February 5, 2013

Cocktail Talk: The Liqueur Glass

You may not know it, but today is the anniversary of something Alfred Hitchcock did. I’m not sure exactly what it was, be he was a busy big guy, so it was probably something cool. So, he deserves a toast. But maybe not with the sloe gin cocktail detailed below (though it’s from an anthology he edited called 14 Suspense Stories to Play Russian Roulette By). To figure out why that’s a bad idea, read the below.

‘Hurry up with that liqueur!’ said her husband. Mrs. Watkins went into the pantry and took out a liqueur glass. She poured a little sloe gin into it, and then she put down the bottle and left the pantry. She went into the children’s darkroom – they were allowed that for their photography. She still had the glass in her hand. There was a bottle on the highest shelf. She took it down and measured it carefully with her eye. The children’s manual of photography and the medical dictionary in Henry’s dressing room had been a great help. She poured out into the deep red of the sloe gin some of the contents of the bottle; it looked very white and harmless and hardly smelt at all. She wondered it if was enough, and she tipped up the bottle a little to make sure. She used a good deal more than the medical dictionary said was neccessary, but the medical dictionary might have underestimate Henry’s constitutions. She put the bottle back where she found it, and returned to the pantry. There she filled up the liqueur glass with more sloe gin.

–The Liqueur Glass, Phyllis Bottome

PS: He deserved it.

Rathbun on Film