Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, No. 5. Whole No. 855, November 2012

The Suitcase by Edward D. Hoch

Since 2008, when this magazine lost one of its greatest contributors, Edward D. Hoch, we’ve been presenting occasional reprints of stories he sold to other publications. Most of the stories have not been typical of the sort of work Ed Hoch did for EQMM. His work for us was predominantly in the classical vein — fairly clued whodunits with series characters readers came to know intimately. Over the past four years we’ve tried to show, through these reprints, Ed Hoch’s versatility. Here, for instance, we see that he was a master of the story with a twist in the tail.

The plane, a silver bird dipping its wings to the far-off dawn, came in low over Jason Lean’s farmland. Too low, he remembered thinking, for he’d seen so many hundreds on the airport approach that he almost at times felt he could fly one. Too low, with the rising sun in the pilot’s eyes and the double row of power lines crossing the tip of the hill. He shouted something, to be heard only by the field birds and the indifferent cows, then screwed his face in a sort of horror as the great plane touched the unseen wires.

There was a crackle of blue flame, no more than that of a match lit and suddenly dying, but it was enough to spell death to an airliner. The entire hillside seemed to explode as the plane twisted into the ground, boring deep like some hibernating animal, spewing flames that might have told you the animal was a dragon.

Jason Lean watched until the first flash of flame had died, and then began the short trek across the valley to the wreckage on the hillside. Others would have seen the crash too, he knew, and already it would be tapping out on the news tickers of the world. How many dead — fifty, sixty? Those big planes carried a lot of people these days. He shook his head sadly at the thought, but did not increase his pace. He already knew he would find nothing alive when he reached the smoldering wreckage.

Now here and there a tree was burning, and there ahead he could see the tail section of the plane itself, a great silver thing that sat silent now as a giant tombstone. Padded seats, so comfortable with their bodies still strapped sitting — grotesque, but all too real. And strewn across the landscape, wreckage, flesh, baggage, mail pouches, fallen trees, dangerously dangling wires. As if a giant hand — a flaming devil’s hand — had written its signature on the hillside. All dead, all.

He walked among them, terrified, remembering somewhere deep within the recesses of his mind a time when, very young, he’d walked through a country graveyard at night. He took in all the details of grief and tragedy, the spilled suitcases, the child’s toys, the scorched and splintered packing cases... and then his eyes fell on one suitcase, resting apart from the others, its leather hide barely marked by the smoke.

It was a large bag, of pale pebbled pigskin, with two tough straps around it to reinforce the lock. It was the only one he saw that had neither burned nor tumbled open to spread its contents over the landscape. Jason Lean stood for some moments staring at the bag, as if it held some strange sort of fascination for him. Then, in an instant of certainty, he stood and grasped the plastic handle, lifting the suitcase from the ground. He turned once to look over his shoulder, to make certain that none of the blackened corpses moved in accusation. Then he hurried back down the hillside, through the smoky haze of destruction, carrying his treasure like some traveler only just returned from a world tour.

“A plane crash,” Martha said when he returned. “What a terrible thing!”

“Terrible,” Jason agreed. He always agreed with his wife. “I was over there, looking at the wreckage. They’re all dead.” Already, on the distant ridge, they could see men moving like ants. Police, ambulances, morgue wagons, reporters — all converging now on the scene of disaster. Making their way carefully around the fallen wires and the blackened wreckage. Hoping, then feeling hope die as they saw what Jason Lean had seen.

“What’s that you’ve got?” she asked, noticing the suitcase for the first time.

“I found it up by the wreckage. It’s not burned or anything. Must have been thrown clear.”

“And you took it?” She made the words into something terrible, and for the first time he realized just what he had done. “You took it? From the dead?”

“I... I thought it might have something valuable in it. They’re all dead. It belongs to no one.” But even as he spoke the words he knew he would never convince her.

“That’s looting! It’s like robbing graves, but even worse. Jason, you have to take it back this minute, leave it where you found it.”

“Don’t be silly — how could I do that when the hill’s swarming with people?” It was the first time he had ever raised his voice to her, and he regretted it at once. “I’ll get rid of it, just as soon as I open it up and look inside.”

“Jason, you’re not opening that suitcase! I can’t imagine anything more horrible than pawing about in the belongings of some poor dead creature who was so much alive just an hour ago.”

“But... but there might be something valuable inside, Martha. It’s an expensive suitcase, you can see that. Suppose it contains fancy clothes, or an expensive camera, or important papers. Or even money!”

“Jason, either you return that suitcase this minute, or you take it out behind the barn and bury it. I’m not going to have it here. I’m not going to have you opening it and going through it. I don’t want the man’s ghost coming and haunting us for your awful crime!”

He knew it was useless when she got in one of those moods. And yet his will was torn between her commanding words and the questioning suitcase that rested now on the floor between his feet. “Martha...”

“Bury it! Get it out of my sight, Jason!”

“All right.” He went out with bowed head, carrying the heavy suitcase beyond the faded red barn to the little animal graveyard. While Martha watched from a distance he dug a shallow hole and buried the pigskin bag between the old cow and last year’s cat. “All right. It’s done.”

But as he followed her into the house there was a sort of sadness in his heart.

The following morning a car stopped on the road and a tall young man walked back to the barn where Jason was busy with his daily chores. “Hello there,” he called out. “Got a minute?”

Jason set down his milk pails and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Sure, mister. What can I do for you?”

“We’re investigating yesterday’s plane crash over on the hill. We thought you might have seen something that could help us.” The man had taken out a little notebook. “You’re Jason Lean, correct?”

“That’s me, and I saw it, all right. Plane came in too low. Hit those power lines. Was just at dawn, and I suppose the sun might have blinded the pilot for a minute. It hit the lines and that was the end of it.”

“Did you go over to see the wreckage?”

“I... No, I started to, but then turned back. I was afraid of those fallen power lines.”

“Just as well,” the investigator said, making a brief note in his book. “You couldn’t have done anything. They were all killed instantly.”

“Yes. Horrible.” Jason turned to stare out across the valley, toward the hillside scar which would take many seasons to heal.

“Thanks for your time,” the man said. “I may be back to talk to you again.”

“Certainly. Anything I can do...”

The man nodded a smile and started back to his car. He hadn’t asked about the suitcase, Jason thought. They’d never missed it. Burnt to ashes, they probably supposed.

And that night, in bed next to the cold flesh of his wife, Jason imagined it all again. Opening the suitcase, finding a lifetime’s treasure nestled there waiting. What would it be? Money? A woman’s wardrobe and jewels? A salesman’s sample kit of fine furs? Something for Martha, perhaps. Or himself. Even a fine new suit that could be made to fit him.

The next day, in the late afternoon, while Martha was cleaning in the front of the house, his uncertain footsteps took him once more to the animal graveyard beyond the barn. Perhaps, if he could only dig up the suitcase and look — then bury it again before she ever knew the difference. Yes, that was what he would do. Must do.

He retrieved the old spade from the barn and started to dig. After a moment’s work he could feel the familiar leather hide as he scraped the dirt from it.

“Jason!”

“Martha. What are you...?”

“Jason, you were going to open it! Cover it up this instant! Don’t you realize it will bring us nothing but tragedy? Don’t you realize it belongs to a dead man?”

“All right, Martha. I was just...”

“Cover it up, Jason. And don’t do that again.”

He covered it up.

But still, as the days passed and the memory of the crash itself drifted further to the back of his conscious mind, there was still the shape of the sealed suitcase to obsess him. He saw it in his waking and sleeping hours, saw it closed as first he’d met it, and open with all its treasures exposed. It became, in various fantasies, a spy’s hoard of secret plans, an embezzler’s final crime, a businessman’s stock of everyday valuables. He imagined all the hundreds of things that might come tumbling out if only he looked. The things he’d never owned; like an electric razor, or a portable radio, or a fine camera.

No, decided Jason with finality, after a week of torment. Whatever was in that suitcase, it was not going to rot in the ground behind the barn. He found Martha in the kitchen and told her of his decision.

“I’m going to dig it up and open it,” he said.

“Jason...”

“Nothing you can say will stop me, Martha, I have to know what’s inside it.”

“Jason, there’s death in that suitcase. I can feel it in my bones.”

“I have to know!” he screamed at her. And when she stepped heavily into his path he brushed her aside as he would some animal in the field.

“Stop, Jason!”

He hit her, only to shut that refusing mouth, only to silence her for a few important moments. She fell heavily, her head catching the edge of the old stove. He sucked in his breath and bent over her, chilled now to the bone. She wasn’t moving and he knew in some fantastic manner that he’d killed her.

But he didn’t stop. He hurried on to the barn, with a speed born now of nameless panic. The spade, digging in the familiar earth, uncovering, revealing.

Yes, the suitcase. Still there like some Pandora’s box awaiting him. His hands fumbled with the straps, teeth biting into lips, forehead sweating a chill moisture.

But it was locked.

Into the barn, carrying it gently now, with clods of earth falling from it. Into the barn, and a few careful blows with the pitchfork, prying the lock apart until it snapped under the pressure. Finally.

He opened the suitcase.

The government inspector found them, some time later, when he stopped by the Lean farmhouse to ask some further questions about the airliner crash. He found Martha Lean on the kitchen floor, and she looked so peaceful it was hard to believe she was dead.

And he found Jason Lean in the barn, kneeling in a sort of daze over an open suitcase. It was a salesman’s sample case. It was filled with leather-bound Bibles.

Copyright © 1962 by Edward D. Hoch. First published in The Saint magazine.