Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 16 Skeletons From My Closet Part 13

Samantha Withers wasn't reticent about showing her feelings. "Can't you remember anything, you idiot?"

Homer Withers was a small, round, mild-appearing man, and he seemed to shrink even smaller under the blast from his spinster sister. Though she routinely treated him as though he were a mental incompetent, it never occurred to him to fight back. For too many years he'd been conditioned to her domineering manner.

Samantha Withers was a head taller than Homer, thirty pounds heavier, and as muscular as a man. Though she'd never actually offered him physical violence, she often seemed on the verge of striking him, and the thought made Homer cringe. He was quite certain he'd be defenseless against her in a physical battle.

"The policy won't lapse," he said in a placating tone. "The agent sends in the premium money when it's due, you see, and I simply repay him. I'll mail the check right after dinner."

"You'll mail it right now, if you expect any dinner," Samantha snapped. "And don't forget it's the mailbox you're heading for."

"I'm entirely capable of mailing a letter without detailed instructions," Homer said with unaccustomed asperity. Then he wilted under the glitter of his older sister's eyes.

He rarely rebelled enough to give her a tart reply, and invariably wished he hadn't on the infrequent occasions he drummed up enough courage to do it. For usually she made his life miserable for days afterward.

He scooted out before she could open up her heavy artillery, but she managed to get in a parting shot. As he went down the porch steps, she shouted through the screen door, "Look both ways when you cross the street, stupid. Coming back I don't care. Once the premium's mailed, you can..."

Homer had heard it before - you can drop dead, for all I care. Those were the words, he knew, which he didn't wait to hear.

Homer sighed. She probably would be glad if he were dead. Why did he put up with her constant carping? Discouragedly he answered the mental question as soon as he asked it. He put up with it because of unbreakable habit.

As long as he could remember his sister had dominated him, even while their parents still lived. Since their death fifteen years earlier, the domination had gradually increased until at middle age her grip on his whole life was an enveloping, suffocating thing which had squeezed from him the last ounce of resistance and the last drops of individuality.

"It's not right for a person who's so carefully avoided marriage to be the most henpecked man in town," he thought, automatically following Samantha's instructions to look both ways before crossing the street.

He reached the other side and walked vaguely past the mailbox in the direction of the drug store; he wondered what it would be like to die and be free of Samantha. He almost hoped that her repeated suggestion would come true when suddenly a new thought occurred to him. Wouldn't it be nice if Samantha died?

This thought was so pleasant, he lost himself in it and nearly pa.s.sed the drug store. He halted to consider what Samantha had sent him for, found his mind a blank and finally grew conscious of the envelope in his hand. Shamefacedly he retraced his way to the mailbox, dropped the letter and recrossed the street.

The dream persisted, however. As he strolled back up the street, he envisioned how pleasant it would be to return from work each evening to an empty and silent house, one where he could smoke in the front room, sit around without a necktie, or even in his unders.h.i.+rt if he chose. He could even have beer in the refrigerator.

He completely lost himself in the reverie. He had mentally gone through the ordeal of Samantha's funeral, had completed the necessary period of mourning, and was busily converting her bedroom into a masculine den when he opened the front door. The daydream was so real, he let out a gasp when he saw Samantha standing there.

Samantha snapped at him, "What's the matter with you? You look like you're going to throw up."

"I ... I don't feel too well," he said.

He went upstairs to wash, jolted from his dream world into full awareness of reality. As he examined his pale face in the bathroom mirror, he realized how intolerable that reality was as long as Samantha was alive.

The idea of killing his sister came to him effortlessly and with no sense of shock. His sole emotional reaction was surprise that he'd never thought of it before.

Unfortunately Homer Withers discovered there was a vast gap between reaching a decision to kill and carrying out the decision. He didn't discover this at once, however. That evening, as he prepared the hot chocolate he made for his sister each night, his plans took shape with remarkable ease.

Any plan as violent as strangulation was out of the question for the simple reason that Samantha was larger and stronger than he. Shooting or stabbing were ruled out because he had no desire to hang for Samantha's murder. He toyed with the idea of staging a fatal accident but discarded it for the same reason he had discarded strangulation. He wasn't at all sure that if he attempted to push Samantha out of a window or down a flight of stairs, he wouldn't end up being the victim.

By the process of elimination he arrived at poison as the most practical means. A few minutes after he had carried Samantha's hot chocolate into the front room, he knew how to administer the poison. He watched as she took a sip to test the temperature, then set the saucer on the floor and poured some of the chocolate into it from the cup.

Roger, Samantha's cat, dropped from the window ledge, stalked majestically over to the saucer and sniffed at it. Roger licked tentatively, then sat down to wait for it to cool.

Homer decided that his sister took her chocolate so heavily sweetened it ought to disguise the taste of nearly any poison. It also occurred to him that her habit of sharing it with the cat presented a complication, but not a serious complication. Samantha liked her chocolate hot. while Roger preferred his cool; her cup always was empty before the cat lapped from the saucer.

He could simply wait until his sister had drunk the poison and died, then take the saucer away from Roger.

The next day Homer used his lunch hour for a visit to the public library, where he did some research on poisons. He decided on pota.s.sium cyanide for two reasons: it was quick and sure, and the death symptoms resembled those of a heart attack.

Up to this point his planning had proceeded without a hitch. He didn't run into a snag until he attempted to obtain the poison.

In a vague way Homer supposed that the law established certain restrictions against the indiscriminate sale of poisons. He was quite prepared to be questioned about its intended use when he bought his cyanide, and he expected to be asked to sign a poison register of some kind. For this reason he went to a downtown drug store where he was unknown, intending to give a fict.i.tious name.

However, he wasn't prepared to encounter a blank wall.

The druggist, an affable middle-aged man, chuckled indulgently when Homer told him in a diffident voice that he would like some pota.s.sium cyanide to use as a rat poison.

"You can't buy cyanide without a doctor's prescription, mister," he said. "You can't buy any poison without a prescription. It's a federal law. Here's what you want for rats."

He produced a small, round tin labeled: Rat Poison.

Homer looked at it doubtfully. "Do I need a prescription for this too?"

The druggist shook his head with a smile. "You only need a prescription for poisonous drugs which might be taken internally by a human."

"Mightn't this be taken by a human?"

The druggist shrugged. "Sure. Might even kill him. But chances are he'd throw it up. Rat poison contains white phosphorus, which is a deadly poison, but difficult to keep down. It works on rats because they don't know how to vomit. Anyway, the main reason for the federal law is to prevent murders. I guess they figure a suicide would find some way to kill himself even if he couldn't get poison. You might commit suicide with this, if you managed to keep it down, but you'd have a hard time poisoning anybody on the sly. The first sip would burn so bad, they'd spit it out without swallowing."

"I see," Homer said. "How much?"

As he left the store with the small tin in his pocket, he felt thankful that the druggist had been so informative. The thought of Samantha tasting her hot chocolate, spitting it out and realizing he had meant to kill her, sent him into a cold sweat. She would be quite capable of forcing him to drink it.

A block from the drug store he took the tin from his pocket, looked at it ruefully and rolled it into a sewer opening.

Not being a very resourceful person, this incident brought Homer's murder plan to a dead stop. Aside from purchasing it in a drug store, he hadn't the faintest idea of how to obtain poison. Murder remained in his mind, but it ceased to be an active plan. He relapsed into his dream world, and except that he had a new fantasy to entertain him, his life went on much as it had before he ever thought of murder.

For twenty-five years Homer had held the t.i.tle of "chief clerk" at the law firm of Marrow and Fanner, a designation which implied more prestige than the job actually involved. He was chief clerk because he was the only clerk; his real status was that of an exalted office boy.

Five days a week he did routine office work for the law partners, each Friday faithfully brought home his pay and handed over half of it to Samantha. What was left barely covered his expenses, including carfare and personal needs and the monthly insurance premium.

On the surface this routine continued, but secretly Homer began to live an entirely different life. By a sort of schizophrenic process he succeeded in imagining, whenever he was away from home, that the murder was an accomplished fact and that he now lived in carefree isolation. Riding the streetcar to and from work, he would plan how he meant to convert Samantha's old room into a den, would mentally frame newspaper ads for a cleaning woman to "come in" once a week, and would wrestle with the problem of what he ought to prepare for dinner that night.

However, he carefully avoided losing himself in the fantasy as completely as he had the evening Samantha's murder first occurred to him, for he had no desire to repeat the experience of being frightened into a near faint by seeing his sister's ghost. Each evening, just as he reached the porch steps, he automatically returned to reality in time to greet his sister without surprise. The fantasy would then take a slight twist; instead of the murder being fait accompli, it would become a deed planned for the next day.

But, of course, the next day never arrived.

It was within Homer's capacity to live in reasonable contentment with this fluctuating dream for years without taking any positive action and he probably would have if Samantha herself hadn't unsuspectingly furnished the impetus necessary to jar him into action.

Samantha developed a cold accompanied by a hacking cough which required the services of the family doctor. By the time Samantha let him go, it was past ten P.M. The local drug store was closed when Homer arrived with the prescriptions. The other two drug stores also were closed.

Homer didn't work on Sat.u.r.day and he went out again with the prescriptions immediately after breakfast. Idly he looked them over.

The doctor had written both before tearing them from the prescription pad, then had ripped them off together so that they were still attached to each other by the glued top edge. Apparently he had flipped one sheet too many after writing the first, for there was a blank prescription sheet between them.

The top one was a prescription for some kind of nose drops. The bottom read: ===.

Tab. codeine x.x.x TT 1/2 gr.

Sig. one tab. Q 3 H.

Though he was unacquainted with pharmaceutical shorthand, Homer recognized the word "codeine" from his research on poisons. He couldn't recall whether or not it was a dangerous drug, but he did remember that it was some kind of opiate. Simultaneously it dawned on him that he had a blank prescription sheet, and with the original as a model, it would be a simple matter to forge a duplicate.

Instead of stopping at the drug store, he walked on two blocks to a branch public library, drew out a textbook of materia medica and retired with it to the reading room.

He discovered that one of the primary uses of codeine was to lessen coughing, which explained why the prescription had been written. He also learned that it was a compound of morphine and was one of the active alkaloids of opium. It was listed as a safer drug than morphine, and he searched every indexed reference to the drug without finding an indication of how much const.i.tuted a fatal dose, or even any indication that it was a dangerous poison.

However, he was certain it would be fatal in a large enough dose, for it was included under the general heading of "Brain and Spinal Cord Depressants," along with opium, morphine and the illegal drug, heroin. Rechecking the prescription, he deduced that the figure "x.x.x" probably meant thirty tablets. At a half grain each, this came to fifteen grains, certainly enough of any opiate to kill a person.

Satisfied that he had a poison which would work, he took out his fountain pen and carefully duplicated the prescription on the blank sheet. He forged a reasonable facsimile of the doctor's signature, not taking too great pains with it because he knew it would not be subjected to the same scrutiny a bank might give a check. The office heading and the fact that the terminology was authentic were enough to make it acceptable to the average druggist.

He walked six blocks to another drug store where he was unknown to get the forged prescription filled. Then he returned to his own neighborhood drug store to have the two filled which the doctor had written.

When he finally got home, he received a sound tongue las.h.i.+ng from his sister for taking so long, but he accepted it stoically. For consolation he fingered the extra bottle in his pocket.

For the first time in weeks Homer didn't retreat into his world of fantasy. For now he had the reality of definitely planned action to replace his dreams. He was in such a state of antic.i.p.ation all week end he could hardly wait to get home Monday evening.

If there had been any lingering qualms in Homer Withers' mind about committing sororicide, they were extinguished by Samantha's reception. Her normal unpleasantness had been aggravated by her cold until she was impossible.

She greeted him with an ominous, "I suppose you forgot to mail the insurance premium again."

Time had on more than one occasion flitted by Homer unnoticed - it was a genuine surprise to him that a full month had pa.s.sed since he had belatedly mailed the last premium.

Samantha launched into such a blistering attack on his mental shortcomings, he retreated headlong up the stairs in the middle of her tirade. His hands shook as he wrote the check. He was downstairs again and on his way to the mailbox before his sister could get her second wind.

The incident spoiled all chance of their last evening together being a pleasant one. Dinner was accompanied by a monologue by Samantha on her favorite subject: why didn't Homer do her the favor of dropping dead? Afterward, as they sat in the front room, she froze him with a silence so forbidding, he was afraid to open his mouth.

It was a relief when she finally indicated it was near bedtime by saying, "I'll have my chocolate now, if you think you have sense enough to put it together properly."

Homer had the hot chocolate all made and poured into a cup before he realized his oversight. It would have been better to have crushed the thirty codeine tablets into a powder so that they would dissolve more easily. He swore mildly at his chronic forgetfulness.

Pouring some of the tablets into his hand, he stared at them blankly for a moment. Then he got down an empty cup and began crus.h.i.+ng them one at a time with a spoon.

It was a slow process; he was but two-thirds finished when Samantha's impatient voice called from the front room, "What are you doing, dreamer? Staring off into s.p.a.ce?"

His heart hammering in fear she would enter the kitchen, he called back, "It's almost ready, Samantha. Just one more minute."

As rapidly as possible he crushed the remaining tablets, sc.r.a.ped the powder into the chocolate and stirred it vigorously. When it was completely dissolved, he touched his tongue to the solution and was panic stricken to find it faintly bitter. He shoveled in two extra teaspoonsful of sugar, stirred it and tasted it again. It now tasted normal.

He carried the cup and saucer out to Samantha who, after accepting it with a grunt, went through her usual ritual of pouring some into the saucer for Roger.

Immediately the cat dropped from his favorite spot on the window ledge, padded to the saucer and tentatively explored the chocolate's temperature. Then, instead of sitting back to wait for it to cool, he lapped the dish clean.

Homer stared in horror, realizing that the time consumed in crus.h.i.+ng the codeine tablets had allowed the chocolate to cool sufficiently to please the cat. Homer watched, fascinated, as the animal licked its whiskers; stretched and rubbed itself against Samantha's calf.

Samantha took a sip from the cup, and exploded.

"You idiot!" She screamed at Homer. "Can't you do anything right? This chocolate is merely luke-warm!"

Homer gulped, his eyes on Roger. Roger looked up at him.

"Take it back to the kitchen." Samantha ordered. "Heat it up. You know I want hot chocolate."

Homer took the cup and carried it to the kitchen. Dumping the contents into a sauce pan, he turned the gas on full. Just before it boiled he removed the pan from the flame, poured the chocolate back in the cup. He got back to Samantha just as fast as he could.

For once Homer did an efficient job. Too efficient. The chocolate was too hot to drink. After sampling it by taking the barest sip, Samantha set the cup aside to let it cool.

As Homer watched the cat in an agony of apprehension, precious minutes dragged by. He knew he could never get Samantha to pick up the cup.

Roger was back on the ledge, purring, begging, Homer felt sure, for more chocolate. If Roger would just die quietly there, Samantha would never know.

Homer took a deep breath as Samantha finally raised the cup to her lips. She paused, said in an impatient voice, "Oh, all right, Roger, you may have a drop more."

The cat sprung off the window ledge, wobbled on his feet, looked up once more at Homer. The animal took a step toward the saucer, and suddenly his front legs collapsed.

Samantha stared at Roger in puzzlement, and Homer watched in terror, as the cat struggled to his feet, took another aimless step and fell over on his side. His eyes rolled and his breathing began to grow heavy.

Samantha glanced from the cat to her brother. Her eyes narrowed, and she said, "You drink my chocolate this evening, Homer."

Homer gibbered an unintelligible refusal. Roger's heavy breathing stopped.

"You actually meant to kill me, didn't you?" she said in a tone of soft satisfaction.

Homer gazed at her without immediate understanding. She added gently, "My dear brother, two can play at that game."

He understood her sudden air of satisfaction then. His act had given her the moral excuse she needed to turn her often-expressed hope into reality, and Homer knew he was lost. He had no idea of where to obtain more poison, and no murder plan aside from poison.

But Samantha was different. She was efficient. She would be able to devise any number of alternate plans.

Any of which would work.