Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 01/01/11 Read online

  “Nah. Now we go in and eat.”

  James Stark owned one of the two general stores in Laskin, South Dakota, and three quarter-sections of land out in the county. The land he’d divided among his oldest sons, William, Harold, and Patrick, who lived on and worked the land. Now Patrick’s land was to be farmed by William and Harold, the profits split and a good share held in trust for Patrick’s children. The youngest of James’s sons, Graham, Pearl’s husband, ran the shop under James’s supervision. James Stark was in his fifties, still fit and strong, despite his white hair and beard. Martha, a Norwegian immigrant, was his third wife: he never spoke of either of his first two, and rarely of her.

  It was a very quiet house. Martha, old before her time, worked like a cart horse and never spoke of anything but work, and that usually not beyond the kitchen and lean-to. Graham slid through life like a shadow, speaking only when forced to in a burdened voice. James, silent in the morning over breakfast and dinner, walled himself behind the newspaper between the two. After dinner he went out, returning late to release Pearl to help with housework. After supper, James took over the shop entirely. As the evening progressed, loud shouts of laughter from below rang upwards like echoes from a foreign land.

  Nell quickly became friends with Pearl. You couldn’t help but love Pearl, for her lively Irish spirits, her loving heart, her lovely face. Pearl and Graham had one son, Arthur, the dead spit of his father. The boy was barely three, and named for Tennyson’s poems. Nell took charge of Arthur while Pearl worked in the shop, for it was she who really kept it going, offering advice and help and promises, while her husband stood in the back and looked dully over the goods.

  “Well, and it’s not really a job for a man, is it?” Pearl made apology over her mending. “Selling things. And all those calicos and threads. He does get that bored with the ladies running in for a bit of ribbon or a choice bit of trim. Small blame to him, says I. And it’s no trouble to me at all, not at all.” Her wonderful smile flashed. “I’ve always been too fond of dress, that’s what my mother would say. And now here I am, having the run of a shop. What is the world coming to when wickedness is its own reward, that’s what she’d say.”

  She giggled like a schoolgirl, and Nell thought once more that if it weren’t for Pearl, she would go distracted in this silent house. But where could she go? What else could she do? Laskin already had two dressmakers, and the only other job of work open to a woman with two small children was washing: heavy, backbreaking, disreputable.

  The boys seemed happy enough, though Bill missed the farm terribly. His great joy was to be taken out to the land and allowed to follow Uncle William or Uncle Harold as he had once followed his father. But it was rare that they came to town, and never did they bring their wives. They were all busy on the land, and Nell could well understand that. She had been once. And while then there had been days when she had hated it, the endless work, the loneliness, the isolation, now she missed it terribly. When she had felt closed in, she had only to step outside. How she had loved the sweep of it, up to the greater sweep of the sky! The space of it. The air and the color of it. Sometimes the sheer interiority of her life now—walls upon walls, in the house and in the town—seemed suffocating.

  But it was not only the silence and the town life that bothered her. There was a growing unease about her father-in-law. He moved as little as a rock, and that rock seemed to be always the breaker against which she must crash. When she served food, his body made no room for her laden arm, but required it to reach across him. When she cleaned, he always needed something that required him to stretch himself above and across her bent back. And in church, one Sunday, he had slumped in their pew until his arm rested hotly against hers. And his eyes ...

  She could barely think it to herself, much less whisper it to anyone. All she could do was avoid him. She waited to work, or sit, or go outside, until she was quite clear where James Stark would be. One day, as she performed her little minuet, she glanced up and saw Graham looking at her, and the slight movement of his knife-colored eyes made her heart thud. He knew. But the next moment, it was gone.

  The daily round continued. Autumn brought the rush of gathering, preserving, pickling, and salting what came from the garden and the pig. It was a shame, with a feast first of spareribs, then of fresh meat, that Pearl, who had to be called in from the shop to help, had entirely lost her appetite for any of it. Nell suspected it wasn’t the headcheese so much as that Pearl might be again what she’d confessed she’d longed to be, with child, and Nell cheerfully took over the rest of the distasteful work. After two hard weeks of harvest labor, cellar and attic were stored to bursting and the kitchen scoured clean. The three women could get on with the usual Saturday baking.

  Nell put a second batch of bread to rise in greased pans as Pearl picked up bits of raw dough from the table and nibbled them.

  “Yah, you get worms from that!” Martha called from the cookstove. She was frying doughnuts in a seething vat of the recently tried lard, and her face was crimson from the heat.

  “That’s but an old wives’ tale,” Pearl said. “And it tastes so good.”

  Martha shrugged. Nell covered her bread and said, in a low voice, “It’s a sure sign. When are you going to tell Graham?”

  Pearl’s blue eyes looked sidelong through their long golden lashes. “When it quickens, when else? It’s just foxfire before then.”

  Martha turned, a platter of doughnuts in her right hand. “When what—” Her left hand flashed her wedding ring to her heart.

  “Martha?” Nell leaped forward.

  Martha thrust the platter at Nell and tried to step forward. “Ach! What-” Her face crimsoned more as she fell to her knees. Her corsets held her straight the rest of the way to the floor.

  It was as cold a funeral as Patrick’s had been hot. The ground was iron hard. Snow fell over the black hats and veils as the minister read the service. The wind scudded little drifts of snow across the road as they walked back, pricked out tears of cold, if not of sorrow, from every face.

  Indoors, Nell headed straight to the kitchen, her black bombazine comfortingly warm. Pearl, blotchy from crying (the one thing she could not do gracefully, Nell noted), came in to help her. It was the same menu as before. Funeral food: scalloped potatoes and ham, biscuits, pie, and coffee. Afterwards, they cleaned up, with help from other townswomen, while the men smoked cigars in the parlor and rumbled about the news.

  “What a mercy it was quick!” Mrs. Mortensen said only what everyone had said for the last three days, and all the women nodded. “And at least Mr. Stark isn’t left with any young children.” Someone tittered, not Mrs. Mortensen.

  “What do you think Mr. Stark will do now?” Mrs. Torvaldson, the banker’s wife, asked Nell.

  “I ... I don’t know,” Nell replied, startled at being asked her opinion. Mourning a husband meant a year without society, and she did not yet know the townsfolk very well.

  Graham’s dull voice came from the door. “Maybe he’ll get married again.”

  “Graham!” Pearl cried. “And Martha not yet cold.”

  Graham shrugged and walked away.

  Late that night, Nell lay in her cold bed, listening to the wind howling outside. What she had barely been able to think to herself had suddenly made itself plain. If James Stark desired her, what was now to stop him? What if he wanted to marry her? Her whole body shuddered. It could not be. She would rather die. Surely there were laws against something as horrible, as unnatural as that. A man would ... No, it was impossible. She had to have mistaken his behavior. And if she had not, she vowed, she would move to a shanty on the edge of town and take in washing before she would become involved with her husband’s father. Patrick! Patrick! She whipped herself over into a ball under the covers, and cried her heart out.

  Winter days were short. The shop shut early now, and James Stark showed a surprising talent for reading aloud in the evenings: newspaper articles, novels, poetry. Graham seemed indifferent a
s he whittled in his corner, but all the rest, even Nell, were rapt by that fine voice rising and falling in the gathering dark. And then, by eight o’clock, nine at the latest, everyone was in bed. Coal and kerosene were too precious, even for a shopkeeper, when everything had to be imported from the East.

  Rising at four thirty, Nell worked doggedly to light the kitchen fire, heat water, and get breakfast served by six thirty, usually by herself, for Pearl’s condition was one of almost constant sickness. Often all Pearl could do was sit by the lean-to door in case she needed to rush out quickly. Nell did not mind: Anything she could do to help Pearl was a satisfaction. But James Stark was a very early riser, and instead of heading straight to the barn to tend the cow, he now lingered in the kitchen, starting the fire, fetching water, leaning against her as she tried—it was so cold!—to get warm over the kindling flame. He said nothing but common words of work, of courtesy, to them both. But he had never done so for poor Martha, and Nell—“Nellie,” he called her now—felt embarrassed, ashamed, fearful, and ... flattered?

  And then, one morning, Graham was there, before the women. Nell and Pearl lingered on the steps, hearing the two male voices, James’s low like thunder, Graham’s surprisingly sharp. They stepped into the kitchen. James glanced once at her and Pearl, who shakily sat down by the door, and went out to the barn. The fire was kindled.

  “I’ll fetch water,” Graham told Nell. “And then I’ll go help Father.”

  He was protecting her, Nell realized. And wondered why.

  Pearl’s light, active body was now heavy with child, and while she was no longer sick, she sat most days, all day. Nell wished they could both have fresh air, but they were shut up in the rooms of this house, battened and ceiled as it was against the wind, with the odor of cooking and coal, sweat and manure thick in their nostrils no matter how much Nell scrubbed and washed. And the diet—bread, fried potatoes, beans, meat, with a dollop of preserves or canned fruit—was heavy as lead. Nell knew that fresh greens were what Pearl needed, and fresh milk, but the cow was almost dry, and there was no hope for anything but what they had until spring. Winter stretched out forever in a whirl of wind and snow and dark, long nights.

  The two women spent the scant afternoon light sewing and mending, looking after the three boys, although Bill spent most of his time in the shop. James Stark had given him a pennywhistle, a map, and a promise to take him to the Huron State Fair come summer. Every night, James and Bill, John, and Arthur lingered at table, the boys mesmerized by James Stark’s stories of Dakota Territory as it had been when he arrived thirty years ago. As Nell washed the dishes and scrubbed the pots, she heard him talk of buffalo herds that had stretched like a dark cloud across a sea of grass, a cloud that made its own thunder. Of the great hunts that left piles of buffalo rotting under the sun, and had provided them with the buffalo hides that kept them warm this long, cold winter. Of the sod house he had built, when he decided to stay and not follow the buffalo across the Jim. It was the warmest house he’d ever known, he claimed. But no mention of the dirt of it, Nell noted, nor of the first wife who’d lived in it but a year and died giving birth to the twins, William and Harold. Or the second, who’d given him his other two sons.

  But the stories were thrilling. She would glance over at her boys, open mouthed, and find his eyes upon her.

  “See?” they said. “See how I’ve won their hearts?”

  In church, Nell stood between James and Graham, her boys beside James. They loved him. Nell shared a hymnal with him. He sang well, just as he read well. He was devout in manner, sober in conduct and habits, clean in person. His courtesy—exquisite, polished, courtly—to her and to her sons drew the attention of their fellow parishioners. She knew what they were thinking. In June, her mourning would be over, and James Stark was vigorous enough for a fourth wife. She blushed, but did not shudder.

  On a cold, snowy morning at the end of March, Pearl’s time came. Nell threw her shawl over her head and went racing to the doctor’s, so quickly that she was back before the breakfast potatoes had time to burn. Nell ran up and downstairs with hot water, towels, and whatever else Dr. Peterson required. Soon the cries were loud enough to distress the boys in the kitchen, who dropped their forks. James Stark, who had sat like a ramrod through it all, now got up and herded the boys—with their plates—into the shop, where they joined Graham for the rest of the day.

  Pearl’s little girl was born by suppertime.

  “I want to call her Violet.” Pearl’s white face smiled tremulously down upon her baby. A dark-haired crown was all that could be seen above the swaddling.

  “Where in God’s name did you get that idea?” Graham asked from the door, his tone surprisingly hostile.

  “It’s a lovely name,” Nell said, trying desperately to scrub away the smell of childbirth that filled the air.

  “From a book by Charlotte Yonge,” Pearl replied. “Mrs. Mortensen lent it me.”

  “Oh.” He shrugged. “I’ll sleep in the store tonight.” And he went downstairs.

  Later, as Nell, with an aching back, cleaned the last of the pots and pans in the kitchen, James Stark stood in the doorway and asked about the baby.

  “She’s a beautiful little girl,” Nell said, without looking up from her pots. “Dark hair and violet eyes.” She turned, to find his eyes fixed on her. “Pearl is going to name her Violet.”

  He nodded, and went into the parlor. He returned with the family Bible. Carefully he sat down, thawed the ink at the stove, and wrote down the name and date of this new member of the family.

  “‘Children’s children are the crown of old men,’” he quoted, “‘and the glory of children are their fathers.’”

  As he rose and took the Bible back to the parlor, Nell thought that he was not yet an old man.

  ***.

  Graham slept in the store for the next two weeks, and fell ill with a bad cold that quickly turned ragged. The coughs nearly tore him in two. James Stark had his son moved into the parlor, and kept the stove alight, water steaming away on it, no matter the cost in coal. Pearl was not allowed near her husband, nor were the boys, for fear of infection. Nell nursed him diligently for Pearl, bedding herself down in the sitting room where she could hear him in the night. But Graham got worse, despite rubbing with kerosene and dosing with camphor. Dr. Peterson feared pleurisy. He bled Graham lightly, and left a small brown bottle of laudanum to ease his cough and help him sleep.

  “You’ll need to be careful of the dose,” Dr. Peterson said.

  Nell flushed. James Stark, standing by the bedside, came to her rescue, assuring the doctor that “Nellie” would be very careful of her, sorry, his son and Pearl’s husband. Nellie flushed even more.

  Every four hours, Nell went into the parlor to give Graham his medicine. He would wake, briefly, swallow, and return to sleep, until awakened by another wracking cough. At suppertime she went in to feed him broth and found him trying to get up.

  She pushed him back down: He was weak as a child. “Lie back down, Graham. Do you need the honey pot?”

  “Pain,” he gasped. “Medicine ... I need to sleep ... Forever.”

  Her heart cramped. “No, no, no. You need but a little more to sleep.”

  He clutched her wrist. “I need ... enough to sleep ... forever,” he repeated.

  “No, you don’t. Why, in less than a month it will be May, and the sun will bake the sickness out of you. All will be well.”

  “Will it?” Graham asked without eagerness. “And how ... will it be ... for you? May ... June ... No more mourning ... A short time.”

  “It’s seemed very long to me.”

  “I won’t know you ... if you’re not ... in black.”

  “I don’t like black.”

  “My father ... He ... He ...”

  “Hush,” Nell interrupted. She did not want to discuss James Stark with Graham. “Here. Take this now, and you’ll sleep like a lamb.”

  Graham supped his half teaspoon eagerly. “Leave it
by me.”

  “No!” she cried. She put the bottle in her apron pocket, then put more coal on the parlor fire. “Now rest yourself. Sleep.”

  Afterwards, she took her apron off, setting the bottle high in the kitchen cupboard, and sat with Pearl and Bill at the kitchen table. Arthur and John were already in bed, and Violet was in Pearl’s lap.

  “Oh, Nell. You look so tired,” Pearl said, concerned.

  Nell shrugged. “It’s nothing that a good night’s sleep won’t cure. Did I hear someone come in earlier?”

  “Mrs. Mortensen called. ’Twas very kind of her, I’m sure, but she is a talker. All sorts of nonsense out of her today. Mr. Stark shooed her out at last, saying I needed my rest.”

  Bill looked up, with his clear blue eyes. “She said that you were to be married, Mam, come summer. Is that true?”

  Nell flushed, and Pearl gave the child a sidelong glance through those golden lashes. “You see what I mean?”

  “But she said everyone—”

  Pearl interrupted the boy. “Bill, it’s time to take Mr. Stark his evening coffee in the shop.”

  Bill leaped up. His greatest treat was to spend the last hour of the evening with his grandfather.

  Once the boy was gone, Pearl asked, anxiously, “How is Graham? Truly?”

  “He will be fine, I promise you,” Nell assured her. Pearl was still so white from childbirth, and her wide blue eyes were apprehensive. “I have told you before, Pearl, I would never let your husband die. I love you too well. I will do all I can to save him for you.”

  Pearl nodded, her mouth fixed.

  Nell lay in her pallet on the sitting room floor. Above her was the master bedroom. She heard the floorboards creaking as James Stark put himself to bed. She tried not to pay attention. Everyone expected it. Graham, Mrs. Mortensen, even little Bill. She had come to expect it herself. She had come to ... She shook herself. Were those footsteps she heard? She lifted herself up and listened. Light ... No, not his footsteps. No footsteps at all. She was imagining things. She closed her weary eyes and fell into a well of darkness.