The Small Assassin

Includes The Small Assassin; The Next in Line; The Lake; The Crowd; Jack in the Box; The Man Upstairs; The Cistern; The Tombstone; The Smiling People; The Handler; Let's Play Poison; The Night; The Dead Man David and Alice Leiber are a happily married couple living in Los Angeles, but when Alice gives birth to a healthy baby boy, she fears the baby is somehow abnormal and will kill her. She expresses her fears to her husband, who dismisses them and tries to comfort her. Their family doctor, Dr. Jeffers, explains that it is not unusual for some women to experience such feelings after the birth of a child—especially in Alice's case, as she almost died of complications of a Caesarean section during delivery. David leaves for a business trip in Chicago and is gone for a few days. On his sixth day away he receives an emergency phone call from Dr. Jeffers, telling him Alice is seriously ill with pneumonia; David rushes home, and a frightened Alice tells him, "It was the baby again." She claims she got pneumonia because the baby cried all night to keep her from sleeping; she believes he is deliberately trying to weaken and kill her. One night David hears the baby crying and gets up to fetch milk from the kitchen. At the top of the stairs he slips on a soft object, but he manages to catch the railing and does not fall downstairs.