Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

Dr. Merwood and Alan Treviscoe sat in Treviscoe’s drawing room smoking.

“I should have detected that it was poison,” said Merwood. “When you cried hellfire, I thought you delirious.”

“I was near enough to delirium that you cannot be found at fault for believing so, sir,” said Treviscoe. “Indeed, my wits were at such an ebb that at that moment I thought that Dr. Tindle was the man who meant to murder me.”

“So did we all.”

“But, of course, it made no sense, not after I realized the nature of the poison.”

“You mean because he had not e’er touched the bottle Elizabeth brought from Coridon.”

“Even without that, it could never have been poor mad Tindle who supplied the poison. Don’t you see? He believed the deaths to be miraculous, the intervention of God. He wouldn’t interfere with the work of the Lord. He believed himself to be merely the vessel of God’s power. And why would he, even mad as he is, choose to administer arsenic in an emetic, of all vehicles? Why, he would know that the patient should disgorge most of the poison in the course of events. An inefficient method, sir! Were Dr. Tindle the poisoner, he must surely have chosen a better means. No, he who poisoned the emetic must have done so because it was his only avenue, and that meant it had to be Coridon.”

“You were uncommon lucky, Alan, to discover in time what was being done. If the variolation had taken, you would now be in the grip of the scourge, weakened beyond any hope of recovery by the poison, like Lucy Phelps, poor moppet.”

“I am lucky if to be maliciously poisoned by an utter stranger can be called luck, but there was never any danger of the smallpox, Dr. Merwood, as I tried to tell you,” replied Treviscoe. “Remember how at the funeral I told you that I spent my boyhood in the shadow of Cornet Castle? Comet Castle is the ancient fortification on Guernsey. My father was Cornish, but my mother is of the Channel Isles; ’tis how I came to speak French.

“Guernsey is rich in cattle, Dr. Merwood, and although the island is blissfully free of most of the diseases that plague mankind in Britain and on the Continent, there has never been a herd of cattle where the cow-pock is unknown. I had that disease as a boy, and it is well-known that, once having suffered from the cow-pock, it is quite impossible to contract smallpox.”

“An old wives’ tale, Alan!”

“Then why did the ingrafting fail to take hold? Especially in my weakened state?”

“Medicine is an art, my boy, and art is filled with mystery. Only God is omniscient. But if you believed yourself immune to smallpox, why did you agree to the ingraft?”

Treviscoe laughed. “You gave me little option, if you recall, sir! Besides, I could not see that it would do any harm.”

Hero entered the room, bearing a newspaper. “I have some tragic news, sir,” he said. “Dr. Tindle has taken his own life. He left a note proclaiming it to be the will of God.”

“Another victim, then,” said Treviscoe quietly. “I hope that by destroying his faith I did not in the end destroy him.” He took the broadsheet, containing all the news in Bath for that day, December 22, 1773.

Tooth Fairy

by Gary Alexander

There’s a lot to be said for transferring out of Production to Claims. You might look at it as being grounded, but Management strongly prefers that you do not. You’re not fighting to meet quotas as they constantly raise the bar. You’re relying on your problem-solving skills rather than blinding, mindless speed. You’re now a professional/technical employee. You’re empowered.

At least that’s how Management sold it to me. Not a tough sale when you’re no longer as, well, sprightly as you used to be. And not when you consider the alternative, which is downsizing.

What they don’t tell you is that you’re pulling files out of the archives as green around the edges as a spoiled block of cheese. The trunk of my company car is so full of these it’s dragging on the ground, flattening near-bald tires. But off I go, not exactly dawdling, squinting through rock-chipped glass, pumping a roostertail of blue smoke. After budgets are written, Claims always seems to end up on the hind teat.

Bob Pat Hoopsma of Various Falls, Oregon, drove an eighteen-wheeler. I finally caught up with him at a forlorn truck stop off I-84. Bob Pat was in the lounge. Cigarette smoke hung like a temperature inversion, and the jukebox lamented lost pickup trucks, dogs, and loves, usually in that order.

To insure that I’d have his attention, I sashayed in with big hair and small clothes. Though Bob Pat was one step from geezerhood, I recognized him from the file description. The pencil neck and jug hairs were in place, the cowlick presumably squashed under his John Deere cap.

I took the stool next to him. Bob Pat undressed me with his hemorrhaging eyeballs. That’s okay. I can live with a few minutes of degradation. When they’re three sheets to the wind and lust-crazed, it’s easier to get to the bottom line.