The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!

The Capsule

Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, December 1964.

Nearly three hatred-filled years had passed, postmortem, before Alvin Dudley had an opportunity to kill Carter Malin. The opportunity, when it came, was not the result of any deliberate manifestation of initiative on Alvin’s part. Although his motive was vengeance and his hatred deep, it was not in his character to take positive action. Where other men might have pursued, Alvin merely waited.

He lived alone in a modest house in an unpretentious neighborhood. Six days a week he left for work promptly at seven-thirty in the morning, and returned just as promptly at five-thirty in the evening. He prepared most of his own meals, dining out rarely, and once a week he had a woman in for eight hours to clean and do his laundry. He was admired and respected by folk who knew his history. He was respected for his restraint. He was admired for his quiet courage.

Alvin had not always lived alone. Once, for a couple of years, he had shared the modest house with a wife. Her name was Wanda, and Alvin acquired her in what he considered at the time to be an incredible stroke of good luck.

It didn’t quite turn out that way, but Alvin was deceived by one element of reality that obscured all the others. The truth was, Wanda was stupid, and she had the morals of a mink. She didn’t even have the brains to exploit her remarkable physical assets, which was the only reason for her choice of Alvin. She could have done much better in the first place, and she could have done better, shortly thereafter, when she transferred her affections to Carter Malin.

Alvin was aware of his deficiencies, and he was properly grateful and humble. He had never expected to establish an exclusive claim to so much smoldering beauty.

And, to be exact, he never did.

Wanda was restless, and Alvin was understanding. He pampered her shamelessly and was paid off in unconcealed contempt. It was not long before she was making short trips to Kansas City once a month to alleviate her unrest, and to patronize the department stores. Alvin, who stayed at home, thought the change in environment did her good, and there were brief periods after each return when her tongue seemed to lose its sharpness and he was convinced he had not been mistaken.

However, the trips were soon lasting longer, and the bills from the Kansas City department stores kept getting bigger. Wanda was sometimes away for a week at a time, and the day arrived, of course, when she did not return at all.

Alvin received a letter which he showed to no one. The spelling was atrocious, but the meaning was unmistakably clear. It was written on a crisp sheet of stationery bearing the impressive crest of a Kansas City apartment-hotel, and it said in effect that Wanda had found her true love at last, a prosperous cosmetic salesman named Carter Malin, and had taken up quarters with him at the above address. Alvin was welcome to a divorce, and Wanda was sure that he would understand.

The implication was plain that he could, if he didn’t, go jump over a stump. Wanda’s candor was perhaps as much a manifestation of her stupidity as it was of an easily understandable desire to flaunt her improved status. But Alvin, being what he was, ascribed it to a basic integrity of character that would have been derided by almost anyone else in Wanda’s world, including Wanda herself.

He was terribly unhappy and quietly desperate. He considered going after Wanda and pleading with her to return, but he was too much in dread of her certain scorn. He even thought of buying a gun and going after Malin. But he lacked sufficient confidence in himself to resort to that kind of violence and had no stomach for the mess it would be certain to create. He did not, moreover, want to do anything to hurt Wanda.

In the end, he made a surreptitious trip to Kansas City and lurked about the apartment hotel until he saw Wanda and Malin together. Wanda looked smart and happy, even euphoric, and it was evident that “living in sin” was doing her no harm. Unseen and unheard, Alvin retreated, returned to his home and took up his routine.

He kept hoping that Wanda would eventually return, and he was prepared to receive her without recriminations if she did. But she didn’t. When Alvin heard of her again, six months later, she was dead. Discarded by Carter Malin, she had, in the hoary tradition of melodrama, taken a handful of barbiturates and fallen into a fatal sleep.

Even Alvin’s delusions had their limitations, and he had the wayward thought that her death was undoubtedly more of an accident than a suicide. She had made a gesture to frighten her lover, and had simply, through stupidity, taken too many pills. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was dead. She was dead, and Carter Malin was responsible.

Alvin claimed her body and brought her home and gave her a decent burial in a double cemetery plot, the other half of which was reserved for himself. Afterward, with no demonstration of the grief and hatred he felt, he made the adjustments necessary to a widower and went on living.

He took only one small step in the direction of vengeance. He purchased a few empty gelatin capsules and some cyanide salts. The purchase of the deadly poison was made openly, and he signed a register without hesitation, offering a plausible explanation of the purchase as he did so. There was no suspicion in the druggist’s eyes.

At home, he filled one of the capsules with salts, and thereafter he carried it with him at all times, just as he carried his keys and his loose coins. When he went to bed at night, he put it on the dresser with the other items, and when he dressed in the morning he tucked it away securely into the watch pocket of his trousers.

Although his friends and neighbors didn’t realize it, he was a man with a mission, and his mission was to kill Carter Malin. It was contrary to his nature to hunt Malin down, but he had an unreasonable conviction that the time would come when he and Malin would meet in circumstances exactly right for murder. Or justice, as he preferred to call it.

After all, Kansas City was not far away, and sooner or later Malin was certain to show up. Perhaps his sales area would be expanded to include this town. Perhaps he would merely stop off on his way through. Perhaps — any number of things. For whatever reason, he would surely come, and in the meanwhile Alvin was prepared and waiting. His position, in short, was a compromise between what he was and what he thought he should be. His great advantage was that Malin had never seen him and wouldn’t recognize him.

And so he waited. And sure enough, nearly three years later, Malin came. Alvin recognized him immediately, but there was no sign of it except the sudden barely discernible throbbing of a pulse in his throat. Malin was as natty and handsome as he had been when Alvin had seen him with Wanda in Kansas City. If he suffered from remorse for Wanda’s fate, it was not apparent. In fact, his appearance of well-being was marred only by the shadow of a twenty-four-hour beard.

Alvin calmly finished the job he was doing, and then turned away. He drew some water into a paper cup. Removing the cyanide capsule from his watch pocket, he swallowed it with the water. There! It was done. In ten minutes he would be beyond the reach of temporal retribution. Any other kind he was willing to risk.

Turning back toward Carter Malin, he bowed slightly with just a touch of deference, holding his tonsorial bib aside like the cape of a matador.

“Next,” he said.