She showed me...”

“Why did you do it?” Ann’s smile was fixed.

“Well, I...” Sara stammered.

“She wanted to, Mommy,” Holly spoke up. “What’s wrong?”

Ann was gripping the newel post so hard that her knuckles had turned white. “But why Clara?” The two girls registered nothing but bewilderment, and soon Ann said tonelessly, “There’s a snack for you in the kitchen. I have to finish the mending.”

But when she returned to the spare bedroom, she replaced the box of clothes in the closet. She went to her own room to get the remnant of pale green silk.

Ann timed the surprise perfectly. While Holly was taking her bath that night, Ann tiptoed into her room and knelt beside the doll house. What a difference the new curtains and bedspread made in Mrs. Pettingill’s room. And the moss-green velvet pillow on the slipper chair was an inspiration. As her final touch, Ann slipped a minute string of pearls around Mrs. Pettingill’s throat.

“What’re you doing?” Holly had entered with a towel draped around her shoulders, and water was still trickling down her legs.

Ann stood up. “Oh, I just made a little surprise for the doll house.” She saw her daughter was trembling. “Dry yourself off first, dear. You can see it after you’ve put on your pajamas.”

Holly remained near the door, shivering. “But I didn’t want you to, Mommy,” she said tearfully. “I told you not to do anything more to the doll house.”

“You’ll catch cold like that. Here, let me help you.” Ann began rubbing Holly down briskly with the towel. “Now put on your pajamas quick.” Holly was so slow about it that. Ann finished buttoning the top herself. “There, now,” her mother said. “Let’s go see the surprise.”

“No,” Holly shuddered. “I’m still cold. I just want to go to bed and get warm.”

Ann’s disappointment changed to concern. “Do you feel sick, darling?”

Holly hunched herself under the covers. “My stomach feels funny.”

“It’s from all those brownies and lemonade this afternoon. I know Sara makes a habit of stuffing herself, but you should know better.” Ann frowned. “Maybe some milk of magnesia...”

“I’ll be all right.”

“You’re sure?”

Holly nodded.

Ann kissed her. “Call me if you should start to feel sick.” she turned to look at Holly once more before she went downstairs. The child lay absolutely still, her eyes fixed on the doll house.

The cry in the middle of the night was unrecognizable at first, but Phil and Ann instantly awoke to full consciousness. Then from Holly’s room came a terrified, “Daddy... Daddy.”

Ann flung back the sheet and blanket. “Stay here,” she said tersely to her husband. “I’ll go to her.”

Holly was huddled against her pillow. She wouldn’t look up when Ann bent over her, murmuring, “What’s wrong, baby?”

“Take it away,” Holly gasped.

“Take what away?”

“The doll house. Take it away... now,” Holly pleaded.

“In the middle of the night. But why, darling? Did you have a bad dream?”

“Just take it away... please. Right now.” Holly’s voice rose, shrill to the verge of hysteria.

Phil appeared in the doorway. He’d apparently heard what she’d said, for he commented smoothly, reasonably, “But we can’t move it out at this hour, honey. All the stuff inside has to be taken out so nothing will get broken. We’ll take care of it the first thing in the morning.”

But Holly was unassuaged. She kept crying, “No... take it away... now.”

“Tell you what,” Phil said after a moment of deliberation. “Suppose we put something over the doll house so you can’t see it.” He motioned to Ann to get the extra blanket at the foot of Holly’s bed.

“What do you suppose frightened her so.” Ann whispered to Phil as he stepped over to her.

“Never mind that now,” he muttered. “The poor kid’s upset enough already.” Then he raised his voice to the same unruffled tone as before. “Holly, remember that time when you were about four or five, and you kept seeing those shadows from your tree swing on this wall...”

Ann unfolded the blanket. She was about to drape it over the doll house. But she sensed that something was terribly wrong. Mrs. Pettingill. Where was she? Ann searched every room in the doll house with mounting tension. Clara and Charlie and Mr. Pettingill were seated in the parlor, their china faces placid and content. The scene was entirely too innocent.

Ann found the clue she was looking for. The pearl necklace. Clara was wearing Mrs. Pettingill’s pearl necklace.

Almost instinctively now Ann knew where she would find Mrs. Pettingill. She reached up to the storage room in the attic. Her fingers felt numb as she unlocked and opened the steamer trunk. Mrs. Pettingill was inside... crushed... her neck broken.

Ann slowly turned around. With the trunk between her thumb and forefinger, she held it up for Holly to see. “Why did you let them do it?”

Holly leaned toward her father. “It... it was an accident.” She pressed closer against Phil. “I didn’t mean to. Honest.”

Phil tightened his arm around the child. “For God’s sake, Ann,” he began angrily. Then he stopped. He’d never before seen the kind of emotion that was now darkening his wife’s eyes.

Deadly calm, Ann said, “No, Holly. It wasn’t an accident.” She replaced the trunk in the attic, with poor Mrs. Pettingill still inside. “It was no accident,” she confronted Clara and Mr. Pettingill. “You murdered her.”