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

Aunt Lora then sighed, and, in a characteristic gesture, meaning both impatience and a dutiful desire to please, ran both hands rapidly through her hair and began to speak. She assured Sybil that there was little to know, really. The accident — the tragedy — had happened so long ago. “Your mother, Melanie, was twenty-six years old at the time — a beautiful sweet-natured young woman, with eyes like yours, cheekbones like yours, pale wavy hair. Your father, George Conte, was thirty-one years old — a promising young lawyer, in his father’s firm — an attractive, ambitious man—” And here as in the past Aunt Lora paused, as if in the very act of summoning up this long-dead couple, she had forgotten them; and was simply repeating a story, a family tale, like one of the more extreme of her tales of the Glencoe Medical Center, worn smooth by countless tellings.

“A boating accident — Fourth of July—” Sybil coaxed, “—and I was with you, and—”

“You were with me, and Grandma, at the cottage — you were just a little girl!” Aunt Lora said, blinking tears from her eyes, “—and it was almost dusk, and time for the fireworks to start. Mommy and Daddy were out in Daddy’s speedboat — they’d been across the lake, at the Club—”

“And they started back across the lake — Lake Champlain—”

“—Lake Champlain, of course: it’s beautiful, but treacherous, if a storm comes up suddenly—”

“And Daddy was at the controls of the boat—”

“—and, somehow, they capsized. And drowned. A rescue boat went out immediately, but it was too late.” Aunt Lora’s mouth turned hard. Her eyes glistening with tears, as if defiantly. “They drowned.”

Sybil’s heart was beating painfully. She was certain there must be more, yet she herself could remember nothing — not even herself, that two-year-old child, waiting for Mommy and Daddy who were never to arrive. Her memory of her mother and father was vague, dim, featureless, like a dream that, even as it seems about to drift into consciousness, retreats farther into darkness. She said, in a whisper, “It was an accident. No one was to blame.”

Aunt Lora chose her words with care. “No one was to blame.”

There was a pause. Sybil looked at her aunt, who was not now looking at her. How lined, even leathery, the older woman’s face was getting! — all her life she’d been reckless, indifferent, about sun, wind, weather, and now, in her late forties, she might have been a decade older. Sybil said, tentatively, “No one was to blame—?”

“Well, if you must know,” Aunt Lora said. “—there was evidence he’d been drinking. They’d been drinking. At the Club.”

Sybil could not have been more shocked had Aunt Lora reached over and pinched the back of her hand. “Drinking—?” She had never heard this part of the story before.

Aunt Lora continued, grimly, “But not enough, probably, to have made a difference.” Again she paused. She was not looking at Sybil. “Probably.”

Sybil, stunned, could not think of anything further to say, or to ask.

Aunt Lora was on her feet, pacing. Her close-cropped hair was disheveled and her manner fiercely contentious, as if she were arguing her case before an invisible audience as Sybil looked on. “What fools! I tried to tell her! ‘Popular’ couple — ‘attractive’ couple — lots of friends — too many friends! That Goddamned Champlain Club, where everyone drank too much! All that money, and privilege! And what good did it do! She — Melanie — so proud of being asked to join — proud of marrying him — throwing her life away! That’s what it came to, in the end. I’d warned her it was dangerous — playing with fire — but would she listen? Would either of them listen? To Lora? — to me? When you’re that age, so ignorant, you think you will live forever — you can throw your life away—”

Sybil felt ill, suddenly. She walked swiftly out of the room, shut the door to her own room, stood in the dark, beginning to cry.

So that was it, the secret. The tawdry little secret — drinking, drunkenness — behind the “tragedy.”

With characteristic tact, Aunt Lora did not knock on Sybil’s door, but left her alone for the remainder of the night.

Only after Sybil was in bed, and the house darkened, did she realize she’d forgotten to tell her aunt about Mr. Starr — he’d slipped her mind entirely. And the money he’d pressed into her hand, now in her bureau drawer, rolled up neatly beneath her underwear, as if hidden...

Sybil thought, guiltily, I can tell her tomorrow.

5. The Hearse