Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

A Time to Cry by Edward van der Rhoer

Gerald plotted to commit a murder that would virtually defy detection. There was only one flaw in his near-perfect crime. He somehow managed to kill the wrong girl.

Gerald Coffin liked to joke that he had grown up with coffins. He meant that his family had been in the coffin business as long as he could remember. In fact, the Coffin Casket Co. had been established by his grandfather, long since deceased. But there was no one who knew more about manufacturing coffins than Gerald did, and he resented the way in which he had been kept from running the family business for so many years.

That mean old buzzard, his father, had had the good taste, as Gerald saw it, to die rather early. However, his mother, who never failed to make him squirm under her cold, probing slate-eyes, clearly had the intention of living forever. Yet even she, for all her toughness, was no match for cancer, and now she lay in her coffin in the parlor of their big old house.

Gerald could not resist taking another look at the open coffin within that endlessly dim room, with tall candles flickering at its head and foot, and seeing his mother laid out there, reassuring himself that she was really dead, in the knowledge that he was unobserved he did a bird-like dance of joy.

He was very conscious of his movements, light as those of a ballerina, and caught blurred blimpses of his fair and delicate face in the mirrors around the room. People in the town thought there was something queer about him; they talked about his weak mouth and almost nonexsitent chin, not having the slightest inkling of how dangerous he really was. It gave him a thrill merely to contemplate what he was about to do.

All was well — except for two clouds on his horizon. One large dark cloud encroaching more and more on his own blue sky — and another, equally menacing, although not much larger than the proverbial man’s hand.

First of all, the company was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Secondly, there was his secretary, Irma Pappas.

The two problems were connected, very closely connected. Gerald knew that if he could eliminate one of them, Irma, he could resolve the other.

After his mother’s illness reached the terminal stage and she could no longer watch over the business with her usual vigilance, Gerald had been able to get at the company funds and invest them with the boldness of the true businessmen he most admired. It was unbelievable bad luck that the economy had turned sour at just that moment, resulting in heavy losses.

Only Irma knew the truth about the company’s finances, although it was only a matter of time, if something did not happen, until his creditors would be hounding him and he might have to go to prison because of certain questionable actions on his part. For the moment, he had nothing to fear from Irma. She had been his mistress for nearly five years, so discreet about her relationship with him, as well as about the business, that no one else suspected what was going on.

Irma had always wanted to marry him, but Gerald had been successful thus far in putting her off by pointing out that his mother would not hesitate to disinherit him if he married the wrong woman. Irma, who was thought by Gerald’s mother to be definitely beneath him, could not but appear to be very much the wrong woman.

Now that his mother was dead, Irma would expect him to keep his promise to marry her. She had no way of knowing that there was an even stronger reason why he would not marry her. He intended to marry Peggy McFarland, the town’s richest woman now that her husband was dead. He needed Peggy’s money to stave off bankruptcy. But he knew, too, that Irma would not let go, that she would insist on his marrying her and, if he refused, ruin him by exposing his misuse of company funds.

Thus musing, Gerald kept staring at the sputtering candles and shuddered when an unexpected sound, the doorbell, shattered the silence of the big house. He knew very well who it was. He went to the solid oak front door and swung it open wide, smiling his warmest smile.

Irma, her black hair glistening from the rain, came in, carrying a large handbag. She was wearing a shapeless gray dress which gave no hint of the rich body it concealed. There was a bovine quality, like that of the great Earth Mother, which had first attracted him and still held him in its spell.

“Darling,” Gerald said, kissing her. “You remind me of an adorable peasant. You’re right on time.”

The serious look on Irma’s face did not change. She walked quickly to the door of the parlor, looking in as if she also wished to assure herself that the old woman was at long last dead.

“That’s some coffin,” she said. “It doesn’t look like one in our line.”

“It isn’t,” Gerald said, coming to a stop beside her. “I had it built specially. Magnificent, isn’t it?”

It was a very special coffin. Ever since Gerald read about the Mafia’s neat little trick of suing a split-level coffin to get rid of an unwelcome body underneath that of someone else who was legally dead, he had pondered the application of this solution to his problems. He had built it with his own hands to the same specifications, working through the night while he was alone in the factory. But he could not very well tell Irma how he intended to use it.

“Come on in, dear,” he said, taking her arm. “Let’s sit by the fire where it’s warm.”

She shivered a little when he touched her, but he was certain the shiver came from cold rather than fear.

“Did anyone think it odd that you resigned your job?” Gerald asked.

She shrugged. “Not really. I just said I was tired of living here, that I wanted to go to California.”

Gerald had worked it all out with Irma. She was to resign her job and go to California ahead of him. With her, would go most of the liquid assets of the firm. He was to join her as soon as he had declared bankruptcy and arranged for a receiver to take over. At least, that was supposed to be the plan.

“Did you check in for your flight at the airport before you came here tonight?”

“Yes,” Irma said doubtfully. “I don’t see why it was necessary.”

“We’re only ten minutes away from the airport,” Gerald said quickly. “This gives us more time together before you have to leave.”

“I know, but—”

“Honey, you’re going to love. California.” He leaned over to kiss her. “Now, how about a drink to warm you up?”

“Just a little ginger ale, Gerald.”

“Not on your life,” he said, walking to the portable bar. “How can we toast our future happiness without something alcoholic?”

Irma shook her head, but Gerald was already pouring the clear liquid into two small shot glasses. She could not see him adding the cyanide to her glass. “This is vodka, straight,” he said, his back hiding what he was doing at the bar. “I bet you ten dollars you can’t drink bottoms up.”

He handed her the glass. Then he held his own high. “To Mother!” he said and gulped down the vodka.

Irma drained the contents of her glass. As anticipated, she rose to his challenge.

He took the glass from her hand and walked back to the bar, where he set both glasses down. When he turned, he noted a peculiar expression on her face. Then her body sagged. A moment later she slid to the carpet.

He wasted no time. Everything had been carefully rehearsed and he knew he could finish the business in less than five minutes. He lifted the shrunken body of his mother out of the coffin, laid her corpse down on the rug next to Irma. It took him seconds to remove the panel inside the coffin, exposing the compartment underneath.

He lifted Irma’s body and carefully arranged it in the lower compartment. He went through her handbag swiftly, looking at her airline ticket and boarding pass, then returned them, throwing in the shot glass from which she had drunk, and finally removing a manila envelope filled with banknotes. He laid the handbag next to Irma.

Then he replaced the panel with swift, deft movements, took up his mother and laid her back in place. Checking his watch, he saw with satisfaction that all this had taken only two minutes and fifty seconds. Not, he thought, bad for a first effort.

He poured himself a stiff drink of bourbon and reflected that no one knew Irma Pappas was coming to his house that night. The secrecy was part of the plan. Since she had checked in for her flight already, as far as anyone would ever know she had definitely taken that flight to California. Since she had no relatives or close friends in the town, no one would really expect to hear from her.

The funeral the next morning went even better than Gerald had hoped. The chill rain of the previous evening had stopped and it turned out to be a beautiful spring day. All the prominent people of the town were there to pay their last respects to his mother. He watched carefully as the pallbearers handled the coffin. For one moment his heart seemed to skip a beat as they briefly lost their grip. For a brief instant, he had a vision of the coffin splitting open on the ground and both bodies spilling out. Fortunately, the pall-bearers regained their hold before this happened.

Gerald felt fine standing next to Peggy McFarland under the billowing striped awning beside the grave. The cemetery, with its tall elms and colorful purple lilac’s and yellow jonquil, made him think that it was almost too good for the dead and should belong instead to the living. When the Reverend Andrews had finished his inevitably long and dull funeral address, Gerald walked away from the grave with blonde Peggy beside him, conscious of the admiring glances of his fellow townspeople for the pretty and very rich young widow.

“Gerald, there is something I want very much to say to you,” Peggy told him, looking up at him out of large blue eyes into which he dreamed of plunging. “But I don’t think I should say anything right now.”

Gerald assumed the proper attitude of mourning. “I understand,” he said. Indeed, he did understand. Peggy was well aware how he felt about her, and she wanted to let him know that when he was ready to ask her she would agree to become his wife.

At least, this was what he thought until he reached the white mansion on the hill where he had lived alone with his mother for so many years. The newsboy had already been there, and he saw the afternoon paper lying on the top step of the veranda. Cruel disappointment awaited him when he looked at the front page.

There, prominently displayed, was a picture of Peggy McFarland with a headline beside it — WIDOW ANNOUNCES FORTHCOMING MARRIAGE TO BANKER. The accompanying story reported that Mrs. McFarland’s engagement to a well-known banker in a nearby city had just been announced.

So this was what Peggy had wanted to tell him! Morosely, Gerald unlocked the front door and went into the inner hall, in his distraction leaving the door open behind him. He had no idea what he could do now. All his carefully constructed plans for saving the company from bankruptcy had collapsed, and it was more than likely that he would be convicted of fraud and go to jail. He sat down in the first chair he came to in the hall, holding his head in his hands.

After a while, he became aware of another presence. He looked up and met the gaze of his lawyer, a white-haired, mangy pillar of the community, old John Upshaw.

Gerald had never liked him. “How are you, John?”

“Sorry to intrude at this sad time.” Upshaw gave him a heavy-lidded stare. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Not especially.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I wish I didn’t have to bother you at such a time but—”

“But what?” Gerald said sharply.

“Well,” Upshaw said, fixing his stare on Gerald. “I’m worried about Irma Pappas.”

“Irma Pappas? What is there to worry about? She left last night for California.”

Upshaw nodded. “I know. I checked and found that she did leave on the evening flight. But there’s one thing I can’t understand. She didn’t leave any forwarding address.”

“Why should she?” Gerald asked with a challenging glance.

“Maybe you didn’t know that I happen to be her attorney, too.”

“Why on earth did Irma need an attorney?” Gerald almost laughed in the other man’s face. “Was she in some trouble?”

Upshaw’s expression did not betray what he was thinking. “You probably didn’t know that Irma was a very rich woman.”

“Irma? A rich woman? What nonsense! Irma was only an orphan.”

“That’s true. But it turned out that she had an uncle who made millions in the food importing business. He left all his money to her.”

“But — she never said a word about it.”

“I’m not surprised,” Upshaw said. “She told me she didn’t want anyone to marry her for her money.”

Gerald could think of nothing to say.

“Anyway, I expected Irma to keep in touch with me because I made out her will. I thought perhaps she would have told you where she was going.”

“She didn’t,” Gerald said.

“Strange.”

“You’ll probably hear from her when she gets settled out there.” Then Gerald added sharply, “What’s so strange about her not telling me?”

“It’s not important,” Upshaw said, turning to go.

“Wait — I’d like to know. What’s so strange about it?”

“Well,” Upshaw replied. “Perhaps I shouldn’t really say this. But it probably doesn’t matter anyway. Irma made you her sole beneficiary. Congratulations, Gerald. You stand to inherit close to three million dollars.”

“Three million dollars?”

“That’s right. Not that you’re interested in the money. After all, you have a big business of your own now.” Upshaw stood there, smiling faintly. “Well, so long, Gerald. I have to go. If you hear anything from Irma, be sure to let me know.”

After Upshaw had gone, Gerald once again held his head in his hands. He was due to inherit three million dollars from Irma, but there was absolutely no way to get his hands on this inheritance without Irma’s death certificate. And with Irma buried in the split-level coffin with his mother, he could not reveal her death without incriminating himself for her murder.

All at once, he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, but failing in this he gave forth a long quivering sob.