The Good Old Stuff

by John D. MacDonald

  Dinah Davisson’s house was brightly lighted. The other houses on the street were dark. He had asked that he be permitted to inform her.

  She was in the long pastel living room, a man and a woman with her. She had been crying, but she was undefeated. She carried her head high. Something hardened and tautened within him when he saw the red stripes on her cheek, stripes that only fingers could have made, in anger.

  “Mr. Darrigan, this is Miss Davisson and Colonel Davisson.”

  They were tall people. Temple had his father’s hard jaw, shrewd eye. The woman was so much like him that it was almost ludicrous. Both of them were very cool, very formal, slightly patronizing.

  “You are from Guardsman Life?” Colonel Davisson asked. “Bit unusual for you to be here, isn’t it?”

  “Not entirely. I’d like to speak to you alone, Mrs. Davisson.”

  “Anything you wish to say to her can be said in front of us,” Alicia Davisson said acidly.

  “I’d prefer to speak to her alone,” Gil said, quite softly.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Darrigan,” the young widow said.

  “The police have found your husband’s body,” he said bluntly, knowing that bluntness was more merciful than trying to cushion the blow with mealy half-truths.

  Dinah closed her lovely eyes, kept them closed for long seconds. Her hand tightened on the arm of the chair and then relaxed. “How—”

  “I knew a stupid marriage of this sort would end in some kind of disaster,” Alicia said.

  The cruelty of that statement took Darrigan’s breath for a moment. Shock gave way to anger. The colonel walked to the dark windows, looked out into the night, hands locked behind him, head bowed.

  Alicia rapped a cigarette briskly on her thumbnail, lighted it.

  “Marriage had nothing to do with it,” Darrigan said. “He was murdered for the sake of profit. He was murdered by a thoroughly unpleasant little man with a greedy wife.”

  “And our young friend here profits nicely,” Alicia said.

  Dinah stared at her. “How on earth can you say a thing like that when you’ve just found out? You’re his daughter. It doesn’t seem—”

  “Kindly spare us the violin music,” Alicia said.

  “I don’t want any of the insurance money,” Dinah said. “I don’t want any part of it. You two can have it. All of it.”

  The colonel wheeled slowly and stared at her. He wet his lips. “Do you mean that?”

  Dinah lifted her chin. “I mean it.”

  The colonel said ingratiatingly, “You’ll have the trust fund, of course, as it states in the will. That certainly will be enough to take care of you.”

  “I don’t know as I want that, either.”

  “We can discuss that later,” the colonel said soothingly. “This is a great shock to all of us. Darrigan, can you draw up some sort of document she can sign where she relinquishes her claim as principal beneficiary?” When he spoke to Darrigan, his voice had a Pentagon crispness.

  Darrigan had seen this too many times before. Money had changed the faces of the children. A croupier would recognize that glitter in the eyes, that moistness of mouth. Darrigan looked at Dinah. Her face was proud, unchanged.

  “I could, I suppose. But I won’t,” Darrigan said.

  “Don’t be impudent. If you can’t, a lawyer can.”

  Darrigan spoke very slowly, very distinctly. “Possibly you don’t understand, Colonel. The relationship between insurance company and policyholder is one of trust. A policyholder does not name his principal beneficiary through whim. We have accepted his money over a period of years. We intend to see that his wishes are carried out. The policy options state that his widow will have an excellent income during her lifetime. She does not receive a lump sum, except for a single payment of ten thousand. What she does with the income is her own business, once it is received. She can give it to you, if she wishes.”

  “I couldn’t accept that sort of … charity,” the colonel said stiffly. “You heard her state her wishes, man! She wants to give up all claims against the policies.”

  Darrigan allowed himself a smile. “She’s only trying to dissociate herself from you two scavengers. She has a certain amount of pride. She is mourning her husband. Maybe you can’t understand that.”

  “Throw him out, Tem,” Alicia whispered.

  The colonel had turned white. “I shall do exactly that,” he said.

  Dinah stood up slowly, her face white. “Leave my house,” she said.

  The colonel turned toward her. “What do—”

  “Yes, the two of you. You and your sister. Leave my house at once.”

  The tension lasted for long seconds. Dinah’s eyes didn’t waver. Alicia shattered the moment by standing up and saying, in tones of infinite disgust, “Come on, Tem. The only thing to do with that little bitch is start dragging her through the courts.”

  They left silently, wrapped in dignity like stained cloaks.

  Dinah came to Darrigan. She put her face against his chest, her brow hard against the angle of his jaw. The sobs were tiny spasms, tearing her, contorting her.

  He cupped the back of her head in his hand, feeling a sense of wonder at the silk texture of her hair, at the tender outline of fragile bone underneath. Something more than forgotten welled up within him, stinging his eyes, husking his voice as he said, “They aren’t worth … this.”

  “He … was worth … more than … this,” she gasped.

  The torment was gone as suddenly as it had come. She stepped back, rubbing at streaming eyes with the backs of her hands, the way a child does.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She tried to smile. “You’re not a wailing wall.”

  “Part of my official duties, sometimes.”

  “Can they turn this into … nastiness?”

  “They have no basis. He was of sound mind when he made the provisions. They’re getting enough. More than enough. Some people can never have enough.”

  “I’d like to sign it over.”

  “Your husband had good reasons for setting it up the way he did.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Do you have anyone to help you?” he asked impulsively. He knew at once he had put too much of what he felt in his voice. He tried to cover by saying, “There’ll be a lot of arrangements. I mean, it could be considered part of my job.”

  He detected the faintly startled look in her eyes. Awareness made them awkward. “Thank you very much, Mr. Darrigan. I think Brad will help.”

  “Can you get that woman over to stay with you tonight?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  He left her and went back to the beach to his room. In the morning he would make whatever official statements were considered necessary. He lay in the darkness and thought of Dinah, of the way she was a promise of warmth, of integrity.

  And, being what he was, he began to look for subterfuge in her attitude, for some evidence that her reactions had been part of a clever act. He ended by despising himself for having gone so far that he could instinctively trust no one.

  In the morning he phoned the home office. He talked with Palmer, a vice-president. He said, “Mr. Palmer, I’m sending through the necessary reports approving payment on the claim.”

  “It’s a bloody big one,” Palmer said disconsolately.

  “I know that, sir,” Darrigan said. “No way out of it.”

  “Well, I suppose you’ll be checking in then by, say, the day after tomorrow?”

  “That should be about right.”

  Darrigan spent the rest of the day going through motions. He signed the lengthy statement for the police. The Drynfellses were claiming that in the scuffle for the paper, Davisson had fallen and hit his head on a bumper guard. In panic they had hidden the body. It was dubious as to whether premeditation could be proved.

  He dictated his report for the company files to a public stenographer, sent it off airmail. He turned the car in, packed his bag. He sat on the edge of his bed
for a long time, smoking cigarettes, looking at the far wall.

  The thought of heading north gave him a monstrous sense of loss. He argued with himself. Fool, she’s just a young, well-heeled widow. All that sort of thing was canceled out when Doris left you. What difference does it make that she should remind you of what you had once thought Doris was?

  He looked into the future and saw a long string of hotel rooms, one after the other, like a child’s blocks aligned on a dark carpet.

  If she doesn’t laugh in your face, and if your daydream should turn out to be true, they’ll nudge each other and talk about how Gil Darrigan fell into a soft spot.

  She’ll laugh in your face.

  He phoned at quarter of five and caught Palmer. “I’d like to stay down here and do what I can for the beneficiary, Mr. Palmer. A couple of weeks, maybe.”

  “Isn’t that a bit unusual?”

  “I have a vacation overdue, if you’d rather I didn’t do it on company time.”

  “Better make it vacation, then.”

  “Anything you say. Will you put it through for me?”

  “Certainly, Gil.”

  At dusk she came down the hall, looked through the screen at him. She was wearing black.

  He felt like a kid trying to make his first date. “I thought I could stay around a few days and … help out. I don’t want you to think I—”

  She swung the door open. “Somehow I knew you wouldn’t leave,” she said.

  He stepped into the house, with a strange feeling of trumpets and banners. She hadn’t laughed. And he knew in that moment that during the years ahead, the good years ahead of them, she would always know what was in his heart, even before he would know it. And one day, perhaps within the year, she would turn all that warmth suddenly toward him, and it would be like coming in out of a cold and rainy night.

  Death Writes the Answer

  He held the magazine up as though he were still reading it, but he watched her across the top of it, ready to drop his eyes to the story again should she look up.

  For the moment the excitement, the carefully concealed anticipation, of the past month faded, and he wondered, quite blankly, why he was going to kill his wife. Myra had no major faults. In the eight years of their marriage, they had had no serious quarrels.

  Peter Kallon looked across the small one-room apartment at her, and slowly the dislike and the determination built up again in equal quantity. It had started about six months before, and then it was only an intellectual game. How would a man kill his wife without fear of discovery? And, in the midst of the game, he had looked at Myra with the cold objectivity of a stranger and found that the eight years had changed her.

  Eight years had thickened her figure, put a roll of soft tissue under her chin, but the years had done nothing to alter that basic untidiness which he had once found so charming.

  Peter Kallon was a very tidy man. By day he entered neat columns of figures on pale yellow work sheets. His linen was always fresh, his razor in the exact same spot on the bathroom shelf, trees inserted in his shoes each night.

  But Myra, even though childless, seemed to find it impossible to handle the housekeeping details of an efficiency apartment with its minuscule bath, cubbyhole kitchen, Murphy bed. Eight years of litter had worn away his quite impressive patience with the monotony of water dripping on sandstone.

  The thought of being a widower was quite engaging. Peter Kallon had a passion for puzzles. Crosswords, cryptograms, contests. He attacked all with equal dry ardor. Murder became a puzzle.

  And a month ago he had arrived at the final detailed answer.

  He looked across at her. A strand of graying brown hair hung down her cheek. She sat with one leg tucked under her, an unlaced shoe on the swinging foot. She was reading a novel, and as she came to the end of each page she licked the middle finger of her right hand before turning the next page. That little habit annoyed him. Long ago he had given up trying to read any book Myra had finished.

  It would be such a pity to have the answer and not put it into effect.

  Lately he had been looking at the young girls on the street and in the office. There was the clean line of youth about them.

  Myra set the book aside, smiled over to him, and scuffed her way into the kitchenette. He heard her fill a glass with water from the faucet, heard the small familiar sound she made in her throat as she drank. He knew that as she came back into the room she would be wiping her mouth with the back of her right hand. She was.

  It would never do, he thought, to say, “Myra, I’m tired of being married.” Poor Myra. She would never be able to support herself. That would mean quite a drain on him, supporting two establishments. No. Murder would be tidy. Myra could die without knowing that he had grown to hate her and her ways with all the dry passion of a careful, fastidious man.

  She turned on the transistor radio, spun the dial to a station. Myra continued to read.

  “You’ve got two stations there,” he said.

  She cocked her head on one side, listening. “But you can hardly hear that other one.”

  He came angrily across the room and reset the dial. She never did anything crisply and purposefully. Never on time, never able to move fast.

  Most murders were too hasty. The motive was too clear. Their few friends would never suspect him of having a motive to kill Myra. He knew that their friends considered them beautifully adjusted.

  When murders weren’t too hasty, they were too contrived, too full of details that the murderer was incapable of handling neatly.

  The perfect murder, he had decided, could be quite detailed, if the details were handled by a man competent to do so. A man like Peter Kallon. He was the sort of man that no one had ever called Pete. Not even his mother or his sister.

  He looked over at her again and saw that the book had sagged down onto her heavy thigh. Her head was tilted over onto her shoulder and she breathed audibly through her open mouth. Each night they stayed home it was the same. She would expect him to awaken her when he was ready to go to bed. Now there was no need to discipline his expression. While she slept he could look at her with all the naked, helpless fury at his command.

  In that moment he made up his mind, finally and completely, with no possibility of changing it. Peter Kallon decided to make himself a widower and put into effect the plan he had worked out.

  Friday he made her write the note.

  He sat at the small desk, scribbling. He made frequent grunts of disgust, crumpling what he had written. She asked him what the trouble was.

  “Nothing, nothing,” he said impatiently.

  He wrote for a long time, then said irritably, “The hell with it,” crumpling what he had written.

  “What is the trouble, darling?” she asked.

  “Maybe you could help me. You see, I’ve got one account, a garage, that’s giving me a bad time. The man won’t keep the books the way I tell him to. We’ve quarreled about it. I’m trying to write a letter to him, but I can’t seem to get it right. If I could dictate it to you and you wrote it down … I always think better on my feet somehow.”

  “Of course, darling,” she said.

  He laid out a fresh sheet of her notepaper and put his fountain pen beside it. She took his place at the small desk.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Don’t bother with that, Myra. I’ll copy it over. Let me see now. First paragraph. ‘You know how hard I’ve tried to make everything work out. But there is no use trying any more.’ New paragraph. ‘Please don’t condemn me too much for taking this step. I am certain that you will be happier in the future because of it.’ There! That ought to do it.”

  He leaned over her shoulder and read the words she had written in her childish scrawl. The words, as usual, slanted uphill to the right edge of the paper.

  “Like that pen?” he asked casually. There was the coldness of sweat against his ribs.

  “I like a heavier point,” she said. “You know that.”

&nb
sp; “Just a habit. A fine point makes better-looking writing. Here, sign your name on that sheet. For my file.”

  She obediently wrote “Myra.” He took the pen from her hand before she could write the last name. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me look at this. I think you were bearing down too hard on it.” He examined the point, holding it under the lamplight. “Get up a minute, dear. I want to try it.”

  He sat down and wrote on another sheet.

  “No, I guess it’s okay. Thanks, dear. I’ll recopy this letter and send it to the man. I think it’ll be all right.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said. For a long time he did not risk looking at her. When he did he saw that she was engrossed in the novel again, without suspicion. Just to be certain, he copied the letter, using the actual name of one of his clients, making the contents a bit more businesslike. He showed it to her. She said that she guessed it sounded all right.

  After she had fallen asleep he read the note over. Finger-prints on it were quite all right. He would just make certain that he found the note first.

  You know how hard I’ve tried to make everything work out. But there is no use trying any more.

  Please don’t condemn me too much for taking this step. But I am certain that you will be happier in the future because of it.

  Myra

  A bit stilted, perhaps, but the intent was unmistakable. It was on her gray monogrammed notepaper. He put it with his business papers, knowing that she never looked at them. He wanted to take a long walk to get the tension out of him. But that might look a bit odd, and his plan didn’t call for it.

  Instead he took out the manila folder containing the contest puzzles he was currently working on. Within fifteen minutes he was so deeply engrossed in the puzzle that he had actually forgotten his plan. The deadline of this one was near. It was a puzzle that assigned numerical values to letters of the alphabet, and the object was to fill out a grid with words in such a way that the highest possible total was reached.