Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 121, No. 2. Whole No. 738, February 2003

The Faraway Quilters by Edward D. Hoch

Simon Ark, a dabbler in the occult who claims to be two thousand years old, is a more aloof sort of sleuth than most of Edward D. Hoch’s other series characters, but he allows the author occasionally to treat offbeat subjects and plots. Ark was the protagonist of the first published Hoch short story. Given his claims to longevity, it isn’t surprising that he hasn’t changed much over the nearly fifty years since that first case.

Ever since I’d known Simon Ark he’d been searching for the devil. More often than not he found death instead. On the evening he visited my home in Westchester, I hardly expected him to find either one. I certainly never thought I’d see him confronting a robed and cowled Death, complete with a bloody scythe, in my family room.

But I’d better begin with my wife Shelly, because in a way she was the cause of it all. I was a very young journalist when we met in a small Western town over forty years ago. I met Simon Ark at the same time, and they were to become the two most important people in my life. Shelly and I were married six months after we met. I took a New York job in publishing and rose to become editor-in-chief of Neptune Books. Soon we had a modest home in Westchester County. We had no family, and Shelly filled her days with community activities. Occasionally she’d even write poetry, publishing it in obscure literary quarterlies under her maiden name of Shelly Constance.

My frequent journeys with Simon Ark, which seemed to increase following my retirement, had been a source of constant irritation to Shelly. She viewed this tall black-garbed man whose appearance seemed never to change as some sort of freak best to be avoided. It was one night in spring, following my return after a lengthy stay in England with Simon, that Shelly and I had a real battle.

“He claims to be two thousand years old. Isn’t it time he was dead?”

“For God’s sake, Shelly! He’s our oldest friend!”

“In more ways than one.”

I sighed and threw down the newspaper I’d been reading. “What do you want me to do? Never see him again?”

We didn’t speak for the next couple of hours, but that didn’t last. In all our years of marriage we’d never gone to bed angry. As I turned out the light Shelly asked, “What would you think if I invited Simon to speak to the Quilters?”

“The Quilters?”

It took just a moment for the name to register. The Quilters was a group of a dozen ladies, all of them over fifty, who met once a month for some purpose I’d never quite been able to grasp. Shelly had joined them under the impression they were some sort of poetry society, but she’d confided to me almost at once that they seemed more interested in what was known in the publishing trade as New Age topics — mysticism, astrology, spiritualism, and alternative medicine. I’d never thought of the group in connection with Simon Ark, but perhaps my wife had a point.

I rolled over in the bed and snapped the light back on. “Can you picture Simon helping to make a quilt?”

“Silly! They haven’t done anything like that since I’ve been going. They bring in speakers on New Age topics and discuss things like crop circles and interplanetary visitors.”

I tried to make light of it. “So that’s what you do on your nights out!”

“It’s a nice diversion once a month when you’re halfway around the world with Simon Ark. I don’t have to believe any of it.”

“Do you really think they’d be interested in listening to Simon? He can be a dull speaker at times.”

“I’m glad you finally admitted it!”

“Really, Shelly—”

“I’m trying to be nice! I’m trying to make amends for all the bad things I’ve said about him. Look, the next meeting is at our house in two weeks and we’re having a woman speak to us on death and dying. Simon would be the perfect balance because he claims to be living forever!”

“I don’t know that he’s ever put it exactly like that.”

“Ask him! Ask him if he’d be interested in giving a twenty-minute talk to the Quilters. Tell him one of our members is a retired movie star. That might intrigue him.”

Shelly had mentioned Grace Merrit before. Back in the forties when I was just beginning to discover the wonders of a motion picture on a Saturday afternoon, she’d played various exotic types, usually in World War II spy films with Alan Ladd or Ray Milland. Like so many other young actresses, she dropped out of films after a decade or so, when the parts became scarcer. I saw her on television once or twice in the fifties and then nothing. Shelly seemed to think her departure from Hollywood wasn’t just the result of ageing but also of some vague scandal. In any event, she’d married the publisher of a string of weekly newspapers up the Hudson. They were divorced now but she was living comfortably, enjoying life in her advanced years.

“I can’t imagine Simon being interested in an ageing glamour girl,” I told her, “but I’ll mention it.”

“Grace has been very active in our little group. In fact, she’s the one who gave it the name the Quilters.”

“I wonder where she came up with that.”

Simon Ark was lecturing on Indonesian mysticism as part of a seminar on the Far East being held at Columbia University. I met him afterwards and we had a drink at a nearby bar. “How’d it go?” I asked.

“My friend, it always goes well for me. The audience is another matter. You said on the telephone you wished to offer me another speaking assignment. I trust it is not to a university audience.”

“No, hardly that. Shelly belongs to a little group of older women called the Quilters. She’s wondering if you’d like to give a brief talk to them at their next meeting.”

“I know nothing about quilting,” he said with a weak smile.

“That’s just a name they chose. It has more to do with New Age topics. The other speaker will talk on death and dying. Shelly thought you could make a nice balance.”

“I’m beginning to think your wife doesn’t like me,” he said with a sigh. “This is really not my—”

“She said to tell you an old movie star would be there, an actress named Grace Merrit. She’s one of the Quilters.”

There was the slightest flicker of his eyelids at the mention of her name. “The Faraway Quilters,” he said softly, almost to himself. “Of course!”

“Then you’ll come?”

“Certainly. What did you say the date was?”

I think Shelly was as surprised as I was that Simon had accepted her invitation to speak to the Quilters. “He seemed interested in Grace Merrit,” I told her. “That’s what decided him.”

The Quilters meetings were always held on the second Thursday of the month, when I usually managed to be away. This time I had to remain and greet Simon, who surprised us by arriving a full thirty minutes early. “I am sorry to come so soon,” he told Shelly with unaccustomed grace. “I took an early train from New York so I wouldn’t be late.”

“That’s perfectly all right.” She showed him the family room where extra chairs had been brought in. “There’ll be eleven of us tonight. Kate Brady’s husband will probably come, too, because she doesn’t like to drive after dark. Usually he just drops her off and comes back later to pick her up, but if he sees other men around he may stay in the kitchen to chat.”

Simon Ark nodded. “And Grace Merrit?”

“You’ll find she’s quite nice, not at all the movie queen type. She usually comes with Mona Emberry. I think she had some small movie parts, too.”

In fact, they were the first to arrive, about ten minutes early. Mona was a large, take-charge woman, slightly masculine, who came in still clutching her key ring. “You must be Simon Ark,” she said, standing almost as tall as he did. “I read your witchcraft book.”

“There are very few of you around,” he said with some modesty. Almost at once he turned to her companion, a shorter woman, a bit plump but with a lovely face that seemed ageless. I figured she had to be at least eighty yet she moved like a much younger woman. “You must be Grace Merrit.”

A glowing smile lit her face. “That’s right.”

“It’s been a long time since I saw you in films,” he told her. “I followed your career with some interest.”

I could not have imagined those words issuing from Simon Ark’s mouth. Much as I wanted to hear the remainder of their conversation, I was summoned away by the door chimes. Wayne and Kate Brady had arrived. “Well,” he said, seeing me. “So long as I’m not the only man I guess I’ll stay awhile.” Wayne was a real estate executive, and was still going off to work every day even though he was old enough to retire. His wife Kate had problems with her night vision, but otherwise she seemed in perfect health.

Simon had arrived at seven-thirty and forty-five minutes later all eleven women were crowded into our family room. I shut the kitchen door and opened a couple of beers for Wayne and me. “Wasn’t there supposed to be another speaker?” he asked. “Someone about death?”

“I guess she’s not here yet.”

We listened to Shelly introduce Simon Ark as a well-known writer and student of the occult, her voice carrying clearly through the kitchen door. When Simon himself spoke, his voice did not carry as well. Finally, annoyed at my own curiosity, I opened the door a crack so we could overhear his words.

“...and it is not death we fear,” he was telling them, “but the act of dying, often accompanied by pain and suffering. But I am here to talk to you about life, some form of eternal life, perhaps. I leave it to the next speaker to enlighten you about death. Before I continue, are there any questions thus far?”

Someone had raised her hand, and I peeked into the family room to see that it was Grace Merrit. “Professor Ark,” she began.

He immediately corrected her. “Not Professor, I fear, though I have studied at some of the world’s leading universities. What is your question?”

Before she could ask it the door chimes sounded again. Shelly rose to answer them and I heard her gasp as she opened the door. I walked through the hallway to see what was wrong. Shelly had backed away, hugging the wall, as a robed and cowled figure, all in black, entered the house carrying a long scythe whose blade appeared tipped with blood. “Sorry if I frightened you,” a female voice said as she pushed back the cowl to reveal an attractive dark-haired woman in her early twenties. “I’m Mandy Snider. I wear this costume to get people in the proper mood for my talk.”

“You’re Death!” Shelly said, as if that explained everything.

“Well, yes. Miss Death. I should have warned you about the costume in advance. Boy, that’s some curving road you’ve got out there. I almost went over the edge in the dark!”

Wayne Brady had followed me from the kitchen. “What is this?” he asked, prepared to do battle.

I explained it was just part of the show. “Are the Quilters meetings always like this?” I asked my wife.

She chuckled. “Usually they’re quite dull.”

“I can’t wait to see Simon’s face when Death walks into the room.”

“Do you think it’s wise?” she asked, suddenly alarmed. “He might do something violent.”

“I doubt that,” I replied, though I wasn’t completely sure.

We listened while Simon completed his talk. To me it seemed scholarly and a bit dull, but the women applauded. Then Shelly came on to announce the arrival of their second speaker, billed as Miss Death.

The women gasped as the robed and cowled figure appeared in the doorway, and even Simon seemed a bit startled. He strode forward with a hand outstretched and for a moment I thought he was trying to ward off this evil creature. Then I realized he was offering to shake hands. Miss Death seemed surprised by the gesture and had to switch the bloody scythe to her left hand.

“My name is Ark, Simon Ark. I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”

“I... I’m Miss Death.” She seemed so nervous that she pushed back the cowl again and added, “Mandy Snider.”

The Quilters seated around the room gave some polite applause and the young woman launched into her talk. “I hope I didn’t frighten any of you with my costume. No one likes to be confronted by death, whatever her age.” She laid down the bloody scythe with a nervous laugh.

I wondered how long she’d been doing this particular bit. Her nervousness surprised me. I retreated into the kitchen with Simon and Wayne Brady, and Shelly followed along to arrange the little buffet supper that had become the club’s tradition. “Was Miss Death your idea?” I asked. “She looks like she’s barely out of school.”

“Actually, Mona Emberry saw an ad in the classifieds. Mandy’s not very good, is she?”

I opened the door a bit and listened. She was standing in the center of the room, having removed the black robe to reveal jeans and a faded T-shirt from UCLA, not at all in keeping with her character. “...it is the beauty of youth we all pay for,” she was saying. “Beauty at any cost. We never think about dying.”

Grace Merrit, the former film star, was next into the kitchen. “That young woman is not for the Quilters. She should be speaking to her college sorority!”

“I’m sorry, Grace,” my wife told her. “She sounded more mature on the telephone.”

“What are we paying these performers?” she asked with a sweeping gesture that took in Simon Ark.

“Fifty dollars for Miss Death.”

“I am performing free of charge,” Simon informed her with exaggerated dignity. “But it is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Merrit. As I said earlier, I have long admired your work in the cinema and elsewhere.”

She studied him with hard eyes. “There was no elsewhere, Mr. Ark. I made seventeen pictures in the nineteen forties and that was the end of it, unless you mean my two television appearances in the early fifties.”

“I was referring to a group known then as the Faraway Quilters. All women, I believe, like the Quilters of today.”

She turned away. “I know nothing of that.”

“The group disbanded when the House Un-American Activities Committee began its investigation of the motion-picture industry. Though I doubt that the Faraway Quilters was any sort of Communist front organization.”

“We played cards,” she told us. “There were a dozen young film stars and we played cards and gossiped about the business.”

The scattered applause from the family room told me that Miss Death had finished her presentation. Kate Brady came out to join her husband. “Well, at least Simon Ark was entertaining.”

“See, Simon, you have a fan,” I told him.

Shelly was busy herding the rest of them into the kitchen for the buffet. “Supper is served!” she announced. “Grab a plate.”

“Did we decide on next month’s meeting?” Mona Emberry asked.

Kate Brady spoke up. “It’s at my house. That way Wayne won’t have to drive me anywhere.”

“What about a speaker?” Shelly inquired. “Or should we just gab?”

Grace Merrit was about to offer her opinion on that, but their youthful speaker, Miss Death, entered with a flourish. “I’m so glad that’s over! I hope I wasn’t too nervous.”

“Perhaps you’re in the wrong line of work,” Grace suggested.

Shelly tried to smooth things over. “Here, Mandy. Have some food.”

“Thanks, but I couldn’t. Just something to drink and I’ll be on my way. A beer if you have one.”

Shelly took one from the refrigerator and opened it while Wayne Brady handed her a glass. She gave Mandy an envelope for her talk, which the young woman accepted with thanks. She removed the bill and slipped it into her wallet, asking, “Which one is Grace Merrit, the actress?”

“That’s me,” Grace said, none too happy about it.

“My grandmother knew you.”

“I’ll bet! What do you think I am, a hundred years old?”

“She’d be eighty-four if she were still alive.”

Grace hesitated, and then asked, “What was her name?”

“Her screen name was Fran Clinger. She was in the Faraway Quilters with you out in Hollywood.”

“That was a long time ago,” Grace Merrit replied. “I don’t remember the name.”

“I was hoping—”

“Sorry. I don’t remember her.”

“She killed herself!” Mandy hurled the words like missiles. “She killed herself and you don’t remember her?”

Mona Emberry stepped quickly between them. “Of course we remember your grandmother. But you’d better go now,” she told the young woman.

Mandy Snider quickly finished the rest of her beer and gathered up her costume. As she headed for the front door she turned and said, “You haven’t heard the last of me. I want to know why my grandmother died. I want to know the truth about the Quilters!”

Then she was gone.

“What was that all about?” Kate Brady asked. Some of the other women were voicing their displeasure at the scene.

“Where did you find her, Shelly?” Kate’s husband asked. “That getup was really weird.”

“I’m the one who mentioned her to Shelly,” Mona Emberry admitted. “But I didn’t expect anything like this.”

“I’m sorry things got out of hand,” my wife apologized. “I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

But just as it seemed the tempest had passed, Simon Ark asked, “Just what was the purpose of the Faraway Quilters?”

Grace Merrit took a deep breath and gave her stock answer. “We played cards.”

I was dreaming of a meeting of the Quilters, made up of glamorous Hollywood starlets remembered from my youth. Somehow Shelly was there, too. One minute there seemed to be a sex orgy complete with drugs, but then it turned into some sort of Communist front organization. I enjoyed it better as an orgy, but then I was awakened by Shelly pushing on my arm. “There’s someone at the front door,” she said, and I heard the insistent chimes ring again.

I rolled over to peer at the clock radio. “At seven-ten in the morning?”

“Go see who it is.”

“Do I have to?”

“One of us does.”

I grumbled and slipped into my robe. Downstairs, through the tiny windows in the front door, I could make out a uniformed policeman. That was always bad news at this hour of the morning. I opened the door and he asked, “Is this the residence of Shelly Constance?”

“That’s my wife. She uses her maiden name sometimes.”

“There was an accident overnight, down the hill. We believe the woman was coming from here, and I’m sorry to tell you she was killed in the crash. Her vehicle went off the road and it wasn’t discovered for some hours.”

“Killed? My God! Who was it?”

“A young woman named Mandy Snider.”

Shelly had followed me downstairs when she heard her name mentioned. “What is it?”

“Your speaker last night, Miss Death. She was killed in an accident down the hill.”

“How awful!”

“Had she been drinking while she was here?” the officer asked.

“No, she left right after— Oh, I think she did have a beer. But only one.”

“You served it to her, Miss Constance?”

“It’s Mrs.,” she corrected, giving our last name. “She asked if we had a beer and I gave her one. The young woman was certainly not drunk on one beer.”

“How did you know she was here?” I asked.

“The car was registered to a Veronica Brand. She told us Miss Snider borrowed it last night to speak to a women’s group at your house.”

“That’s correct,” Shelly said. “She spoke here, had one beer, and left about ten-thirty.”

“Were you aware that Miss Snider was only twenty-one years old?”

Shelly was immediately flustered, and I quickly took over. “Officer, drinking is legal at that age and she only had one. If you’re implying something different I think we should have a lawyer present.”

“That’s entirely up to you, sir. I believe a detective will be coming by later to take her statement.”

When he was gone, Shelly asked, “Should we call a lawyer?”

“For now let’s just call Simon Ark.”

I met Simon at the train and brought him to the house. A detective named Sergeant Mason had arrived during my absence, but assured us we did not need a lawyer.

“We have no plans to charge your wife with serving beer,” he said. “We understand that you hired this woman from a classified ad for Miss Death. Only trouble is, she wasn’t Miss Death.”

Somehow that didn’t surprise me. I told the detective about her amateurish performance. “But then how did she get here?” Shelly wanted to know. “And why did she come?”

“The owner of the car, Veronica Brand, is the real Miss Death, something of a local kook. She’s the one you talked to on the phone. Two days ago Mandy Snider came to her house and offered her a thousand dollars if she could come here as Miss Death last night. She said she wanted to surprise an old family friend.”

“A thousand dollars!” Shelly exclaimed. “I only paid her fifty bucks!”

“Exactly. It was big money to Veronica Brand and she readily accepted it. She even loaned Miss Snider her SUV for the night. It seems she came here to confront some old friend of her grandmother.”

“There was a confrontation,” Shelly agreed. “One of our members was a movie star in her youth. Mandy Snider said her grandmother was a member of their group and was driven to suicide.”

“Is any of that true?”

“I have no way of knowing.”

He made a few notes. “You gave her a beer before she left?”

“She asked for one. I opened it and handed it to her.”

“Did she drink it from the bottle?”

“I think someone handed her a glass.”

“What’s the purpose of all these questions?” I wanted to know. “One beer could hardly have contributed to the accident.”

Sergeant Mason closed his notebook. “That’s correct. There was a minimum amount of alcohol in her blood. But this morning’s autopsy turned up something much more significant: traces of chloral hydrate.”

“Knockout drops?” Simon asked.

“Exactly. If someone here slipped them into her beer, there’s no way she could have driven down that hill without crashing.”

“Are you saying she was murdered?” Shelly asked.

“It appears likely,” the detective answered. “I’ll need the names and addresses of everyone who was here last night. How many are in this Quilters group?”

“Twelve, usually, but only eleven of us were here last night. Plus my husband and Simon Ark here. Oh, and Kate Brady’s husband Wayne. He had to drive her. I guess that makes fourteen, not counting Mandy.”

“What’s your connection with all this?” the detective asked Simon.

“I was asked to give a brief talk on New Age topics.”

“What’s that?”

“Mysticism, astrology, and the like.”

“What is this group, anyway?” Mason wanted to know.

“There’s nothing sinister about us,” Shelly assured him. “We talk and play cards. Sometimes we have a speaker.”

She gave him the list he’d requested and he promised to get back to us. When the three of us were alone, Shelly said, “This is the first time I’ve been a suspect in a murder case.”

“It seems we’re all suspects,” I told her. “What do you think, Simon?”

He pondered for a moment and then asked Shelly, “Why are there twelve women in the Quilters?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Grace and Mona. I think they founded a similar group out in California when she was there.”

“Back in the forties?”

“I guess so, yes.”

“Did she ever refer to them as the Faraway Quilters?”

“I don’t think so, Simon. They were just the Quilters, like our group.”

“What was this California group?” I asked him.

“They were very secret, somehow connected with the motion-picture industry. There was a man—” Suddenly he said, “Come, my friend. We must interview the true Miss Death. If anyone can shed light on the victim, she can.”

Shelly supplied us with Miss Death’s phone number and she was awaiting our arrival. She had a modest garden apartment in town and she opened the door as Simon and I left the car. Veronica Brand was indeed something of a kook, as the police officer had said. Though she appeared close to fifty, she had flaming red hair and wore a long black dressing gown that covered her slender figure. When she reached out to shake our hands I caught sight of a massive tattoo that seemed to run up her right arm. “Found the place okay, huh?”

“We’re here,” I agreed, stating the obvious.

“The cops already questioned me. Damn kid borrowed my car and then wrecked it!”

“How long had you known the victim?” Simon asked as she showed us into her apartment. The living room was decorated with a massive mural of a crouching dragon, breathing fire.

“Didn’t know her at all! She showed up on Monday and offered me a thousand dollars cash if I’d let her take my place as Miss Death. Hell, that was more money than I could turn down. I showed her the costume and ran though my spiel with her.”

“And sent this unknown person into a stranger’s house?”

“She was only a kid. It’s not as if she were Jack the Ripper, for God’s sake!”

“What was her explanation for this stunt?” I asked.

“She wanted to surprise an old friend of her grandmother’s.”

“But how did she know my wife had hired you in the first place?”

“She’d telephoned one of the women last week from the West Coast, found her address on the Internet. The woman mentioned the meeting last night, and that they were having me as a speaker. So Mandy hopped a plane and came to me with her offer.”

“Did she leave any possessions here at your place?”

“No, she had a hotel room in White Plains for a couple of nights. What she didn’t have was a car, so she borrowed my SUV. I was a fool to let her.”

“The police think someone at the party may have drugged her so she went off the road on the way down.”

“Are you serious? She was only a kid.”

“She had a bit of a confrontation with one of my wife’s guests, an old film star named Grace Merrit. Name mean anything to you?”

Veronica Brand shook her head. “Never watch old movies. Tough enough keeping up with the new ones.”

Simon spoke up then. “Did Miss Snider happen to mention a California group that was also called the Quilters, or the Faraway Quilters?”

“No. She told me nothing, but I liked the color of her money.”

As we were leaving I said, “Sorry about your car.”

“So am I.”

Back in my car, I asked Simon, “Where to now?”

“Do you have a copy of Shelly’s list of the Quilters members?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s pay a visit to Grace Merrit.”

The former movie star’s home was hardly palatial but it was several steps up from Veronica Brand’s place. Located in Larchmont, the next town over from ours, it was one step farther along on the commuter line from Manhattan. A car was parked in her driveway so we weren’t surprised to find another of the Quilters, Mona Emberry, inside with her. I remembered they’d come together the previous night.

Mona towered over the more petite Grace, and she immediately informed us that the police had just been there. “They’re questioning all the Quilters. They think one of us slipped something into her beer.”

“Did you?” Simon asked.

It was Grace Merrit who answered, conducting us into her living room. “Of course not! That girl was a bit flaky. She might have been on something before she arrived at Shelly’s.”

I seated myself gingerly on her brocaded sofa and said, “She couldn’t have been on chloral hydrate or she’d have been unconscious. Someone had to slip it into her drink at the Quilters.”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” Mona said, “or Grace, either! At our ages we don’t go around feeding knockout drops to people, whatever the police might think.”

“The dead woman tried to ask you about Hollywood, about a group called the Faraway Quilters that her grandmother belonged to. I believe you were its president for a time, Miss Merrit.”

She tried to stare Simon down without answering, but finally relented. “Most of us served as president at one time or another.”

“There were twelve members, as with the present Quilters?”

“Correct.”

“Was there something special about that number?”

“We played bridge. That made up three tables.”

“Sixteen would have made four tables,” he pointed out. “I have wondered about the Faraway Quilters for years, ever since I learned of their existence. Isn’t it true that there was a thirteenth member, a male?”

“Certainly not!” Mona Emberry insisted.

Simon turned his attention back to her. “Were you a member of the California Quilters, too?”

“I was,” she admitted. “And we weren’t a Communist front!”

“Who else among the present membership was a member then?”

“Only one,” Grace answered. “Kate Brady, our youngest. She was still a teenager when the old Quilters disbanded.”

“Why would a Hollywood teenager spend her free nights playing bridge?” he wondered. “Were all of you in the motion-picture business?”

“That’s right,” Grace acknowledged. “I suppose I was the most successful, but we’d all had parts.”

Simon Ark studied the two women. “Your present interest in mysticism and spiritualism leads me to believe that the original Quilters must have had similar interests.”

“Not at all!” Grace insisted. “We were strictly social.”

“There were twelve women and one man. What was his purpose? What did he contribute?”

“There was no man.”

“I believe his name was Dr. Fritz Faraway,” Simon insisted. “He was a practitioner of alternative medicine who’d lost his license as a regular doctor.”

“What do you—?”

“Twelve women suggest to me a coven of witches, with a male wizard as its leader.”

Both women laughed at the suggestion, perhaps a little too much. “Dr. Faraway spoke to us on a few occasions,” Grace admitted. “But he was no wizard and we were no witches. Sometimes I wish we had been.”

“What about this woman who killed herself, Mandy Snider’s grandmother?”

“Fran Clinger suffered from depression. She was older than the rest of us and she hadn’t been able to get work. She wanted something from us that we weren’t able to give her. Suicide was her only way out. It was a foolish, tragic ending to a wasted life.” Her voice seemed to waver as she spoke. “But this Mandy hadn’t even been born yet then. Why would it mean anything to her?”

“That’s all we can tell you,” Mona Emberry said suddenly, rising to her feet. “You’ve tired Grace. I’ll have to ask you to leave. I’ll see you to your car.”

We were hustled out the front door. “You certainly take good care of Grace,” I commented.

“This whole business is my fault,” she said, but then fell silent, glancing back at the house.

“The dead woman phoned you from California, didn’t she?” Simon quickly asked. “She asked you about Grace and the others, and you were the one who told her about the Quilters and Miss Death.”

“Yes. That was a terrible mistake.”

“Why did she care so much about a grandmother she’d never known?”

Mona took a deep breath, perhaps deciding it was time to tell it all. “The Clinger family had money. It was Fran’s failure at her career that drove her to suicide. Her money went to Mandy’s mother with a proviso that any children of hers would receive a large sum on their twenty-first birthday. When Mandy turned twenty-one her mother told her the story and Mandy decided the Quilters were somehow to blame.”

“What were the Quilters?” Simon asked quietly.

But Mona Emberry shook her head. “You’ll have to get that from someone else. I’ve told you too much already.”

I assumed we’d be visiting Kate Brady next, but Simon had something else in mind. “That young woman came to the Quilters last night to confront Grace Merrit and the other old-timers from the original group. If she really wanted some sort of vengeance for her grandmother’s suicide, she might have been carrying a weapon of some sort.”

“She had a weapon, Simon. A scythe about six feet long. You overlooked the obvious.”

“You underestimate me,” he said with that slight smile of his. “I felt the scythe blade. It was rubber, covered with silver paint and a dab of red for blood. It was Veronica’s costume, remember, used for these appearances.”

So we drove over into town and found Sergeant Mason. “There was no weapon,” he assured Simon. He produced a large evidence bag from a filing cabinet and spread the contents on his desk. “Purse, handkerchief, makeup, keys, address book, pencil, wallet, cell phone, cigarettes. We’re contacting her family in California now.”

“Any pictures in the wallet?”

“Girlfriends from high school, no guys. The usual things: California driver’s license, a couple dollars in change, eighteen dollars in bills, a key card for her hotel room in White Plains. No drugs or pills of any sort.”

“What about her return plane ticket?”

“We found that in the room with her suitcase. She was planning to fly back Monday.”

Our next stop was the home of Kate and Wayne Brady. Their house was big and lived-in, with a basketball hoop over the garage door attesting to one or more sons. The children were all gone now, though pictures of two boys and a girl decorated the piano, and larger wedding photographs stood behind them.

“Grace phoned to warn me you’d probably be coming,” Kate said, showing us inside. “She worried about what I might say.”

Wayne Brady offered glasses of white wine and we both accepted. Then Simon asked, “What was it that you might say?”

“Oh, about California and the Quilters.”

“And Dr. Faraway?”

“You know about him?” she asked, surprised.

“I have heard stories.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Then suppose you tell me what it was, so we can stop suspecting your husband of murder.”

“What?” The blood drained from Wayne Brady’s face. “What in hell are you talking about?”

“My friend here tells me you were in the kitchen with him when Mandy Snider arrived in her costume. She mentioned she’d almost gone off the road in the dark. And later, when Shelly handed her a beer, you supplied the glass. The knockout drops could have been in the bottom of that glass, unnoticed by any of us.”

“Why would I kill her?”

“To protect the secret of the Faraway Quilters.”

“There is no secret!” Kate insisted. “I don’t know why Grace and Mona wanted to dig up that name from a half-century ago.”

“Tell us about it,” Simon urged.

She sighed and looked down, shaking her head. “You have to realize times were different then. Today actresses have all sorts of cosmetic surgery without anyone blinking an eye. Back in the forties we stopped getting work with the first sign of a facial wrinkle. They didn’t need us. There were plenty of eighteen-year-olds ready and willing to take our places. Today it’s called the ‘Q’ or quality factor — that indefinable something that makes someone attractive to people. How an actor or singer or politician rates in Q-factor polling can determine their future exposure to the public. They talked quietly about Qs back in the nineteen forties, too, and it could spell the end of an actress’s career. It was the Q that gave Grace the idea for the Quilters. We would quilt and play cards, and the studio executives would never suspect that a former doctor named Faraway came to the meetings with his little black bag and injected our faces with all sorts of untried youth potions. They worked wonderfully on Grace for several years. They were a terrible disaster for poor Fran Clinger.”

“So she killed herself,” Simon Ark said, half to himself.

“She killed herself. Dr. Faraway is long dead, too, but Fran’s granddaughter inherited that money when she turned twenty-one and came East to somehow avenge her grandmother.”

“But why should one of you kill her?”

“We didn’t!” Kate Brady insisted. “And neither did Wayne. Do you think any of us would carry knockout drops around with us in case there was an opportunity to use them? And they work so quickly that the poor girl would have been on her face before she ever reached the car.”

“Come, my friend,” Simon Ark said quietly. “We must not make another mistake.”

Veronica Brand was painting her living room wall when we arrived, making some fiery additions to the dragon’s breath. “Do you like it?” she asked, stepping back to admire her work. We’d come in after announcing ourselves through the screen door, and she was startled to suddenly realize that Sergeant Mason was with us.

“Perhaps they’ll let you decorate your cell,” Simon told her, “when you go to prison for killing Mandy Snider.”

“You’re crazy! I barely knew her!”

“Strangers kill strangers all the time, especially for money. You didn’t let her borrow that car. You drove her to Shelly’s house and waited outside in the dark. When she came out and told you about the confrontation you gave her a quick drink of something laced with chloral hydrate that knocked her out. Then you took what you wanted from her and steered the car off the road, making sure she died in the apparent accident. If foul play was suspected, you figured the Quilters would be blamed. You probably called a cab to take you home.”

“What did I take from her?”

“Money, a great deal of money. When she paid you a thousand dollars cash to substitute as Miss Death you must have known there was lots more. She’d foolishly brought a portion of her inheritance with her.”

“You think you can prove that? There was a houseful of people who could have drugged her.”

“We saw her take the fifty-dollar fee from Shelly and place it in her wallet. It wasn’t there after the accident. Someone must have been in the car with her, to drug her and take the money, and you were the most likely possibility. You took all the big bills, but you took one too many.”

Sergeant Mason came over and recited her rights. It was as if she didn’t hear him. “It was only a few thousand dollars,” she grumbled. “Not even enough to pay for a new SUV.”

“You won’t be needing a car for a good long time,” he told her.

Copyright © 2002 by Edward D. Hoch.