The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

Trial Run

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, August 1971.

The three-column heading leaped at Ethel Claridge the instant she unfolded the newspaper that morning:

“Would you ever!” Ethel lectured her silent kitchen. “Those nasty newspaper people, doting on death!”

She sank down at the table, blue eyes devouring the story:

Engrossed in the story, Ethel didn’t hear George, her husband, come into the kitchen. She started slightly as his shadow fell across her. She got up and turned toward the stove, clicking a burner to bring water to a boil for instant coffee.

George sat down and picked up the paper without saying good morning, rattling the sports pages open.

Ethel’s lips parted on a long-suffering sigh as she separated strips of bacon and stretched them neatly on the broiling pan. She was a tall, strong, spare woman with sallow skin and thin brown hair shot with gray. Her faded blue eyes deepened as she stole a glance at George.

The years had had a curious effect on him. Other men aged; George rejuvenated. At twenty-eight, when she had maneuvered him into marriage, George had the stooped, hollow look of a refugee from a tubercular hospital. Today, the skeletal youth was but a memory. The years had fleshed his frame, filled out the shoulders and cheeks and chased the pallor with the ruddy glow of a robust and virile middle age. Even his drab, mouse-colored hair had gained vitality as the silver claimed it. This morning it was a handsome leonine mane, its tips curling with masculine shagginess from the dampness of his shower.

Looking at him, Ethel was tom by a pang of pity and regret. But let the head rule, not the heart, she thought. The heart is a nest of trickery.

The bacon was sizzling as she made George’s coffee. Slipping the cup on the table beside his elbow, she asked conversationally, “Did you read about the murder, George?”

He rustled the pages to the real estate section. She retreated toward the stove.

“A nice young fellow was killed, George. Named Allan Zeigler. Do you know any Zeiglers?”

He glanced up with irritated eyes. “What? What did you say?”

“I wondered if you know anyone named Zeigler? You know a lot of the businessmen in town.”

“Zeigler? There’s a Zeigler wholesale paper company.”

“Maybe that’s Allan’s father.”

“Allan? Who in blazes is Allan?”

“I just told you, George. The young man who was murdered.”

He grunted and flipped to the stock market reports.

Ethel broke a pair of eggs into a warm, buttery skillet. “He was twenty-two, the paper said. Just about the same age as Patti Warren.”

Her words brought an unpleasant change to the room. She could feel him looking at her.

“You don’t like the setup, you can get out,” he said. “I’d welcome a suit for divorce.”

“I know you would, George.” She stared at the hardening whites of the eggs. “You’ve made that clear enough.”

“Then why don’t you have a little pride and quit hanging on this way?”

“Pride, George?” A short laugh gouged through her Ups. “Would a divorce heal the terrible way you’ve wounded me? I took a vow, George — until death do us part.”

She heard him fling the paper down and shove his chair back. “I don’t care to listen to your broken record this morning, Ethel. I’ll breakfast in town.”

She flinched when the front door slammed behind him. He wouldn’t be here for dinner, she knew. He would return late tonight, befouling the house with the mingled smell of alcohol and Patti Warren’s perfume.

Ethel dumped the eggs and watched the disposal gobble them up.

After a breakfast of tea and English muffin, she continued the routine of yesterday, last month, of more years than she could remember: cleaning, dusting, scouring, waxing.

A mist fogged her eyes as she caught the vague, vagrant memory of how she used to hum as she went about her work. She fought the dizzying silence and emptiness of the house with a vigorous assault of her dust cloth on a drum table in the living-room.

“My, you look nice, Table,” she said, stepping back and admiring the soft sheen she’d protected and nurtured for so long. “I’ve a wonderful idea Table. We’ll dress you up with an arrangement of zinnias from the garden!”

She carried the cloth to the kitchen, washed it at the sink and hung it on the rack above the drain to dry. “There we are, Cloth, spotless as ever.”

Glancing at the wall clock, she noted that she’d got rid of another morning. She breathed out a note of tiredness.

“Stove, should we make another cup of tea and rest a bit? Of course we should!”

When the tea was ready, she decided to have it in the den. She padded through the house, carefully balancing cup and saucer.

“Television, have you some news from a vulgar and heartless world? It’s that time of day.”

She clicked on the set and settled on the edge of the couch. The screen came to glowing life. She watched the last couple of minutes of a network game show. She finished her tea during the commercials. Then she set her cup on a low coffee table and leaned forward as the noontime local newscast came on.

Through the camera’s eye, Ethel saw the place where Allan Zeigler had been murdered, the wide, tree-shaded street that looked so serene and secure.

The scene cut to an office in police headquarters, a physically powerful figure standing at a desk. The announcer identified him as Lieutenant Heim, Homicide. They discussed the case, Heim parrying questions cleverly and not revealing much more than the morning newspaper had reported.

Ethel studied Heim throughout the taped interview. Her opinion was expressed with an emphatic nod for this sturdy cut of a man, never the skinny weakling George had once been.

Heim’s face was a collection of lumps and bone, but it came to Ethel, a flashing revelation, that the deep, Lincolnesque eyes were capable of tenderness. She was quite pleased with her insight.

“No one but a person with a deep, secret sensitivity of her own would ever see beyond what the mad-mad, rushing world sees,” Ethel told the electronically-etched image.

She could imagine Heim’s presence warmly filling a modest home when his working day was finished, kissing a happy wife, tumbling with roly-poly children. The images evoked in Ethel a bittersweet sense of being lost that was, somehow, strangely satisfying.

She dried her eyes with the cuff of her blouse, got up, and turned off the TV. Crossing the room, she picked up the phone. She dialed a number that had stamped itself into her mind the one and only time she’d looked it up.

The phone in a distant part of town was lifted. “Hello. Miss Warren’s residence.”

Ethel gritted her teeth, almost choking with nausea at the sound of the warm, feminine voice.

“Miss Warren, this is a friend,” Ethel forced herself to speak quietly, levelly, “of Mr. Claridge. I... hate to break the news, but there’s been an accident.”

Ethel heard the girl — the hussy — catch a breath. “Is George... Mr. Claridge... badly hurt?”

“I’m afraid so. He’s on his way to City Hospital in an ambulance. He was asking for you, begged me to let you know.”

“C-can you tell me what happened?”

“He was crossing the street and a car swerved out of control. He needs you — dear — and will you get over there right away?”

“Sure,” Patti Warren said in a voice tight with concern. “I’ll leave right now. And thanks.”

“Not at all, dear. Glad to do anything I can for George.”

Ethel hung up, smiling. Then her face almost instantly resumed its grim, angular lines. She dialed George’s office, speaking now with her nostrils clamped between her fingers. Her voice seemed to bounce from her sinus passages, disguising itself even from George.

“I’m a maid in Miss Warren’s apartment building,” she told him. “She fell down and got a nasty gash on the head. The doctor’s on his way, but she’s calling for you.” George had a moment of stunned shock. Ethel could imagine him bolting upright behind his desk.

“Don’t let anything happen to her,” he shouted. “Do everything you can for her until the doctor comes! Tell her I’ll be right there!” He slammed the phone down with the energy of a leaping tomcat.

Ethel dialed a third number, ordering a taxi. The dispatcher assured her that he would have a cab at her door shortly.

She went from den to kitchen, moving with a vigor she hadn’t felt in days. She lifted down her flour canister, opened it, and worked her hand down through the fluffy whiteness. She stirred a small snowy cloud of flour as she pulled a ring of keys from the hiding place. They were exact copies of George’s keys.

Last Saturday, while he’d watched baseball on TV, she’d gone into the bedroom where his keys, wallet, book matches, and change lay in the bureau tray. She carried the keys to the neighborhood shopping center. Not knowing which key would fit Miss Warren’s door, she’d cleverly had them all duplicated, returning George’s set without him ever knowing she’d left the house.

The keys emitted a soft, cold tinkle as she dusted the remaining bits of flour from them over the sink. She turned as the door chimes sounded. Her brows lifted. The taxicab had certainly hurried.

Ethel moved from the kitchen, crossed the living-room and opened the front door. “I have to get a thing or two from the bedroom and I’ll be ready...” Her stream of words evaporated, leaving her mouth hanging. Then her teeth clicked. “Why, you’re not the taxi driver. You — You’re the detective I read about and saw on TV. You’re Lieutenant Heim.”

He nodded, mirthless, mountainous, rocky. “Is this the George Claridge residence?”

“Yes, but whatever brings you—” He was looking at her with such a heavy wisdom that her voice again broke off.

“I take it you’re Mrs. Claridge?” Ethel nodded. “Does your husband own a .32-caliber pistol?”

Ethel looked at him carefully. The sunlight hurt her eyes. Her faded blue dress seemed to grow a size larger as she shriveled inside.

“Please step in, Mr. Heim. There’s no need exposing all this to the neighbors.”

He took off his hat in the living-room, and she closed the door quietly. She looked about the room as if it were strange to her. “It’s been so long since anyone but George came into this house... Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Claridge.”

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

“Why not?” he said. “That’s why I came, isn’t it? These clueless cases... Sometimes when they start to crack, they break wide open. Last night the crack of the small-bore pistol that killed young Zeigler went almost unnoticed. Almost. But one young woman heard it. She looked from her bedroom window not far away.”

“Did she see the murderer, Mr. Heim?”

“Yes, as a shadowy figure. And the car. She saw the murderer get into a car and drive away. She had run out on the lawn by that time and as the car passed a street light, she got a piece of the license number.”

Ethel sank stiffly on a chair and stared at a worn place in the carpet that was a dreadful dust-catcher.

“The license had an initial that in this state indicates vehicles used for rental purposes.” Heim’s voice seemed to ooze from floor, walls, ceiling. “From then on it was routine. Checking the auto rental places in town, eliminating the cars and renters one by one — until we came to a set of circumstances that filled every requirement of the situation.”

Heim took a side step, trying to look into Ethel’s face. “No wonder young Zeigler didn’t try to run or put up a fight. When he heard footsteps behind him and glanced over his shoulder, all he saw was a harmless-looking middle-aged woman.”

“George had the gun for a long time,” Ethel said. “He kept it in the bedroom, the way a lot of people do. I guess he’d about forgotten it was there. It looked like a toy when I first practiced with it in the basement.”

She looked up at last. Her bland, blue eyes were dilated, her mouth pinched at the corners. “George was going to find out too — about the gun not being a toy, I mean. I was on my way to get my hat, purse, and the gun when you rang. I had it all planned and timed. I was going to Patti Warren’s apartment while she was on a wild-goose chase to the hospital and let myself in. Fighting cross-town traffic, George would be longer getting there. When he burst in, filled with fears for his adulteress, I was going to shoot him. Shoot him, and leave, and let her come back to find him dead, a memory her depraved mind would hold for a long time to come. And I knew then that I could do it, too. I could see it through.”

“But why young Zeigler last night, Mrs. Claridge?” Bewilderment stamped Heim’s face with a dullard’s look. “Wasn’t he a total stranger? Why did you take the gun and rent a car and drive around until you spotted the first person you thought it would be safe to kill?”

“Really, Mr. Heim, I thought you were smarter than that!” She looked at him with mild disappointment as she explained. “The boxer trains. The soldier practices with live ammunition. Each prepares and conditions himself for his ultimate act.”

As her meaning slipped through, Heim stood rooted, frozen. He stared in unwilling belief.

She reached and patted his hand, humbly, gently, as if she’d found an understanding friend at last. “I’m glad you see the necessity for a trial run,” she said gratefully. “I didn’t know how I’d react to the impact of murder. I wasn’t at all sure I could see it through — the killing of George, I mean — without some prior conditioning and practice. After all, he’s been my husband for a long time, and I had to know I wouldn’t get cold feet and panic when George was only halfway dead...”