Kiss and Kill

Chapter XVII

While I busied myself with studying the farm appliance business and getting acquainted with the community, Mavis spent enough time ostensibly looking for a job to create the impression that she really wanted one, though she would have been considerably put out if anyone had actually offered her a position. Dewey seemed content to loll around the house waiting for the expected opening at the store to develop.

Helen threw herself wholeheartedly into housekeeping duties.

We discovered that Westfield was a charming village. There were many lovely old homes, and most streets were lined with ancient elms. At the moment these were bare, but it wasn’t hard to visualize that when the winter passed, the streets would be beautiful green-roofed arcades. While it was an old town, there seemed to be some money in it, for most of the large old frame buildings were well kept up.

Mixed with the old-fashioned element which made the town so comfortable was a good deal of modernism, too. The stores of the shopping center were as streamlined as any in large cities, there was an excellent first-run movie theater, and even one or two glittering cocktail lounges. The net effect was of a wealth of tradition, which still reached over into modern times to give the town its pleasant flavor, without the natives allowing it to sap their vitality. For despite its quietly homey atmosphere, I sensed a good deal of vitality and forward thinking among Westfield’s businessmen.

It wasn’t hard to fall in love with the town.

My relationship with Helen developed very pleasantly, too. She was an excellent housewife. As we grew to know each other better she developed into a more and more vivacious companion, and she seemed to be pouring out to me all the passionate love which had been bottled up within her for thirty-two years.

Sometimes, in my enjoyment of our day-to-day life, I would forget the eventual plans Mavis and I had for Helen and Dewey to the extent that I would find myself seriously looking forward to the moment when we would take over the Farmer’s Appliance Store and become permanent members of the community. Then it was like a dash of cold water in the face when I jerked myself back to reality.

As Christmas neared, Mavis began to grow a little impatient as to when I intended to act. One afternoon while Helen was shopping and Dewey, for a change, was out of the house too, we nearly had a fight.

“Hasn’t the insurance been in force long enough?” Mavis demanded.

“Only three weeks,” I said. “We’ll wait until after the first of the year.”

“You mean you expect to spend Christmas as that woman’s husband?”

“I certainly don’t expect to spend it in mourning,” I snapped at her. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing with me,” she said. “I’m beginning to wonder what’s the matter with you.”

I discovered what was the matter with me Christmas Eve. We had a tree with the usual exchange of presents, and Helen acted as delighted as a child. She had given me a new robe and slippers. My gift to her, which made Mavis stare at me balefully, was a tiny gold wrist-watch for which I had paid the unnecessary price of seventy-five dollars.

I had given Mavis a scarf and a pair of gloves.

In bed that night Helen was still showering me with excited thanks for the watch. And as she whispered into my ear, I suddenly realized something I must have known subconsciously for some time.

I was in love with Helen.

As I lay there with Helen in my arms, thinking about my new discovery, I realized not only that I was in love with her, but that it was the first time in my life I had ever been really in love. Whatever it was I had felt for Mavis, it had no comparison to this overwhelming desire to protect and live the rest of my life with the soft creature lying next to me.

All at once, I knew with great certainty that all Mavis’s and my plans were off. I intended to take over Gwynn’s store, I intended to make it pay, and I intended to live in this town with Helen as my wife permanently.

The decision involved considerable alternate planning. I knew it was no use trying to explain it to Mavis, for she would never accept a simple ultimatum to get out of my life and stay out. I remembered a scene a year or two back when Mavis had suspected I was carrying on a flirtation with a blonde during one of our periodic vacations. It was one of the few times I ever saw her really angry, and the only time she ever dared talk to me in the tone she used that night.

She had said, “I’ve let you push me around since the day we met, Sam. I’ve done everything you told me. I’ve let you make a killer out of me. I’ve watched you live with other women, burning with jealousy, even though I knew they meant nothing to you. I would have let you push me into bed with other men, if you’d wanted to run that kind of a racket. There isn’t anything in the world I wouldn’t do for you. Except one thing. Give you up.” Then she had screamed in complete rage, “That blonde’s no mark. You stay away from her!”

No, Mavis wouldn’t accept my change of plans. I knew that even suggesting it would bring on a tornado which would make her rage over my mild flirtation with the blonde seem like a gentle spring breeze. In all probability she would create a scene which would end with both of us on trial for our lives in a half-dozen different states.

There was really only one solution, I realized.

I was going to have to kill Mavis.

I reached the decision quite calmly. Five years earlier, just the thought of killing Mavis would have appalled me. But I had gotten a lot of practice in murder since then. It had become such a part of my life that it was the logical solution to any problem.

I started my campaign a few days later by telling Mavis in private that I was beginning to miss her so much, I wanted to arrange for us to get away for a few days.

“I don’t want to pull this thing until a couple of weeks after New Year’s,” I said. “When people have had a chance to get over the holidays. Before that we couldn’t get a judge to act on unfreezing the bank accounts, and we’d just have to sit and sweat it out anyway. But I’m going crazy for you. I can’t wait three more weeks.”

Mavis was so overjoyed at the suggestion that it didn’t even occur to her this was the first time I had ever violated my strict rule of never dropping our brother-sister relationship, even temporarily, when we were on a job.

“How will we work it?” she asked breathlessly.

“Buffalo’s only sixty miles from here. Suppose that right after New Year’s you announce you have a job offer in Buffalo and have to go up there to check it. Ill offer to drive you up. We’ll leave on Wednesday the sixth and stay over until Friday night.”

“Suppose Helen wants to go along?”

“I can handle Helen,” I said.

On Monday, January fourth, Mavis began putting the plan in operation. At dinner she announced that she had spotted an ad for a stenographer in the Buffalo Courier Express, had phoned the prospective employer long distance, and had an appointment to see him Wednesday afternoon.

“I think I’ll stay for a couple of days and see what Buffalo’s like while I’m up there,” she remarked.

I made no comment at the time. I waited until the following evening at dinner.

Then I said, “A number of Gwynn’s suppliers are in Buffalo. I’ve been thinking of running up to talk to them and get their slant on the store. Think 111 drive Mavis up and spend a couple of days there myself.”

Helen voiced no objection whatever, nor did she invite herself along, apparently feeling that I’d be too busy with suppliers to bother with her. Mavis and I left early Wednesday morning.

When we reached Buffalo, I drove straight to J. N. Adams’ instead of registering at a hotel. When I parked in front of the department store, Mavis looked at me puzzledly.

“What are we going to do here?” she asked.

“I’m going down the street and kill some time in the first tavern I see,” I said. “You’re going into J. N. Adams’ and get an outfit that makes you look like a woman instead of an old-maid school teacher.” I handed her five twenty-dollar bills. “Don’t go overboard, because you’re only buying these clothes to wear for a couple of days, but if we’re going to have a short second honeymoon, I want you to look the part.”

I told her I’d give her an hour and meet her back at the car.

Promptly at the end of an hour I found her waiting at the car with a happy expression on her face and two suit boxes under her am.

“Spend it all?” I asked.

“Hardly half of it,” she said. “But wait till you see what I got.”

She was so eager to get back into something feminine, she insisted on going straight to a hotel before we even had lunch. I registered us at the Richford as Mr. and Mrs. Sam Parker of Brooklyn.

As soon as the bellhop left us alone, Mavis disappeared into the bathroom with her two boxes. She was gone nearly twenty minutes, and when she came out again she was a different woman.

She wore a white quilted skirt of heavy satin, so tight across the hips that their firm roundness was brought out in sharp relief, and an ebony black blouse open at the throat, with the V dipping to the shadowed cleft between her breasts. She had loosened her hair from its old-maidish bun and had brushed it to fall loosely about her shoulders. Expertly-applied makeup completed her transformation.

“You did all that on fifty bucks?” I asked admiringly.

“Plus a clearance-sale coat for only nineteen dollars.”

Going back into the bathroom, she returned wearing the new coat. It was of gray cloth and tailored as simply as the one she wore with her spinsterish suits. But instead of being severe, its lines somehow managed to create an effect of complete femininity.

“Can you appear in public with me now without feeling ashamed?” she asked.

“I’ll have to fight off the wolves,” I told her.