Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

“This is what Mr. Shing would have done, and he assumed that Charlie Tang would do the same. He decided that he must somehow let the police know about the murder before Charlie Tang returned. But now there was no way anyone else could get into the house to discover Wong Li’s body.

“Then he remembered Madam Shing, who perhaps is a relative of his. He has lived in the neighbourhood longer than she has — long enough to know all about her — including the fact that she once was an agent for the Lady Detective who works with the police. So he called on her and asked her to go at once to the Lady Detective and tell her she had seen a man climb a ladder and break into Charlie Tang’s residence. Madam Shing would have no part of such a prevarication. Just as Wong Li felt that the responsibility for his master’s property was a sacred trust, Madam Shing would have felt that truth was a sacred trust in her relation with me. She flatly refused. So Mr. Shing used force — remember the bruises on her arms and perhaps on her throat — and finally terrified her so with fear for her life that she consented. He or one of his employees certainly took her most of the way in a cab and then followed her all the way to my door.

“So she arrived in a panic and told me what he wanted her to — but she added the one touch of truth that destroyed all of his plans. When she described the man climbing the ladder, she put Mr. Shing’s beard on him. Probably she did it without thinking because the beard had terrified her and was foremost in her thoughts. Then, when I arranged to have her taken home, she pretended to go willingly, but she knew Mr. Shing would be waiting for her if she failed. At the first opportunity, she escaped to friends who would protect her.”

“You keep saying she won’t be called as a witness, but she is the only one who can connect Mr. Shing with the murder,” I said.

“Mr. Shing’s fingerprints connect him with the murder. Madam Shing won’t be called unless the police should decide to charge Mr. Shing with assault — but why would they bother? A murder charge is inclusive enough, and as I told you, she didn’t see anything. No one climbed a ladder, and she probably was asleep when Mr. Shing called on her.

“As for Mr. Shing, no Oriental would talk as confidentially to a stranger as he did to me in describing that touching scene where he drank toasts with Charlie Tang and Wong Li. It was information important to the case against Charlie Tang, and he wanted to make certain the police got it. Why did he confide in an Anglo-Saxon woman who was merely browsing for knickknacks in his shop? Because he knew who I was. He had terrified Madam Shing into calling on me and telling his lie for him — he knew the ploy had worked, because it got both me and the police there — and he wanted to make further use of me. He didn’t realize, when he told me that little tale about drinking a toast, that I was hearing it as a confession.”

Secondhand Heart

by Doug Allyn

Some nights I dream of toasters. An endless assembly line of 1955 Sunbeam T-35’s snakes through my sleep. Each one pristine. Chrome gleaming. Brand spanking new. Thousands of toasters.

Millions.

Then the new starts to wear off. Pinheads of rust discolor the chrome. The toasters look tired. Used. Secondhand.

Suddenly the assembly line veers and the toasters start spilling off the end, tumbling down into a landfill, down and down into a bottomless black pit...

And I snap awake! Wide-eyed, panting. Scanning the room for... I don’t know what. Something horrible. Death, maybe.

But no one’s ever there. Only me. Alone.

So I fall back to my pillow. But not to sleep. Instead I begin the deep breathing exercises they taught me in the hospital, slowing my hammering heartbeat. Willing myself to calm down.

Just make it through the night. A few more hours. How hard can that be?

Very hard, sometimes.

My bedroom helps. The room is softly lit. I never sleep in the dark anymore. Every stick of furniture is familiar. It took me months of scrounging to find them all. A fifties’ vintage McCobb six-drawer maple bureau, a Maloof day bed, cast-iron Laurel lamps with white mushroom shades.

In mint condition the furnishings might be worth five or six grand, but they aren’t museum pieces. I live with them.

Everything I own is secondhand. By choice.

Secondhand means that other people once chose these things, too. Bought them, enjoyed them. So in a small way, I feel connected to their lives, to their happiness. It’s the only connection I have now. Strictly secondhand.

Most people like new things. They buy new cars. Their cups all match. Their curtains color-complement their carpets and the art on their walls.

On garbage day, armies of empty cardboard boxes from Sears or Marshall Field’s line their curbs. Treasures mingling with the trash. A 1964 Eureka upright vacuum, a Plycraft bar stool.