Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

In 1987, Joyce Carol Oates made her first explicit venture into the mystery genre with a novel published under the pseudonym Rosamund Smith; but she was always one of the great masters of psychological suspense, and the following story ranks with her best...

1. The Approach of Mr. Starr

Had he stepped out of nowhere, or had he been watching her for some time, even more than he’d claimed, and for a different purpose? — she shivered to think that, yes, probably, she had many times glimpsed him in the village, or in the park, without really seeing him: him, and the long gleaming black limousine she would not have known to associate with him even had she noticed him: the man who called himself Mr. Starr.

As, each day, her eyes passed rapidly and lightly over any number of people both familiar to her and strangers, blurred as in the background of a film in which the foreground is the essential reality, the very point of the film.

She was seventeen. It was in fact the day after her birthday, a bright gusty January day, and she’d been running in the late afternoon, after school, in the park overlooking the ocean, and she’d just turned to head toward home, pausing to wipe her face, adjust her damp cotton headband, feeling the accelerated strength of her heartbeat and the pleasant ache of her leg muscles: and she glanced up, shy, surprised, and there he stood, a man she had never knowingly seen before. He was smiling at her, his smile broad and eager, hopeful, and he stood in such a way, leaning lightly on a cane, as to block her way on the path; yet tentatively too, with a gentlemanly, deferential air, so as to suggest that he meant no threat. When he spoke, his voice sounded hoarse as if from disuse. “Excuse me! — hello! Young lady! I realize that this is abrupt, and an intrusion on your privacy, but I am an artist, and I am looking for a model, and I wonder if you might be interested in posing for me? Only here, I mean, in the park — in full daylight! I am willing to pay, per hour—”

Sybil stared at the man. Like most young people she was incapable of estimating ages beyond thirty-five — this strange person might have been in his forties, or well into his fifties. His thin, lank hair was the color of antique silver — perhaps he was even older. His skin was luridly pale, grainy, and rough; he wore glasses with lenses so darkly tinted as to suggest the kind of glasses worn by the blind; his clothes were plain, dark, conservative — a tweed jacket that fitted him loosely, a shirt buttoned tight to the neck, and no tie, highly polished black leather shoes in an outmoded style. There was something hesitant, even convalescent in his manner, as if, like numerous others in this coastal Southern California town with its population of the retired, the elderly, and the infirm, he had learned by experience to carry himself with care; he could not entirely trust the earth to support him. His features were refined, but worn; subtly distorted, as if seen through wavy glass, or water.

Sybil didn’t like it that she couldn’t see the man’s eyes. Except to know that he was squinting at her, hard. The skin at the corners of his eyes was whitely puckered as if, in his time, he’d done a good deal of squinting and smiling.

Quickly, but politely, Sybil murmured, “No, thank you, I can’t.”

She was turning away, but still the man spoke, apologetically, “I realize this is a — surprise, but, you see, I don’t know how else to make inquiries. I’ve only just begun sketching in the park, and—”

“Sorry!”

Sybil turned, began to run, not hurriedly, by no means in a panic, but at her usual measured pace, her head up and her arms swinging at her sides. She was, for all that she looked younger than her seventeen years, not an easily frightened girl, and she was not frightened now; but her face burned with embarrassment. She hoped that no one in the park who knew her had been watching — Glencoe was a small town, and the high school was about a mile away. Why had that preposterous man approached her?

He was calling after her, probably waving his cane after her — she didn’t dare look back. “I’ll be here tomorrow! My name is Starr! Don’t judge me too quickly — please! I’m true to my word! My name is Starr! I’ll pay you, per hour” — and here he cited an exorbitant sum, nearly twice what Sybil made babysitting or working as a librarian’s assistant at the branch library near her home, when she could get hired.

She thought, astonished, He must be mad!

2. The Temptation