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I read this short story in a collection, at least 25 years ago. The collection was quite possibly much older. I think I read it in French, but I am not sure. But if so, the whole collection was probably a translation from English.

I don’t remember much more than what I wrote in the title, except that the maid, in the old woman body, somehow managed to get the old woman in her body come close to her. Bed-ridden she was, but her arms were very powerful and she caught and strangled the other body to death. I don’t remember who ended up in the sole living body left.

Now though the notion of “body-swapping” is also present in “The Anubis Gates” which was the accepted answer in my question Novel where a serial killer lives (almost) forever by swapping bodies, this story is totally different. A short story, rather than a rather long novel, the body-swapper is an bed-ridden old woman, not a man who used many bodies, but all of them in more or less adequate health, and there are many more differences.

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    The point of mentioning in the body of the question that my story is not “The Anubis Gate” is not an idle “clutter”. It has two purposes. One is to spare users who would like to answer the trouble of remembering the exact title of the latter story. Second, to avoid my question being closed for being a duplicate. Unless, of course, it really is a duplicate, but then I would get the answer anyway ! Commented Nov 6 at 4:44
  • It reminds me a bit of the plot of The Skeleton Key, but overall it doesn't match and the film doesn't mention being based on a story (although the Wikipedia article references "Viy", which seems very different to me). Commented Nov 6 at 12:45
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    @FuzzyBoots Sorry, but the movie does not fit at all for my story which is almost a "huis-clos"("behind closed doors") between the maid and the old lady. Commented Nov 6 at 16:06
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    @FuzzyBoots which means that any story it might be based on cannot ber my story. Viy does definitely not fit either. Commented Nov 6 at 16:12
  • I've got kind of a feeling that there's a Stephen King short story like that, but I couldn't tell you which or where. It may just be that the theme feels like the kind of thing he would have written, back in the 70s/80s when he was putting out some good stuff. Commented Nov 6 at 16:43

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That description of the old woman exactly matches the bedridden old woman in the 1941 story "Finger, Finger!" by Margaret Ronan.

It describes the mean, harsh bedridden old woman as "evil" and "bloated" with eyes hidden in flesh and mounds of flesh under the blankets. She is so mean that the reader does not feel compassion for her extreme disability and degraded condition.

It is told in the third person,and tells the thoughts and emotions of the new maid, Carola, only 16 years old, on her first day working there.

When she brings in the food tray, the old woman grabs and strokes her arm, and powerfully pulls her down. The old woman asks inappropriate, demanding questions about her lover, Donald, who comes up at the end of the day with a horse-drawn carriage.

The head cook tells Carola of all the new maids who acted queerly, left the job after one day, and one who committed suicide.

When Carola brings the evening dinner tray up near the end of her first long, draining, frightening workday,the old woman clamps Carola down toward her.

Those hands were very strong. One of them alone was quite capable of keeping Carola where she was.

The rest of the story from, when the old woman clamps Carola down, suddenly switches viewpoint. Now Carola is in bed, watching herself walk out the door to go meet her lover. The old woman in the new body nastily tells Carola in the old one, "You're not going to meet your lover, Carola. He won't ever know."

Just as suddenly there is another weird twist: Carola trapped in the old body screams that the girl stole her rings.The head cook (the girl's boss) shoves the girl into the old woman's bedroom, forcing her in there until the police come, keeping the girl's stolen body from leaving.

With them both trapped in the bedroom, the quite vicious old-woman-in-Carola's-body taunts the bedridden real-Carola about how she will never see her lover again, and spits on her.

The twist goes really fast; I think that Carola in the old woman's body knows what she needs to do, because she (in the old woman's body) has "nine hooked fingers" "hooked to fit a girl's neck".

Carola uses her strong hooked fingers to grab and choke the young Carola's body to death. So the vicious old woman is dead, in a body-swapped way.

Old bedridden Carola calls to the police as they are coming in, saying it's about time they showed up. Apparently the ring theft is the crime they were called for, perhaps to justify the murder in self-defense.

It was published in a French antholgoy, edited by no less than the redoubtable Alfred Hitchcock.

Edit: there was no ""Finger, Finger!" answer while I was typing, but once I hit "post answer", I then saw John Rennie's answer.

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    You answered first by two minutes, when I checked. And you are probably right, I vaguely remember having read *Histoires à ne pas lire la nuit", also found by John Rennie. Well, even by two minutes, you have priority ! Commented Nov 6 at 17:48
  • @Alfred: If you hover over the "answered yesterday" (or whatever it updates to in the future) above the "signature block" at the bottom of the answer, you get a precise timestamp. This answer was posted at 16:35Z, the John's at 16:23Z, 12 minutes earlier. They're both good answers, but if your sole tie-breaker is post time, John Rennie did win. Commented Nov 7 at 17:40
  • Also asked about (but not confirmed) here: scifi.stackexchange.com/q/198073/48874 Commented Nov 7 at 22:25
  • @ShadowRanger Thanks for this information. It is not so easy to make it appear, I had to "hover" a long tie before it worked. Anyway, John Rennie did not object. Commented Nov 8 at 18:08
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Finger! Finger! by Margaret Ronan. It was published in 1941 and it hasn't been collected that much. Maybe you read it in Histoires à ne pas lire la nuit, which is a translation of Hitchcock's anthology Stories for Late at Night.

I found a copy of the story on the Scary for Kids web site.

At the end the maid, Coral, in the body of the old woman does strangle her possessed body:

As if the scene had happened a hundred times before, Carola knew what she must do. Beneath the young face was a young, white neck. Carola had not known that the old hands could move so quickly, that the girl's throat would fit them so well. The strength of the fingers filled her with an almost unbearable pleasure.

Feet were coming up the stairs outside before Carola released the dead throat. A policeman's tread, heavy and impersonal. For a moment she only listened and waited, then her brain roused with alarm. Not only the old legs were paralyzed now. She could not take her eyes from the terrible strength of those fingers, hooked to fit a girl's neck. Nine hooked fingers. The tenth had thrust itself out fastidiously.

The story ends with a policeman about to enter the bedroom, and presumably find the murdered "maid", but is is left unclear what will happen next.

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    Well, When I checked, the time Occam Shave had posted was indicated two minutes before the time you did... So I have not as much difficulty accepting his answer instead of yours. I remember once when I got two answers with the same number of minutes. Really difficult to choose that time ! Commented Nov 6 at 17:45
  • Indeed, you did . But the OP did not "accept" it. The system noticed the relationship and I followed its suggestion. The recent upvote you got there is mine.... Commented Nov 6 at 20:22
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You might be thinking of “Aura” by Carlos Fuentes.

I couldn’t find a good short summary online, so the following is mine. The question cannot properly be answered without revealing the plot twist, so

The protagonist, Montero, gets a job writing the biography of General Llorente, the deceased husband of an ancient, bed-ridden woman named Consuelo. As part of the job he stays at Consuelo’s old and dingy home. He finds himself identifying with the deceased more and more.

Also in the home is Aura, a mysterious and otherworldly young woman whom Montero finds exceptionally attractive. She and the old woman seem to have some kind of unnerving bond, and clues about witchcraft are fairly heavily dropped, but Montero’s growing lust for the lass overrides that consideration.

Eventually the young woman seduces Montero, and as they are making love the magic unravels, revealing the young Aura and Consuelo to be one and the same, and also revealing Montero to be the reincarnated General Llorente.

What does not match: No strangling to death. That said, IIRC (been a while since I read this) the final scene does describe them to be embraced in something of a death grip.

The original is in Spanish, but surely has been translated to French.

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    There is no active protagonist in my story. IIRC, the fiancé (or maybe lover) of the maid is waiting for her outside, the motivation for the old woman to "steal" the maid's body just at that time. But he definitely does not have a role anything like the Monterey you describe. Commented Nov 6 at 15:56
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    Alas. It was worth a shot. Commented Nov 6 at 16:15
  • Of course it was ;) Commented Nov 6 at 16:17

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