Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Those standing near Ms. Marcastle at the back of the room, unaware of the goal of Mr. Drexel’s journey, turned to congratulate her. For the moment, however, Ms. Marcastle seemed unable to offer a coherent thank you since her mouth had dropped open at the announcement of Mr. Garrett’s new heir — herself! — and was still sagging in that position from the idea that her beloved Mr. Garrett had been murdered.

Suddenly Mr. Drexel reached her side and lunged, with flexing fingers, towards her throat. Ms. Marcastle’s dazed fumble for escape was prevented by the mass of villagers packed into the room. Observers began to scream.

At that moment Mrs. Risk appeared between Mr. Drexel and Ms. Marcastle and effectively blocked his progress with her body. Nobody remembered seeing the witch nearby a moment ago, which many took as confirmation of their opinion that she was truly supernatural.

Then Mrs. Risk spoke. Her low vibrant voice cut through the mayhem and silenced it.

“So you’ve discovered all your plans to be fruitless, have you, Matthew?”

Mr. Drexel was brought up short by the question. Slowly his hands lowered, as if his earlier manic energy was being drained from him. His face reflected an agonized bewilderment. He blinked at the witch, then looked around him, although without any apparent awareness of his audience.

“I don’t understand,” he said to her in a peculiarly high-pitched tone. “Wasn’t he already buried? I went to the funeral myself. When did they do an autopsy?”

Homicide Detective Michael Hahn reached him at just that moment and with a heavy hand, pushed him none too gently by the shoulder into a chair. Detective Hahn aimed a commanding frown at the surrounding onlookers, and most of them shuffled back a foot or so.

Mrs. Risk, however, stayed close beside Mr. Drexel. Her eyes flashed with a black fire, but her voice sounded only detached... casual... as if she merely wondered about some things.

“Aisa’s doctor ordered him to drink two carafes of water every day and you knew it. You added Tri-Zan to the carafe on his desk that Peggy kept filled with water for him. You’re the one who slipped that same Tri-Zan into the bottled water to poison Phantom’s construction crew, too, aren’t you.” She didn’t make it sound like a question.

He gave a short, bitter laugh. “When Aisa took over, he found that North Shore still had a supply of the banned rat poison left over from decades ago. He put me in charge of disposing of it, along with everything else. I never got around to it. I could use all I wanted and nobody would miss it, since nobody was supposed to still have any.”

“But the well water would’ve made the crew sick eventually, that was the joke, wasn’t it, Matthew?” she said.

Mr. Drexel looked aside but nodded.

“Because it was tainted with gas,” said Mrs. Risk. “The water table was slowly being polluted from those pipeline leaks you were supposed to clean up and eliminate years ago. You never finished that job, either, did you?”

“I started it, but the costs were astronomical. The pipes were so old — the engineers said they had pinhole leaks, maybe even only one or two, that we couldn’t find. The only solution they recommended was to dig up and replace the entire pipeline. I did replace some of it, but there were miles of pipes!”

“And since you were in charge, you were able to keep anyone at the company from knowing all the facts of the cleanup operation, weren’t you? Nobody but you knew that you’d left it unfinished. And so, slowly, gas has continued to leak into the water table at the east end of the village. The leak hadn’t spread to my property yet, and the only people living between NSIC and Phantom’s property are rarely there to notice anything. The plots are so large on my side of town it played to your advantage, isn’t that right, Matthew?”

“I would’ve done the job, in time.” His voice sounded plaintive, as if he felt she should see the reasonableness of his actions. He looked up at her. “The gas was taking years to spread. But no, Mr. Garrett wanted everything done immediately. NSIC would’ve gone broke.”

“Not broke, but the stock price would’ve been greatly depressed, wouldn’t it, Matthew?” murmured Mrs. Risk.

He nodded, still looking only at her. “The stock price had already dropped in reaction to Aisa’s huge expenditures. I’d gotten several loans using that stock as collateral. If the value dropped again, I would’ve had to come up with money I didn’t have to back up those loans. It’s expensive, living the way I do. Everybody knows I’m Aisa’s heir. I’m an important man, I have appearances to maintain.”

Mrs. Risk looked away from him for a moment, the muscles in her jaw working, then continued, “Too bad you couldn’t have — economized your lifestyle a little — enough to buy that land yourself.” She still spoke with a strange intensity of tone that carried throughout the room without being loud. The crowd stood breathlessly silent, listening.