1956 - There's Always a Price Tag (27 page)

'You bet I'm coming.'

'Will you be able to manage?' She looked anxiously at me. 'Will you get your legacy by then?'

I looked at her, not knowing what she meant. Then I remembered I had been crazy enough to have told her before the insurance plan had come unstuck that I was coming into a legacy.

'Why, no. I don't think that's coming off now,' I said. 'But I've got some money put by. I'll manage. Maybe I can get myself a job in Rome.'

'Let's talk about it at breakfast'

We left it like that. I went back to the house. The policeman was sitting on the terrace, basking in the early morning sun. He had made a pot of coffee, and he nodded at me as I went by and on to the house.

I stood in the hall for a minute or so, trying to realize that I was out of danger. There was the inquest, of course. An inquisitive coroner could ask some awkward questions, but it seemed to me that the main danger was over. It seemed incredible that the plan had succeeded so well. But I had still things to do.

There was the soiled cloth in the saucepan I had to get rid of and my pyjamas and dressing gown. As soon as I had the house entirely to myself I would burn them, I told myself.

I felt I couldn't live another minute without a shot of whisky. The tension and the acute anxiety of the past four hours had left me exhausted. I walked into the lounge and began to head towards the bar when I stopped short, my nerves jangling, my heart skipping a beat.

Lolling in one of the lounging chairs was a tall, dark man of about my own age who was nursing a glass of whisky, a cigarette hanging from his lips.

He looked up at me and gave me a slow, lazy grin. His darkly tanned, humorously ugly face lit up as he smiled and he waved the glass of whisky at me.

'Rotten habit to drink at this hour,' he said. 'My wife would have a fit if she could see me, but I've been up all night and I can't take it unless I have twelve hours sleep.'

I remained motionless, looking at him.

'Are you from the Press?' I managed to get out.

'Me? Do I look like a pressman?' His grin widened. 'No. I'm Steve Harmas, special investigator for the National Fidelity Insurance Company. I'm waiting for old man Maddux. He's due here any moment.'

I felt a cold chill creep over me. 'Maddux?'

'That's right. No one could keep the old wolfs snout out of a setup like this for long.' Again he grinned at me. 'Have a drink. You look as if you need one.'

* * *

A few minutes to seven-fifteen, Maddux walked into the lounge. By then I had shaved, showered and dressed, moving like an automaton, my heart cold with fear. I kept telling myself that if the police were satisfied, there was no reason why Maddux shouldn't be. I reminded myself again and again that it was in his company's interest to accept the theory that Dester had killed his wife and then had shot himself. If the coroner found that Dester had committed suicide then Maddux's company would not be liable for three-quarters of a million dollars. Surely he wouldn't be such a fool as to try to prove Dester had been murdered? He would jump at the chance not to pay out the money.

For the past hour, Harmas had been talking in his slow, drawling voice about the political situation as he saw it. He seemed to take a great interest in the Russian attitude and America's policy in Europe. I scarcely listened to what he was saying, but that didn't stop him talking.

As soon as Maddux walked into the lounge, I noticed a sharp change come over Harmas. He no longer looked lazy. His face became alert, his eyes hardened and he uncoiled his tall frame from the chair and stood up as if he had released a spring inside him.

Maddux looked at us and walked over to the empty fireplace. He set his back to it, took out his pipe and began to fill it.

'I guess I'm in the way,' I said. 'I'll go up to my room.'

'Stay right here, Mr. Nash,' Maddux said. 'There may be points where you can help us. Sit down. Sit down, Steve.' He waited until we had sat down, then he lit his pipe and went on, 'Well? What's it look like?'

Harmas lit a cigarette.

'You remember the business we had over that striptease dancer last year? When she tried to gyp us out of a million and a half bucks by a neat trick that we nearly fell for?' he said. 'Well, this setup seems to me to be along those lines.'

Something as cold as a dead man's hand clutched my heart when he said that. Neither he nor Maddux was looking at me, and they didn't see my convulsive start.

Maddux said: 'What makes you think that?'

'The things that have appeared to happen that couldn't possibly have happened,' Harmas returned, sinking further into his chair. 'It's so obviously a clever trick, but it beats me how it was worked. For instance, Dester was supposed to have entered the house by the cloakroom window. All the other windows in the house and all the doors were locked. The cloakroom window was open: so that was the way he was supposed to enter the house, but he didn't because I was right outside the cloakroom window watching the house all the evening. Dester didn't enter the house that way, so how did he get in?'

'He could have been hiding in the house during the afternoon,' Maddux suggested.

'He wasn't. Lewis told me he went over the house from top to bottom at six o'clock in the evening when I took up my position in the garden. Dester wasn't in the house then, and he didn't get into the house after that time, but for all that he was found dead in the study.'

Maddux moved to a chair and sat down.

'Yes: that's quite a point. What else?'

'I've seen ten suicides from shots in the head during my career,' Harmas went on. 'The mess was considerable, and yet Dester bled very little. If it wasn't absolutely impossible, I would have said he had shot himself some other place and then moved himself to his study to finish his bleeding there.'

Maddux shifted impatiently.

'What did the medical examiner say?'

Harmas lifted his shoulders.

'He was surprised, but he didn't seem to be put off his conviction that Dester shot himself. After all, here was a guy, a gun at his side, shot through the head, causing instantaneous death, who hadn't been dead for more than fifteen minutes, who couldn't have been brought into the house since I was watching outside and all the doors and windows, except for the small cloakroom window through which it would be difficult, not to say impossible, to push a dead body, were locked. So the doc just shrugged his shoulders and said odd things happen and he had no idea why Dester hadn't bled more than he had. He accepted the situation because there was no other theory that would fit.'

Maddux showed his white teeth in a grin.

'But we know better, huh?' He looked over at me. 'I think I mentioned to you that I have had some experience in fraud, Mr. Nash. It is unbelievable the tricks some guys get up to to earn themselves an easy buck. I've got to the point now when I don't rely on my eyes and ears; I rely on hunches. You'd be surprised how my hunches pay off.'

'You'll have to have a pretty hot hunch to explain why Dester didn't bleed as much as he should for all that,' Harmas said.

Maddux waved this aside. 'What else have you got?'

'There were no fingerprints,' Harmas said. 'Not one. Dester left a confession note; no prints on the paper nor the typewriter. Apparently he took a drink and dropped a bottle of whisky, but there were no prints on either the glass nor on the broken bottle. There were no prints on the gun. It had been wiped clean. There were no prints on the cloakroom window, and yet he was supposed to have opened it.'

'Maybe he wore gloves.'

'Then where are they? I've looked for them and I can't find them. Why should a guy write a confession note in gloves?'

I took out my handkerchief and wiped the sweat from my face. I was feeling so bad I was past caring if they saw me do it, but neither of them looked at me.

'Then there's another thing,' Harmas went on. 'When Dester left the house to go to the sanatorium with Mrs. Dester, he was wearing a dark brown hat, a camel-haired coat, dark grey trousers and reverse calf shoes. When he was found in his study, he had no top coat or hat, his trousers were blue and he was wearing black leather shoes.'

'What did Bromwich think of that?'

'He thought maybe Dester had soiled his clothes while he was at the forestry station and had changed into the clothes he had with him in the suitcase. He's having a search made for the camel-haired coat. He's checking all the left-luggage depots as a start. It may take time, but he's working first on those near where the Rolls was ditched.'

Maddux scratched the side of his jaw with his pipe stem. He looked relaxed and there was a contented expression in his eyes.

'It looks as if we have a nice little puzzle dropped in our laps,' he said. 'I knew this was an attempt at fraud. I smelt it. Someone has thought up a smart idea to get himself a packet of dough. I told Bromwich to look for the other man. Well, if he won't we will.'

'You think there's another man?' Harmas said, lifting his head and staring at Maddux. 'You think Mrs. Dester had a lover?'

'I'm damned sure she did. Between them I think they cooked up a smart idea to murder Dester and pick up some money. She didn't think up the idea. The last time she tried to defraud an insurance company she nearly landed herself in jail. This is a much more calculated effort; much more clever. A man thought it up, and who else could he be but Mrs. Dester's boyfriend?'

'You really think Dester was murdered?' Harmas said. 'That's not so hot for the company, is it? We'll have to settle the claim if he was murdered.'

I looked quickly at Maddux. Everything depended on what he would say to this. He was smiling at Harmas, taking no notice of me.

'Now look,' he said, 'we have never bilked on a claim yet and we never will. Dester gave us an out when he cancelled the suicide clause. Maybe a lot of smaller companies would have kept out of this and accepted the police's findings that Dester had killed himself, but I take a broader view. This is murder. Okay, maybe it will cost us three-quarters of a million, but in the long run it will save us money. I have never let one fraud go unchallenged. I have put eighteen smart alecs in the death cell. Other smart alecs are beginning to learn that it isn't safe to monkey with the National Fidelity. If I let this one pass I'll be asking for trouble. I'm not going to let it pass. I'm going to prove this is murder. It'll be a damn fine advertisement for us, and it will act as a warning.' His grin widened. 'But it doesn't mean that we will have to pay up. It might not be in the interests of the public to settle such a claim. Remember that phrase - the interests of the public. It has stopped a lot of payments in the past, and it will go on stopping them in the future. Now I'll tell you both something. I think these two - Mrs. Dester and her boyfriend - were smart enough to know that we would come after them with everything we've got if Dester was murdered and she put in a claim. So what do they do? I'll tell you: they planned to murder Dester and fix it so it would look like suicide. By doing that they knew they were passing up all hopes of making a claim. They hoped that as they weren't making a claim, we would stand back and let them get away with the murder. Now this is the pay off.' He leaned forward, pointing the stem of his pipe at Harmas. 'They were smart enough to know that if we didn't settle the claim, we would return the premiums, and do you know how much Dester has paid in premiums over the past years? He's paid one hundred and four thousand dollars. That's what they were after: not the three-quarters of a million. That was too dangerous to grab at, but the returned premiums were something worth having and they were safe. Okay, Dester's debts amount to fifty thousand dollars. By the time the house, furniture, cars and what have you are sold there will be enough to pay the debts. They would have been left with one hundred and four thousand dollars which is quite a nice piece of money.'

Harmas suppressed a yawn.

'I think you've got something,' he said. 'I had forgotten the premiums would be returned. What happened to Mrs. Dester then? What went wrong?'

Maddux shrugged.

'I don't know and I don't care. Maybe they quarrelled. Maybe the boyfriend killed her. Maybe Dester killed her. I don't know. That's for the police to find out. What I do know is that our client was murdered, and I'm going to take damn good care the killer doesn't get away with it!' He suddenly turned and looked at me. 'Well, Mr. Nash, what do you think of all this? You haven't said much up to now. Have you any ideas who Mrs. Dester's boyfriend is?'

I knew now that I had a desperate fight on my hands. I could still get clear if I played my cards right, but if I made one slip, I was through.

'I don't know who he is,' I said, forcing myself to meet his steady, inquiring stare, 'but I did once see her with someone.'

Maddux smiled. He looked over at Harmas. 'Do you see? Dig enough and something comes to the surface.' He turned back to me. 'When was this, Mr. Nash?'

'Maybe a week ago. I'm not sure. I happened to be downtown. I saw Mrs. Dester and this man come out of the Brown Derby.'

'Can you give me a description of him?'

'Why, yes.' The words seemed to come out of my mouth without any effort on my part. 'He was tall, fair, with a blond moustache, around thirty-five or six, good-looking, well-dressed.'

Maddux looked over at Harmas. 'Got that? At the Brown Derby. You've got to find this guy.'

'Yeah,' Harmas said. 'There are only about twenty thousand tall, fair, good-looking guys in Hollywood, but never mind, I'll find him.'

'Did you get the impression, Mr. Nash, that they were more than friendly?' Maddux asked.

'I'm afraid I didn't,' I said. 'I was driving past. I just caught a glimpse of them. She had her hand on his arm. I didn't have much time to see if they were on good or bad terms. I just saw him.'

'Well, okay, that's something to work on,' Maddux said and got to his feet. 'You'd better get working on it,' he went on to Harmas. 'Go down to the Brown Derby and see if you can get a lead on this guy. I'm going to talk to Bromwich.'