Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 3, March 1964

Between Two Woman by C. B. Gilford

The lowly hangover is an affliction reflecting real misery. Fortunately, however, there is a limit to human suffering, a point beyond which one might as well be dead.

Tony Courtner had already had too much to drink. In the inner recesses of his mind he was aware of this fact. But he mixed himself another batch of martinis anyway, maybe just to spite Alison. Maybe she was the reason he drank; maybe she wasn’t. He’d sort of lost track.

“Tony, please.”

That was about all she could say to him these days, “Tony, please.” She sat over in the far corner of the sofa, wanting to keep an eye on him, wanting to count his drinks, but definitely not wanting to be too near him, not wanting him to touch her. Her brown eyes watched him. Her hair, the same color, was still slightly mussed from the tussle they’d had when she’d tried to stop him from taking the bottle of gin from the cabinet. She was a tiny woman and hadn’t been any match for him.

“Tony, let’s have dinner. The roast will be terribly overdone.”

“Then take it out of the oven,” he told her curtly. “Want to have a couple of drinks before dinner.”

“A couple! You’ve had six.”

So that was how many he’d had. Six. There wasn’t more than an inch of gin left in the bottom of the bottle. “I need another bottle,” he told her.

“There isn’t any more.”

“Look, I bought a whole case.”

“Yes, Tony, about three weeks ago, but it’s all gone. You drank it.”

“Well, I distinctly told you I wanted a supply of liquor kept in the house. You bring in everything else. You’re never lacking for anything, I notice. Always plenty of yogurt and carrot juice and that other stuff in the refrigerator. Well, gin is my health food, do you understand? Do you understand, Alison? Need I repeat myself?”

“Tony, why are you screaming? You always scream when you’re drunk.”

“I am not drunk!”

He turned away from her savagely, and concentrated all of his attention on stirring his skimpy batch of martinis. He wasn’t drunk, and he didn’t appreciate her claiming that he was. He’d had a few, but he hadn’t lost control.

He was standing with his back to her, but he heard her cross the room going toward the kitchen. Then there were other noises from that direction. She’d be checking the dinner, trying to keep it warm without burning it. Finally she was behind him again, speaking to him from the kitchen door.

“I turned off the stove,” she said.

He didn’t look at her, only shrugged his shoulders. “So?”

“It’s foolish for me to try to cook. You’re not interested in food. You live on alcohol.”

He snickered. “It tastes a lot better than your cooking,” he told her.

“Let’s face it, Tony. You’re an alcoholic.”

He whirled on her. He started to speak, had trouble with his tongue. She stood there in the doorway, contemptuous, accusing. He hated her self-righteousness, her assumption of superiority. Finally he managed to come out with the words. “Now there’s an understanding wife for you. A guy has a couple of drinks before dinner, and all of a sudden he’s an alcoholic.”

But she stood her ground. “Not all of a sudden, Tony. This has been going on for months. You sneak out of the office in the middle of the day to have a drink. You come home every night smelling of it. And then you spend the whole evening drinking. It’s got to stop, Tony.”

“Look who’s giving orders,” he sneered.

She shook her head. “I’m just making it a condition, Tony. You can take your choice. Either you stop, or I’m leaving you.”

In the first minute he just didn’t believe it. This was a trick, a pose. She was trying to scare him. Then quickly his incredulity became anger. He took a step toward her, a red haze beginning to color his vision.

“Look,” he said thickly, “you took me for better or worse. Remember? I’ve given you five years of my life, Alison. I’ve worked hard, made a little money, and you’ve had it all. I work hard, you understand? For you, nobody but you. But I’ve got to unwind a little after a tough day. That’s something that goes with the bargain. You made a bargain. And you’re not walking out.”

And to prove his point, mainly that he was still the boss, he tipped up his martini glass and drained every drop out of it. The taste was strong, burning, the amount of liquid choked him, and the room heaved before his eyes, like the deck of a ship.

Alison understood his gesture. “I’ve had it, Tony,” she shouted. “I’m leaving!”

He hurled the empty glass in the direction of her face. He wasn’t quite sure whether she ducked successfully or his aim was poor. But he was aware that the glass hadn’t hit her. Enraged, desperate to do her harm, to stop her from going, he lunged toward her, his hands reaching for her shoulders... or possibly her throat.

Everything grew hazy and uncertain then. His clawing fingers grasped something. But he couldn’t seem to keep his footing. His eyes played tricks on him. His fogged brain groped for reality in the same way that his hands groped for Alison. And then he ceased to remember.

He awoke, as it were, in a bar. He had gotten there somehow under his own power. Sound came to his consciousness first. Raucous, tinny music from a jukebox, and under it a steady babble of voices, punctuated by harsh laughter. Later, it seemed, his eyes began to focus, and he saw the girl.

“You poor guy,” she said to him.

Why did she think he was a poor guy? He blinked, stared at her, trying to identify, to recall. But he was sure he had never seen her before. She was a blonde, the real bright yellow kind, with her hair frizzy all around her head. Her face was almost perfectly round, possibly wouldn’t even have been pretty without the thick red on her mouth and the heavy mascara. Her bare shoulders weren’t exactly fat, but they were kind of extra soft and full looking, and she was bosomy, as her tight black dress showed.

“Why should a wife make a fuss just ’cause her husband takes a drink or two? Some of these babes got their nerve, if you ask me.”

So he’d been talking to this woman. Maybe he’d been here a long time, in this strange bar that he’d never been in before. And he’d met this woman and had been spilling his soul to her.

But where was Alison? He searched his memory, but that whole function of his brain was operating uncertainly. He could remember only vague shadows of things — his drinking, the argument, Alison’s threat, the throwing of the glass, and his attempt to take hold of Alison, to keep her from leaving. What then?

He shook his head, but the effort failed to dislodge any cobwebs. He had a suspicion though, of what must have happened. He’d lunged at Alison and missed, slipped, fallen, konked out. When he’d awakened, he’d recalled dimly there was no more gin in the house, so he’d headed for a bar. In his drunken confusion he’d found this dump.

“I am not drunk,” he said belligerently.

“ ’Course you’re not drunk,” the blonde assured him.

“I don’t get drunk. Never. My wife says I’m an alcoholic, but I’m not. Never been drunk in my life.”

To comfort him further, the blonde put a hand on his. It was a pudgy hand, not a bony hand like Alison’s. This was the sort of hand he liked. It was warm, and the pressure of it meant sympathy, understanding.

The blonde nodded toward the bar, and a waitress sauntered up. “What are you drinking, honey?” the blonde asked him.

“Double martini,” he said. He patted the friendly, pudgy hand. “What’ll you have?” he asked her.

“Scotch.”

The waitress went away and he looked across at his companion. Her eyes were blue, wide, and had a strange innocence about them. “What’s your name?”

“Marva. What’s yours?”

“Tony. Tony Courtner.”

“You’re okay, Tony.”

They drank together, and talked, but mostly about Alison. “I make good money,” he said, “and I bring her practically every cent of it. I work hard. I don’t go out with women. What does she expect? When a guy works hard, the tensions build up. He’s got to get rid of them some way. So I take a drink now and then. Helps a lot. Relaxes me. But Alison doesn’t like it.”

“She doesn’t appreciate you, Tony.”

“It’s nothing more than that, you understand. Just a little drink to calm my nerves.” And then somehow, he found himself telling about the argument, the fight. And the ending of it, unremembered.

“Where’s your wife now?” Marva wondered.

“Gone, I guess.”

“Gone where?”

“Who knows? Who cares?”

He had another double martini, maybe two. He lost count. Things were getting hazy again. He babbled on about Alison. He’d tried to grab her to stop her from leaving. Matter of pride. No, it wasn’t that. He hated her. He’d wanted to kill her. Yeah, that was it. One of those real quick things that comes over a guy when he’s mad. Wanted to kill her. But his foot had slipped or something. Of course, he really wouldn’t have killed her. Maybe just hit her. He wasn’t a murderer. Just a guy who had a right to be mad. Couldn’t remember though, whether he had actually hit her.

“That wife of yours, Tony, she didn’t know what a good deal she had. She deserved to be slapped around.”

The haze before his eyes was getting thicker, more impenetrable. But the world was all right, because he had a friend. Marva was a good friend.

“Let’s take you home, honey,” she said.

He didn’t think he’d driven his car. He put his arm around Marva, and she steadied him nicely. Out on the sidewalk she hailed a cab and helped him into it. It surprised him a little when she climbed in beside him, but he put his head on her soft bare shoulder, and the warmth of her felt good. He gave the driver his address, then slept during the ride home.

He received another mild surprise when Marva paid the driver, sent the cab off, walked with him up the path, helped him find the key and unlock the door. When she came inside with him though, he shook his head in mild protest.

“Hey, Alison wouldn’t want you in here.”

“Your wife is gone,” she said.

“Yeah... yeah, that’s right.”

He didn’t go into the kitchen, but on his way to the bedroom, he just angled past the kitchen doorway, the place where he’d last seen Alison. What he saw there now was only the pieces of the martini glass he’d thrown. Meticulous housekeeper though she was, Alison hadn’t stayed long enough to clean up the mess.

Did he awaken and move around during the rest of the night? Or did he sleep heavily, and merely imagine movement and wakefulness during a parade of nightmares? He asked himself these questions at the time, while he was dreaming — if he was dreaming — and also later. If these experiences were dreams, Alison invaded them, like a restless ghost, accusing him, haunting him.

Had the glass he’d thrown actually hit her? In one dream, at least, it had, for her face rose before him, cut and bleeding, dreadful to look at — and he had to do something, anything, to get rid of the awful vision. So he dug a hole and buried Alison’s body in it. Then for a while he seemed to feel better.

When he awoke, really awoke for certain, sunshine was streaming in the windows. It was already too late to bother going to work, and he had a horrible headache. But his mind was much clearer. He began to piece his world together, and the picture wasn’t very pleasant. There’d been that awful, stupid argument with Alison...

A noise from the kitchen interrupted his thoughts — a domestic kind of noise, made by a frying pan or something. He rushed out of the bedroom and toward the noise, shouting gratefully, “Alison... oh, Alison...”

There was a woman in the kitchen making noise with the frying pan all right, but it wasn’t Alison. Instead it was a big blonde woman, vulgar in a tight black dress, her round, puffy face heavily adorned with lipstick and mascara.

“Who are you?” he blurted.

“I’m Marva. Remember?”

Yes, slowly, he did remember now. But the memory only confused him further. “Where’s Alison?” he demanded.

“Not here.”

“Was she here at all... ever?”

The big blonde shook her head.

That was a relief to him, in a way, that Alison hadn’t seen him with this woman. “Well look... have you been here... all night?”

“Sure. I slept in the guest room.”

“Well, fine.” He hesitated, but finally had to be frank. “Thanks for bringing me home. I guess I was pretty bad off. But I’m okay now. So I won’t need you any more.” He reached in his pocket, found a couple of bills, and thrust them at her. “Here’s for your trouble. I mean, I guess you paid for the drinks and the cab.”

She accepted the money and put it down the front of her dress, but she made no move to leave. He stared at her. Didn’t she understand?

“You’d better go now. I’ve got to get dressed and go to the office.”

“I’ll fix your breakfast.”

“Thanks, but I really don’t feel like eating.”

Marva shrugged her bare, plump shoulders, and set the frying pan aside. He noticed that the kitchen was a bit messy. Alison had always kept everything so neat. This woman must have been cooking for herself.

“Okay,” she said, going past him toward the living room. “There’s a nice roast in the freezer. What time do you get home for dinner?”

A little twinge of annoyance, hardly alarm, passed through him, and he forgot about his headache. He followed her into the living room, and discovered that she was already curled up on the sofa, paging through Alison’s magazines.

“Hey!” That was all he could think of to say.

She looked up at him, her blue eyes innocent and questioning. “Hey, what?”

“What do you think you’re doing? You can’t stay here.”

“Why not? Don’t you like me, Tony?”

He chewed his under lip and tried to remain calm and patient. “Well, sure I like you. And I’m very grateful for your taking care of me last night. But you can’t just sit there like that. What if Alison walks in and finds you here? She wouldn’t understand...”

His protest dwindled off into an uneasy silence. He didn’t like the look on Marva’s face. There was something there underneath the wide-eyed innocence. He didn’t know what it was, only that it frightened him.

She returned his stare for a long time before she asked the question. “Don’t you remember?”

“Sure, I remember,” he answered, but without confidence. “Lots of things. Alison walked out on me. I got pretty drunk, met you in a bar, and you brought me home.” He hesitated again. “What else is there to remember?”

“You were blind, staggering drunk, Tony.”

“Okay, so I was. So what?”

“I guess you really don’t remember. Or maybe you don’t want to.”

“Remember what, for Pete’s sake?”

“What happened to Alison.”

A cold, terrifying chill seeped into him. A voice from a great distance, not sounding like his own voice at all, asked fearfully, “What happened to Alison?”

“You killed her.”

The room swam giddily before his eyes. The big bosomy blonde became the center of a whirlpool revolving ever more swiftly, threatening to suck him in. He groped for a chair, finally found one, and waited till the worst of the physical sensation had passed.

After a while he asked weakly, “How do you know I killed her?”

“How do I know? I saw her body. She’d been strangled.”

“By me?”

“Who else? You told me the whole story in the bar, about this big argument you had with her. Then we came home, and there she is on the kitchen floor. What else is it supposed to be if you didn’t kill her?”

He shook his head in desperate denial. “But I don’t remember doing it.”

“Honey, you don’t remember a lot of things. About how you got from here to where you met me last night, for instance.”

He had to admit that much. He’d been drunk, but not the kind of drunk where you collapse and fall asleep somewhere. He’d been active, done things, like finding that strange bar, and... yes, it was possible... strangling Alison. He’d been enraged and drunk, a combination that could have meant murder.

Suddenly he stood up. “You said the body was on the kitchen floor. I’ve been in the kitchen. There isn’t any body there.”

She looked away from him, and went back to paging through the magazine. “Not now,” she said.

He crossed to where she sat, and stood over her. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

“It’s gone, that’s all.”

“Gone where?”

“I took care of it, honey. Don’t you understand? You don’t have a thing to worry about.” She flipped pages, then stopped to gaze at an advertisement featuring mink coats. “There’s not a thing to worry about, honey. Go eat a bite of breakfast, take a shave, and get yourself down to the office.”

The transition was accomplished more smoothly than he had ever imagined such a thing could happen. One day Alison had been his wife, and they had lived together in this semi-secluded little ranch house. The next day Alison was gone, and her place taken by another “wife,” a new “Mrs. Courtner”, and nobody seemed particularly to care.

There were reasons for this phenomenon, of course. The Courtners were fairly new in the neighborhood. Alison had no close friends locally. She hadn’t wanted to get involved socially, she’d once said, because Tony had gone to drinking so heavily.

A whole week passed. Marva came and went frequently. But nobody questioned her. Perhaps some telephones buzzed with the gossip, about the blonde Mr. Courtner seemed to have taken up with, but nobody confronted Mr. Courtner with his breach of social etiquette. And nobody thought of mentioning anything to the police.

Many of the frequent comings and goings of the new Mrs. Courtner were to the big department stores where Alison had had charge accounts. Marva, proving to be a very versatile girl, managed a rather good forgery of Alison’s signature as it appeared on the charge plates. Delivery trucks arrived every day at the Courtner house. Marva blossomed forth in gay-colored gowns, usually of the cocktail and evening type, expensive shoes and purses, atrocious hats. She also acquired the best lingerie and hosiery, a collection of rather gaudy costume jewelry, a fur stole.

Tony Courtner, though he saw his bank account dwindling to nothing, did not complain aloud. Although Marva brought in a supply of Scotch for herself, he stopped drinking completely, and instead he brooded. He brooded about the missing corpse, and wondered where it might be. Nowhere on the premises, he was certain of that. In fact, he looked around surreptitiously. No freshly turned dirt was visible in the yard. How could Marva, on the spur of the moment, dispose of an object as bulky as a body? When had they come home that night? Midnight or thereabouts? She had five or six hours of darkness to work in. His car had been in the garage, available for transportation. She could have taken Alison’s body almost anywhere. Marva was a big woman, strong, and Alison had been so small. It was all possible, terrifyingly possible.

He did what he could to check out the other alternatives. Alison had a sister in Oregon. But he didn’t dare to communicate with that sister to ask if Alison had gone there; if she hadn’t, the sister would undoubtedly become suspicious and alert the police. Besides, it seemed unlikely that Alison had gone anywhere voluntarily. None of her clothing was missing from the closets except what she had been wearing.

Helpless, frustrated, all he could do was watch this parasite, Marva, parade her new finery. Only with the furs did he dare to inquire the price.

Marva answered him with her usual innocent smile. Then she added, “But it’s worth it, isn’t it, honey? Look what I did for you.”

Sometimes when the pressure mounted, and his tension headache seemed ready to burst his skull, he asked her the old question. “Marva, what did you do with Alison’s body?”

“Don’t worry, I took care of it,” she always answered.

But the woman was slowly — or not so slowly — driving him insane. She was a sinister presence, an ever-visible reminder of his crime, a foul thing occupying his house, worse than the corpse itself.

“Marva,” he told her finally, “I’ve got to know.”

“What, honey?”

“Exactly what you did with Alison.”

“Why are you worrying?”

He had never said this before, never dared to be frank with her, but his despair drove him on. “I’ve got plenty of reason to worry. You disposed of the body, hid it somewhere, or something. Maybe you buried it. But you could dig it up any time.”

“Why should I dig it up?”

“That’s what you’d do if I didn’t play along. If I stopped you using my credit. If I kicked you out of here.”

“Is that what you’re going to do, honey? Kick me out?”

He hesitated at the brink, then drew back. “I didn’t say that. But it’s about time we laid our cards on the table. What do you have in mind? How long do you intend to stay?”

She puckered her lips and frowned. It was an obscene sight, that childish, innocent, pensive look on that fat, made-up face. Then she smiled, and became even uglier.

“I like it here,” she said.

“But we can’t go on like this,” he pleaded. “I’m not made of money. I’m going broke fast...”

“But I like it here, I said,” she interrupted him softly. “Don’t you understand, honey? I like the setup. Look at me, would you? Just a bar girl. That’s all I’ve ever been. And all of a sudden I’m in a nice, cozy house. A real house, not some crumby room up over a secondhand store. A real house, clean, everything clean. And you, Tony, you’re nice too. A real nice guy, just like your house. Oh sure, you killed your wife, but you had good reasons. So I still think you’re a nice guy. Now I got me a house, and I got me a husband too.”

“Husband?”

“Sure. You’ll get lonesome. You haven’t forgotten Alison yet, but I got plenty of time. I can wait.”

He retreated from her, horrified. “You’re crazy,” he whispered hoarsely.

But she wasn’t crazy. She knew exactly what she was doing, knew her power over him. She sat there smiling at him — a puffy, fat, pale buddha, garishly painted with lipstick and mascara. And now she wanted to become his wife! Oh, Alison... Alison...

Desperate to shut her out of his sight, out of his mind, he stumbled to the kitchen. Marva had stowed a case of Scotch there for her own use, and he found it. He hated Scotch, but now he was grateful for anything that would bring forgetfulness.

He drank, grimacing at the taste of the stuff. He hated himself, but even more he hated her, that parasite who had fastened herself to him, draining his will, his life’s blood. He went on drinking, seeking oblivion.

He came awake slowly, agonizingly, gradually aware of the daylight, aware that he was somehow, distastefully, unluckily, alive. The thing that awakened him, he began to discover, was the soft, melodious sound of the door chimes.

He was alone in the living room, sprawled in one of the easy chairs, a horrible, horrible ache beating inside his skull. The bell chimed again, reverberating painfully in his head, sounding like a hammer hitting an anvil. Please, please, he begged, stop that ringing. But it didn’t stop. It went on persistently. Cursing, he lunged out of the chair, made for the door, and flung it open.

“Alison!”

Incredibly, it was she. Small, fragile, so dear to his gaze, a questioning little frown wrinkling her forehead, her brown eyes searching his face, then the rest of him.

“Tony, you’ve been drinking again.”

Ruefully he remembered how he must look, unshaven, his eyes red and bleary, his clothes slept in and mussed. But it didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered now. Only that she’d come home.

He swept her into his arms, kissed her, then whispered into her ear, “Yes, I’ve been drinking... but this is the first time... because you were gone... but it won’t happen again... ever again... I promise... oh, Alison, I want you so much... I’ll never do anything again to make you go...”

Somehow, between kissing her and reassuring her, he dragged her in and shut the door. Then he sat her down, knelt before her, kissed her hands, and stared into her face. “Alison, I’ve missed you. You don’t know how much. It’s you I need, not the booze. Nothing else. Just you.”

Slowly, it seemed, despite the looks of him, and probably the smell of him, she softened. Her frown smoothed away, the look in her eyes became tender. She began to believe him.

“Where have you been?” he asked after a while.

“It doesn’t matter. I’d rather not say.”

“All right,” he said, agreeable to anything. “But I was worried about you. You left so suddenly, you didn’t take any of your clothes.”

“I know,” she said with a funny little smile. “I was so angry that I just walked out. Then I didn’t want to come back after my things, or even ask you to send them. Tony, you don’t know how angry I was.”

“Yes, I do,” he said, “and you had a right to be.”

“But I shouldn’t have left, Tony. That was wrong. I should have stayed, and tried to help you. We should have tried to work it out together. That’s what I want to do now. May I stay?”

“May you stay? Oh, darling!” He seized her hands and kissed them again.

And then he remembered, suddenly, shatteringly. Marva!

What could he do? How could he explain? Could Alison possibly believe that he’d imagined that he’d killed her, and that he’d allowed Marva to remain in the house only because she was blackmailing him? Or would Alison think that the instant she’d gone he’d taken up with another woman? Even been living with her!

Terrified, he tried to think. Alison would simply have to believe him. Their reconciliation would have to be based on truth, not on a lie. He’d have to make a clean breast of everything... and to begin with he’d have to get rid of that horror in the guest room right now.

He lurched to his feet and headed toward the room. At least Marva was in there, not in his own bedroom. He opened the door and started to say, “You can get out now, you can’t blackmail me any more...”

And then he saw her. She was tumbled on the bed, a gross heap of repulsive flesh. But her face wasn’t pale any more. It was dark rather, and swollen, disfigured. And around her throat was knotted one of those expensive nylon stockings that had been bought on Alison’s charge account.

The haze was engulfing him again, blurring the real world into the unreal. Alison was at his shoulder, staring at the grisly object on the bed.

“I can explain everything,” he began.

“You killed her?” Alison’s voice sounded harsh, like the voice of a stranger.

“I must have.”

“You were drunk?”

“Of course. How else could I have done it?”

“It was the same way, wasn’t it, like when you threw the glass at me?”

“No, no... you don’t understand. This woman is nothing... scum... she didn’t deserve to live. She was blackmailing me... telling me I’d killed you... but we can get rid of this body... you can help me... nobody will care... nobody will ever miss her... Alison, where are you going?”

“Tony, you’re a murderer!”

“You’re going to tell the police, I suppose.”

The room was growing murkier. Darkness was descending, in the middle of the day. Through the gathering dusk he walked toward Alison, trying to make the decision as he went. Either way, he had lost her.