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

To avoid seeing Aunt Lora that evening, or, rather, to avoid being seen by her, Sybil went to bed early, leaving a note on the kitchen table explaining that she had a mild case of the flu. Next morning, when Aunt Lora looked in Sybil’s room, to ask her worriedly how she was, Sybil smiled wanly and said she’d improved; but, still, she thought she would stay home from school that day.

Aunt Lora, ever vigilant against illness, pressed her hand against Sybil’s forehead, which did seem feverish. She looked into Sybil’s eyes, which were dilated. She asked if Sybil had a sore throat, if she had a headache, if she’d had an upset stomach or diarrhea, and Sybil said no, no, she simply felt a little weak, she wanted to sleep. So Aunt Lora believed her, brought her Bufferin and fruit juice and toast with honey, and went off quietly to leave her alone.

Sybil wondered if she would ever see her aunt again.

But of course she would: she had no doubt, she could force herself to do what must be done.

Wasn’t her mother waiting for her?

A windy, chilly afternoon. Sybil wore warm slacks and a wool pullover sweater and her jogging shoes. But she wasn’t running today. She carried her kidskin bag, its strap looped over her shoulder.

Her handsome kidskin bag, with its distinctive smell.

Her bag, into which she’d slipped, before leaving home, the sharpest of her aunt’s several finely honed steak knives.

Sybil Blake hadn’t gone to school that day but she entered the park at approximately three-forty-five, her usual time. She’d sighted Mr. Starr’s long elegantly gleaming black limousine parked on the street close by, and there was Mr. Starr himself, waiting for her.

How animated he became, seeing her! — exactly as he’d been in the past. It seemed strange to Sybil that, somehow, to him, things were unchanged.

He imagined her still ignorant, innocent. Easy prey.

Smiling at her. Waving. “Hello, Sybil!”

Daring to call her that — “Sybil.”

He was hurrying in her direction, limping, using his cane. Sybil smiled. There was no reason not to smile, thus she smiled. She was thinking with what skill Mr. Starr used that cane of his, how practiced he’d become. Since the injury to his brain? — or had there been another injury, suffered in prison?

Those years in prison, when he’d had time to think. Not to repent — Sybil seemed to know he had not repented — but, simply, to think.

To consider the mistakes he’d made, and how to unmake them.

“Why, my dear, hello! — I’ve missed you, you know,” Mr. Starr said. There was an edge of reproach to his voice but he smiled to show his delight. “I won’t ask where were you, now you’re here. And carrying your beautiful bag—”

Sybil peered up at Mr. Starr’s pale, tense, smiling face. Her reactions were slow at first, as if numbed; as if she were, for all that she’d rehearsed this, not fully wakened — a kind of sleepwalker.

“And — you will model for me this afternoon? Under our new, improved terms?”

“Yes, Mr. Starr.”

Mr. Starr had his duffel bag, his sketch pad, his charcoal sticks. He was bareheaded, and his fine silver hair blew in the wind. He wore a slightly soiled white shirt with a navy-blue silk necktie and his old tweed jacket; and his gleaming black shoes that put Sybil in mind of a funeral. She could not see his eyes behind the dark lenses of his glasses but she knew by the puckered skin at the corners of his eyes that he was staring at her intently, hungrily. She was his model, he was the artist, when could they begin? Already, his fingers were flexing in anticipation.

“I think, though, we’ve about exhausted the possibilities of this park, don’t you, dear? It’s charming, but rather common. And so finite,” Mr. Starr was saying, expansively. “Even the beach, here in Glencoe. Somehow it lacks — amplitude. So I was thinking — I was hoping — we might today vary our routine just a bit, and drive up the coast. Not far — just a few miles. Away from so many people, and so many distractions.” Seeing that Sybil was slow to respond, he added, warmly, “I’ll pay you double, Sybil — of course. You know you can trust me by now, don’t you? Yes?”

That curious, ugly little hook of a scar in Mr. Starr’s forehead — its soft pale tissue gleamed in the whitish light. Sybil wondered was that where the bullet had gone in.

Mr. Starr had been leading Sybil in the direction of the curb, where the limousine was waiting, its engine idling almost soundlessly. He opened the door. Sybil, clutching her kidskin bag, peered inside, at the cushioned, shadowy interior. For a moment, her mind was blank. She might have been on a high board, about to dive into the water, not knowing how she’d gotten to where she was, or why. Only that she could not turn back.

Mr. Starr was smiling eagerly, hopefully. “Shall we? Sybil?”

“Yes, Mr. Starr,” Sybil said, and climbed inside.