George scratched his head, hesitating. But he could think of absolutely nothing else which might be done at the moment, and if he delayed here any longer, it would only increase Martha’s suspicious alertness.
He pulled open the stamp drawer, reached into it, then paused for a moment. His eyes narrowed briefly.
Right there in the drawer, he realized, was a method of keeping Martha’s letter from reaching Uncle Don even after it was mailed. Here was a way of canceling her attempt to insure herself against getting murdered, without letting her know it had happened . . .
George began to feel a little better.
He was obliged to discard the first, and simplest, method of circumventing his wife’s precautions when he was still thirty feet from the garage.
From beyond a thick hedge, he heard Martha speak animatedly; then there was a burst of laughter. George stopped for an instant, listening intently. He might have expected something like this. At least two other women were there with her. Her secretary, Joanne Brown . . . and . . . yes! Cynthia. The delectable Cynthia Haley. Martha must have invited both of them to accompany her on an afternoon shopping trip. And—deliberately, of course—she had refrained from telling George about the arrangement.
His suspicions were confirmed by the glance Martha gave him as he came around the hedge. It was bright with malicious amusement.
“Found it?” she asked, the twist of her mouth telling him that she wasn’t referring to the stamp drawer.
“Uh-huh,” George said blandly. “Six stamps . . . wasn’t that what you said?” He gave the two other ladies his most boyishly winning grin, received two smiles in return. A timid one, accompanied by a faint blush, from Joanne Brown. A lazy, openly ‘my-you’re-handsome sort of smile from the lovely Cynthia. Martha took the half-dozen letters from her purse and held them out to him.
She said, “If you’ll put the stamps on like a good boy, we’ll mail them on the way.”
Their eyes met for an instant, then George shrugged with a trace of irritation and took the letters.
He heard the women settle themselves into the back of the car while he put a stamp on each of the envelopes. Try the switch with the fake letter? No; Martha probably was watching. The other method was safer anyway. She’d played right into his hand again by trying to show him that he was still under her thumb, that he’d better learn to like it. George finished stamping the letters and walked around to the driver’s seat with them.
Martha said from the rear of the car, “I’ll hold the letters while you’re driving, dear.”
He handed them back to her, the envelope addressed to Donald H. Spurgeon on top, then got in and started the motor. There was silence in the rear seat for a few seconds as he backed the car expertly into the turnaround, reversed direction and swung out into the driveway. George realized he was perspiring. Any instant now, he would hear Martha begin, her voice taut, “But, George, dear boy, you’ve . . .”
Instead, he heard her purse snap shut, the letters safely inside. George let his breath out carefully.
Cynthia Haley inquired whether either of the others had been to Restow’s, and wasn’t it divinely . . .
The chatter went on. George took out a cigarette and lit it. So far, so good! It had been a smart move not to attempt to switch the letters. Martha very likely would have noticed it when she took the envelopes back.
Three blocks from the business district, she pointed out a mailbox and handed him the letters through the car window. At the mailbox, George paused and flicked a glance back at the car. Martha was watching him, an openly mocking look on her face. He deposited the letters, walked back to the car, his expression wooden.
He dropped the three women off at Martha’s bank, drove around the corner and pulled in to the curb. Martha’s car, the one she planned to use tonight, was in a garage a few blocks away; it had been picked up during the morning, for a check-up. Probably, George realized now, Martha had also wanted to prevent him from gimmicking the sedan in some manner before she set out. Of course this had been one of the possible methods of disposal on his agenda.
George scratched it mentally from the list. Martha was to stop by for the car in the evening, after she finished her shopping, and drive it home. There wouldn’t be time to do a sufficiently careful job of gimmicking on it. He hadn’t liked this idea much, anyway. An accident actually mightn’t be difficult to arrange; but he had not been able to work out anything to make sure—or even to make it very probable—that the accident would be fatal to the sedan’s occupants.
The sap in his pocket began to look like the best idea again. . . .
George moved the car back out into traffic, and drove home slowly through the warm summer afternoon, chain-smoking and thinking.
His introductory move, last Monday evening, had been to report a prowler on the grounds. The move had backfired because Martha, normally not easy to alarm, had begun locking her bedroom door each night. Now that George thought of it, she had also seen to it that her husband would have no opportunity to obtain a duplicate key to the bedroom during the days that followed. This afternoon was the first time he’d found himself alone in the house since Monday.
As it happened, that particular precaution of Martha’s had made no real difference—except for knocking out the murder-by-prowler scheme which George originally had favored. He’d been in possession of a duplicate key to Martha’s bedroom for the past two months. The fact now gave him an advantage which she didn’t know about or considered. He let himself into the bedroom and looked around.
The little gun Martha had been keeping at her bedside this week, supposedly as protection against the prowler, wasn’t in sight. He’d been right in assuming she had it with her. A partly packed suitcase lay beside the bed; another one, empty, stood against the wall. Martha’s little bedroom bar was locked. She’d probably have a few drinks before leaving; that, at any rate, had been Martha’s practice at the beginning of any long drive since George had known her. She was an excellent driver, and alcohol didn’t affect her reactions perceptibly, but in drawing up his plans George had given the habit some consideration.
He peered into Martha’s handsome adjoining bathroom, came back to the bedroom, and went over to the large built-in dress closet. Sliding one of the closet doors back, he glanced towards the vanity on the far side of the room, clicking his tongue reflectively against his teeth.
Martha would be back, she had stated, around six. It was a warm day. One of the first things she’d do would be to have herself some bourbon on the rocks, and then climb into the shower.
George nodded, pulled the closet door shut and left the bedroom, locking the door behind him. He went downstairs, whistling softly, and on into the rumpus room in the basement where he kept a variety of body-building equipment. Only a few minor preparations were required to see Alternate Plan 4 ready to roll.
He heard Martha’s car come along the driveway at twenty minutes past six, and opened the door to the terrace for her when she walked up through the garden, carrying an assortment of paper bags. Martha went directly to her bedroom and locked the door behind her with a sharp, decisive click. She was making it plain, George realized, that there would be no more polite pretense about the situation in the Redfern house unless there was somebody around to impress.
He stood at the far end of the upstairs hall for a minute or two, listening. Then he removed his shoes and came quietly down the hall to his wife’s room.
He could hear her moving around, pulling out drawers; then came the click of a suitcase lock. Paper rustled for a while; then there was a short silence followed by the clink of ice cubes into a glass and the brief burbling of a bottle. The wall closet’s door opened next; hangers were slid about inside it. Presently the second suitcase snapped shut, and there was another short period of relative inactivity while Martha started on her second drink and lit a cigarette. Finally George heard her go into the bathroom.
The shower began to roar. When he heard Martha close
the stall behind her, George brought out his key, opened the bedroom door and stepped inside. He looked quickly around.
The vanity lights were on, but she’d turned off the overhead light. The two packed suitcases stood at the foot of the bed. The purse Martha had been carrying lay on the bed, and a linen suit was laid out next to it. George pulled the door shut, went over to the purse. The gun was inside.
He slipped the gun into his pocket, and was behind the door of the closet when Martha came out of the bedroom. He heard her move about, fitting herself into her underclothes. Then she poured a third drink and settled down before the vanity mirror, humming to herself.
George gave her a minute or two, then came on stocking feet out of the closet. She was in her slip, putting on lipstick, her eyes intent on the mirror.
Six feet away from her, George said quietly, “You know, I’m afraid those letters I mailed for you will be returned to us.”
Martha’s whole body had jerked violently at the first sound of his voice. It must have had a shattering effect on her to discover her husband inexplicably inside her locked room, and George couldn’t be sure whether she actually grasped what he said. Martha came half out of her chair like a cat, obviously with the idea of grabbing the gun from her purse; then, recognizing that George stood between her and the bed, she reached out quickly for a small pair of scissors on the vanity. In the mirror, George saw her mouth open wide as she sucked her breath in to scream. He stepped forward and brought the sap down with a solid swing.
It wasn’t until Martha was lying face down on the carpet and he’d made certain she was dead that George realized just how intensely he had disliked his wife. Breathing a little heavily, he checked his watch . . . five minutes to seven, and getting dark enough now to put Alternate Plan 4 into immediate action.
He carried the two suitcases downstairs, placed them against the wall in the dark entry hall, then went on through the door opening into the dining room. He felt steady enough, but he could do with a drink—just one—himself. He brought out brandy, was filling a glass when the terrace doorbell rang.
George, starting almost as wildly as Martha had done, splashed brandy on the table. He set the bottle down with a shaking hand, stood dead still for an instant, staring towards the hall. Then he moved stealthily to a corner window and peered out on the terrace.
Joanne Brown stood under the doorlight; as George looked, the secretary was putting out her hand to ring the bell again. The ring came, a polite, brief little tinkle. George’s glance shifted to the overnight bag and portable typewriter case standing beside her; and suddenly he understood. Martha had intended to take Joanne to the beach with her, and the girl had come over in her own car. If she’d come a few minutes later, and he’d already left with Martha’s body when she arrived . . . sweat started out on George’s face as he realized the narrowness of his escape.
Then he straightened his tie, put on the boyish smile, and went to open the French doors for little Joanne Brown.
By seven-thirty, George had Martha’s sedan rolling up into the hills west of town towards a place he had selected a month before as a possible setting for her untimely end. The road was a winding, two lane affair which both he and Martha used occasionally as a shortcut to the coast highway; it permitted fast driving in some sections, but eventually it turned into a steep, hill-hugging grade which saw little traffic.
George was busy going over the details of his plan in his mind, so his thoughts turned only occasionally to the two bodies under the blankets in the back of the car. Joanne Brown’s unexpected appearance, as much as it had startled him, actually had been a break for which he could be thankful. A man who proposes to kill his wife does not deliberately select a time which makes it necessary to kill his wife’s secretary as well. Suspicion was even less likely to touch him now. In fact, with proper handling of the concluding steps of Alternate Plan 4, the whole thing looked simply perfect.
Coming around a curve, he saw the lights of traffic flowing along the highway across the valley towards which the hill road presently started turning down. Two miles beyond the top of the grade, a dirt path came winding down the hill from the left. George stopped the car and looked about to make sure no one was approaching; then he switched off his headlights and backed the sedan carefully a hundred feet up the dirt path.
He put on the hand brake, climbed out and went around to the rear of the car where he opened the trunk and brought out the bicycle which ordinarily formed part of an exercise stand in the basement rumpus room of the Redfern home. With tonight’s use for it in mind, George had purchased a few accessories for the vehicle.
Strapped across the bicycle’s carrier rack was a canvas roll. George quickly opened the roll, took out a pair of soiled tennis shoes and a beaked cap. He put these articles on, slipped out of his suit and shirt, and stood attired in shorts and a worn T-shirt. Wrapping his street clothes and shoes into the roll, he strapped it across the rack and wheeled the bicycle into the bushes where it was out of sight.
A minute or two later, he had moved Martha’s body into the right front seat of the car. He trotted down to the point where the dirt path opened into the hill road and glanced about. Still no headlights coming from either direction. George hurried back to the sedan and got in for the final maneuver which he had been rehearsing so carefully in his mind.
On the opposite side of the road, for around a quarter-mile, the hillside dropped off vertically three or four hundred feet to the woods in the valley. George turned on the headlights, shifted the sedan into third gear and released the hand brake. As the car began to roll forward, he switched on the ignition and pressed the starter button.
The car picked up speed rapidly, coming down the path. George turned it into the road, and let it roll on a hundred feet along the grade. Then, heart hammering with excitement, he opened the door on his left, rose half out of the seat, gave the steering wheel a violent wrench to the right, and dove out through the door as the sedan veered towards the low fence guarding the drop to the valley.
He hit the pavement, arms, head and legs tucked in expertly, in a tumbler’s roll. There was a crash behind him, a long screech of metal on rock. For a heart-stopping instant, George thought the car’s momentum hadn’t been enough to take it through the fence. But then the screeching ended, and after some moments there came other crashing noises, far below him . . . two, three, four in rapid succession, and then ominous silence. Shaken but triumphant, George climbed to his feet. The hill road lay dark and quiet, twenty feet of the guard fence torn away. Without waiting to look down at the wreck, he sprinted back to the dirt path, pulled the bicycle out of the bushes and began shoving it up the path towards the top of the hill.
He was trembling violently with excitement, but he knew he was safe. Apparently the wreck hadn’t caught fire. But if it had, and attracted attention immediately, it would have taken at least an hour to get to it in the valley. As it was, it might easily be morning before someone reported a shattered guard fence on the hill road, or stopped to investigate.
In any event, in considerably less than an hour an anonymous cyclist would slip quietly through the back garden gate of the Redfern residence. The bicycle, cleaned and freed of such incongruous attachments as a lamp and a carrier rack, would be back in the exercise stand. And George Redfern, in pajamas and dressing gown, would be having a quiet drink before retiring, prepared to express adequate shock and grief if the telephone rang to inform him of a terrible accident in the hills which had snuffed out the lives of his wife and her unfortunate secretary.
Every detail, George thought jubilantly, played safely, just as he had planned it! Nothing, nothing at all, that could even begin to direct the finger of suspicion at Martha Redfern’s husband. . . .
In the Redfern residence the telephone remained quiet all night.
Shortly before nine o’clock in the morning, the mailman came walking up through the garden towards George’s front door. George came out on the porch and gave the man
a boyishly happy grin.
“Morning,” he observed. “Wonderful day!”
The mailman grunted and fished a small pack of letters out of his bag. “Looks like someone made a mistake here!” he said.
“Eh?” George took the letters, looked at the RETURNED FOR INSUFFICIENT POSTAGE stamp on the top one, shook his head irritatedly. “My wife’s stupid secretary again! She . . .” He shuffled through the envelopes, said suddenly in a tight voice, “I believe—yes, I’m sure it was six letters Mrs. Redfern asked me to mail for her.”
The mailman looked at him blankly.
George cleared his throat. “Only four, however, have come back.”
The mailman shrugged, shifting bag on his shoulder. “So she stuck a four-cent stamp on the others like she should’ve.”
“No! I . . .”
“Well, them letters just slipped through, then,” the mailman explained patiently. “They’ll collect the two cents at the other end. . . .” He checked himself, staring at George’s face. “Why, you look pale!” he said, surprised. “Nothing that important about them two letters, is there?”
“No, no, not at all!” George attempted to smile, felt his mouth twitch into a lopsided grimace. “I was just wondering . . . that is, I . . .” His voice faded out.
“You ain’t sick, are you, Mr. Redfern?” the mailman asked. “Maybe I should get you a glass of water?” George didn’t answer. Across the mailman’s shoulder, he watched a police car turn quietly into the driveway. It came rolling on towards the house. The pale, implacable face staring at him out of the car’s rear window belonged to Martha’s Uncle Don Spurgeon.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 97