Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (25 page)

Looking up at him, Mrs. Cappelli knew it would be so. In her, regrettably, Greg Morrow had made the biggest mistake of his life.

She thought of John's grandfather and his father and of Cappelli men from Sicily to San Francisco. In all the Mafia—and it had been so for generations—there were no better soldiers than Cappelli men. They enforced Mafioso law without fear or regard—and none was more stalwart than the loving fullness of her heart, her John.

Norman Kaner
lifted his head from the pillow, slowly opened his eyes, and immediately regretted having done so. As the light reached his brain, the mining and blasting operation within his head began full tilt. He wet his lips with his tongue, vaguely considering whether a muskrat or some other furry creature had died inside his mouth sometime the previous night. A hangover of these sublime proportions should, he thought, be enshrined somewhere as an example and warning for future generations. He wondered if the Smithsonian Institution would be at all interested.

To drink so much, especially when driving strange roads, was unforgivable. Nevertheless, Norman managed to forgive himself. There were, after all, mitigating circumstances. Just yesterday he'd taught his final class in the pre-Revolutionary colonial period, and now he and Betty had the whole summer free for the tour of New England for which they'd been planning and saving since he was a mere instructor at Hadley College. That in itself was cause for celebration.

The celebration had included four martinis at dinner in that tiny restaurant in southern Connecticut.

Furthermore, Betty's mother, Vera, had insisted on coming along on the vacation. No cause for rejoicing, this, but an excellent excuse for drowning one's sorrows.

Vera Blumenthal was a tiny old shrew of a woman with a mouth exceeded in size by nothing on earth except the Mississippi River and possibly the Amazon. From the time they'd left yesterday noon, she'd had a disapproving comment for each revolution of the station wagon's wheels. The back seat was too narrow, Norman was driving too fast, her arthritis was acting up, they should have taken another route to avoid traffic … Yakkety, yakkety, yak! Whenever Norman had attempted to talk to her, to calm her or at least shut her up, she'd resorted to her favorite catch phrase: “A pox on you, Norman. And on all your brood, too.”

A pox on you, Vera
, thought Norman, pressing the heels of his hands against his eye sockets and tasting once again the dregs of the drinks he'd had. Somehow he'd reeled back to the car and managed to find the road. His memory from that point on wasn't too clear. He'd stopped for a traffic light out in the middle of nowhere, and then the car door had opened and a man said something about his being under arrest. Who'd expect a cop to be waiting right there …

Suddenly Norman sat bolt upright on the bed. He looked about at the stout oak walls of the room and the tiny window with the hand-wrought bars. The palms of his hands pressed against the mattress, feeling not springs but a crackling something that could have been wheat straw or corn shucks.

The man had been leading a horse. Not only that, but he'd been dressed in baggy pants, gathered at the knees. His shirt had been white, with full sleeves, and his hair had been pulled back and tied behind his head. The picture was one Norman had seen hundreds of times in his own history books.

“What do you know about that?” he said wonderingly. “I've been busted by Paul Revere.”

As if the words were a signal, there was the sound of a bolt being thrown outside the stout door. It creaked open ponderously. Bright sunlight streamed into the tiny cell, and Norman peeped through squinted eyes at the figure in the opening.

Ethan Allen, maybe? Or John Adams? The man was dressed in similar fashion to the policeman of the night before, with the addition of a wide-brimmed hat atop hair that hung almost to his shoulders. The 1700s? Norman shook his head. No, almost a century earlier. It was hard to believe that outside that door somewhere there was a land of jet planes and superhighways, smokestacks polluting the air and raw sewage turning clear water into poison—modern America.

The guard jangled a ring of heavy wrought-iron keys in his hand. “Come to your senses have you, neighbor?” he said. “Your brain was more than a little fuddled by strong spirits when Constable Wainright towed your strange machine into town last night.”

“My wife … her mother,” mumbled Norman thickly. “Where are they? Are they all right?”

The guard nodded. “Since our gaol makes no provision for women, Dame Pellow was kind enough to put them up for the night. Just now, I suspect, they're enjoying a bowl of her flummery to break their fast. But come, put yourself in order. It won't do to keep Justice Sawyer waiting.”

“Justice … Oh, yeah. The drunk-driving charge.” Norman patted his hip pocket. The thick wad of traveler's checks was still there.

He stood up, and his face turned white as the miners inside his skull let loose a three-megaton blast. With the palm of his hand he tried to smooth down his tousled hair.

“Tell me,” he said, giving up the hair as a bad job and making ineffectual passes at the wrinkles in his pants, “what's this thing with the costumes? And the policeman on horseback? Do you folks always carry on like this, or is something special going on?”

“Illium—our little village—was one of the first settlements in New England. We have a long and proud heritage that we try to keep alive.”

“Oh, yeah.” Norman tapped his head with an index finger. “The Bicentennial thing. Y'know, I clean forgot this was the year for it …”

The guard shook his head. “We predate the Revolution by more than a century. Some ten years ago the people of Illium decided we should not let the old ways and customs die. So for one month each year we do our best to relive the early days, exactly as they were, as a reminder of the stock from which we sprang.”

Norman considered the oddly dressed figure. “Not bad. Not bad at all. Just one or two little things out of place, though.”

“Out of place?” The guard looked as if he'd been slapped.

“Yeah. Historical errors from the wrong time. Anachronisms. Your shoes, for example.”

“What about my shoes?”

“They're cut for right and left feet. Now, most of the shoes of the 1600s were made from a single last. The right and left ones were exactly the same.”

“Interesting. I'll make a note of that for the village board. We try to keep everything as authentic as possible.”

“Another thing. The cop last night—Wainright, I think you said his name was—he had clubbed hair.”

“Clubbed?”

Norman nodded. “Tied at the back. Not really the style in Puritan days. It usually hung loose, like yours.”

“Peter Wainright won't like to hear that. He's very proud of his hair. But I'm sure he'll go along in the interests of accuracy. How is it that you know all these things?”

“I'm a professor of American history. Did my doctorate on the Pilgrim and Puritan social systems.”

“Ah, a man of learning. Be sure to mention it to Justice Sawyer. He puts great store by exact knowledge. Come now. We must not keep the good justice waiting.”

As he marched across the village green accompanied by the key-jingling guard, Norman was amazed at how closely Illium resembled the woodcuts he'd seen of early New England villages. Windows, porches, and in some cases entire store fronts had been altered; here a home, seemingly constructed of hand-hewn timbers. Only the closest scrutiny showed they were really commercial products. There, the blacksmith shop, complete with spreading chestnut tree; the grease rack behind the facade was barely visible through the half-open door. The tiny church on the hillside, surrounded by maple trees, might actually have been built decades before the American Revolution; amazing attention to detail.

Court was held in Justice Jonathan Sawyer's low-ceilinged living room. The furniture had been pulled back against the walls, and the justice's desk placed by the room's single window—a homey yet oddly formal setting for a trial.

Betty and Vera were waiting for him when he arrived. In his hungover condition, Norman was scarcely up to the combined onslaught of the two women.

“Norman!” chattered his wife. “This will put us at least a day behind schedule, if not more. I told you not to have so much to—”

“Sheer tomfoolery,” chimed in Vera. “A pox on you, Norman. And on all your brood, too.”

“We have no brood, Vera,” Norman groaned. “There's just Betty and me, a condition I can hardly ignore since you—”

“Oyez, oyez!” intoned the guard. “The court of the village and town of Illium is now in session, Justice Jonathan Sawyer presiding. Those who have business before this court, approach and ye shall be heard. All rise, please.”

When Justice Sawyer entered from the kitchen, it was all Norman could do to keep from laughing out loud. A short, fat man in a black cloak, he resembled nothing so much as a large globe draped for mourning, surmounted by a wig of indeterminate shape, which insisted on drooping down over one eye.

“The charge?” chanted Sawyer in a sepulchral voice.

“Public drunk and disorderly,” said the guard.

“He wasn't that at all,” screeched Betty. “I—I mean he was drunk, all right. But he wasn't disorderly. Mother and I both—”

Justice Sawyer's hand slammed down on the desk. “You are here on my sufferance as observers. Nothing more. Now let's get on with it.”

“But she was just trying to tell you there was nothing public about Norman's being drunk,” Vera carped.

“Enough, madams.” Justice Sawyer's face was livid. “By my faith, I'll have order in this court! This feminine caterwauling will cease immediately.”

Momentarily cowed, the two women sank back onto their chairs.

“Now then, sir,” Sawyer continued, looking at Norman, “how do you plead?”

“Guilty … your Honor … sir,” mumbled Norman. “But I would like to offer an explanation of why it happened.”

Sawyer conferred with the guard in a hushed voice. “The court will deign to hear you out,” he said finally.

“Well, it was the first day of our vacation. A half day, really, because I'd had my classes at the college all morning. There's, well, a letdown at the end of the school year, your Honor. You know how it is. I felt the need of a pick-me-up and … well, I guess I picked myself up too far.”

“You are aware, neighbor, that under the present laws of this state I could revoke your license.”

“Yes, but—”

“In addition, I could sentence you to up to sixty days in gaol and a whacking good fine?”

“Please, your Honor, it's our vacation. It won't happen again, I promise.”

“However,” Sawyer went on, “this court is inclined to be lenient. You seem to have enough troubles of your own without my adding to them unnecessarily.” The withering glance he directed at Betty and Vera could have etched glass.

“Therefore, in keeping with the … eh … changed character of our village during this month, I sentence you to one day of confinement in the stocks.”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“The stocks. You know.” Sawyer was suddenly like a child with a new toy. He swiveled about in his chair, extending hands and feet outward rigidly. “We have the stocks out there on the green, but so far nobody's been in them. It would add a great deal to the realism of our annual celebration. Otherwise …” Sawyer's bushy eyebrows drooped across his eyes like half-drawn blinds, “… the full extent of the law.”

“No!” cried Betty. “I forbid it. Sitting out there with your hands and feet clamped in those boards. I'd be embarrassed to—”

“Betty, shut up!” roared Norman. “This way, we'll only be a day behind schedule.” He turned back to Sawyer. “Okay, I'll go along with your sentence. Purely in the interest of historical accuracy, of course.”

“Not fair.” Vera again. “You could have fined him ten dollars or so, and we could have been out of this madhouse by now.”

The guard took Norman by the arm and led him toward the door. Behind him, Vera and Betty were both expostulating with Justice Sawyer. As he left, Vera's inevitable rejoinder rang out in the small room: “A pox on you, Sawyer! And on all your brood, too!”