Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Dana Lyon The Living End

The living arrangements that Nell had made with her friend Emma had not been in effect a month before she realized that it had been a devastating mistake. Why, she asked herself, sitting trembling at her desk while she was going over her bills, hadn’t she left well enough alone, without worrying about money all the time? She had her little house, her so-so job with Civil Service and a pension not far in the offing, her solitude at night, her peace and quiet, even if inflation was taking a large piece out of her accumulated savings while the little apartment above was standing idle; so why hadn’t she left it that way?

Money, she thought. Worrying about the future. Seeing the savings growing smaller instead of larger, feeling the need for an increased income which she’d never get from her job now that she was this close to retirement. So that apartment upstairs that she had built and used herself years ago while her parents were still living in the downstairs quarters was the answer to her need for increased income, just sitting there waiting for another tenant.

She had tried: the nice young couple both of whom worked and were therefore out of the house all day — until she discovered that the girl had been three months’ pregnant at the time of signing the lease, and then there was the baby, waking Nell at night with its incessant crying, until she had finally had to give them their notice. What was $85 a month weighed against her peace of mind?

And then the nice-looking middle-aged woman who worked downtown and brought home man after man and was such a wretched housekeeper that some of her roaches had finally invaded Nell’s living quarters. Notice served.

And there were others, even less desirable, particularly the ones who managed to evade rent day, and those who wanted to be sociable, wanting to use her telephone or her washer, wanting her to accept C.O.D. packages and forgetting to repay her, and always and forever the excuses for not being able to pay the rent. (“Just a week or two, Nell dear — I’m expecting a check in the mail any day.”)

She had hated being a landlady, but now she was hating, even more, seeing her small savings depleted in order to take up the slack caused by inflation. Nevertheless, no more bothersome tenants — until suddenly she had thought of Emma.

Emma had been her closest friend, her chum, when they were in high school together, her confidante, nearer to her than anyone else had ever been. Arms entwined, heads together, whispering about boys, daringly discussing the origins of life — a commitment they knew would last for life. It didn’t, of course.

Nell had gone her way to college and other friends, to love affairs and marriage, to divorce and finally a job with the state, and somewhere along the way Emma had been almost forgotten. Except for one definite and unfailing commitment that had lasted all these years: they exchanged long letters on each other’s birthday and thus at least kept in touch once a year. But as time went on there was little to tell each other about their lives which had remained almost static in their later years.

They were both in their early sixties now, but this one contact remained; they dared not neglect this birthday acknowledgement for fear that whoever didn’t write would be considered dead by the other. So they had continued writing.

Emma. Nell thought now. I know she doesn’t have much money. I wonder if she’d like to take the apartment overhead. I could bring the rent down to $75, and I’d be company for her, and she’d be company for me — but not too much, not as if, heaven forbid, we had to live in the same rooms. Nell enjoyed her privacy too much, her own way of doing things — letting the dishes go if she felt like it, or flying at the cleaning chores some weekend if that was what possessed her at the time, or playing the radio late at night, or the TV, or painting in her little studio room. Snacks at any hour of the day when she was home, instead of regular meals. Quiet reading. Walks alone along the country road where she lived. Just to be alone when she wanted to be—

However, the apartment upstairs was entirely separate, and even had an outside staircase of its own, and someone like Emma, who had always been so thoughtful of others, would not make much noise. The $75 would help; it would just about take over the depletion that present-day prices had made in her savings. Well — a few more years and she’d be able to retire on her pension and what she had managed to save during the years of her enslavement. But there’d be no savings left unless she rented the apartment.

Emma was delighted. She wrote, “I have been so depressed, dearest Nell, because I thought the rest of my life would have to be spent alone, no family, even my friends here are dying off; and you make the little apartment sound so fascinating. I’ll give notice on this dinky room I live in.” Room, thought Nell: is that all she has? — and began to feel qualms along with the Good Samaritan warmth within her. “I’ll just pack up my things and get a bus ticket and be with you in a week.”

More qualms. Why was Emma in such a hurry? What was she doing that she could pack up and leave her way of life and her job and what friends she had, without another thought — too eager, perhaps, to join Nell’s life? Well, no matter, they could still lead their individual lives. Emma would be getting a cheap apartment and Nell would be getting an increased income.

Nell spent the following weekend giving the little apartment — sitting-room, kitchen, bedroom, and bath — a thorough cleaning. She laundered the curtains, put everything in place, even added a little bouquet of flowers from the garden just before she went off to the bus station to greet her friend.

“I can’t believe it!” Nell exclaimed over and over as they drove back to the house. “You seem just the same, dear. I just can’t believe it, how long has it been, you’ve hardly changed at all—”

“Nor you,” said Emma, beaming, both of them fully aware they were lying. “How could we ever have been separated for so long?”

“Well, like everyone else, we got busy with our own lives. Here we are,” and she pulled into the carport at the side of the house. “Do come into my little nest for a bite before I take you upstairs.”

“What a darling place!” Emma exclaimed, looking around Nell’s cozy living room. “Don’t bother with anything, dear, I won’t want to put you to any trouble.”

Nell beamed. “Well, if you’re not hungry, how about some sherry?”

“No, thanks, but you go ahead.”

They sat there, in Nell’s charming little living room, and for a moment said nothing. What was left to say? They had chattered all the way from the bus station, but now there was nothing left that hadn’t already been said in their long exchange of letters. They had changed, indeed: Nell, the tall, graceful, darkhaired high-school girl, was now lean rather than slender, her dark hair mostly white, her once lovely eyes shadowed by glasses, her lipstick not quite even; and Emma, the plump, plain little high-school girl was now plumper and plainer. Her faded blonde-white hair was cut in a Buster Brown fashion, making her look like a prematurely aging kindergartener, her dress was flowery, her shawl askew, and her face, as always, bland.

Out of the silence Emma finally said, “What a lovely home you have here, dear. Shall we go upstairs and look at mine?”

She exclaimed joyfully over the neat little apartment. “Just right for me!” she said. “And with you downstairs for company I’ll never get lonely—”

Apprehension washed over Nell like a sudden splash of cold water. “Well, I keep pretty busy all the time,” she explained hastily. “Working all day, then doing my chores at night, and I’ve kind of taken up painting — oh, not commercially, of course, just for my own amusement though it might develop into something someday. Now about the rent, dear. As I told you, seventy-five a month for you, though I usually get a lot more, but I decided I just didn’t want strangers up there any longer.”

“Oh, yes,” said Emma. And then, “But I don’t guess you want a deposit of a month’s rent or a lease or anything like that, do you? Being friends and all.”

“No,” said Nell patiently. “I don’t think a lease is necessary between us. Just the month’s rent.”

Emma paid her. In cash. “And I promise,” she added, smiling, “that I’ll be very careful with the utilities so they won’t add too much extra onto your expenses.”

Nell thought: Who said anything about my paying the utilities? But she kept silent, more apprehensive now than ever.

The first month was quiet and calm and Nell could now figure on replenishing her savings account toward her retirement. Except, of course, that it wasn’t a full $75 since the gas and electricity and water took up well over $10.

And it soon became apparent that Emma was far from solvent herself, so she started looking for a job. She found nothing, until finally she put an ad in the paper as baby sitter, and was repaid by a rash of answers on the telephone — Nell’s telephone, of course, since Emma claimed she couldn’t afford one of her own. Therefore Nell gave her a key to her own apartment and Emma ran down her outside stairs whenever the phone rang.

And at night, when Nell answered, she had to go out and call Emma, who never answered until Nell had climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. If she can hear the telephone when I’m not at home, Nell asked herself, why doesn’t she hear me when I call? She finally resorted to banging her broom handle on the ceiling and Emma learned that if she didn’t respond Nell would simply hang up the phone.

No matter. Emma was delighted with the $2 an hour she was paid for her services, although occasionally she was called on to supply her own transportation which, of course, meant Nell’s, and soon this became intolerable as Nell was expected to pick her up any time alter midnight, as well as to take her earlier, and what with the telephone ringing almost constantly, Nell was soon at her wits’ end. Until finally she informed Emma that she must take jobs only where transportation was provided.

“Oh,” said Emma, looking downcast. “That means I’ll have to lose a lot of my jobs because most of them expect me to drive myself. Maybe I could learn to drive your car?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” said Nell, and that was that. Until the first of the following month w hen the rent was due. Emma did not offer it and finally, five days late, Nell brought up the subject.

“Oh,” said Emma. “Well, dear, would it be all right if I just paid half of the rent this time and made it up later? You see, with business falling off and everything, I’m a little short of cash. Just for this month, of course,” she added hastily.

Nell said, “Will next month be any better? Emma, I think you should have made your financial circumstances clearer before you pulled up stakes and came here. You told me you had an income from your brother’s estate and also your Social Security that you took at sixty-two instead of waiting till sixty-five when you’d have gotten more, and that you felt you would have no trouble getting a job here. After all, dear, seventy-five dollars a month, utilities included, is very low rent for these days.”

“Yes, I know,” Emma said hurriedly, “but it’s a lot more than I paid back home where I stayed with friends. Only I thought you needed me, that you were lonely and that’s why you wanted me to come and keep you company, and then I thought how you might be pleased for me to help with the work in your dear little house, cleaning and cooking and laundering, and that would take care of the rent, and so everything would turn out fine.”

Too late Nell remembered Emma’s proclivities of the past that had earned her the name of Pollyanna Emma, who always knew that tomorrow would be sunny and happy and that everything would turn out right for little Emma. But it never had, because little Emma, being so sure of God’s grace, had done little to prepare for the inevitable rainy day. “Oh, I’m sure everything will turn out for the best,” Emma was always saying, and it frequently did but only because of the services of people around her.

So now she said, “I’m sure everything will turn out fine for both of us,” and Nell could have slapped her. But she couldn’t bear to come down too hard on her. After all, she’d given up what home she’d had (whatever that was) to do something she thought would help her friend. Emma couldn’t pay, that was certain, and so Nell said resignedly, “All right, Emma, you can help with my place,” and went back to it in despair.

So now, she thought, I have a dependent for the first time since I got my divorce.

Emma was always under foot and always in need — she had to use the telephone, she had to go to the library, the dentist, the supermarket, everything for which she had no transportation and for which Nell did. Nell would come home tired out from her job of coping with people, her boss, her co-workers, the public; and even though she tried to be as quiet as possible, hoping for a few moments of peace, there would be Emma on her doorstep saying, “Oh, Nell dear, do you suppose you could run me down to the store — or would you have an extra can of tuna fish?” or, “Drat it, I have to go to the dentist’s tomorrow, only appointment I could get was three o’clock. Do you suppose you could take a weensy bit of time off and run me to his office?”

“Emma,” said Nell, pushed to the wall, “I’m afraid this arrangement isn’t going to work out very well after all—”

And then the little round face under the white bangs would grow old and pinched and frightened and Nell would sigh and say, “Well, we’ll see—” and the little face would brighten with relief and things would go on as before...

Emma was idle and lonely. She still had a few baby-sitting jobs when the transportation was included, but the rest of her time was spent without purpose. She didn’t really care much for reading, she hated any sort of handiwork, gardens did not interest her: she had no TV set nor the wherewithal to buy one since she did not even have the wherewithal to pay the rent. This last was an unmentioned, rather sordid matter that Emma refused to acknowledge, and which Nell, exhausted, would no longer bring up after the three times she had mentioned it and as a result suffered excruciatingly from guilt qualms when she’d seen the bleak frightened look on her little friend’s face.

Little friend, hell, Nell said to herself. She’s a leech! But she doesn’t know it. She keeps saying that she’d do the same for me if our positions were reversed, take me in and give me a home and look out for me — she knows damn well our positions could never be reversed, but in the meantime she gets credit for being noble enough to offer her beneficence to me!

Nell was getting frantic. Emma said, at various times: The roof leaks. The heater doesn’t work properly. Now that summer’s here the heat is terrible, perhaps if I could have an air conditioner—?

Winter again. Emma growing plumper, Nell growing leaner. And more tired. Pitter-patter up and down the outside staircase, knocking on the door the minute Nell got home, sitting there chatting but unable to keep the disapproval out of her eyes while Nell sipped her sherry and yearned to read the paper at the same time. Why am I such a fool? Nell asked herself countless times. So, okay, I made a mistake but God knows I’ve paid for it over and over. Do I have to pay forever?

One wintry day Emma tapped lightly on the door and when Nell appeared she said, “Dear, could I see you for a minute?”

“What?” said Nell. “I’m busy with supper.”

“O-oh, it smells wonderful. Swiss steak, is it? Haven’t had any for years, it seems. Just scrambled eggs. Or tuna. Gets kind of tiresome.”

The wind blew a blast of cold air into Nell’s cozy living room.

“What is it, Emma?” she asked impatiently. I’m damned if I’m going to ask her again to have supper with me. She’ll end up a permanent unpaid boarder.

“Well, it’s just the staircase outside. It shakes a little when I use it. That nice Mr. Brown who brought me home the other night noticed it — you know, the one with the two children I sit for, they’re really darling but they do keep me busy, they get into such mischief — where was I?”

“The staircase,” said Nell with foreboding. “What about it?”

“Well, Mr. Brown noticed how it shook when he took me to my door — so polite, the other fathers never do — and he said I should tell my landlady about it.”

Nell went out and inspected the staircase. It did shake. The main post holding it up was beginning to rot at the bottom. Without Emma up there, she thought, I could just let the thing go and close up the apartment. Wait till I get ahead a little with my finances, and then I’ll have it repaired. But not with Emma there.

She said briefly, “I’ll see about it,” and went into her apartment again, ignoring the mewling plea behind her, “Oh, but Nell darling—”

Shut up, said Nell to herself. Shut up!

She sat erect in her chair and cried.

And thus Nell’s life became a shambles. There was now no further talk of paying the rent — Emma was always low on funds. And there were constant complaints (delicately put) of things that should be done to the apartment to make it more habitable, other things that were needed — like transportation, telephone, air conditioning, television — that would make Emma more comfortable and happy. With always the offer to take care of Nell’s house, cook her meals, do her cleaning, refusing to believe Nell when she said, in a moment of exasperation, that all she wanted when she got home at night was peace and quiet and solitude, a look at the paper, and her drink in private.

“You’re just saying that,” said Emma, beaming her bland smile. “But I know that you just don’t want an old friend like me doing menial work for you. But honestly, dear, I don’t mind. I’m very independent, you know, but I like to do my share—”

Another time, a day when Nell was more exhausted than usual, Emma was waiting for her at the door. “I could hardly wait,” she said excitedly. “I’ve had the most wonderful idea that would do wonders for both of us! Look, dear, it’s just that— Oh, let’s go in first and I’ll tell you while you have your little drink — it’s really a solution to everything.”

There’s only one solution, Nell thought drearily, and that’s for you to pack up and leave.

They went in.

“It’s so simple,” said Emma, her voice rising. “Look, I know you could use a little more money and of course I hardly have any at all, so — why don’t I move into that little studio room of yours, where you paint, and rent the upstairs apartment, then we’d both be better off. We could split the rent money because I’d be giving up my own apartment, of course—”

Nell looked at her incredulously. She did not go into explanations. She simply said no, and did not speak again.

Emma left, her head bowed like a child who has been unjustly disciplined, and Nell poured herself a drink and sat trembling in her chair, her thoughts black and deep.

She spoke aloud. “This,” she said, “is the living end. The absolute living end.”

A storm rose slowly, unobserved, from the north, and then came rushing like a wild insane creature of the elements, swooping down in blackness and noise and torrents and terrible sounds until the small house shook. Nell roused and lifted her face and said, “Storm, why don’t you blow off the roof of my house?” The thought felt good.

She got up finally and went outside and saw that the steps leading up to the apartment were trembling in the wind. She went to the unsteady post and examined it, the wind and rain lashing at her. Nell did not notice. She smiled and kept her hand on the fragile support, then gave it a violent shove. It moved dangerously, almost loose from its moorings, ready to go with the least pressure put upon the steps. She smiled, and went into her warm little nest, humming happily to herself.

When would Emma come? She was frightened of storms. There had been other times of wildness in the elements when she would come shivering with fear to Nell’s door and plead to spend the night there. How soon? She must come now — now when the storm was raging.

Still humming, Nell went into the kitchen, got the broom, and banged its handle on the ceiling. That should fetch her.

The storm, the wild screaming wind, pounded on the small house and shook it like an angry giant and the torrents fell and the air was filled with noise and confusion and terrifying threats; and suddenly there was another sound, the wrenching crash of the steps outside as they were torn from their moorings; and then a single human scream... At last, as if finally satisfied, the wind held itself in abeyance for an instant, and suddenly there was no sound at all. Just silence.

And Nell sat on, drink in hand, still smiling, still humming.

She was alone at last...

Emma did not die.

She lay in traction from head to foot in the hospital to which she had been taken. Her back had been so shattered that she was given little hope of ever being able to walk again. A wheelchair possibly, after months spent in bed.

Nell did not go to see her. Not, that is, until Emma fully regained consciousness. She went then only because the hospital called her and said that Emma was asking for her and that since she was Emma’s only living relative — “I am not a relative,” said Nell sharply. “I am her landlady only.”

But she went. Emma smiled wanly from the bed. “Hello, dear,” she said. “It’s so good to see you. I’ll bet you were here every day while I was unconscious.”

Nell said nothing.

After a brief silence Emma said bluntly, “The bills are enormous. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Well, I’m sure the county will take care of you. They always do in cases like yours.”

“County! What do you mean, county? I have never accepted charity from anyone.”

Oh, no? Nell thought. No free rent, no free transportation, no free food half of the time? “And,” the pathetic little voice continued, “I don’t intend to start now.”

“Then what do you propose to do?” said Nell, monumentally uninterested. “You certainly can’t pay these bills yourself.”

“I don’t have to!” said Emma triumphantly. “You know that nice Mr. Brown who used to bring me home after I sat with his kids? Well, he’s a lawyer, and he was the one who pointed out how rickety those stairs were, so he was in to see me this morning and he told me—”

There was an uneasy silence. Then Nell said, not really wanting to know, “Well? What did he say?”

“He said,” Emma explained carefully, “that you should have had those stairs fixed after I complained about them, and that undoubtedly your insurance company would come through with plenty of money to take care of me—”

There was a brief silence. Then Nell spoke. “Emma,” she said carefully, “there is no insurance company.”

“Then of course you should have had the stairs fixed. Mr. Brown inspected the hole where the post had been and he said it looked as if the post had been even more damaged than when he first saw it.”

“The storm—”

“No,” said Emma. “The storm knocked away the post but the hole was cement and it was broken all around the top — he said the post must have been hanging by a thread when the storm came. No insurance, hm? Well, dear, then I guess I’ll just have to sue you personally.”

“Sue me? What do you mean? You know I haven’t done anything to be sued for — it would just be a waste of money on your part. You can’t get blood out of a turnip. It wasn’t my fault the storm blew down the steps, so there’s no use your threatening me with a lawsuit—”

Nell’s voice rose hysterically, and the impulse to murder was there in her hands. She could almost feel them moving of their own volition, twisting in her lap, struggling to be free in order to silence this hateful creature forever.

“I have nothing, do you hear?” she cried, her voice rising out of control. “Nothing!”

“Well, then, what am I to do?” said Emma helplessly. “And of course you have something, dear. Your little house — you told me once it was free and clear — and your car and your little, or big, savings account that you plan for when you retire— Oh dear me, yes, you have a lot and of course it is only fair for you to take care of me for the rest of my life since you ought to have had the stairs fixed, you ought to have had the stairs fixed, you ought to...” She smiled contentedly, and dozed off.