The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK® Page 19

  Back at the tourist court we had one more job. I set Helena to work scrubbing out the tub which had been her husband’s bier for five days.

  Then I informed her there wasn’t any reason, now that her cabin was corpseless, that she couldn’t sleep in her own bed that night. She gave me a mildly surprised look, but she made no objection.

  I didn’t think it necessary to explain that musing on her homicidal tendencies had begun to give me the feeling it might not be too safe to go to sleep in the same room she was in.

  I locked my cabin door that night.

  My last thought before going to sleep was speculation as to what Helena’s feelings would be when she stepped into that tub for a shower the next morning. Then I stopped speculating, because I knew it wouldn’t bother her in the slightest.

  CHAPTER 16

  The trip back to St. Louis on Sunday was uneventful. En route I briefed Helena again on how she must behave on Monday in order to keep suspicion from herself. I elaborated a little on my original instructions and made her repeat them back to me.

  “I’m to meet the plane Lawrence intended to come back on just as though I expected him to be on it,” she said tonelessly. “After it lands and everyone is off, I’m to check with the flight office and pretend to be upset because he wasn’t listed on the flight. Then I’m to wire Lawrence in care of convention headquarters in New York. When word comes back that the telegram isn’t deliverable, I’m to wire an inquiry to convention headquarters itself.” She paused, then asked, “But will anybody be there if the convention is over?”

  “Conventions are always headed up by local people in the town where the convention’s held,” I told her. “Usual procedure is for the chairman to rent a temporary post office box under the convention’s name, then inform Western Union wires addressed to convention headquarters are to be delivered either to his office or home. He’ll have the same office and home after the convention.”

  “I see. Well, when the wire comes back from convention headquarters saying Lawrence never reported in. I’m to phone the police and report him missing.”

  “You’ve got it pretty well,” I said, satisfied that she could carry it off. “There’s only one more thing. You’ve got to get it across to Harry Cushman that if he mentions his part in this, he’s an accessory to first-degree murder. He’s going to have to know Lawrence is dead, because otherwise he may get rattled enough at his continued disappearance to take his story to the police. Don’t give him any details. Just give it to him cold that Lawrence is dead and he’d better keep his mouth shut if he wants to stay out of jail. Also tell him to stay completely away from you for the present. I don’t want the cops accidentally stumbling over him, because while I’m sure he’ll keep his mouth shut if he’s left alone, I think he’d break pretty easily under questioning. If he keeps away from you, there isn’t any reason for the cops to find out you even know him.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I can handle Harry.”

  We took Mac Arthur Bridge back into St. Louis. I drove straight to my flat, then turned the car over to Helena. I didn’t invite her in.

  Standing on the sidewalk with my bag in one hand and my new fishing gear in the other, I said, “I’ve kept a list of expenses. But I’ll wait until the police lose interest in your husband and you get your affairs straightened out before I bill you. I imagine your money will be tied up for some time if everything was in Lawrence’s name.”

  “Are you adding an additional fee for disposing of Lawrence?” she asked.

  “That was on the house. Just don’t give me any more little jobs like that.”

  “Will I see you again, Barney? I mean aside from when you submit your expense account.”

  I shook my head definitely. “You’re a lovely woman, and except for the third party you rang in on our trip, I enjoyed the week thoroughly. But this is the end. When things quiet down, you divorce Lawrence for desertion and marry some nice millionaire. Harry Cushman, maybe, if he isn’t too scared to come near you again.”

  I thought for a moment her expressionless face looked a little wistful, but it may have been imagination. Her voice was as totally lacking in emotion as usual when she spoke.

  “Good-by, Barney.”

  “Good-by, Helena,” I said.

  She drove away.

  CHAPTER 17

  I had hoped that was the end of it, but at nine Monday evening Helena phoned me at home.

  “Everything went smoothly, Barney,” she announced the moment I picked up the phone. “It worked out just as you said. The police were just here for a picture of Lawrence to teletype to New York. They weren’t in the least suspicious, and about all they asked me was if he’d said anything about financial troubles recently.”

  Her call upset me. “Listen,” I said. “Did it occur to you your phone might be tapped?”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she asked, “Could it be?”

  “No,” I snapped. “They wouldn’t tap a phone on a routine missing person case. But don’t call me again. It’s an unnecessary risk.”

  “I’m sorry, Barney. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Just let me know if something goes wrong,” I said. “If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you’re doing fine.”

  But she phoned me again at nine Tuesday night.

  As soon as I recognized her voice, I said bitterly, “I told you not to phone!”

  “You said I should if something went wrong. Well, something has.”

  I felt a cold chill run along my spine. “What?”

  “You’ll have to come out here, Barney. Right away.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you over the phone. But you must come. Immediately.”

  “As soon as I can get a taxi,” I said, and hung up.

  All the way out to Helena’s home in the cab I wondered what possibly could have gone wrong. There wasn’t anything that could have gone wrong, I kept assuring myself. If ever a perfect murder had been pulled, Lawrence Powers’s was it. Not only was the body beyond recovery, the police didn’t even suspect there had been a murder, and probably never would.

  The only thing I could think of was that Harry Cushman had gone to the police. But that seemed inconceivable to me. If I had evaluated him right, he’d stay as far away from both the police and Helena as he could get from the minute he realized he could be charged as an accessory to first-degree homicide.

  My thoughts hadn’t accomplished anything but to get me all upset by the time we arrived at Helena’s home.

  Helena met me at the front door. She wore a red off-the-shoulder hostess gown, and she looked as calm and unruffled as ever.

  “Alice isn’t here,” she greeted me. “I sent her home at six because I expected Harry at seven.”

  So it was Harry Cushman after all who was causing whatever the trouble was, I thought.

  I asked, “He still here?”

  Instead of answering, she led me into the front room. “Would you like a drink before we talk?”

  “No, I wouldn’t like a drink before we talk,” I said, exasperated. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I’d rather show you.”

  The words raised the hair at the base of my neck. The last time she’d used similar words, she led me to her husband’s iced corpse. Now she took my hand, just as she had that previous time, and led me into the dining room. I followed numbly, almost knowing what to expect.

  The light was off in the dining room, but the switch was by the door and Helena flicked it on as we entered. Then she dropped my hand and looked at me expectantly.

  The dining room was large and had a fireplace on the outside wall. Against the wall closest to us was a sideboard containing a tray of bottles and glasses and a bowl of ice cubes.

 
Lying face down in front of the sideboard was Harry Cushman, the entire back of his head a pulpy and bloody mass from some terrific blow. His left hand clutched a glass from which the liquid had spilled, and near his outstretched right hand lay a siphon bottle on its side. Next to him lay a pair of brass fire tongs with blood on them.

  The shock was not as great as you might expect, because I had anticipated something on this order from the moment Helena said she would rather “show” me. Glancing about the room, I saw the drapes were drawn so that we were safe from outside observation.

  I said coldly, “It looks like you hit him from behind while he was mixing a drink. Right?”

  She merely nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because I was afraid he might give us away. He was in a panic when I told him Lawrence was dead.”

  “Did he threaten to go to the police?”

  She shook her head.

  “What did he say?”

  Helena shrugged slightly. “Nothing, really, except that I hadn’t any right to involve him in murder. It was the way he acted. He shook like a leaf.”

  For a long time I looked at her. “Let me get this straight,” I said finally. “He didn’t threaten to expose us. He wasn’t going to the police. But just because he seemed to you like a bad security risk, you murdered him.”

  She frowned slightly. “You make it sound worse than it was.”

  “Then make it sound better.”

  She made an impatient gesture. “What difference does it make now? It’s done. And we have to dispose of the body.”

  Again she looked at me expectantly, a curious brightness in her eyes. And suddenly I realized something I had been aware of subconsciously for some time, but hadn’t brought to the front of my mind for examination.

  Helena enjoyed watching me solve the problems brought on by murder.

  It was a game to her, I knew with abrupt understanding, for the first time really knowing what went on under that expressionless face.

  I said, “What do you mean, we have to dispose of the body? I haven’t killed anybody.”

  Her lip corners curved upward in a barely discernible smile. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want me caught, Barney. You can only be executed for one murder. So there wouldn’t be any point in not telling the police about Lawrence if I got caught for this one. Including how cleverly you got rid of the body.”

  With a feeling of horror I looked off into the future, seeing myself disposing of corpse after corpse as Helena repeatedly indulged her newly discovered thrill.

  With only one result. Nobody gets away with murder forever.

  I knew what I had to do then.

  For a moment I examined her moodily. Then I shrugged. “All right, Helena. We may as well start now. Get some rags.”

  Obediently she went into the kitchen, returning in a few moments with several large rags. Taking one from her, I picked up the tongs.

  “Lift his head a little,” I said. “So I can spread a rag under it.”

  Turning her back to me, she put both hands under the dead man’s shoulders and tugged upward. I swung the brass fire tongs down on top of her head with all my force.

  It isn’t much harder to dispose of two bodies than it is to dispose of one. Not with a river as deep as the Mississippi so close by.

  THE HAPPY MARRIAGE

  Originally published in Manhunt, August 1955.

  Chapter 1

  The first time Tom Wright and my wife Nora tried to kill me, they stretched a wire across the stairway two steps from the top.

  The only thing that saved me was an untied shoelace. Noticing it was untied just as I started down the stairs, I stopped with one foot on the second step, turned around and raised my other foot to the top landing so that I could bend forward and retie it.

  The calf of my left leg touched the wire as I leaned forward.

  Forgetting the untied lace, I turned to examine the wire. It was piano wire, almost invisible to the eye, and it was stretched tautly across the stairway about a foot above the steps.

  My first reaction was simply astonishment. I was about to yell downstairs to Nora and Tom to come look at my discovery when Nora called from the front room, “George, honey! The Nelsons will he waiting for us!”

  It wasn’t till then that it occurred to me the wire must have been strung for my benefit, and no one but my wife or Tom Wright could have strung it.

  I closed my mouth and looked at the wire again. Then I looked down the steep stretch of stairs and imagined myself hurtling headfirst the entire length to the marble-floored foyer. Our house had eleven-foot ceilings, and there were twenty steps in the flight. I might not have been killed, but I certainly couldn’t have escaped serious injury.

  Dispassionately I wondered whether it would have been Wright or Nora who would have finished me off if the fall had failed to kill me.

  Nora called again, “Did you hear me, George?” and it seemed to me that a faint note of hysteria underlay the impatience in her voice.

  Retreating to the bathroom door, I called in a calm voice, “Just knotting my tie, dear. About two minutes.”

  Again I knelt to retie the lace which had saved my life. Then I quietly returned to the stairs and loosened one end of the wire where it was wound tightly about a baluster. When I released it, it coiled up like a loose spring against the opposite railing.

  Whistling, I descended to the foyer.

  Nora was only slightly pale when I entered the front room, and her facial muscles were entirely under control. In a cynical sort of way I couldn’t help admiring her recovery, for when she heard me whistling on the stairs, the shock of nothing happening must have flabbergasted her.

  Tom Wright was not as good an actor, however. His expression was one of stupefaction.

  Smiling pleasantly, I said, “Sorry I took so long, but the Nelsons are never on time anyway.”

  Tom recovered then and managed a smile in return. “I’m in no rush. Nora’s the impatient one.”

  For a moment I examined the two of them as they stood side-by-side in front of the fireplace. I knew my wife was a beautiful woman, of course, and I knew Tom Wright was an exceptionally handsome man. But until that moment I’d never considered them as a pair. It came to me with something of a shock that together they made an exceedingly handsome couple.

  Under my steady gaze they both began to look slightly uneasy. Casually I said, “I’ll get the car out.” I turned to get my topcoat and hat from the front hall and went out the front door.

  I took my time getting the car out, wanting to give them opportunity to recover their poise, to discover that the wire was still on the stairs and decide that one end had somehow come loose by accident.

  When I finally honked from the driveway alongside the house, Tom and Nora came out at once. Apparently they had had a swift conference and decided I suspected nothing of their murder attempt, for I could detect an air of relief in both their manners.

  En route to pick up the Nelsons I mulled over what action I should take. It never even occurred to me simply to confront my wife and our closest family friend with the charge that they had attempted to kill me. Nora has sometimes accused me of being unemotional, but it wasn’t just that which made me delay doing anything at all until I had a chance to think things out thoroughly. Inside I was as disturbed as any man would be who unexpectedly discovers he has been betrayed by his wife and one of his best friends. But I hadn’t built my considerable reputation as a corporation lawyer by moving before I was fully prepared. Years of negotiating business contracts and trying civil suits had conditioned me to studying problems from all angles before making even an initial move.

  The only difference between this problem and the ones I was used to encountering was that this one was more important.

  Chapte
r 2

  As we rode along I arranged the factors of this new problem in my mind as logically as I would have the problem of a corporation merger.

  First there was the inescapable fact that Tom and Nora had tried to murder me. I considered the possibility of there being some other explanation for the wire across the stairs, not for the ostrich-like purpose of trying to blind myself to reality, but because I wanted to examine all possibilities. I didn’t have to consider it long.

  When I had arrived home from the office, late as usual, Tom was already there, immaculate in his dinner jacket, and Nora was also dressed for the country club dinner. Our maid Jane doesn’t live in and had already left for the evening, so no one else was in the house when I rushed upstairs to shower and dress, leaving Nora and Tom together in the front room. And there had been no wire across the stairs then.

  Twenty minutes later the lethal wire had been in place.

  No one but Tom or Nora could have put it there.

  The situation being defined to my satisfaction, I next turned my thoughts to what could have brought about Nora and Tom’s decision to kill me. The most probable explanation was that they were in love and had decided that as an obstacle to their love I had to be removed. I examined this theory dispassionately and without jealousy.

  I was forty-five, I reflected, and Nora only thirty. While I was in fair physical condition, corporate law isn’t a field which requires much exercise, and I knew I had allowed myself to grow a little flabby.

  Tom Wright, on the other hand, while almost exactly my size and general build, was as leanly muscled as a cat because he got plenty of exercise. He was golf pro and tennis instructor at the country club. He was also ten years younger than I and still possessed the smooth handsomeness of a youth. Physically I was hardly much competition for as beautiful a woman as Nora.

  Furthermore I had too little time for Nora. After the first year of our marriage five years before, I had become too preoccupied with building my practice to give her the attention she deserved, I now realized.