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

“Get the bag off her head!” he shouted, for Rose had panicked under the plastic and could not, with bandaged fingers, pull it from her nose.

Once again at his mother’s apartment Lin Po sat while she fed him a breakfast sufficient for three men. “How did you come to suspect Sim?” she asked.

“At first I thought only of someone from his offices because of the traces of watercolors on the back of each threatening letter. Everyone there, including the director, has a workbench spattered with the colors used in his making of drawings.” He ate another bite. “The letters by themselves prove nothing except that the crime was planned well in advance.”

His chopsticks reached for a steaming hot dumpling. “Later I thought if the fall was a plot to kill a person that person had to be on the scaffold at a certain time. To make the accident happen, the murderer needed to smash into the scaffold with a truck. And to cover his tracks he had to remove the truck and the sabotaged scaffold before anyone could study the evidence.

“The only person at the scene with the authority to get these things done was Sim. Which led me to ask what could cause an intelligent man like Sim to throw three people to their deaths just to kill one of them? The French, of course, have a proverb for it: ‘Look for the woman.’ And sure enough, office gossip led me to the answer.”

His mother scooped warmed-over rice. “Where was this Eng while Rose took his place in the hospital?”

“In a bed at the far end of the ward. What delicious dumplings! You must have worked all night to feed me.”

“You deserve something special,” his mother said. “But how did you know Sim would strike last night?”

He had to swallow before he could answer. “I let it slip that today Eng would be flown to Beijing and the orthopedic hospital there for surgery. A he, but Sim felt he had only one chance to complete his revenge. And he nearly did, for if he had killed Rose—”

She reached out and touched her son’s hand. “And the two lovers? I trust they will find happiness at last.”

“I doubt that.” Lin Po poured tea for his mother, then for himself. “Rose feels she must stay by Sim’s side and see the thing through to the end. It is a wife’s duty, she said, a matter of honor. Unless Sim receives the death penalty, and with his powerful family, that is not to be expected, she will dress like a widow until—” He waved the chopsticks.

“Dragon’s blood! I told you so,” said the little round woman. “No good can ever come from disturbing a dragon. Bad fang shui!”

The Danger of Being Frank

by John H. Dirckx

The chiming clock in the parlor struck five, setting up faint sympathetic vibrations in the dusty mandolin that lay next to it on the mantel. Mrs. Helm felt that the mandolin lent a note of refinement and culture to the decor of her boardinghouse on Ninth Avenue even though, over the years, none of her many tenants had been able to play it.

The parlor looked like something out of a Currier & Ives print entitled Home and Hearth or Domestic Tranquillity, and the rest of the house was pretty much of a piece with the parlor. Hardly a likely setting, one would have thought, for coldblooded murder.

Boyd Bland lounged in his favorite chair in the corner, watching the traffic through the dingy lace curtains and dingier windows and savoring the smell of dinner cooking. The door from the side porch opened, and Frank Strode came in humming, the evening paper under his arm. He took a seat opposite Bland and busied himself with his paper, from time to time reading a headline aloud.

Mrs. Helm’s head appeared suddenly and briefly in the doorway. “I’m putting it on the table, gentlemen,” she said. Bland and Strode filed into the dining room, where Hans Drebbel was already seated at the table. Hugh Gardner was just coming in from the back hall.

Mrs. Helm brought the platter of roast beef in from the kitchen and carved and dispensed it with ceremony. “You eat that before you get any more, Mr. Bland. Your turn is coming, Mr. Drebbel.” If her manner fell short of a mother’s tenderness, it wasn’t quite as uncompromising as a major league umpire’s.

She ate with the boarders, dividing her attention between her plate and their needs. Experience had taught her that if she left them to serve one another, some petty conflict would inevitably arise. Middle-aged bachelors were a lot like little boys; wherever their lives rubbed together, sparks were apt to fly.

As stomachs began to fill, conversation broke out in the dining room. Frank Strode yawned, said he was sleepy, and reached for the coffeepot.

“Didn’t sleep very well myself last night,” sighed Hugh Gardner with a faintly theatrical air. “Accursed television blaring until all hours.” He stared pointedly at Strode.

Strode stared back. He was a wiry restless man to whose face a bushy mustache lent an air of pugnacity. “Bogart festival last night,” he explained matter-of-factly.