Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 77, No. 7. Whole No. 454, June 17, 1981

A Friend Who Understands by Donald Olson

© 1981 by Donald Olson

An unusual story... “Still without a whisper of impatience in his tone he asked what it was she meant to do, and this time, in a breathless, defiant rush of words, she told him”...

For Harriet Winger the passage of time had been as uneventful, by and large, as a journey, blindfolded in a balloon, across a vast and silent desert with nothing to gauge the distance she had traveled. Nor had there been husband, children, or lovers whose changing faces might have served as guideposts of her own progress through life. She was no longer certain even of her own age. The dusty, gold-scrolled mirrors throughout the big old house on Canterbury Drive reflected the face of a woman who might have been anywhere from fifty to seventy, for though her untidy gray hair and scrawny neck revealed the truth, her face itself had retained a youthfulness that might have led one to believe nothing very dramatic had ever occurred to disturb the tranquillity of those passive features reflected in the glass.

It was a face as rarely seen in the community as anything else that lay hidden behind the severe brick façade of the Tuscan-style mansion brooding well back from the road among its unkempt lawns and gardens. And yet Harriet was disturbed, a disturbance that had progressed over the past few weeks from feelings of mild neurotic distress to frantic desperation. This latter acute stage of despair dated from the moment she first realized that Piper’s betrayal of her affection — all those years of solitary devotion! — gave every indication of becoming a permanent estrangement.

For weeks the bird had refused to respond to her endearments, had not touched his food, and remained mutely unresponsive to the frail, beseeching finger gently prodding his green- and yellow-feathered body through the bars of his antique cage in the gloomy, mahogany-burdened dining room. His spiny claws clung to the perch, his yellow head rested against the bars, his clove-seed eyes regarded her with the pitiless stare of a stranger.

Yes, Harriet had grown desperate without Piper’s constant perky squawks of sympathy and encouragement. She felt bewilderingly alone, bereft of her only source of comfort in a world dominated by the cranky, demanding presence of Uncle Emil. She heard him now — tap-tap-tap... tap-tap-tap, and she turned her drooping eyes wearily toward the great spindled staircase down which floated that imperious summons. Since Uncle Emil had lost the power of speech after a series of strokes, his only means of communicating his incessant demands for attention were by tapping his cane on the carpetless floor of his room or by clapping his hands like some Eastern potentate summoning a faithful slave. Tap-tap-tap. Clap-clap-clap. Day and night sometimes. And when she had dragged herself up the long flight of stairs more often than not all he wanted her to do was keep him company; for hours she was obliged to sit rocking away in the corner while the old man lay on his bed as mute and cheerless as Piper had become in the last few weeks.

She had borne it all with unprotesting fortitude in years past when the occasional relative or neighbor would stop in and commend her for her saintliness, her compassion, for the stoic resignation with which she wore her martyr’s crown. But now the relatives and the old neighbors had all died. Most of the adjoining houses were cut up into flats whose young occupants ignored her. But then what else could they do when she herself never stepped outside the door or answered the doorbell when anyone did venture to ring it?

The particular form her desperation took was in a feeling of horrible confinement and a morbid awareness of the tomb-like silence in which she lived. Even the clocks had betrayed her, refusing any longer to chime or tell the time. And now that Piper had joined this conspiracy of silence it had become unbearable. She was obsessed with a rage to escape. Yes, to escape before it was too late, before she herself became as stiff and silent as the massive Victorian furniture, the clocks, the bird. Escape from that endless tap-tap-tap, clap-clap-clap. Escape from the chair in Uncle Emil’s room. She would go mad if she didn’t escape.

Although the telephone still functioned — she needed that to place her grocery order — it never rang, and she had long ago stopped subscribing to the daily paper. Still she would sometimes pick up one of the old papers stacked messily in the hall and read herself to sleep over it. That the wars, accidents, births, deaths, and marriages she read about had occurred years in the past made no difference to her. Events never changed, only names.

But now one evening, driven by that furious sense of desperation, she did something quite extraordinary. Her eyes happened to fall on a personals ad in the classified section of the paper lying across her lap. It read:

Troubled? Lonely? Desperate? Need a friend who understands? Call this number.

A fragile hope invaded her mind as the word desperate leaped out at her. She was desperate. Oh, frightfully desperate. And Piper, the only friend who had understood her, had unaccountably and perversely abandoned her.

Before the impulse had a chance to die she got out of bed, fumbled in her sewing basket for a pair of shears, and clipped the ad from the paper. Scarcely knowing what she would say, she dialed the number in the ad with a trembling finger, and only when a man’s voice responded did she feel a sudden shyness and confusion. The mere sound of a stranger’s voice distracted her from the purpose of her call.

“Who is this? Is someone there?” the voice kept repeating, and finally, in a tremulous little-girl voice she whispered into the phone, “Harriet. It’s Harriet.”

“Harriet?”

“Who is this?” she asked falteringly.

“Denton.”

“I saw it... in the paper. I had to call.” And she read out the text of the ad. “I am desperate!” she cried, frightened by a horrible doubt that she might not qualify for the understanding promised in the ad. “I truly am desperate.”

“What seems to be the trouble?” the voice asked, not urgently but with a gentle, inquiring curiosity. And then: “Hello? Harriet? You still there?”

“Yes... yes. I’m always here. I can’t get out.”

“Now do calm down, my dear. I don’t understand. You say you can’t get out? Do you mean you’re trapped somewhere?”

Trapped! Oh, yes, she was trapped. “It’s him. Uncle Emil. I have to take care of him. It’s awful. Degrading. I could bear it as long as Piper would talk to me. But now he won’t. I don’t know why, but he won’t say a word. I feel so all alone. Desperate, desperate, desperate!”

The jumble of words seemed not to put him off, and when she paused for breath he replied soothingly, as if to a child, “Now, Harriet, my dear, please start from the beginning. If I’m to help you I must know precisely what the problem is. Do you understand, Harriet?”

Her head jerked toward the door. Did she hear something? Alarmed, she pressed the mouthpiece to her lips. “He mustn’t know. He’d be furious.” And then in a burst of emotion: “There’s no other way out! I can’t just leave him. I don’t want to do it but there’s no other way.”

“You don’t want to do what, my dear?”

But now she hesitated, frightened and unsure. “Nobody would understand.”

“Isn’t that why you called me? Because I might understand?”

A friend who understands. Yes, that’s what the ad promised.

“Somebody must listen. Somebody must understand.”

Unceasingly patient, the voice promised to understand, but now Harriet’s courage failed her. “Not now,” she whispered. “I’m afraid.”

A sigh came over the line. “I understand, my dear. Perhaps you’ll call me again?”

She dropped the phone ever so softly and craned her neck above the pillow, listening.

Gary flung the door shut and propped his dripping umbrella against the wall in the foyer before advancing into the living room of the apartment. His face wore a tired, disgruntled frown as he ripped off his tie and headed for the liquor cabinet. Denton was just hanging up the phone.

“For me?” Gary asked peevishly.

Black hair and the ivory pallor of his skin gave an impression of manliness combined with delicacy to the face of the young man sprawled negligently on the sofa. He smiled up at his friend. “Could have been, if among your acquaintance of female crackpots there’s one named Harriet.”

“I don’t know any Harriet.”

“Then it must have been a wrong number. Do you get many?”

Gary flung him a satirical look. “I’m not around here long enough to get any calls, wrong or right. I have to work, remember?” Gary managed a restaurant and worked from noon until often late at night. Now, sipping his drink, he regarded the indolent, mocking expression on Denton’s face with frank distaste.

“Any luck today?” Gary asked.

“To the extent I did not get mugged, break a leg, or run into any of my more belligerent creditors, yes, one might say I was lucky.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, Gary, I know what you mean. And the answer is no, I didn’t get the part.”

“Or look for any other sort of job, needless to say.”

“I’m an actor, not a dishwasher.”

Gary drained his glass and stood twirling it in his hands. “The job at Raffaelo’s is hardly a dishwasher’s. Believe me I had to do a good job of acting myself to convince Tony you could handle it.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

This flippant reply seemed all that Gary needed to make up his mind. “Then that’s it, pal. I told you I’d put you up for a couple of weeks. It’s been over a month. You’ll have to make other arrangements before the weekend.”

Denton reacted with a malicious grin. “Darling Peggy’s idea, no doubt? I can just hear her: ‘He’s nothing but a sponger. Kick him out.’ ”

“Peggy has nothing to do with it. I’ve just had it up to here. So let’s drop it, okay?”

“And where do you suggest I pitch my tent?”

“Try a hotel.”

“Gladly. If you’ll tender me a friendly loan.”

“Considering I haven’t seen a dime of what I’ve already given you? Don’t be dumb.”

Recalling something mad Harriet had said, Denton replied with a hopeless shrug, “A friend who understands. How can I be so lucky?”

“Can it, Denton. If you’re really all that desperate you’d take whatever job you could find.”

With the bizarre phone call still at the back of his mind, Denton laughed. “Oh, I’m not nearly so desperate as some people. I’ll get by.”

In a spirit of newfound rebelliousness Harriet stubbornly shut her ears to the cranky tap-tap-tap that dogged her consciousness as she wandered aimlessly from room to room in the gloomy old house. I don’t hear a thing, she kept telling herself. It’s all in my mind. She stopped in front of Piper’s cage and returned his sullen, glazed stare with an arch smile. “I don’t, my darling. I don’t hear a blessed thing.”

But of course she did. It kept hammering relentlessly in her brain. Her mind was made up. There was only one way to silence it.

“Harriet? I was afraid you weren’t going to call. I was worried about you, my dear.”

“Were you, Denton? Were you truly?”

“Well, the way you sounded last night. I mean, so desperate.”

“Oh, I am. Frightened and desperate.”

“I know the feeling, my dear. Believe me.”

“I can’t bear it any longer!” she cried. “I’ve made up my mind. I really am going to do it. There’s no other way.”

Still without a whisper of impatience in his tone he asked what it was she meant to do, and this time, in a breathless, defiant rush of words, she told him.

“I’m going to kill him!”

The ensuing prolonged silence frightened her. “Denton? Are you there? Please answer me.”

His voice reached her, subdued, a trifle anxious. “I’m here, Harriet. I heard you.”

“I know it sounds most awfully wicked, but it’s not. How could it be? He’s a miserable, ugly, detestable old man!”

Another pause. “Of course, dear. I understand. But do you think it’s wise? Not everybody is as understanding as I am, you know.”

“Nobody cares. We’re all alone here. We’ve been shut up here together, just the two of us, for years and years. Nobody will ever know.”

Suddenly a vision invaded her mind, a vision of blue skies and great puffy white clouds reflected in a mirror-smooth lake bordered with tall green pine trees. Where was it? She strained to bring the picture into focus. Mama and Papa were with her, she remembered that, and there was a wicker picnic basket and the sound of laughter.

“Oh, Denton, I must get away from here!”

“Harriet? Where is ‘here?’ You must tell me so I can understand. Where do you live?”

The question revived the memory of a smiling old lady in the pavilion by the lake.

“And what is your name, dear?” And she spoke the answer aloud, as if she were back there now, staring up into the lady’s face, “My name is Harriet Winger and I live at 82 Canterbury Drive.”

As if bemused by the childlike, singsong reply, Denton laughed softly. “That’s better, dear. You sound much calmer now. It must be terribly difficult for you, all alone with your Uncle Emil to take care of... and very expensive, I shouldn’t wonder?”

“Oh, he’s rich. He pretends not to be, but he doesn’t fool me. There’s ever so much money hidden around the house. And all those gold watches and gold coins. His precious collection. Always drooling over it, he is.”

“But what do you live on, dear?”

“The bank used to send a check every month,” she explained, warming to Denton’s interest. How wonderful it was to find a friend who understood! “But I never cashed them and now Mr. Hopson brings the money and puts it in the mailbox.”

Mentioning Mr. Hopson’s name suddenly brought the cottage to mind, reawakening an instinct of pleasure long forgotten. The cottage! It must still be there. She remembered dimly being pestered by some other creature from the bank who wanted her to sell it, but she had refused. And now it came to her as the answer to a prayer.

“I’ll move out to the cottage on the lake,” she confided to Denton. “Just Piper and I. It’s this house, I know it is. Piper will be his old self again once we’re at the cottage.”

She became aware that Denton was speaking. “...a perfectly divine idea, dear. But I can’t believe you’re really serious about — you know. A nice refined lady like you? How could you possibly kill Uncle Emil?”

“With his medicine! I’ll put something in his medicine.” She darted a look toward the bedroom door, then hugged the phone to her head, whispering softly, “It’s called arsenic. It’s in a glass jar in the cellar.”

“Now Harriet, you mustn’t do anything rash. Someone might come to the house—”

“I told you. Nobody ever comes.”

“Perhaps if I came to see you — we could talk about it.”

This provoked a panicky response. “Oh, no. Never. Uncle Emil would have a fit. The last man who came calling on me was all but thrown bodily out of the house.” Now what was his name? Gordon? George? She couldn’t even remember what he looked like.

“But didn’t you say your uncle is an invalid? I’m sure he couldn’t—”

“He just pretends not to be able to walk. He doesn’t fool me. I hear him at night when I’m in bed. Roaming all around the house. He just makes believe he’s helpless so I’ll wait on him hand and foot. He’s been doing it for years.”

Denton assured her that he understood her predicament but urged her not to do anything until they’d had more time to talk about it. “You sound awfully tired now, Harriet. Why don’t you try to get a good night’s sleep and then call me again tomorrow night.”

She was tired. Dreadfully tired. She had forgotten what a strain the most casual social intercourse could place on the mind. It had been so long since she had had an understanding friend to confide her troubles to.

Denton made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner the following night, which might have been barely palatable if good old Gary hadn’t balked at bringing any more beer into the house. Or food either, for that matter. Peggy’s bright idea, no doubt. “Starve the bum out,” was no doubt her advice. And to think it was he who had introduced Gary to her.

Now he was left with no choice but to move out. Only you can’t move out without somewhere to move in. Not that Gary cared about that. Fair-weather friends. They were all alike. Denton had relieved his boredom these last few nights by listening to Desperate Harriet but had not seriously given any thought to how he might exploit the situation. It was all too bizarre. But now he kept thinking about what she had let drop about all those gold watches, gold coins, and money hidden in the house. Could it be true? And was she really all alone there except for an invalid uncle?

Denton, to be fair, had never actually stooped to out-and-out thievery, but then he had never been quite so desperate himself. Besides, what good was money to a fruitcake like Harriet and her bedridden uncle? She’d no doubt be carted away once Uncle Emil was dead and whatever money there was would probably find its way into some crummy nursing home or crooked lawyer’s pockets.

He decided there was only one way to find out how much of Harriet’s blather might be true, and having scrounged enough change from Gary’s clothes and bureau drawers to cover cab fare, he set out for Canterbury Drive in a light rain shower.

He got out at the end of the street, turned up his coat collar, and proceeded to look for number 82. The area was one of once majestic old dwellings just east of Delevan Park which had been converted to doctors’ offices, headquarters for various charities, and apartments. Number 82 stood like a forgotten relic among all the others. An iron-railed fence supporting great raggedy clumps of overgrown rhododendrons bordered the property. It was an almost comically spooky old place and as Denton crept through the gate and along the winding sidewalk he would have sworn no one could possibly still reside there, it projected such a dismal air of decay and neglect. Even in broad daylight it would have presented a forbidding aspect with its vine-covered brick walls and tall arched windows.

That it was not in fact abandoned became clear when he spotted a dim light in one of the upper windows. He checked his watch. It was one hour past midnight. He circled the house and with the cautious use of his flashlight confirmed that all the doors were locked. Having done that he wasn’t sure what course to pursue. Had there been more than the one light visible he might have boldly rung the doorbell just to see what would happen. He could always say he was looking for some non-existent neighbor. But having observed the extreme neglect of the premises he was now inclined to believe Harriet’s story of living alone in the mansion with Uncle Emil.

A sudden increase in the rain’s force decided him. Discovering a broken windowpane in the enclosed back porch he managed to dislodge it, stick his hand in, and raise the window. Once inside he found the door into the house itself easy to jimmy open. He found himself in a sort of pantry and after listening for a minute or so he proceeded to explore.

Suddenly he froze. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. From somewhere in the rooms beyond he heard it and recalled Harriet’s bitter mimicking of this sound that had so disturbed her. And no wonder. It twisted his own nerves into a knot. But as it plainly came from the upper regions of the house he felt safe in progressing beyond the kitchen into a wide dark-paneled hall. He stifled a gasp as his foot collided with something bulky, and flashing his light downward he saw that it was an untidy bundle of faded newspapers, a number of which littered the floor; they struck a discordant note as his light glanced off tall gilt-framed mirrors and along the dusty surface of cold white marble. That the house could indeed be a treasure trove filled him with a nerve-tingling excitement.

He moved stealthily into the other rooms, occasionally recoiling as invisible cobwebs trailed wispily across his face, and gradually his nostrils grew accustomed to a pervasive odor of decomposition. Not the ripe, sickening aroma of recent decay but more a stale, lingering accumulation of years. Advancing into the dining room his light presently came to rest on the ornate birdcage.

Denton uttered a faint grunt of revulsion as the bird itself became trapped in the light’s beam. The thing had obviously been dead for weeks. He smiled. No wonder it had lapsed into silence. Meanwhile the tapping still continued from somewhere overhead. In the parlor — he instinctively thought of it as such with its clutter of walnut-carved Victorian furniture — his light revealed a newspaper flung across the seat of a horsehair-upholstered loveseat. A neatly excised square caught his eye. Evidently something had been clipped from the classified section. He noted the paper’s date: September 3, 1947. Well, that explained one thing. Not a wrong number but the wrong decade.

Realizing that a systematic search of the premises would require hours of patient snooping he decided it was essential to determine who in fact occupied the house and to do that he would have to explore the upper rooms.

The tapping grew louder as he ascended the stairs and when he reached the top he discovered its source — a raindrop struck him unexpectedly square on the nose. As he moved aside the steady plop-plop-plop resumed.

A thread of light showed beneath the nearest door. Hearing no sound from within the room as he pressed an ear to the panel he quietly opened the door. In the dingy glow of a pink-shaded bedlamp he saw Harriet asleep on the bed, her nest of ratty gray hair framing a curiously young-old face. He retreated, shutting the door behind him.

The two adjoining bedrooms were both vacant and when he arrived at the one at the end of the passage he knew it must be Uncle Emil’s. Wasn’t it likely that if there were in fact gold coins and watches they would be secreted in this room? Even if he disturbed the old man he wouldn’t be able to cry out, assuming Harriet had been telling the truth about his speechlessness. Without actually thinking of it as a possible weapon, Denton gripped the flashlight more tightly in his sweating fist.

One sweep of the light revealed what Denton had expected to find. Beneath the covers in a huge carved-oak bed the figure did not move. As Denton crept to the side of the bed his nostrils were assailed by an even more oppressive odor of dusty corruption. He had to make certain the old fellow was indeed asleep and not shamming.

He reached across and carefully lifted the cover, then almost instantly reared back with an audible gasp of horrified disgust. If the bird had been dead for weeks, Uncle Emil had clearly been decaying for months.

With a clatter the flashlight dropped from Denton’s hand and rolled under the bed. Panic-stricken, he fell to his knees and scrambled to retrieve it. Unable to find it he sprang to his feet and as he tried to flee from the room, he collided heavily in the darkness with a small side chair. Some object rolled off its seat as the chair overturned. Denton’s hand closed around a heavy cane with a metal knob on its end. Using it to feel his way in the inky blackness he retreated back toward the stairs. All he wanted now was to get out of this putrid-smelling charnel house.

The noise from Uncle Emil’s room awakened Harriet with a start. She rose up in bed, her heart pounding. Tap-tap-tap. Her hand flew to her throat. It was no nightmare. It was real. He was out of his room. The old devil was again on the prowl.

Desperate, desperate, desperate. It had to end. Now! Tonight! She felt she would never sleep again if she did not once and for all find the courage to do what must be done.

Her fingers fumbled in the bedside table drawer and closed around the pair of shears with which she had cut out the clipping. Clutching them to her breast she crawled out of bed and tiptoed to the door.

Tap-tap-tap... He was right outside. With a wailing screech of rage and terror she flung open the door and plunged the shears into the dark figure poised to descend the stairs. With a long-drawn dying scream the figure plunged headlong into the darkness below.

The shrill jangling of the phone awakened Gary out of a sound sleep. With a muttered oath he rolled over and snatched it up.

“Denton! Denton!”

Gary’s temper exploded. “He’s not here!”

The hysterical, pleading voice paid no heed. “I did it, Denton! I did it! I’m so frightened, Denton. Tell me what to—”

Gary banged the phone down and with a heavy groan of annoyance buried his face in the pillow. Yes, lady, he’s gone, but keep trying. He’s not gone for good, the bum, the freeloader.

Nobody could be that lucky.