by Joan Aiken
There was a buzz on the wire and Lieutenant Decker’s voice went fuzzy. “Taylor,” he said after a couple of seconds. “Can you hear me? Are you listening?”
“Sure,” Mitch said. “But what for?”
And he hung up.
Yeah, Mitch Taylor, Homicide Expert.
Domestic Intrigue
Donald E. Westlake
When Mike Avallone recommended this story, he wrote, “Donald Cutesy Again.” I would say, “Donald very cutesy indeed.”
“Mrs. Carroll,” said the nasty man, “I happen to know that your husband is insanely jealous.”
I happened to know the same thing myself, and so there was nothing for me to do but agree. Robert was insanely jealous. “However,” I added, “I fail to see where that is any of your business.”
The nasty man smiled at me, nastily. “I’ll come to that,” he said.
“You entered this house,” I reminded him, “under the guise of taking some sort of survey. Yet you ask me no questions at all about my television viewing habits. On the contrary, you promptly begin to make comments about my personal life. I think it more than likely that you are a fraud.”
“Ah, madam,” he said, with that nasty smile of his, under that nasty little mustache, “of course I’m a fraud. Aren’t we all frauds, each in his—or her—own way?”
“I think,” I said, as icily as possible, “it would be best if you were to leave. At once.”
He made no move to get up from the sofa. In fact, he even spread out a bit more than before, acting as though at any instant he might kick off his shoes and take a nap. “If your husband,” he said lazily, “were to discover another man making love to you, there’s no doubt in my mind that Mr. Carroll would shoot the other man on the spot.”
Once again I had no choice but to agree, since Robert had more than once said the same thing to me, waving that great big pistol of his around and shouting, “If I ever see another man so much as kiss you, I’ll blow his brains out, I swear I will!”
Still, that was my cross to bear, and hardly a subject for idle chatter with perfect strangers who had sailed into my living room under false colors, and I said as much. “I don’t know where you got your information,” I went on, “and I don’t care. Nor do I care to discuss my private life with you. If you do not leave, I shall telephone the police at once.”
The nasty man smiled his nasty smile and said, “I don’t think you’ll call the police, Mrs. Carroll. You aren’t a stupid woman. I think you realize by now I’m here for a reason, and I think you’d like to know what that reason is. Am I right?”
He was right to an extent, to the extent that I had the uneasy feeling he knew even more about my private life than he’d already mentioned, possibly even more than Robert knew, but I was hardly anxious to hear him say the words that would confirm my suspicions, so I told him, “I find it unlikely that you could have anything to say to me that would interest me in the slightest.”
“I haven’t bored you so far,” he said, with a sudden crispness in his tone, and I saw that the indolent way he had of lounging on my sofa was pure pretense, that underneath he was sharp and hard and very self-aware. But this glimpse of his interior was as brief as it was startling; he slouched at once back into that infuriating pose of idleness and said, “Your husband carries that revolver of his everywhere, doesn’t he? A Colt Cobra, isn’t it? Thirty-eight caliber. Quite a fierce little gun.”
“My husband is in the jewelry business,” I said. “He very frequently carries on his person valuable gems or large amounts of money. He has a permit for the gun, because of the business he’s in.”
“Yes, indeed, I know all that.” He looked around admiringly and said, “And he does very well at it, too, doesn’t he?”
“You are beginning to bore me,” I said, and half-turned away. “I believe I’ll call the police now.”
Quietly, the nasty man said, “Poor William.”
I stopped. I turned around. I said, “What was that?”
“No longer bored?” Under the miserable mustache, he smiled once again his nasty smile.
I said, “Explain yourself!”
“You mean, why did I say, ‘Poor William’? I was merely thinking about what would happen to William if a Colt Cobra were pointed at him, and the trigger pulled, and a thirty-eight caliber bullet were to crash through his body.”
I suddenly felt faint. I took three steps to the left and rested my hands on the back of a chair. “What’s his last name?” I demanded, though the demand was somewhat nullified by the tremor in my voice. “William who?”
He looked at me, and again he gave me a glimpse of the steel within. He said, “Shall I really say the name, Mrs. Carroll? Is there more than one William in your life?”
“There are no Williams in my life,”’ I said, but despairingly, knowing now that this nasty man knew everything. But how? How?
“Then I must say the name,” he said. “William Car—”
“Stop!”
He smiled. His teeth were very even and very white and very sparkly. I hated them. He said softly, “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Carroll? You seem a bit pale.”
I moved around the chair I’d been holding for support, and settled into it, rather heavily and gracelessly. I said, “I don’t know when my husband will be home, he could be—”
“I do,” he said briskly. “Not before one-fifteen. He has appointments till one, and it’s at least a fifteen minute drive here from his last appointment.” He flickered back to indolence, saying lazily, “I come well prepared, you see, Mrs. Carroll.”
“So I see.”
“You are beginning,” he said, “to wonder what on Earth it is that I want. I seem to know so very much about you, and so far I have shown no interest in doing anything but talk. Isn’t that odd?”
From the alert and mocking expression on his face, I knew he required an answer, and so I said, “I suppose you can do what you want. It’s your party.”
“So it is. Mrs. Carroll, would you like to see your good friend William dead? Murdered? Shot down in cold blood?”
My own blood ran cold at the thought of it. William! My love! In all this bleak and brutal world, only one touch of tenderness, of beauty, of hope do I see, and that is William. If it weren’t for those stolen moments with William, how could I go on another minute with Robert?
If only it were William who was rich, rather than Robert. But William was poor, pitifully poor, and as he was a poet, it was unlikely he would ever be anything but poor. And as for me, I admit that I was spoiled, that the thought of giving up the comforts and luxuries which Robert’s money could bring me made me blanch just as much as the thought of giving up William. I needed them both in equal urgency; William’s love and Robert’s money.
The nasty man, having waited in vain for me to answer his rhetorical question, at last said, “I can see you would not like it. William is important to you.”
“Yes,” I said, or whispered, unable to keep from confessing it. “Oh, yes, he is.”
Until William, I had thought that all men were beasts. My mother—bless her soul—had said constantly that all men were beasts, all through my adolescence, after my father disappeared, and I had come to maturity firmly believing that she was right. I had married Robert even though I’d known he was a beast, but simply because I had believed there was no choice in the matter, that one married a beast or one didn’t marry at all. And Robert did have the advantage of being rich.
But now I had found William, and I had found true love, and I had learned what my mother never knew; that not all men are beasts. Almost all, yes, but not entirely all. Here and there one can find the beautiful exception. Like William. But not, obviously, like this nasty man in front of me. I would have needed none of my mother’s training to know that this man was a beast. Perhaps, in his own cunning way, an even worse beast than brutal and blustering Robert. Perhaps, in his own way, even more dangerous.
I said, “What is it you want
from me?”
“Oh, my dear lady,” he protested, “I want from you? Not a thing, I assure you. It is what you want from me.”
I stared at him. I said, “I don’t understand. What could I possibly want from you?”
As quickly as a striking snake, his hand slid within his jacket, slid out again with a long blank white envelope, and flipped it through the air to land in my lap. “These,” he said. “Take a look at them.”
I opened the envelope. I took out the pictures. I looked at them, and I began to feel my face go flaming red.
I recognized the room in the pictures, remembered that motel. The faces were clear in every one of the photographs.
“What you’ll want,” said the nasty man, smiling triumphantly, “is the negatives.”
I whispered, “You mean, you’ll show these to my husband?”
“Oh, I would much rather not. Wouldn’t you like to have them for yourself? The prints and the negatives?”
“How much?”
’Well, I really hadn’t thought,” he said, smiling and smiling. “I’d rather leave that up to you. How much would you say they are worth to you, Mrs. Carroll?”
I looked at the photos again, and something seemed to go click in my mind. I said, “I believe I’m going to faint,” Then my eyes closed, and I fell off the chair onto the floor.
He had a great deal of difficulty awaking me, patting my cheeks and chafing my hands, and when at last I opened my eyes, I saw that he was no longer smiling, but was looking very worried.
“Mrs. Carroll,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“My heart,” I whispered. “I have a weak heart.” It was untrue, but it seemed a lie that might prove useful.
It did already. He looked more worried than ever, and backed away from me, looking down at me lying on the floor and saying, “Don’t excite yourself, Mrs. Carroll. Don’t get yourself all upset. We can work this out.”
“Not now,” I whispered. “Please.” I passed a hand across my eyes. “I must rest. Call me. Telephone me, I’ll meet you somewhere.”
“Yes, of course. Of course.”
“Call me this evening. At six.”
“Yes.”
“Say your name is Boris.”
“Boris,” he repeated. “Yes, I will.” Hastily he retrieved the fallen photos. “Call at six,” he said, and dashed out of the house.
I got to my feet, brushed off my toreadors, and went to phone William. “Darling,” I said.
“Darling!” he cried.
“My love.”
“Oh, my heart, my sweet, my rapture!”
“Darling, I must—”
“Darling! Darling! Darling!”
“Yes, sweetheart, thank you, that’s all very—”
“My life, my love, my all!”
“William!”
There was a stunned silence, and then his voice said, faintly, “Yes, Mona?”
There were advantages to having a poet for a lover, but there were also disadvantages, such as a certain difficulty in attracting his attention sometimes.
But I had his attention now. I said, “William, I won’t be able to see you tonight.”
“Ob, sweetheart!”
“I’m sorry, William, believe me I am, but something just came up.”
“Is it—” his voice lowered to a whisper, “—is it him?”
He meant Robert. I said, “No, dear, not exactly. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
“Shall I see you tomorrow?”
“Of course. At the Museum. At noon.”
“Ah, my love, the hours shall have broken wings.”
“Yes, dear.”
With some difficulty I managed to end the conversation. I then took the other car, the Thunderbird, and drove to the shopping center. In the drugstore there I purchased a large and foul-looking cigar, and in the Mister-Master Men’s Wear Shoppe I bought a rather loud and crude necktie.
I returned to the house, lit the cigar, and found that it tasted even worse than I had anticipated. Still, it was all in a good cause. I went upstairs, puffing away at the cigar, and draped the necktie over the doorknob of the closet door in my bedroom. I then went back to the first floor, left a conspicuous gray cone of cigar ash in the ashtray beside Robert’s favorite chair, puffed away until the room was full of cigar smoke and I felt my flesh beginning to turn green, and then tottered out to the kitchen. I doused the cigar under the cold water at the kitchen sink, stuffed it down out of sight in the rubbish bag, and went away to take two Alka-Seltzer and lie down.
By one-fifteen, when Robert came bounding home, I was recovered and was in the kitchen thawing lunch. “My love!” roared Robert, and crushed me in his arms.
That was the difference right there. William would have put the accent on the other word.
I suffered his attentions, as I always did, and then he went away to read the morning paper in the living room while I finished preparing lunch.
When he came to the table he seemed somewhat more subdued than usual. He ate lunch in silence, with the exception of one question, asked with an apparent attempt at casualness: “Umm, darling, did you have any visitors today?”
I dropped my spoon into my soup. “Oh! Wasn’t that clumsy! What did you say, dear?”
His eyes narrowed. “I asked you, did you have any visitors today?”
“Visitors? Why—why, no, dear.” I gave a guilty sort of little laugh. “What makes you ask, sweetheart?”
“Nothing,” he said, and ate his soup.
After lunch he said, “I have time for a nap today. Wake me at three, will you?’’
“Of course, dear.”
I woke him at three. He said he’d be home by five-thirty, and left. I checked, and the crude necktie was no longer hanging on the doorknob in my bedroom.
When Robert came home at five-thirty he was even quieter than before. I caught him watching me several times, and each time I gave a nervous start and a guilty little laugh and went into some other room.
I was in the kitchen at six o’clock, when the phone rang.
“I’ll get it, dear!” I shouted. “It’s all right, dear! I’ll get it! I’ll get it!”
I picked up the phone and said hello and the nasty man’s voice said, “This is Boris.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“Can we talk?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t your husband home?”
“It’s all right, he’s in the living room, he can’t hear me. I want to meet you tonight, to discuss things.” I gave a heavy emphasis to that word, and put just a touch of throatiness into my voice.
He gave his nasty laugh and said, “Whenever you say, dear lady. I take it you’re recovered from this afternoon?”
“Oh, yes. It was just tremors. But listen, here’s how we’ll meet. You take a room at the Flyaway Motel, under the name of Clark. I’ll—”
“Take a room?”
“We’ll have a lot to—talk about. Don’t worry, I’ll pay for the room.”
“Well,” he said, “in that case…”
“I’ll try to be there,” I said, “as soon after nine as possible. Wait for me.”
“All right, M—”
“I must hang up,” I said hastily, before he could call me Mrs. Carroll. I broke the connection, went into the living room, and found Robert standing near the extension phone in there. I said, “Dinner will be ready soon, dear.”
“Any time, darling,” he said. His voice seemed somewhat strangled. He seemed to be under something of a strain.
Dinner was a silent affair, though I tried to make small talk without much success. Afterward, Robert sat in the living room and read the evening paper.
I walked into the living room at five minutes to nine, wearing my suede jacket. “I have to go out for a while, dear.”
He seemed to control himself with difficulty. “Where to, dear?”
“The drugstore. I need nail polish remover.”
<
br /> “Oh, yes,” he said.
I went out and got into the Thunderbird. As I drove away I saw the lights go on in my bedroom.
If it was nail polish remover Robert was looking for, he’d have little trouble finding it. There was a nearly full bottle with my other cosmetics on the vanity table.
I drove at moderate speeds, arriving at the Flyaway Motel at ten minutes past nine. “I’m Mrs. Clark,” I told the man at the desk “Could you tell me which unit my husband is in?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He checked his register and said, “Six.”
“Thank you.”
Walking across the gravel toward unit 6, I thought it all out again, as it had come to me in a flash of inspiration this afternoon just before I had had my ’faint’. The idea that I could have Robert’s money without necessarily having to have Robert along with it had never occurred to me before. But now it had, and I liked it. To have Robert’s money without having Robert meant I could have William!
What a combination! William and Robert’s money! My step was light as I approached unit 6.
The nasty man opened the door to my knock. He seemed somewhat nervous. “Come on in, Mrs. Carroll.”
As I went in, I glanced back and saw an automobile just turning into the motel driveway. Was that a Lincoln? A blue Lincoln?
The nasty man shut and locked the door, but I said, “None of that. Unlock that door.”
“Don’t worry about me, lady,” he said, grinning nastily. “All I want from you is your money.” Nevertheless, he unlocked the door again.
“Fine,” I said. I took off my suede jacket.
“Now,” he said, coming across the room, rubbing his hands together, “to get to business.”
“Of course,” I said. I took off my blouse.
He blinked at me. He said, “Hey! What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry about a thing,” I told him, and unzipped my toreadors.
His eyes widened and he waved his hands at me, shouting, “Don’t do that! You got it all wrong, don’t do that!”