Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

Period of Mourning by Donald Olson

Whimsical is the word that jumps to mind when I think about Olivia. Whimsical in speech, in attitude, and in the way she dressed...

I first met Olivia Crackenthorpe when I rented a cottage in Ash Grove in hopes of finishing my novel away from the distractions of the city. One late summer afternoon I heard a voice at my open window, a voice that might easily have been mistaken for the twittering of some timid but excitable bird; going to the door, I found this extraordinary-looking woman holding up a finger wrapped in a soiled white handkerchief. With a trill of jingle-bell laughter she asked if I had any iodine.

“I just wish she would die. I know that’s a wicked thing to say but it’s true, my dear. Every time I come home I say to myself, ‘Oh, I do hope she’s died while I’ve been gone.’ ”

She was referring, it transpired, to her cat Perdita. With a childlike morbid delight she displayed two or three half-healed scratches on her tiny age-spotted hand inflicted by this apparently savage animal. I naturally assumed she had befriended some neighborhood stray. “How long has this cat been with you?” I asked.

“Twelve years.”

“Twelve years? And it’s always been that vicious?”

“Always. Although I have managed to teach her that it’s very, very naughty to bite. But, Lordy-Lord, those sharp little claws.”

When I asked her why she hadn’t got rid of the beast, she replied with a forlorn smile that one does have one’s duty to family, even to the black sheep members.

I soon learned all about Olivia. Now in her seventies (from a distance her pert figure and gold-dyed hair were deceptive), she’d lived alone in the red-brick house next door ever since her husband Monty had lost his money in the stock market and taken off for parts unknown.

Whimsical is the word that jumps to mind when I think about Olivia. Whimsical in speech, in attitude, and in the way she dressed. From her long-ago travels she had brought back an exotic collection of colorful accessories: serapes, turbans, sashes, shawls, and mantillas. I would see her leaving her house impeccably attired but flaunting some remarkable Eastern headgear, perhaps a plumed turban or tasseled fez.

Although no longer able to indulge her passion for travel, she liked to pretend to be always on the brink of departure, holding endless consultations with her friends at the travel bureau about fares and tours and itineraries. Then, with a wistful regret, she would look at me over the garden fence and say something like: “I’ve been obliged to cancel my plans for Egypt. It was to have been the most divine trip down the Nile. I’m quite heartbroken, my dear. Seems there’s arisen some tiresome problem with the State Department about my passport. Monty’s no help at all. But then he hates for me to fly off and leave him alone.”

Now it was here, in regard to Monty, that Olivia’s whimsy surpassed oddness and achieved eccentricity. I made this discovery the first time she invited me to tea. I’d wondered why Olivia’s manner was so unnaturally subdued until she said, tiptoeing about the room: “Monty’s busy in the study. He always reads the financial journals at this time of day.”

As I knew Monty Crackenthorpe had flown the coop some twenty years earlier, this news left me somewhat agog. Olivia brought in the tea things: badly tarnished silver and chinaware far from spotless.

A mahogany library table overflowed with a clutter of maps, steamship and airline schedules, guidebooks and colorful brochures.

“I’m planning a little jaunt to the south of France,” she revealed in her twittery, jingle-bell voice. “I wanted your advice, my dear. I haven’t been there in donkey’s years and I’d like to know what to expect. Changes the guidebooks fail to mention.”

I was obliged to disappoint her by disclosing I’d never been to the south of France, nor for that matter to any part of that country. She found this astonishing. That I hadn’t traveled extensively appeared from her expression to cast doubt on my credentials as a writer.

“Oh, what a pity,” she exclaimed. “I say, what a lark if we could go together. Traveling companions, you know.”

We sipped the tepid tea and nibbled the stale cake while Olivia debated the modes of travel. Steamship was romantic but slow, yet did I think airplanes were quite safe? And then presently, with a glance toward the study door, she said: “I do so want Monty to meet you, my dear. I’ll just pop in quiet as a mouse and ask him to join us.”

I could hear her murmuring beyond the door and then she was back, shaking her head in exasperation. “Poor Monty’s in one of his ungregarious moods, I fear. The market, you know. It’s got him frightfully worried. Oh, well, another time.”

Although madly curious, I was required to wait until that weekend for the pleasure of meeting Monty. I was in the garden when I happened to look up and see the figure of a man sitting in a wheelchair in the shade of a catalpa tree on Olivia’s lawn. At length Olivia herself appeared wearing black toreador pants and a beaded pink blouse. She signaled me to come over.

As I opened the gate and advanced up the garden path, I was amazed to discover that the wheelchair’s occupant was in fact a dummy. It was dressed in a tweed suit, a white shirt, and a broad-striped tie with a fake diamond stickpin. A straw hat was jammed low on its cloth head. It had a rudimentary nose, lips embroidered in red silk thread, and shiny black buttons for eyes.

“Yoo hoo, dear boy,” Olivia greeted me. “Come say hello to Monty.”

Imagination failed me when I sought for an appropriate reply, so all I said was, “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Crackenthorpe.”

Olivia winked at me. “He’s been sulking all morning. Something about the Dow Jones. Don’t be offended, dear. It’s time for our walk but I’m expecting a call from the State Department. I don’t suppose you’d care to take him.”

“Well...”

“No, of course you wouldn’t. No point in the neighborhood thinking we’re both dotty.”

From this remark and those that followed, I soon discovered Olivia’s attitude toward this bizarre doll to be a quite unfathomable mixture of fantasy and common sense. “I know I don’t have to worry about your opinion, dear. After all, make-believe is your business, true?”

With a childlike, touching air of trustfulness she imparted the whole story:

“For years after he went away I didn’t do a thing about Monty’s clothes and personal effects. I suppose I kept hoping he might come back, although I knew he’d mistreated me shamefully. I sometimes think any company is better than none. Well, one day when I got to sorting through all Monty’s stuff the idea came to me to make a Monty doll. My dear, it was such fun. Stuffing the body and sewing it all up. And so pleasant afterward, having him sitting there with me while I planned my trips, or across the table at mealtimes, and looking after him after he’d had his accident. Tumbled all the way downstairs one night three years ago. Perdita’s fault. She scooted between his legs when I was taking him up to bed. Luckily, I still had Mama’s wheelchair in the attic. My dear, it’s the strangest thing. My Monty is ever so much more agreeable than the real man. My Monty never talks back, never complains, never calls me a silly child. He’s just there, don’t you know. Someone to talk to. We go for rides in the car and I push him around the block every afternoon, rain or shine. You would have seen us if that wasn’t your writing time.”

Her glance fell upon Perdita, glaring down at us from the porch rail. “I’ll tell you a secret,” Olivia whispered. “I’ve already started making the sweetest little sawdust kitty that’ll look just like Perdita. I’m using parts from an old bearskin rug. If only Perdita would die. It’ll be ever so lovely, her sitting there just like a proper puss, not scratching and clawing at me every chance she gets.”

One would never accuse a child of being insane for liking to dress up in outlandish costumes and play make-believe with her favorite doll. And wasn’t Olivia simply a child who in many ways had never made the transition to adulthood? I found it all infinitely sad, yet poignant and touching. Perhaps for the very reason she had adduced: make-believe was my business.

The summer wore on. I began making progress on my novel. Tea with Olivia became a daily event. While Perdita gazed menacingly upon us or honed her already lethal claws on the furniture, Olivia would pore over her maps and guidebooks, Monty’s benevolent button eyes regarding us with a mute but placid indifference. I was no longer startled when Olivia might suddenly break off and turn to address some remark to Monty, as if aware he was being excluded from the conversation. “What do you think, Monty? Do you think the tour might prove too exhausting for me?”

And then, like the intrusion of the ogre, the monster, or the wicked witch into that fairy-tale summer, the real, the living Monty Crackenthorpe reappeared on the scene, a resurrection devoutly to be regretted by all concerned.

I looked across into Olivia’s garden one morning to see a stranger standing on the back porch. I may have imagined a menacing aspect in that narrow crabbed jaw jutting wedgelike beneath a swollen red nose, but I felt an instant alarm. The seedy look of the stranger aroused fears of burglars and break-ins. I decided to investigate.

I introduced myself and asked for Olivia. The man shrugged, eyed me with an insolent frown, then turned back into the house, squalling Olivia’s name. “Livy! You got company. Get down here.”

At length she appeared, looking like some wasted flower that hadn’t been watered in a week. She darted a quick look over her shoulder and came down the steps to join me.

“He’s back!” she whispered. “Monty’s come home.” Drawing me further from the house, she plucked at my sleeve and looked up at me imploringly. “He simply breezed in last night, pleased as punch with himself, as if he’d only gone down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes. He looked frightful. So shabby. He says he’s home to stay. My dear, whatever shall I do?”

“Kick him out, if that’s what you want.”

“He won’t go. He drinks like a fish and says the nastiest things to me. He says I’m cuckoo. He says I should be put away. What on earth am I to do?”

I could see Monty watching us from the window, an ugly smirk on his face, and although I wanted more than anything to offer Olivia some comfort, there was little I could say and nothing I could do. Finally I promised to come to tea that afternoon and at least talk to Monty.

The tea party was not a success. We went through the motions but the real Monty was no more forthcoming than his effigy, which I noticed was nowhere in sight. In the end, he scowled into his teacup and said crossly: “You ought to know better, Livy. Serving tea in dirty cups. Go and wash them properly.”

Like a chastened child, Olivia did as she was told. Only then did Monty adopt a more sociable manner.

“Batty as a hoot owl, that one. I’d hoped she might have grown up after all this time. Jeez, she’s still playing with dolls.”

“You think you’ve any right to judge her?” I replied. “After all, you deserted her.”

He ignored this quibble. “She says you’re a writer of some sort. Used to loonies, I suppose.”

“I’m very fond of Olivia.”

“Well, don’t go putting notions in her head. Only one thing to be done, by George, and I’m going to do it. She should have been put away years ago.”

“And that’s what you plan to do?”

“Sooner the better,” he snapped. “I’m her husband. I’ll do what’s got to be done. Plenty of folks around here will testify what she’s like.”

“I won’t.” And with that I got up and left.

For the next several days I saw very little of Olivia and must confess I became too caught up in the final polishing of my novel to take an active interest in what might be happening next door. Until late one morning Olivia burst in upon me, visibly distraught and on the verge of tears.

“I’ve been dying to talk to you, my dear, but he watches me like a hawk. He’s gone to town this morning. I just know he’s planning to do something awful. If only I’d had the sense to divorce him. He’s going to put me in some sort of — place. Can he do that? Please. Tell me what I should do.”

She seemed at that moment more childlike than ever. Clearly, her mind was no match for the appalling Monty’s. Nor could I assume responsibility. I wasn’t a relative and had known Olivia for only a few months. All I could do was offer meaningless phrases of assurance that things might work out for the best.

I neither saw nor heard from Olivia for a week. She did not appear to water her flowers, though several rainy days intervened to make this unnecessary. And then one afternoon I saw Monty digging a hole under the catalpa tree. He went back inside and came out carrying a burlap bag which he proceeded to bury in the hole. I waited until I saw him drive off in Olivia’s ancient De Soto before rushing over.

I found Olivia in tears. “He killed her! Before my very eyes! He brained Perdita with my rolling pin. Said it might as well be used for something. Oh, it was dreadful, dreadful. And that’s not all. You should have seen what he did to my Monty. Literally knocked the stuffings out of him. And he’s talking to doctors and lawyers about me. Oh, it’s more than I can bear. I wish I could just die.”

Suddenly she seized my arm and her voice brightened. “I know. We can run away! Yes! Why didn’t I think of that before? You’ll be leaving anyway. We can go together. To the south of France! You can write there and I can have a garden.”

As gently and tactfully as possible I tried to explain the impossibility of such a scheme. She gazed at me with childlike stubbornness. “Well, mercy me, something’s got to be done. We can’t let him get away with it. He’s a monster! A murderer!”

That she might have possessed the will or strength of purpose to resort to as drastic a solution as she did never entered my mind, and even when she came rushing over to me later that evening and told me what had happened, it did not dawn upon me at the time to disbelieve her story.

“Come quick! Come quick! Monty’s had an accident.”

A fatal accident, as I soon discovered. Monty lay dead at the foot of the cellar steps. When I tried to question Olivia all she could do was to keep repeating that she’d heard a Godawful crash and found Monty lying down there.

I had to phone the police, of course, and their questions seemed only to confuse Olivia. At least, I thought it was confusion brought on by shock that inspired her to lie, for when they asked her how Monty had happened to fall, she said with a rapid fluttering of her little hands that he’d tripped over something.

“You didn’t actually see him fall, Mrs. Crackenthorpe?”

“Well, no, but I heard him.”

“Then what do you think he tripped on?”

It was then, as she cast a hooded, sly glance in my direction, the glance of a child who has done something inexcusable and suddenly thinks of a way to escape punishment, that I knew Monty’s death had been no accident.

“The cat!” she cried out, almost gaily. “He tripped over the cat. The cat ran between his legs at the top of the stairs.” She pointed at me. “Ask him. He saw it.”

For one ghastly moment I felt sure the officer would demand to see this cat, which Olivia knew perfectly well was dead and buried. It was such a stupid, careless, childish lie.

Before he could speak, I intervened. “That’s how it happened, officer. I was here when he fell.”

I didn’t dare look at Olivia. I prayed she would keep quiet.

“You were here, sir?”

“Olivia had invited me to dinner. Mr. Crackenthorpe was going down to the cellar to fetch a bottle of wine when it happened.”

That’s all there was to it. My perjured testimony was all they seemed to require to render a verdict of accidental death.

I accompanied Olivia to the funeral. She held tight to my hand but didn’t once shed a tear. I caught one or two of the mourners looking at her with droll amusement. She wore her ancient black dress but at the last minute, while I’d waited in the car, she’d dashed back into the house and added a Spanish mantilla to her outfit. There was no rose in her hair, but with a bunch of sweetpeas pinned to her lapel she looked like an aging, gold-haired Carmen.

That last week before I left we saw a good deal of each other. As if by common agreement, we avoided any reference to the night Monty had died.

“Are you quite sure you’ll be all right, Olivia?” I asked her on the day I was to leave.

“Oh, right as rain, my dear. Of course I’ll be lonely without Perdita. Lonely but unscarred. And without Monty. My Monty. But I can’t very well do anything about that when everyone knows he’s in his grave. They really would think I was dotty.”

I asked her if there was anything at all I could do for her before I took off. She started to shake her head and then, with a droll twinkle in her eye and uttering her jingle-bell laugh, she regarded me with a long, measuring look, studying my shoes, my faded jeans, my shirt, and my old tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches.

“If you could spare them, my dear, you might leave me one or two souvenirs. Yes, it would be lovely. I could use the same stuffing and it would be like you’d never left at all. You’d be right here where I could chat with you every day.”

I was rather attached to those shoes and to the jacket as well, but I could hardly refuse. And so as a parting gift I presented Olivia with the jeans, the shirt, the jacket and shoes.

“You needn’t worry I’ll do anything socially indiscreet,” she assured me. “One can imagine what the neighbors would say if I were to take in a male lodger so soon after Monty’s demise. I think one should observe a decent period of mourning, don’t you agree?”

We promised to write to each other, but, life being what it is, we never did. I suppose Olivia felt there was no need to write — it would only confuse the issue. After all, she had only to look across the room and there I’d be, constantly attentive.

Yet even now, years later, I can still see her, that ageless, perennial child-woman, lifting her guileless blue eyes and saying: “Do you think, my dear, that airplanes are quite safe?”