The Perfect Murder (7 page)

In defense of the FBI, and real policemen too, it should be said that the sort of crime we have been offering hardly inspires the gendarmes. Thus I am pleased to join in your effort to uplift the genre.

Here is the way your murder will work:

You will call the 911 number, tell the operator that you have drowned your wife in the bathtub, provide your name and address, and wait for the police to arrive. When they do, you will show them into the bathroom where your wife will be floating face down, nude, in the tub. You will explain that you had arrived home, noticed that your wife was in the bathroom, and took advantage of her occupation to make a quick search of her desk because of your suspicions that she was having an affair with a friend of yours. In this search, you turned up a draft of a prenuptial contract which confirmed your fears that she planned to leave you. Thereupon, insane with jealous rage, you rushed into the bath, grabbed your wife by the neck, and held her head under water. Finally you noticed she was limp and still. You recovered your senses, felt instant remorse, and called the police. Now you are ready to pay the penalty for your crime.

At this point you must think that I am about to disappoint you, that this is no perfect crime. This scenario is typical of today’s low standards—just what the bored police have come to expect.

Exactly! That is exactly the impression we wish to make and to maintain.

Unfortunately, you will now have to endure the only unpleasantness of this project—but only briefly. Your rights will be read to you and you will be led away, taken downtown in a police car, fingerprinted, officially booked, allowed to call your attorney, and put in a holding cell until he arrives. We might do all this in the morning, thereby allowing enough hours to get you bonded out before the judges quit for the day. But that creates other problems with our conspiracy. Best we do it in the evening. A night in jail won’t kill you, if you’ll allow the pun. Take along something to read. A few novels by this author (and properly noted by title and publisher in your memoirs) would be a fitting nod to your mentor.

When your lawyer arrives, remember what Ben Franklin said of his ilk:

“God works wonders now and then;

“Behold! A lawyer, an honest man!”

Or John Keats, who suggested that lawyers should be “classed in the natural history of monsters.”

In other words stop thinking of this fellow as a Wednesday golfing partner. Think of him as one of an incredible 725,000 predators admitted to the American bar—1 attorney for every 300 honest citizens, 1 wolf for every 300 sheep. Hardly enough lambs to go around, and I want you to keep that in mind. In other words,
do not confide in this man.
If you do, he is going to drop out of the case and that is going to make the prosecuting attorney suspicious. Why did he drop out when he can earn a fee, the prosecutor will ask himself. Because something funny is going on here. Your lawyer is an “officer of the court.” Engaging him in your little conspiracy would be dangerous for him. Worse, it would be dangerous for you.

Tell your lawyer simply that you learned your wife was unfaithful to you. In your rage you killed her. You want him to tell the prosecuting attorney that you wish to plead guilty and pay the penalty. Convince your lawyer that you are remorseful. You need him to give that impression to the prosecutor.

Next comes the homicide detective, possibly accompanied by someone from the district attorney’s office. After all, you are a prominent citizen and the victim is a wealthy member of your town’s social elite. Expect some top-level attention, because by now this drama we have so carefully scripted is beginning to take some peculiar turns.

In the interrogation room, the questioning will go something like this. The detective will ask you to describe exactly, in detail, what happened last night. You will say: “Well, I lost my temper and I killed my wife. I burst into the bathroom and grabbed her by the neck and banged her head against the end of the tub and then held her face under the water until I noticed she was dead and then I released her and called the police.”

Something like this will follow:

Detective: “Burst into the bathroom? Was the door locked?”

You: “Of course. She always locks the bathroom door.”

Det.: “You tried the door and it was locked.?”

You: “Well, no. I guess I didn’t. I was furious. In a rage. I just burst in. What difference does it make?”

(Of course, you and I know it makes a lot of difference. It is one of the ways we arouse the police interest we require.)

Det.: “Did your wife speak to you?”

You: “I didn’t give her a chance.”

Det.: “Did she struggle?”

You: “That surprised me. She didn’t. I think maybe she was sitting in the tub dozing. And then, of course, I banged her head against the tub.”

Det.: “Did you do anything to the door after that?”

You: “Do anything? What do you mean?”

Det.: “Like unlock it.”

You: “No.” (Look surprised.) “It was broken.”

Det.: “Are you sure your wife always locked the door when she took a bath?”

You: (Wry laugh.) “She had some faults, God knows, but she was a very modest woman. She always locked the door.”

Det.: “Well, she didn’t this time. You broke the knob catch but not the lock. So it wasn’t locked. Do you know of anyone who might have a reason to kill your wife?”

You: (Puzzled, fading into amazement.) “I don’t understand.”

Det.: “You say you wanted to kill her. Was there anyone else who might have done it if you didn’t?”

You: (Laugh, shake your head.) “Well, maybe Blazes Boylan. My old friend. That’s why I was so furious with her. I found out she had seduced him. Poor Blazes. She made him think she was going to marry him. When he found out it was just one of her little games he seemed very upset, as I was. It was just going too far, I thought. But I shouldn’t have killed her.”

Det.: “You didn’t. But we will be needing to talk to you until we get this straightened out. So don’t leave town.”

I recommend some sort of a performance at this point—indications of amazement, all the appropriate questions, etc. And when your lawyer appears to escort you home (and establish his right to a fee by explaining things) be careful to pretend surprise when he tells you about it.

What he’ll be telling you is what the autopsy showed. As you will very well know, the autopsy will show that the abrasion on your late wife’s head was nonlethal and that she had no water in her lungs, because she was already dead when you hauled her in there, banged her head, and held her under water.

“What?” you’ll ask. “A stroke? A heart attack? But why was the detective asking if anyone else might have wanted to kill her?” Your lawyer won’t know, of course. And you must resist the temptation to even hint about poisoning. Certainly no hints about mushroom poisoning. Which is how you have done the dastardly deed. And don’t ask me the name of those terrible mushrooms. There are more than one of them. You’ll want the one that looks so much like that mushroom gourmets always fuss over at French restaurants. Check out one of the mushroom books at the library and look up the names. You’re paying me for the plot (and little enough, I must say) and that doesn’t include doing the donkey work.

Why mushrooms? Because there’s a proper weirdness about them that fits your purpose. Because, as a former medical student, you still have connections and friends in the department of pharmacology and the department of neurology, where they are, respectively, growing the things and experimenting with their various effects on nervous systems. And because your wife fancies herself a gourmet, even though she could hardly tell that terrible Texas excuse for chili from the most deliciously subtle Hatch or Chimayo green. And because good old Blazes Boylan fancies himself not only an epicurean but a four-star chef. And finally, because you want a crime that will be memorable. What we’re doing here will not only make the prosecuting attorney and the detective quickly lose interest in your admitted assault upon a corpse, it will send them baying and barking frantically up the wrong tree as soon as we point the wrong tree out to them.

I will pause at this juncture to make sure you understand the strategy behind stage one of this project.

Obviously the relationship into which you must enter with the detective and the prosecutor will be adversarial at the outset. Their conditioning will allow it to be no other way. When you present them with a wife not only murdered but wealthy, you present them yourself as their prey. How does one overcome that? By prepreempting their position.

“I am guilty,” you tell them. “Do your duty. Hang me.” But the conditioning remains. You are still the adversary. They will be happy, still, to prove you wrong. But now that means they must prove you innocent. The principle is a bit like that of the old-fashioned martial art we used to call judo—using the attacker’s momentum against him, to throw him off balance.

So we wait for tomorrow and watch our plans bear fruit.

The detective will return with more questions—but now in the comfort of your home with a tea tray on the table and attitudes dramatically changed. The detective will be excited, possibly tense. The little domestic homicide you presented him has become part of something very, very big. Memorable. Exactly what you called for in your letter. Now he will want to know a lot more about what happened the past several days. And you will be happy to notice he is very curious about Blazes, your faithless former friend.

For this stage of the game, I recommend you appear to be slightly drunk. Not out of it, of course, but having had enough to relax the inhibitions, to lose caution, to speak more candidly than your own best interests would dictate. I recommend a half-empty shaker of martinis on the tea table and the smell of gin on your breath. But take only a single sip. You may need to be sharp.

Detective: “Thank you, no. I can’t drink on duty.”

You: “Some tea, then?” (Fill your martini glass. Take a sip. A small one.)

Detective: “Have you been informed of the cause of your wife’s death?”

You: “No. I presumed a stroke. Or a heart attack. She sometimes complained of chest pains. But she wouldn’t see a doctor.”

Detective: (Looking surprised.) “You haven’t seen the paper? Watched the TV news?”

You: “Not up to it.”

Detective: “It was mushroom poisoning. Eighteen dead so far. Apparently they all came from the Yummie Yuppie Deli.”

You: “The dead?”

Detective: “The mushrooms.”

(I’m guessing at the number of victims, of course. It could be higher, but you didn’t spread very many of the deadly ones in the mushroom display at the Yummie Yuppie Deli. Anyway, since it is an expensive ruling-class grocery and your victims will be Ivy League types, it doesn’t take many to make a celebrated, historic murder case. It’s not like gassing a Greyhound load of Blue Collars.)

You should display shock. Put down your glass with a clink. Remember that your face should register both the surprise of hearing information you didn’t know and the shock of getting caught in your charade. The detective will have no doubt unraveled your cleverly disguised motive: that being a vain man with a notoriously unfaithful wife you saw more honor as a rich man convicted of a murder of passion (and soon released) than as a penniless wretch repeatedly called into the witness chair to publicly testify yet again to another of your wife’s past affairs. You shouldn’t have much to say during this exchange. Allow the detective to do the talking for you. Resist his theory at first and then allow him to comfort you with his version of the truth. This is the easy part. Now your face must show the shock of revelation—the mushrooms! As the detective unburdens you of your dark, humiliating secret, you begin to try to figure it out yourself. The detective’s spadework will already have turned up Blazes Boylan’s name. So, with careful timing, drop in the connection, like so: “My God. Mushroom poisoning. But the only meal we ate out of the house in the last few days was at Blazes’s.”

Detective: “Blazes Boylan?”

You: “Yeah. Do you know him too?”

Detective: (Leaning forward, I’ll wager, with considerable eagerness.) “Tell me about it.”

And so, of course, you tell him about it. Not right away because you are almost, but not quite, incriminating yourself. But you gulp some more martini and let him bluff you into it. You tell it with every evidence of embarrassment and shame.

It seems, you tell the detective, that you had long since stopped loving your wife, a woman of voracious appetites and no warmth at all. But you needed her money. (If the detective doesn’t already know this he soon would find out.) For several years it had been a marriage of convenience. Then, two months ago, she decided to add Blazes Boylan, your old friend, to her list of victims. She seduced him. Despite your warnings about her nature, he fell madly in love. Boylan came to you and asked you to divorce your wife so that he could marry her. (No, you weren’t entirely candid when you first talked to the detective about this.) Nothing you could say would persuade him that she was toying with him. And so you said you would discuss it with her at the first opportunity.

(About here I recommend pouring yourself another martini, but keep it small!)

When you told her that Boylan had fallen in love with her and asked her to let him down easily, she simply laughed. But about then her interest in him seemed to flag. Boylan noticed it, too. He asked you about it. You told him you hadn’t a clue. Boylan said he would investigate. The next day he called you, very upset. He asked you to meet him at the club. When you got there he told you about Weldon McWeinie.

Detective: “Weldon McWho?”

You: “Weldon McWeinie, the famous Nobel Prize-winning Scottish poet, womanizer, bon vivant, and drunk. He is in the city doing poetry readings. Boylan said she had met him at some gathering of the elite, and McWeinie had made a play for her and now she was having an affair with the fellow.”

Detective: “So?”

You: “Well, we talked about it.”

Detective: “About what?”

You: “Blazes wanted to hit back at McWeinie.”