Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 36, No. 6, June 1991

“It landed on my front lawn at exactly three oh-nine this afternoon. I looked at my watch as it landed — three oh-nine exactly. Will you send a squad car or whatever it is that should be sent — at once? It’s sitting right there in the middle of my jack-in-the-pulpits, which you know I prize most highly.”

“Is it from Mars?”

“However would I know? That’s for you to find out. I notice you’re not writing this down.”

MacReynolds sighed a second time before picking up a pencil and beginning to write on a blank piece of paper.

Miss Evangeline turned toward the door, but before leaving the office she glanced back at MacReynolds, who had stopped writing. “You do believe me, don’t you?” Her voice was plaintive. MacReynolds heard a lost little girl hidden in it.

“Now, Miss Evangeline,” he said. “I’ll send someone over to investigate. Don’t you fret.”

“Thank you ever so much, sergeant. You see, my jack-in-the-pulpits—”

“I’ll have Patrolman Carson investigate first thing. Goodbye, Miss Evangeline.”

When she had gone, MacReynolds looked down at the piece of paper on which he had written: Bats in the old girl’s belfry. “Carson!” he yelled.

Carson appeared instantly in the doorway. “She’s at it again, right, sergeant?”

MacReynolds frowned. “Don’t they teach you youngsters respect for your elders any more? Yes, she’s at it again. But why wouldn’t she be? She lives on a pittance from her father’s estate, which is doled out to her annually by a law firm up in New York, and what was good enough twenty years ago isn’t worth a damn today. You ever heard of inflation?”

“Sorry, sergeant.”

“I’m sorry, too. A lady like Miss Evangeline just isn’t properly equipped to deal with our nervous world. Sometimes I’m not so sure I am, either.” MacReynolds muttered something about the bomb.

Carson cleared his throat a moment later.

MacReynolds looked up and drifted back to the present and the matter at hand. “A flying saucer landed on Miss Evangeline’s lawn at three oh-nine this afternoon.” His expression warned Carson not to smile. “I want you to drive by — make sure she sees you — and do whatever a policeman is supposed to do when investigating a flying saucer.”

Carson promised that he would do just that. Right away.

Instead of going home to face the bizarre evidence of interplanetary invasion plopped on her front lawn, Miss Evangeline drove to Mulberry Mall, where she had made up her mind to spend the rest of the afternoon. She had no idea how long it would take Patrolman Carson to disperse the flock of flying saucers she imagined must be parked in the neighborhood by now, frightening people.

She parked outside Mulberry Mall, which got its name from the mulberry bushes planted along its north border, separating the mall itself from the mayor’s ornate mansion, which adjoined it. There were more bushes growing along the promenade that began beside the river and ambled along for nearly a mile and a half.

As Miss Evangeline entered the mall, she saw that the daily invasion of children had taken place. They possessed the mall totally. They were everywhere — on the swings and teeter-totters and sliding boards, burrowing in the sandboxes, and threatening to break their necks on the jungle gyms. The sight of them pleased her. She had, during recent years, come to feel much more comfortable with the children, far more comfortable than she was able to feel with their parents, who insisted upon discussing such confusing matters as stock options and floating (or was it sinking?) bond issues and Christian Dior. But the children — oh, they were quite something else! She often helped them build their forts or find four-leaf clovers or scale the heights of Xanadu.

She sat down on a bench in the shade of her favorite elm tree, her large knitting bag at her side, and looked around at what she had come to think of as her territory. Everything seemed to be in order, but she couldn’t be entirely sure, of course, because she had forgotten to bring her glasses and the effect without them was both disarming and disconcerting. Disarming because it gave a slight but pleasant haze to her surroundings, and disconcerting because she could not sort out the faces of the children according to the names that she knew belonged to them. Well, never mind, she advised herself. This afternoon she would simply sit and suffer the little children to come unto her — if only they would.

The first one did a few minutes later.

The little girl’s name was Mary and she had cut herself. She displayed her wound proudly to Miss Evangeline, who promptly rummaged through her knitting bag and brought out a bottle of antiseptic and daubed some of the red liquid on Mary’s bony knee.

“Do you ever slide?” Mary asked.

For a moment, Miss Evangeline didn’t quite understand the question. Then she said, “Oh, dear me, no. I haven’t been on a sliding board in ever so long.”

“Why not?” Mary wanted to know.