Alfred Hitchcock Tales of Terror: 58 Short Stories Chosen by the Master of Suspense (1986) by Eleanor Sullivan

Author:Eleanor Sullivan [Sullivan, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

He had tried to prepare himself for the moments right afterward. Horror was what he expected, and it came, a wild trembling, a violent nausea as he stared down into the water. Doubt, fear, remorse because now he was a murderer and would know himself to be one forever. But he hadn’t expected the overwhelming loneliness which, when it struck, drove every other feeling out of him. With his own hands he had done it, had rendered himself alone in a world that thought he was a very funny man indeed. She was the only one who hadn’t laughed.

Later he thought that he might have followed her over the wall in that moment, might have ended it right then, if the doorbell hadn’t rung. After the third or fourth ring he recognized the sound. And he knew he had to go ahead with the plan.

When he opened the door Joe Herman stepped inside, pulling his wife behind him. “Damn tire,” he snarled and grabbed the telephone in the entry. “That’s the second one this week—I don’t even have a spare. . .” He looked at Harry more closely. “What’s the matter—too much party? You oughtta cut out all that cute stuff.”

“Call the police,” Harry said. “Call somebody. Greta just jumped off the terrace. She’s killed herself.”

He didn’t have to pretend the sobs that shook him when he actually said the words.

The Hermans stared. “Look, funny boy,” Joe said, but something apparently convinced him it was not a joke, for he ran across to the terrace and his wife followed him.

“The cliff walls are smooth as marble for a hundred yards around the cove,” Harry said harshly from the terrace door. He watched them stare over the edge, seeing the churning blackness himself though he didn’t leave the lighted living room. “That was one of the reasons we built here—privacy, no beach parties, nobody peeking in the windows.”

He went back to the phone and called the police himself. When he was through the Hermans were behind him, their faces white and curiously hungry as they struggled to believe the worst. “You—you wouldn’t joke about a thing like this,” Joe said uncertainly. “I don’t believe you would. But why would Greta—do that?”

Harry saw then that they were the right people to have here when the police came. They both knew him as The Joker; Joe had been involved in several of the best. They would believe the picture of the clown and the joke that backfired. They would want to believe it, would want the police to believe it. They would feel, in a way they would not even admit to themselves, that he had it coming.

“I don’t understand it myself,” he said simply. “We were just talking—you know, after-the-party talk. I mentioned that I had had the tape recorder turned on out on the terrace this evening. She looked strange—kind of sick—I asked her if she was feeling all right—she said yes, but then she started to cry and when I switched on the re-wind she started to moan and then she ran across the terrace and just—jumped.

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