Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (23 page)

“I’ve got things I want to say to him,” she said. “I’ll be all right in the
morning.”

Miriam went to her new home after she had seen her mother safely into her old
one. The space in the new house now seemed less of an attraction, more of a
disorientating threat. She went up to the landing and looked around. The
specialist had said it seemed unlikely there would need to be an inquest. Ernest
had had a couple of minor heart scares soon after retirement. Apart from the
rickety old ladder, the landing was tidy. The box, the container of all that
youthful attempt at fiction, had skidded over to the doorway of the main
bedroom, but it had remained intact, the box being secured by a liberal
application of freezer tape. The neat package looked faintly pathetic.

Poor Dad,
thought Miriam.
He’d never have completed it. The Dad of
today was probably a quite different person to the Dad who wrote
this.

She rummaged in her handbag and found a pair of nail scissors which, with
protest, allowed her to attack the sticky tape and open the box. There, in four
neat little piles, were the handwritten pages of what looked like a series of
letters. Miriam went into the main bedroom, where the light was better. She took
what seemed to be the first letter—the opening to the novel, she supposed: It
had no date on it, nor even any name for the fictional recipient of the letter.
“My dear boy,” it began:

I can’t tell you how happy you made me today. The assurance that you
felt the same attraction to me, had felt it for a long time, made my heart leap
for joy. Your feelings betray a maturity beyond your youth. But do remember that
our feelings are ones that could easily be misinterpreted. They are our secret,
and that is how it must remain.

Miriam frowned. This was not quite what she had expected. She flicked ahead
through the first pile of letters. “My dearest boy,” “Dear lad,” “My best love,”
“My own one”—these were the superscriptions. The events did not seem to progress
in the orderly manner of a novel. “I love your bright eyes, the sight of your
delicious, unruly fair hair.” Why should her father be writing a homosexual
novel? She had never for a moment suspected her father of nourishing such
thoughts. Was it some kind of crime novel, where the reader is offered
information but in a way calculated to mislead?

Eventually the awful, inevitable thought struck her. This was not a novel. This
was her father, writing himself, writing personally. It was a correspondence of
which he had kept only the one side—his own. These were his own real, deeply
felt thoughts. She began to sweat with embarrassment. She took up the second
pile. The tone of the top letter was very much that of the earlier ones.

My beloved boy,

Our games yesterday—so private and perfect—were wonderfully satisfying.
I’m grateful that your being now of age has allowed our love this new dimension.
These letters are my “thank you,” without which the fun and satisfaction would
not be complete.

Miriam’s eyes were awash. She could not rid herself of the feeling that only in
this relationship had her father had real joy and fulfilment. It made her feel
that his had been a life misused, only half satisfying. The combination of love
and schoolmasterliness in the tone of the letters only added to this
feeling.

She wiped her eyes and burrowed for the very last letter.

My dear, still dear, boy,

I cannot tell you the pain I suffered when I read your last and found
that you feel it is time to take up a new sort of relationship. Never before
have you told me that what we have was not enough for you. But I must not
reproach you—you who have given me so much. I must wish you well and let you go.
Please remember how dangerous this love has been, particularly for me. Please,
please,
Leslie: Pack up the letters securely and return them to me.
Those letters would be the end of my career, perhaps of my life. . . .”

Miriam found she could read no more. Now it all became clear: why her father had
opposed so vigorously her marriage, why he and Leslie (Ernest was the only man
who used his full name) had never, in spite of having so much in common, come
fully to trust each other. She understood the pain he must have felt, seeing his
lover as the lover of his daughter, but felt painfully that her father had not
done himself justice in that last letter, while Les had had to take hard
decisions for his father-in-law’s sake, and had loyally stuck to them, however
painful his silence must have been for him.

She went into the kitchen, into the muddle of cupboards and drawers, and found
her own roll of freezer tape. The box must be the basis of the first garden
bonfire in the new house. It would represent for her a thorough and complete
destruction of the most important relationship in her father’s life. But it was
what he would have wanted.

Copyright © 2012 by Robert Barnard

 
Michael Z. Lewin is a longtime contributor to
EQMM
and
AHMM,
and his short stories appear in many other publications as
well. We congratulate him on his recent nomination from the International
Thriller Writers for best story of 2011 for “Anything to Win” (
The
Strand
). Another bit of news related to his short stories:
Family
Trio,
a collection of three of the “Lunghi family” tales (two of which
appeared in
EQMM)
is now available on Kindle. And if you’re a fan of
the Lunghi series, you also won’t want to miss the latest novel,
Family
Way.
 

 
“You havin’ fun? If you’re havin’ fun, say ‘Yeah, Bob!’”

The audience said, “Yeah, Bob,” and the show was under way.

The gray, grizzled comic prowled the small stage. “I
like
this town. You
know why? Because the people are so friendly.” He picked out a young woman whose
seat was in the front row. “Soo, pretty lady? Are you gonna be friendly?”

The young woman shrugged.

“Oh, don’t be shy,” Bob said. “In comedy, if you’re sittin’ in the front row,
then you’re part of the show. So, tell us, sweetie, what’s your name?”

“Julie.”

“And where you from, Julie?”

“Here, in town.”

“And what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a librarian.”

“Hey hey! I guess librarians sure don’t look the way they used to.”

“Neither do libraries,” Julie said. “Or maybe
you’ve
never been inside
one.” The audience enjoyed this sign of resistance to the comic.

“Well well,” Bob said. “Looks like we’ve got us a live one here.”

“I’ve
been in a library.”

All eyes turned to a young man on the opposite side of the stage. He wore a red
baseball cap and a red T-shirt and stood as Bob turned to him.

“And just who are you?” Bob asked.

“Wayne Walcot,” the young man said. “And so far, Julie’s been funnier than you
have, Bob.”

“Well, let’s see if I can fix that.”

“Before you start on me, would you do me a favor and ask Julie if she’s single?
And tell her I’m staying at the Lansdown Hotel, if she’s interested.”

This drew another appreciative response from the crowd, but Bob approached the
newcomer like a vulture approaches dead meat.

At about one in the morning, Wayne Walcot was watching TV in his hotel room when
there was a knock at the door.

Walcot turned the TV off, and checked his hair and his red T-shirt in a mirror.
“Who is it?”

“Police. Open the door, please.”

In the hall he found a tall woman who held up a badge. “I’m Detective Porter,”
the woman said. Behind her was a male officer in uniform. “Are you Wayne
Walcot?”

“Jeez, can’t you guys even give me twenty-four hours?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I only got out of prison this morning.”

“Oh yes? What were you in for?”

“Like you don’t know.”

“Humor me,” Detective Porter said.

Wayne Walcot rubbed his face tiredly. “There was a ruckus in a bar and some jerk
got stabbed and kind of died. The rest of the guys in the bar saved their own
skins by saying that
I
did it.”

“And of course you didn’t.”

“Does it matter now? I’ve done my six years. But before I can turn around,
surprise surprise, I’ve got cops in my face.”

“Cops who want to know where you were tonight.”

Walcot sighed. “I was at the Yuk-Yuk Comedy Club.”

“On your first night after being let out of prison?” The police officers looked
at each other.

“I needed cheering up.”

“And did anybody see you there?”

“WelI . . . I suppose . . . about two hundred people did. So what’s this
about?”

“It’s about your uncle.” Porter read from her notes. “David Walcot.”

“Uncle Dave? He send you here to run me out of town?”

“You don’t get along with your uncle?”

“He didn’t visit me in prison, let’s put it that way.”

“Well, your uncle was found dead in his home about an hour and a half ago.”

“Dead?” Wayne Walcot looked shocked.

“His body was at the bottom of a flight of stairs.”

“He . . . fell?”

“There was a baseball bat by his head. It had blood on it.”

“Are you saying . . . he was . . . murdered?”

“We believe he interrupted a robbery. Didn’t he have a reputation for keeping a
lot of cash in his house?”

“I couldn’t tell you—I’ve been away.”

“Well, guess what? We found
your
name and the name of
this
hotel on a pad of paper by his telephone. Quite a coincidence, don’t you
think?”

“I called him. I was going to see him tomorrow. I . . . was going to ask him for
help getting a job.”

“Even though he didn’t like you?”

“I’m not in a position to be choosy, am I? And I tell you, there’s a dozen people
who hated the old miser worse than me. Try his son, Ollie. Or his last ex-wife.
And everybody knows he’s got kids around the state he’s never acknowledged or
supported. And then there’s his so-called business partners.”

“Slow down, slow down,” Detective Porter said. “I can’t write that fast.”

 
Once the police left the room, Wayne Walcot left it too.

But he didn’t go outside. He went to another room in the hotel where a young man
about his own age and size let him in. “Where you been?” Eddie Jones said.

“I just had the cops in my room,” Walcot said. They seem to think I killed my
Uncle Dave.”

“He’s
dead?”

“They say he interrupted a robbery. But I’m sure he was breathing when I left
him. Still, I suppose they know dead when they see it.”

Jones considered this for a moment. “Bummer.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“He was never a father to
me.
And my mom will open a bottle of champagne
when she hears.”

“Well, make sure it’s the real stuff.” Wayne Walcot passed over a wad of
cash.

Jones kissed the roll of banknotes. “Sweet. . . .”

“And you’ve got something for me, I believe.”

Jones handed him a T-shirt and a baseball cap, both red. “Wouldn’t want too many
of these knocking around,” Walcot said. “How was it at the club?”

“Just the way you said it would be. The so-called funny guy started in on a
librarian. A bit of a babe, as a matter of fact.”

“And then?”

“I stood up, told him he wasn’t funny. He turned on me right away, used your name
over and over. It’s cool, Wayne. Your alibi’s cast-iron.”

“Now, get out of here, Eddie.”

“On my way. I’ll be gone by the morning.”

“Why wait till then?”

“First, I got me a date. Cute little librarian by the name of Julie.”

Copyright © 2012 by Michael Z. Lewin