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

Outside the apartment door, Inspector Peters prostrated himself like an Arab at prayer, sniffing at the crack between the door and carpet. “Somebody’s home,” he whispered. “Radio going full blast, and I smell cigarettes. Funny ones, unless it’s joss sticks. Maybe your guy’s using grass for anesthetics.” He straightened lithely. Then, breath warm in Tom McKell’s ear: “Two locks, both rubbish. Your guy know his stuff?”

McKell, who’d had just about enough of his colleague, said, “Now’s the time to find out.” He undid the top buttons of the raincoat, sliding his hand within the belt holster, confirming by touch that the safety catch was on. Pete Peters, nodding, moved to the other side of the door.

“All yours, Tim,” McKell mouthed. His sergeant, lips pursed thoughtfully, pressed spread fingers between the two locks. Removing the sledgehammer from the bag, he stepped back and swung expertly, once, twice... Changed his grip to drive the hammer’s head at waist height, battering ram fashion.

The door flew open.

Revolver out, McKell crossed the minuscule lobby in a long stride. “Armed police! Stay still!”

Broad daylight outdoors, but the apartment’s lined curtains were closed and a single baby spot in the array of track lights was the sole illumination. The space, reeking of incense, was shadowy except for that pillar of radiance in the middle of the room, where it was mercilessly bright.

Shock froze him for a heartbeat. Bald, faceless, gleamingly naked, a creature was confronting him: a beast disturbed while savaging fallen prey. Inspector McKell’s mind shut down in much the manner of a camera shutter snapping; a refusal to acknowledge the nature of mutilated quarry being guarded by this apparition.

He might, Tom McKell confessed to me years later, have stayed frozen for a second or an hour. But Pete Peters, jammed with the sergeant back in the lobby, had shouted desperately.

McKell understood, in a strangely detached manner, that the creature wasn’t an animal after all. Humanoid, it had risen on two legs, it was advancing, and it brandished a kitchen knife, a narrow triangle of honed steel some seven inches long from tip to grip, and the silver was sweeping up, up—

Belatedly the spell broke. His brain snicked back into gear, and he perceived what he was dealing with. Being right-handed, with no time to switch the revolver to his left, Inspector McKell took his finger off the trigger, ducked under the descending blade, and clubbed his weighted fist against the side of the alien creature’s muzzle.

He even had enough presence of mind to catch Ivy Challis as she collapsed. While he was laying her down, a detached observer in his head noted that the floor wasn’t glistening from water, it was just that most of the carpet was covered by a sheet of clear plastic.

A cracked voice announced, “Panic over, chaps.” Holstering the revolver, he was disturbed to discover that he had been the speaker.

Pete Peters, Adam’s apple abruptly prominent, choked out, “Sweet Jesus, what is all this?” Shaken but professional, he bolted back to the corridor before throwing up; crime scenes must not be compromised.

“You had to be there,” McKell said, either shrugging or shivering. “Ivy didn’t want her clothes stained by the messy task she had taken on, so she stripped, put on a shower cap and a skintight, see-through PVC catsuit, part of her working wardrobe. With just that one light, and no makeup on, she scared seven kinds of spit out of me. And there were scores of those joss sticks you get at Chinese stores, smoldering away to cover the smell, so the flat was sort of foggy.

“She swore she hadn’t been trying to knife me, just making for the door in a panic to escape. Small consolation if she had skewered me, but I didn’t press charges. The lady was in enough trouble without my two-pennyworth.”

Seeing the question on my face, he said patiently, “Ivy had killed Ivor Grange about an hour before we turned up. She needed to smuggle the body out — dismemberment struck her as the best means. ‘I could have carried it a bit at a time,’ she told me, might have been talking about handling materials for a garden bonfire, ‘and Ivor was too big to get into the boot of my car. I had to make him fit.’ ”

He mimed another shudder. “Ice for a heart, that one. Then again, having been used and abused by men all her adult life, maybe she saw it as getting her own back. All the same, I’m afraid Ivy was defective when she came off the assembly line. Glamorous but not fully human.

“Try this: I asked how she could have done such a thing, meaning killing and mutilation — her late boyfriend was minus arms and legs when we broke in, she’d been taking a breather before tackling decapitation. Ivy being such a looker made it even more bizarre, that’s what I was driving at.