Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, December 1956 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a transparent, square-jawed Wil- liam Howard Brewster walking between them. It was that trans- parent man she was really strug- gling to kill. And. maybe she had, he thought dazedly..Anyway, now he was alone. He looked up at the stars and knew how terribly alone he was, feeling it for the first time. How alone every man is. The car slid to a stop beside him while he still stood there looking up. He felt the gun in his. hand and thought. It could have hit me, not her. I could be dead. It was inconceivable, but it was true. He could begin to believe it, as he could not have done ten minutes ago. A car door slammed. He turned. A woman in a pink-striped dress was walking toward him through the wild mustard. He had a mo- ment’s startled feeling that she was Anne. Tall, thin, with big dark eyes, but these eyes met his squarely. They glanced once at the gun. - : Cliff opened his hand wide and flat and heard the gun thump to the ground beside the bright sum- mer dress at his feet. Without knowing that he was going to speak at all without even thinking what he would say, he heard his own voice with hysteria in it. “She did it herself! You’ve got to believe me! She did it herself. She pushed the gun in my hand and made me pull the trigger.” The woman’s dark eyes searched HERE LIES . . his face. She looked down once into the grass and then away again. “Be still,” she said. “Let me think.” She put her hands over her - face and again he thought of ~ Anne. But when she looked up again, she was resolute and not . like Anne at all. “All right,” she said. “It’s done. Nothing can help that now. But nobody will believe you. You. know that.” “But it’s true! She—” “I saw you on the pier together,” the woman broke in. “The bar- tender must have seen you leave together. Do you think the police will listen to you after that?” He gulped and held his breath, desperately afraid he was going to cry. “I didn’t,” he said, hearing in his own voice a hint of the help- lessness he had seen in Anne. “I — didn’t do it!” She stood there for a long mo- ment in silence, looking down again at the thin, motionless girl lying among the wild mustard, the highway dust blowing over her in the headlights. Then she seemed to pull herself together with a little shudder, and she stepped quickly to the car and reached in to switch off the lights. In the sudden dark she said, “All right. I knew her. I believe you. I believe it happened just as you say. Now listen. [ll help you, but you'll have to do ex- actly as I tell you. First of all, we'll put her in the back of my car. Wait, I'll spread out the tarp.” 1] COMICGLOOOKSae©