Fortune Laughs (standard:horror, 2241 words)
Author: Otzchiim	Added: Sep 21 2000	Views/Reads: 4128/8674	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Maybe it was too much of a good thing.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

interested in genealogy and she had always wanted to visit the 
Yorkshire countryside that her ancestors had come from. 

Howard put everything into the vacation and the marriage and left the
business entirely to Walter Stern for a while.  He and Joan spent a 
month in London, then rented a car for another month and made a long 
circuit including Salisbury, the Welsh mountains, and Scotland, 
planning to end in a week or so in Yorkshire.  Their hotel in London 
had been given as their address for the entire period, and had been 
given their itinerary -- or at least a few points they would be at on 
specific days -- and a payment to forward or retransmit messages. 

The month in London was fairly empty of messages.  Walter Stern sent a
few notes about routine business matters.  At the end of the months 
Joan received a chatty letter from an old girlfriend about what had 
happened in their circles if the last few weeks. And there were two 
notes from Martha Scott, Joan's mother.  The woman had seemingly 
accepted the marriage as a fact of life now, but said that she had been 
feeling ill and hoped to see Joan before that second month had quite 
ended. 

Joan volunteered to Howard the information that her mother had claimed
mysterious pains before as a method of psychological control.  Joan 
felt that this was probably the case now. 

But otherwise there were no interruptions to the couple's delighted
explorations of London and each other.  They walked through museums and 
shops until they were thoroughly tired, then rested for a while in a 
restaurant or their hotel room.  A little space was all they needed to 
let them talk until all hours, or to return to some other activities 
that they still found new and delightful. 

Their long circuit of Britain was less uniform in respect to the meals
and accomodations available, but still most enjoyable. They came 
finally to the Yorkshire village of Duncaster, from which Joan's family 
had come at about the time of Cromwell.  Both sides of the family, 
since her mother was a distant relative of her father, enough distant 
that only Joan's researches uncovered the fact. 

But it was startling to drive down the street and recognize the
occasional resemblances to relatives of Joan's in passersby. Howard 
entered the town post office to check for messages while Joan tried to 
find a local hotel of some sort.  There were a few notes about the 
business, of the sort which could as well have waited until Howard's 
return in two weeks.  There was also a telegram for Joan, which had 
come to London and been forwarded to Edinburgh too late to catch them, 
gone back and been sent on to Duncaster. 

Howard decided to open it himself, since anything important enough for a
telegram would affect him also.  It was signed by a name he did not 
recall, and said that Martha Scott had died suddenly.  With the going 
back-and-forth, that telegram was now almost two weeks old, and the 
funeral would certainly have been over by now. 

Therefore, there was no reason to interrupt the honeymoon by rushing
back.  There was no real reason even to spoil things for Joan by 
telling her of her mother's death at this point.  Howard could tell her 
in a day or two, or even let it wait until their return to the U.S.  
And this is what he decided to do. 

Joan's quest had a perhaps happier end, if a less successful one.  There
was no hotel in the village, nor for miles around.  The local tavern 
had two rooms for rent, but both were already taken. The owner could 
suggest only that they try a house two streets west that had a spare 
bedroom. 

The dinner in that tavern that night was at least good, if a little
plain.  Evening had come by the time the couple drove the two streets 
west.  Joan recalled being told that the house to seek was by a large 
oak, but could not recall on which side of the tree it was, and two 
houses were about equally far from it. 

The one to the right seemed a little more run-down, and therefore, they
felt, a little more likely to be the one whose tenants needed to take 
in travellers.  Howard knocked. 

The man in his seventies who answered seemed a bit confused at the
inquiry about lodgings, which made Howard repeat the request and offer 
a payment rather larger than would be usual, to avoid having to drive 
to another town.  This time the old man paused and told them to enter. 

"Won't be able to give you much of a breakfast," he said. Both shrugged
that off as of no matter to them.  "And I'll need a minute ter 
straighten the room up."  They waited in the parlor. 

In a few minutes, they were alone in a room that was both spare and
cluttered.  Spare in that large areas were open, and there were marks 
on the floor to indicate where trunks had been until recently -- until 
Howard and Joan had arrived, since they had heard them being moved.  
Cluttered in that the walls were covered with old faded prints and 
dusty shelves. 

"I suspect strongly that we went to the wrong house after all," Howard
commented.  "I think we turned the old fellow out of his own bed, and 
he's going to be on that old stuffed sofa tonight. Still, he'd take it 
badly if we went elsewhere now." 

"I think you're right," said his wife.  "It's odd to think of someone
being that eager for a little money." 

Howard went to the little bathroom at the end of the hall later, and
returned to find his bride weeping, with the telegram in her hands. 

"I saw it sticking out of your coat, and wondered that you had not
mentioned it," she gasped. 

"I  felt that since it was as delayed as it was in reaching us, there
was no point in telling you for some time," he replied. 

"You are right, but...  I can't help wishing that I hadn't written off
those notes in London as just her hypochondria and had at least tried 
to call her on the telephone." 

And Howard sat and held her for a while, and finally kissed her tears
away.  Some brandy from the suitcase also helped her to calm down. 

After a half-hour, Joan rose and began to prepare for bed.  As she was
finishing, she took the dress that she had worn that day from the 
chair-back it was resting on and opened the closet door to look for a 
hanger. 

Joan screamed and fell to the floor.  Before Howard could move, a figure
in a ragged petticoat, with her mother's face, fell over her. 

***** 

What had happened, Howard learned the next day, was that the old man's
wife had died that day in her sleep.  When the man was presented with 
an opportunity to take more for renting his bedroom for a night than he 
normally saw in a week, he propped her body up in the closet.  And 
while both Howard and Joan thought for that frightened moment that the 
body was that of Martha Scott, the resemblance was only fairly close 
and not a truly uncommon one in that district. 

Joan's heart had given out at once from fright.  Howard returned home in
two days, flying in with his wife's body.  While there were many of the 
friends of Howard and Joan at the funeral, the same ones who had been 
at their wedding six weeks before, no one knew of any living relatives 
of hers. 

The newspapers heard of and played up the tragic story, and that
publicity resulted in a process-server visiting Howard Waggoner on the 
morning after the funeral.  In the six weeks that he had been gone, 
Walter Stern and his old associates had stripped the real-estate firm 
of its assets and borrowed large amounts more in the name of the 
partnership, then vanished.  Howard was not merely bankrupt but in debt 
for nearly a half-million dollars. 

Then in another week, the day after that on which he had been scheduled
to return from Britain, he answered his door to find Martha Scott 
there, demanding to speak to her daughter. 

The woman had become annoyed at the lack of response to her letters and
decided to shock her daughter into coming back quickly by sending the 
telegram with a false report of her death.  Which is to say, she had a 
large hand in killing her daughter. 

It was good for Martha Scott that this all became clear in the front
yard of Howard's house.  That meant that her screams were heard before 
Howard Waggoner could finish strangling her with his bare hands. 

***** 

But this is what I mean.  Too much good luck makes me nervous. I think
it is going to balance out someday, and it may be more than I can 
handle when it does.  Howard is still in the violent ward. 


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