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- The Price of Fear, Vincent Price Presents Michael J. Justin, Sondra Clark and Deathnely heard in Goody two Shoes by William Ingram Vincent Price, Hello and welcome. The story I'm about to tell you is a love story. If not of perfect love, at least the perfecting of it, something difficult to achieve, something which can often lead to disastrous, indeed horrific results. David and Anne Fordyce mister and missus those mid thirties. They'd been married for five years, known each other for ten. They were well what you might say, meant for each other. Everybody said so. Attractive, personable, identical taste, interests meant, and yet a feeling of girl going apart was the way David eventually put it. The reason for this growing apart neither new nor even understood. Both finally blamed it, quite simply on the rat race. They thought about it a lot. It preoccupied them, indeed, to get away out of the rut, a chance to find themselves and each other again, and they both believed it, really believed it. Once decided the move, wasn't difficult to arrange David's credentials as a junior partner in one of the city's most reputable law practices, of fine mind, excellent connections. It was all there just for the asking. They're best friends, Charles and Victorious had so at the time. They even said so after my little story was told. But at the time there was no sense of sacrifice, of giving up anything, and was quite simply the most important thing in David's life. So resh Fields and Pastures knew it had to be the city Chambers lost him to a small country practice, their stylish George and Terrace house in London, to a temporary flat above the office in that distant market town in deepest Devonshire. And it was from there every weekend they'd drive deeper, ever deeper into the surrounding countryside in search of well at the time, they'd both have found it impossible to put a name to that. It was late evening when we got that first glimpse of Tice Cottage. It's just a glimpse at first, briefly between the hedges and high elms, only the roof freely torn fat, no smoke rising from the lop side of old chimney neglected. But strangely, Beckony Darling hold On have a heart. You need a claim her to get rid of these brambles? Do I get better once you find the path? It certainly couldn't get worse. You do realize we're trespassing. Ever happened to yours? Do it an adventure? I left it at the gate. Don't come on, man, come on anybody at learn and if the word idine you talk yourself out of it. Hello, God, what a shamble. It's not exactly house and gardens. I'm ware there's a three legged chair if you want to be nowhere, Oh the living moment, I'll check your word for it. Open the heart, ingle, not that's swift? A little staircase? What way to say? But the right out to the besom reluctance. Now I have to take your word for that too. I love and god, m Now what are you pondering? Only the possibilities? Come on, man, I'm starved and it doesn't look as they were going to get invited to dinner. What possibilities? Oh, only possibilities, There aren't, penny, use your head to the roof leaves. That staircase well obviously need a bit of fixing, but it's a positive slum so water an elbow brings in the old beery, and they're not mad about the idea, are you? You're obviously not well, you're quite right. It's getting late, oh, to have with that. It's just that I thought getting away from it all was part of the general idea. We just got to settle for something on that new estate, yestate. Yes, there's always that, But who the hell wants to live in a boot box when there's the challenge of something like this? Challenge is right? Please please David. It might not even be on the market. It might, so we at least think about it, please, m m please, idiot? All right, I will think about it, But forgot's I done such a harp on it? I already am and needn't have worried. Tithese Cottage was on the market, it had been for a very long time, and at the price even David found it impossible to resist. They spent their first night there on a borrowed and very uncomfortable pair of cat beds and slept like a top. David high at all. Breakfast was served amidst the debris of the old cottage colors, and just as I was dropping off, those damn birds started their mannic Twitterings Piccadilly and the rush hour I can take for those damn birds. Not to worry, darling, look at you till I God, look at the times. I must be off. What's on the agenda? So Walter and the eldow grief can't do much else for the senaty gets here. Well we did from its midday latest. Yeah, so we all know what that means. Anyway, I've arranged for a Missus Perkins from the village to come in and give me a hand. Missus Perkins, how wrong, ain't it just so? What about lunch and dinner? Oh, I'll pop in and do a shop once I've got things organized. Oh, didn't worry, darling. When you get home you won't know the old place somehow, I think I might. And what happened from the start, nothing but hit you mid day, no furniture van and no reliable missus Perkins, and decided to cut her losses. She left a note explaining her absence and set off across the fields to the village and the small general store. At least David wouldn't have an empty larder to add to the list of discomforts. It was early afternoon. By the time she got back to the cottage and the surprise that awaited her, not only had the furniture been delivered, but Missus p had already got things very much in hand. In the living room, the carpet down, the three piece suite arranged very much as she would have chosen, and upstairs in the bedroom her dressing table was just in the place that she would have chosen. Well, well, well, clever old missus Perkins. It wasn't until an hour or so later, when that clever lady called up to her from the bottom of the stairs that she realized that something worth a miss Hello anybody or missus four dies Yes, oh yours not your pardon? Oh that's good. And then missus party talk about the morass of centuries and her best day. You make mother school. You're finally getting kiddy. Just give me a hand to pull this teacher slammed the door. Oh oh that's son. Love little stuff there. Mum, yes, my husband will have to rebalance it. Come on through the living room. Well you like two teens and no thanking. Mum, it's no trouble. I I hadn't mastered that's too, but we scratched that the primus, so no really thanking them well later then it's something the matter with missus Packins. I just come to say, how sorry I am? I have sorry? Well, Jack, that's my husband, he says. No need, no need to go apologizing for someone that's not really your making, he says. But like I says, as far as that poor woman's concerned, all water under the bridge, non a bidder doing, will are not to know. Least I can do is to get out there no and say I'm sorry I am for not being able to get here at all. Not able to get here at all, missus Packin's you did say one up then? Uh? Now, now it's that I had to go to the village for a few things that I left you a note. But if you've just got here, you won't know about the note. No one anyway, it's rather longer than I expected down in the village. I mean, when I got back, most of the furtive neatly stacked in the front garden, and this room arranged just as you see it now. I just took it for granted. It was your day, you see. Oh, my dearness, missus park, my dear lord, look all right, sit down for a minute, that there should be some brandy. I know, I'm all right in a minute, so started already as she I might have known, I should have expected, as in view of what's gone for. But it'd been such a long time now since the last couple moved out, alwaised townies one foot inside the door, and it's love at first sight, but no soners settled and moving on again, And all this of a sudden light. I didn't they give the reason. Most locals never got that close. None of our business, was it? So what call us to ours? Wise and read for us? Just a moment ago? You said, started again? Has she did? I mean? She did say she two shoes? I'm sorry, goody two shoes. You can smile. Just a name for her, good as any other nursery rhyme. Name, no telling for why they first give it to her. But when I were a little maid, I used to listen to the old ones talking in the village and telling the dale, and smile, just smile. Tell me about her, missus Patkins. The right to know the right to know well abandoned on her wedding day a church, according to her say own nothing so much thought in these days. But in Goody's time, well even now possible to imagine the snidings and the wise and wherefoers and every time this cottage is already and prepared simily so, because here she come and stays, and never ventures, swearing, never to be seen again by another lidden soul. Out the night and in the day was what they reckoned. But not even the night poachers and the light ever caught a glimpse of her from wedding day on long dead when they finally notices no smoke from her chimney, long long dead. So no face do they put to her, even in death that seems grave, all arranged and paid for, even something in her own hand wrote for her stone, Accept the disk off her, accept them come what made But she for once sirsty her and lived to boos stay, oh, oh, did you know that? Mam? I don't know, but you've never even seen the grave of it. Now now hasn't leaving house, And as An turned back into the passageway something different. The tea chairs had gone. It now stood on the landing at the top of the stairs. The bedding, if it contained, was already neatly stacked in what she'd only just decided should be her linen cupboard. Even before she'd opened the door, she knew it would be there. It didn't really worry her. She'd already decided not to tell her any of it to David, and then, several weeks later, Happy, I need you ask just as well. If I always imagine it might be more, much more, didn't I always tell you the place that possibility. I just hope you're not overdoing things. That's all. I've loved every minute of it. Wait, it's almost a well, so we owed it something, which is why we came. You hm meant now it's loving us back and return to be I did, dear Idio. I'll just take these coffee things through. It's the woman from the village still coming in to give your hands. No, not any more, Danny. Oh well, her husband was taken Ill. It's quite suddenly, she says, she can't manage it anymore. When did you drop back on you? Oh? Just recently? How recently? A week or so back? Then you'll have to look around for somebody else. No, we don't need anybody else. But we don't you hear me, No, we don't hollering? Ok, you don't she didn't. Of course, if there had been any initial terror, it had long passed. She growned to depend on her good fairy to take her for granted. It no longer even surprised her to leave the kitchen, to return a few minutes later and find the dishes washed and stacked away, to find a fresh supply of logs in the polished tark, freshly baked bread and cakes when she entered the pantry. If there was any motive in her continued silence, one had to look no further than David's praise of her. And yet as the months passed, she felt the need of a wider, less captive audience. They're old friends, Charles and Victoria. Who the obvious time where we got your invitation? Vicky and I had an each way ben don't fit my love? Do tell then take my word for it, she said, Either they've decided to throw even the rural sponge joy. Or oh, poor David's gone over the orchard wall on his own and he's been teaching us to get the spare bedroom recogition. Not that far from the truth. Tell me, oh, come on, darling, don't mind mitting is lady? Answer? Jo? I agreed, with her getting away from it all and to hell with the back ways a bit, but I wasn't too keen on anything other's world or gummage, while better half put on the old mop cap and got on with a gum making out back. If you've seen this place when we first set foot through the door, that has been more than justified. Worse. I still thank God for a telephone in the village and a hotel within striking this justificase it's all come out, Oh you little faith, take a word for God. Looking at the condition is in now? Is about six just above bother bive miracle. Yes, I suppose it must seem like a bit of a miracle. You all right? DONI fine? Heverything's finer, just alt a bit stuffy in here for a moment, that's all, Charles Victoria. Can I get you anything else? And there's another crumbs to me go and you send it to me to a six months cast as it is some blood. Let's do that country pie of yours. You know, I can't remember ever having troubled it before. It's been damn surprising. If you had missus beaton, did you say dom it? Oh? Previous to that kind sir head, I'm not previous to that. Come on, who can we share? A dark secret is no dark secret money, It is commonly parts poetry. What pitchen last, sweet January, if you've a mind to her cider, silk truffle, sal peppercorn fellows and butter margarm that has stood one year around time, first catch your lock, eh, I'm wonder we can order it for our local safe away. And came across an old recipe book when she was clearing out the attic with seep, my sweet deal with seep. God knows how long it had lurked there, handwritten cramp like you never believe crap. You see, well, it seemed easy enough for you anyway, before you could say, missus Beeton's grandmother, We've resurrected the old herb garden, flirted with a local gamekeeper, and I've been playing your eighteenth century guinea pig ever since. You're not finding fault, my sweet dear, to far from it. Try get your hand to say you'll stay out of there. You hear me, You hear well what I am telling you to my place? Mind no others? No, don't call for her to go and medlan in You hear me. Oh, darling, you won't say this. Though it happened several months later, summer had gone, autumn was in the trees and had started out to the village when she remembered her shopping list on the kitchen table. As she passed the half drawn curtains of the living room windows, she caught her first glimpse of her smooth, very small, much older than I. Oh, how very old she looks not at all frightening, though such white hair pulled neatly into a tight bun at her neck, made be seen even whiter, I suppose by her long black dress reaching white to the ground from any age. And yet if I stretched us a little higher over the sill, I can just about see the stone floor, and on tiptoe, peering over the window ledge, Anne saw peeping out from under the hand of the long dress a pair of black kid's shoes, polished to breathe on their front, two very large silver, shiny buckles. Then Anne looked up for just the breefest of moments their eyes met. Then the old lady was gone except the gift I offer. Accept them. Come with me, but see that once their giver and live to room the day. For God's sake, darling, haven't you made a move yet? Oh? Here, m right, have to be a beaker, I'm afraid come to that about the only clean crock in the house. What and why the hell didn't you let me give you a hand with the dinner things? Dinner things, your gourmet speciality certainly goes through one hell of a lot of pots and pans. It's ruddy chaos down there, No nothing. They won't take me long the way things are going lately. Be a damn sight. Better if we cleared the decks before we turned in. On top of which that damn cat must have not the sugar bowl over, It's all over the ruddy place. The fire won't catch because the sticks are damp and it rained in the night, So one of us seems or left the living room window off the catch. Oh hell, love, I don't even have a clean It was that first morning, and began to realize things were not as they had been, that something was a myth. Much as she tried, the shambles continued. The more she tried, the worse it got. Untidiness became chaos, Chaos turned to silk. She tried, but could do nothing to prevent it. Nothing, my dear darling David, nothing in the world, simply too much out of my hand, see you see, But why love, why the change? I must be some reason beyond reason, my old dearies. All right, M Perhaps I shouldn't have depended on you so much, HM say things for granted, If that's why, if it's something that came before, right, don't laugh at me, damn you do me that, Please don't. Oh, dear David, Oh, poor poor David. It's all my doing. I should have told you before, confided in you. But you suddenly growing so proud of me, too, proud See, I am growing to depend on it. See. She must have realized that counted on that right from the very first moment we walked through those doors, all those long years before, waiting for her. Who my love her? But I don't understand now now you you could never understand. Too late to understand. Oh hold me closer, Oh please hold me. I sawry you see just that once. But I should never have done that. It was the briefest glimpse. I should never have caught her. She hated me for that that evening, even as David walked up the pass, he sensed a change in the place, the smoke curling up from the chimney. The brass knocker again worked to a brilliant shine, just as he'd remembered it. Andy, what uh it was? In the kitchen, he founder, Dear Anne. She was wearing her favorite dress. She was smiling at him, so tender and sweet a smile as she swung gently back and forth from the heavy oak beams. There was one other detail David took in in that first horrendous moment. The chair she must have climbed down and then jumped from, was back in its usual place below the recently polished window. And then beneath the chair something as incongruous as it was bewildering. A pair of shoes of the old fashioned kind, much too small for Anne, tiny, low heeled kid leather polished to brilliance, and in the front two heavy silver, shiny buckles, and reflecting in their shine the swinging court. David married again. The new missus Fordyce was quite the opposite of Anne. Sophisticated, poised, almost glossy. She ran her own advertising agency far too well for her male competitors on the domestic front, and only in her crisis, she could just about manage to top up a coffee percolator thatched cottages gave her hay fever, and yet the match seemed to work well enough. HM, David, Probably he prefers it this way. That was Goody two Shoes, starring Michael Jason as David Fordyce, Sondra Clark, Anne and Daphne Heard, Missus Perkins, with Francis Jeter, Victoria and Nigel Graham Charles. The Price of Fear was presented by Vincent Price, written by William Ingram and directed by John Dyce