Only Irma knew the truth about the company’s finances, although it was only a matter of time, if something did not happen, until his creditors would be hounding him and he might have to go to prison because of certain questionable actions on his part. For the moment, he had nothing to fear from Irma. She had been his mistress for nearly five years, so discreet about her relationship with him, as well as about the business, that no one else suspected what was going on.
Irma had always wanted to marry him, but Gerald had been successful thus far in putting her off by pointing out that his mother would not hesitate to disinherit him if he married the wrong woman. Irma, who was thought by Gerald’s mother to be definitely beneath him, could not but appear to be very much the wrong woman.
Now that his mother was dead, Irma would expect him to keep his promise to marry her. She had no way of knowing that there was an even stronger reason why he would not marry her. He intended to marry Peggy McFarland, the town’s richest woman now that her husband was dead. He needed Peggy’s money to stave off bankruptcy. But he knew, too, that Irma would not let go, that she would insist on his marrying her and, if he refused, ruin him by exposing his misuse of company funds.
Thus musing, Gerald kept staring at the sputtering candles and shuddered when an unexpected sound, the doorbell, shattered the silence of the big house. He knew very well who it was. He went to the solid oak front door and swung it open wide, smiling his warmest smile.
Irma, her black hair glistening from the rain, came in, carrying a large handbag. She was wearing a shapeless gray dress which gave no hint of the rich body it concealed. There was a bovine quality, like that of the great Earth Mother, which had first attracted him and still held him in its spell.
“Darling,” Gerald said, kissing her. “You remind me of an adorable peasant. You’re right on time.”
The serious look on Irma’s face did not change. She walked quickly to the door of the parlor, looking in as if she also wished to assure herself that the old woman was at long last dead.
“That’s some coffin,” she said. “It doesn’t look like one in our line.”
“It isn’t,” Gerald said, coming to a stop beside her. “I had it built specially. Magnificent, isn’t it?”
It was a very special coffin. Ever since Gerald read about the Mafia’s neat little trick of suing a split-level coffin to get rid of an unwelcome body underneath that of someone else who was legally dead, he had pondered the application of this solution to his problems. He had built it with his own hands to the same specifications, working through the night while he was alone in the factory. But he could not very well tell Irma how he intended to use it.
“Come on in, dear,” he said, taking her arm. “Let’s sit by the fire where it’s warm.”
She shivered a little when he touched her, but he was certain the shiver came from cold rather than fear.
“Did anyone think it odd that you resigned your job?” Gerald asked.
She shrugged. “Not really. I just said I was tired of living here, that I wanted to go to California.”
Gerald had worked it all out with Irma. She was to resign her job and go to California ahead of him. With her, would go most of the liquid assets of the firm. He was to join her as soon as he had declared bankruptcy and arranged for a receiver to take over. At least, that was supposed to be the plan.
“Did you check in for your flight at the airport before you came here tonight?”
“Yes,” Irma said doubtfully. “I don’t see why it was necessary.”
“We’re only ten minutes away from the airport,” Gerald said quickly. “This gives us more time together before you have to leave.”
“I know, but—”
“Honey, you’re going to love. California.” He leaned over to kiss her. “Now, how about a drink to warm you up?”
“Just a little ginger ale, Gerald.”
“Not on your life,” he said, walking to the portable bar. “How can we toast our future happiness without something alcoholic?”
Irma shook her head, but Gerald was already pouring the clear liquid into two small shot glasses. She could not see him adding the cyanide to her glass. “This is vodka, straight,” he said, his back hiding what he was doing at the bar. “I bet you ten dollars you can’t drink bottoms up.”
He handed her the glass. Then he held his own high. “To Mother!” he said and gulped down the vodka.
Irma drained the contents of her glass. As anticipated, she rose to his challenge.
He took the glass from her hand and walked back to the bar, where he set both glasses down. When he turned, he noted a peculiar expression on her face. Then her body sagged. A moment later she slid to the carpet.
He wasted no time. Everything had been carefully rehearsed and he knew he could finish the business in less than five minutes. He lifted the shrunken body of his mother out of the coffin, laid her corpse down on the rug next to Irma. It took him seconds to remove the panel inside the coffin, exposing the compartment underneath.
He lifted Irma’s body and carefully arranged it in the lower compartment. He went through her handbag swiftly, looking at her airline ticket and boarding pass, then returned them, throwing in the shot glass from which she had drunk, and finally removing a manila envelope filled with banknotes. He laid the handbag next to Irma.
Then he replaced the panel with swift, deft movements, took up his mother and laid her back in place. Checking his watch, he saw with satisfaction that all this had taken only two minutes and fifty seconds. Not, he thought, bad for a first effort.
He poured himself a stiff drink of bourbon and reflected that no one knew Irma Pappas was coming to his house that night. The secrecy was part of the plan. Since she had checked in for her flight already, as far as anyone would ever know she had definitely taken that flight to California. Since she had no relatives or close friends in the town, no one would really expect to hear from her.
The funeral the next morning went even better than Gerald had hoped. The chill rain of the previous evening had stopped and it turned out to be a beautiful spring day. All the prominent people of the town were there to pay their last respects to his mother. He watched carefully as the pallbearers handled the coffin. For one moment his heart seemed to skip a beat as they briefly lost their grip. For a brief instant, he had a vision of the coffin splitting open on the ground and both bodies spilling out. Fortunately, the pall-bearers regained their hold before this happened.
Gerald felt fine standing next to Peggy McFarland under the billowing striped awning beside the grave. The cemetery, with its tall elms and colorful purple lilac’s and yellow jonquil, made him think that it was almost too good for the dead and should belong instead to the living. When the Reverend Andrews had finished his inevitably long and dull funeral address, Gerald walked away from the grave with blonde Peggy beside him, conscious of the admiring glances of his fellow townspeople for the pretty and very rich young widow.
“Gerald, there is something I want very much to say to you,” Peggy told him, looking up at him out of large blue eyes into which he dreamed of plunging. “But I don’t think I should say anything right now.”
Gerald assumed the proper attitude of mourning. “I understand,” he said. Indeed, he did understand. Peggy was well aware how he felt about her, and she wanted to let him know that when he was ready to ask her she would agree to become his wife.
At least, this was what he thought until he reached the white mansion on the hill where he had lived alone with his mother for so many years. The newsboy had already been there, and he saw the afternoon paper lying on the top step of the veranda. Cruel disappointment awaited him when he looked at the front page.