“You see, Darius, I have taken your lessons to heart. No one will suspect that I would kill Lecky merely because---whether you or I receive the directorship---I shall be freer to concentrate on lunar and planetary observations and no longer will take orders from a doddering fool.
“No, I would not kill him if I had a stronger motive than that. I shall not kill Bailey, for that very reason. If I succeed to the directorship, however, he would be taken care of. Of course, I would not kill Lecky for so slight a motive, as motives go, save that the doing of two murders has made a third a matter of slight moment.
“Adieu, then, Darius. Coffee, then Bailey's room, then I shall steal Charlie Lightfoot's leather leggings from the closet, lace them on, and visit friend Lecky. Then---but if you ever read this, you'll know the rest.”
Darius looked up. He said, in a curiously flat voice, “That's all.”
* * * *
A month later, Annabel and I were married at the observatory. Darius Hill, the director, had insisted on giving the bride away. Charlie Lightfoot was my best man.
Darius spoke, copiously, at the dinner afterwards. He'd been at it for what seemed like hours.
“. . . and it is most fitting that Einar should be the setting for this sacred ceremony,” said Darius, “wherein are joined the most beautiful woman who ever graced a problem in differential calculus, and a young man who, although he came to us in an hour of tribulation, has proved. . . .”
“Ugh,” said Charlie Lightfoot. “Paleface talk too much.”
He reached for his glass---and I reached, under the table, for Annabel's hand.
BEFORE SHE KILLS
1
The door was that of an office in an old building on State Street near Chicago Avenue, on the near north side, and the lettering on it read HUNTER & HUNTER DETECTIVE AGENCY. I opened it and went in. Why not? I'm one of the Hunters; my name is Ed. The other Hunter is my uncle, Ambrose Hunter.
The door to the inner office was open and I could see Uncle Am playing solitaire at his desk in there. He's shortish, fattish and smartish, with a straggly brown mustache. I waved at him and headed for my desk in the outer office. I'd had my lunch---we take turns---and he'd be leaving now.
Except that he wasn't. He swept the cards together and stacked them but he said, “Come on in, Ed. Something to talk over with you.”
I went in and pulled up a chair. It was a hot day and two big flies were droning in circles around the room. I reached for the fly swatter and held it, waiting for one or both of them to light somewhere. “We ought to get a bomb,” I said.
“Huh? Who do we want to blow up?”
“A bug bomb,” I said. “One of these aerosol deals, so we can get flies on the wing.”
“Not sporting, kid. Like shooting a sitting duck, only the opposite. Got to give the flies a chance.”
“All right,” I said, swatting one of them as it landed on a corner of the desk. “What did you want to talk about?”
“A case, maybe. A client, or a potential one, came in while you were feeding your face. Offered us a job, but I'm not sure about taking it. Anyway, it's one you'd have to handle, and I wanted to talk it over with you first.”
The other fly landed and died, and the wind of the swat that killed it blew a small rectangular paper off the desk onto the floor. I picked it up and saw that it was a check made out to Hunter & Hunter and signed Oliver R. Bookman---a name I didn't recognize. It was for five hundred dollars.
We could use it. Business had been slow for a month or so. I said, “Looks like you took the job already. Not that I blame you.” I put the check back on the desk. “That's a pretty strong argument.”
“No, I didn't take it. Ollie Bookman had the check already made out when he came, and put it down while we were talking. But I told him we weren't taking the case till I'd talked to you.”
“Ollie? Do you know him, Uncle Am?”
“No, but he told me to call him that, and it comes natural. He's that kind of guy. Nice, I mean.”
I took his word for it. My uncle is a nice guy himself, but he's a sharp judge of character and can spot a phony a mile off.
He said, “He thinks his wife is trying to kill him or maybe planning to.”
“Interesting,” I said. “But what could we do about it---unless she does? And then it's cop business.”
“He knows that, but he's not sure enough to do anything drastic about it unless someone backs up his opinion and tells him he's not imagining things. Then he'll decide what to do. He wants you to study things from the inside.”
“Like how? And why me?”
“He's got a young half brother living in Seattle whom his wife has never met and whom he hasn't seen for twenty years. Brother's twenty-five years old---and you can pass for that age. He wants you to come to Chicago from Seattle on business and stay with them for a few days. You wouldn't even have to change your first name; you'd be Ed Cartwright and Ollie would brief you on everything you'll be supposed to know.”
I thought a moment and then said, “Sounds a little far out to me, but---” I glanced pointedly at the five-hundred-dollar check. “Did you ask how he happened to come to us?”
“Yes. Koslovsky sent him; he's a friend of Kossy's, belongs to a couple of the same clubs.” Koslovsky is chief investigator for an insurance company; we've worked for him or with him on several things.
I asked, “Does that mean there's an insurance angle?”
“No, Ollie Bookman carries only a small policy---small relative to what his estate would be---that he took out a long time ago. Currently he's not insurable. Heart trouble.”
“Oh. And does Kossy approve this scheme of his for investigating his wife?”
“I was going to suggest we ask Kossy that. Look, Ed, Ollie's coming back for our answer at two o'clock. I'll have time to eat and get back. But I wanted to brief you before I left so you could think it over. You might also call Koslovsky and get a rundown on Ollie, whatever he knows about him.”
Uncle Am got up and got the old black slouch hat he insists on wearing despite the season. Kidding him about it does no good.
I said, “One more question before you go. Suppose Bookman's wife meets his half brother, his real one, someday. Isn't it going to be embarrassing?”
“I asked him that. He says it's damned unlikely; he and his brother aren't at all close. Hell never go to Seattle and the chances that his brother will ever come to Chicago are one in a thousand. Well, so long, kid.”
I called Koslovsky. Yes, he'd recommended us to Bookman when Bookman had told him what he wanted done and asked---knowing that he, Koslovsky, sometimes hired outside investigators when he and his small staff had a temporary overload of cases---to have an agency recommended to him.
“I don't think too much of his idea,” Koslovsky said, “but, hell, it's his money and he can afford it. If he wants to spend some of it that way, you might as well have the job as anyone else.”
“Do you think there's any real chance that he's right? About his wife, I mean.”
“I wouldn't know, Ed. I've met her a time or two and---well, she struck me as a cold potato, probably, but hardly as a murderess. Still, I don't know her well enough to say.”
“How well do you know Bookman? Well enough to know whether he's pretty sane or gets wild ideas?”
“Always struck me as pretty sane. We're not close friends but I've known him fairly well for three or four years.”
“Just how well off is he?”
“Not rich, but solvent. If I had to guess, I'd say he could cash out at over one hundred thousand, less than two. Enough to kill him for, I guess.”
“What's his racket?”
“Construction business, but he's mostly retired. Not on account of age; he's only in his forties. But he's got angina pectoris, and a year or two ago the medicos told him to take it easy or else.”
Uncle Am got back a few minutes before two o'clock and I just had time to tell him about my conversation with Kossy be
fore Ollie Bookman showed up. Bookman was a big man with a round, cheerful face that made you like him at sight. He had a good handshake.
“Hi, Ed,” he said. “Glad that's your name because it's what I'll be calling you even if it wasn't. That is, if you'll take on the job for me. Your Uncle Am here wouldn't make it definite. What do you say?”
I told him we could at least talk about it and when we were comfortably seated in the inner office, I said, “Mr. Bookman---” “Call me Ollie,” he interrupted, so I said, “All right, Ollie. The only reason I can think of, thus far, for not taking on the job, if we don't, is that even if you're right---if your wife does have any thoughts about murder---the chances seem awfully slight that I could find out about it, and how she intended to do it, in time to stop it.”
He nodded. “I understand that, but I want you to try, anyway. You see, Ed, I'll be honest and say that I may be imagining things. I want somebody else's opinion---after that somebody has lived with us at least a few days. But if you come to agree with me, or find any positive indications that I'm maybe right, then---well, I'll do something about it. Eve---that's my wife's name---won't give me a divorce or even agree to a separation with maintenance, but damn it, I can always simply leave home and live at the club---better that than get myself killed.”
“You have asked her to give you a divorce, then?”
“Yes, I--- Let me begin at the beginning. Some of this is going to be embarrassing to tell, but you should know the whole score. I met Eve . . .”
2
He'd met Eve eight years ago when he was thirty-five and she was twenty-five, or so she claimed. She was a strip-tease dancer who worked in night clubs under the professional name of Eve Eden---her real name had been Eve Packer. She was a statuesque blonde, beautiful. Ollie had fallen for her and started a campaign immediately, a campaign that intensified when he learned that offstage she was quiet, modest, the exact opposite of what strippers are supposed to be and which some of them really are. By the time he was finally having an affair with her, lust had ripened into respect and he'd been thinking in any case that it was about time he married and settled down.
So he married her, and that was his big mistake. She turned out to be completely, psychopathically frigid. She'd been acting, and doing a good job of acting, during the weeks before marriage, but after marriage, or at least after the honeymoon, she simply saw no reason to keep on acting. She had what she wanted---security and respectability. She hated sex, and that was that. She turned Ollie down flat when he tried to get her to go to a psychoanalyst or even to a marriage consultant, who, he thought, might be able to talk her into going to an analyst. In every other way she was a perfect wife. Beautiful enough to be a showpiece that made all his friends envy him, a charming hostess, even good at handling servants and running the house. For all outsiders could know, it was a perfect marriage. But for a while it drove Ollie Bookman nuts. He offered to let her divorce him and make a generous settlement, either lump sum or alimony. But she had what she wanted, marriage and respectability, and she wasn't going to give them up and become a divorcee, even if doing so wasn't going to affect her scale of living in the slightest. He threatened to divorce her, and she laughed at him. He had, she pointed out, no grounds for divorce that he could prove in court, and she'd never give him any. She'd simply deny the only thing he could say about her, and make a monkey out of him.
It was an impossible situation, especially as Ollie had badly wanted to have children or at least a child, as well as a normal married life. He'd made the best of it by accepting the situation at home as irreparable and settling for staying sane by making at least occasional passes in other directions. Nothing serious, just a normal man wanting to live a normal life and succeeding to a degree.
But eventually the inevitable happened. Three years ago, he had found himself in an affair that turned out to be much more than an affair, the real love of his life---and a reciprocated love. She was a widow, Dorothy Stark, in her early thirties. Her husband had died five years before in Korea; they'd had only a honeymoon together before he'd gone overseas. Ollie wanted so badly to marry her that he offered Eve a financial settlement that would have left him relatively a pauper---this was before the onset of his heart trouble and necessary semiretirement; he looked forward to another twenty years or so of earning capacity---but she refused; never would she consent to become a divorcee, at any price. About this time, he spent a great deal of money on private detectives in the slim hope that her frigidity was toward him only, but the money was wasted. She went out quite a bit but always to bridge parties, teas or, alone or with respectable woman companions, to movies or plays.
Uncle Am interrupted. “You said you used private detectives before, Ollie. Out of curiosity, can I ask why you're not using the same outfit again?”
“Turned out to be crooks, Am. When they and I were finally convinced we couldn't get anything on her legitimately, they offered for a price to frame her for me.” He mentioned the name of an agency we'd heard of, and Uncle Am nodded.
Ollie went on with his story. There wasn't much more of it. Dorothy Stark had known that he could never marry her but she also knew that he very badly wanted a child, preferably a son, and had loved him enough to offer to bear one for him. He had agreed---even if he couldn't give the child his name, he wanted one---and two years ago she had borne him a son: Jerry, they'd named him, Jerry Stark. Ollie loved the boy to distraction.
Uncle Am asked if Eve Bookman knew of Jerry's existence and Ollie nodded.
“But she won't do anything about it. What could she do, except divorce me?”
“But if that's the situation,” I asked him, “what motive would your wife have to want to kill you? And why now, if the situation has been the same for two years?”
“There's been one change, Ed, very recently. Two years ago, I made out a new will, without telling Eve. You see, with angina pectoris, my doctor tells me it's doubtful if I have more than a few years to live in any case. And I want at least the bulk of my estate to go to Dorothy and to my son. So--- Well, I made out a will which leaves a fourth to Eve, a fourth to Dorothy and half, in trust, to Jerry. And I explained, in a preamble, why I was doing it that way---the true story of my marriage to Eve and the fact that it really wasn't one, and why it wasn't. And I admitted paternity of Jerry. You see, Eve could contest that will---but would she? If she fought it, the newspapers would have a field day with its contents and make a big scandal out of it---and her position, her respectability, is the most important thing in the world to Eve. Of course, it would hurt Dorothy, too---but if she won, even in part, she could always move somewhere else and change her name. Jerry, if this happens in the next few years as it probably will, will be too young to be hurt, or even to know what's going on. You see?”
“Yes,” I said. “But if you hate your wife, why not---”
“Why not simply disinherit her completely, leave her nothing? Because then she would fight the will, she'd have to. I'm hoping by giving her a fourth, she'll decide she'd rather settle for that and save face than contest the will.”
“I see that,” I said. “But the situation's been the same for two years now. And you said that something recent---”
“As recent as last night,” he interrupted. “I kept that will in a hiding place in my office---which is in my home since I retired---and last night I discovered it was missing. It was there a few days ago. Which means that, however she came to do so, Eve found it. And destroyed it. So if I should die now---she thinks---before I discover the will is gone and make another, I'll die intestate and she'll automatically get everything. She's got well over a hundred thousand dollars' worth of motive for killing me before I find out the will is gone.”
Uncle Am asked, “You say ‘she thinks.’ Wouldn't she?”
“Last night she would have,” Ollie said grimly. “But this morning, I went to my lawyer, made out a new will, same provisions, and left it in his hands. Which is what I should have done with the first on
e. But she doesn't know that, and I don't want her to.”
It was my turn to question that. “Why not?” I wanted to know. “If she knows a new will exists, where she can't get at it, she'd know killing you wouldn't accomplish anything for her. Even if she got away with it.”
“Right, Ed. But I'm almost hoping she will try, and fail. Then I'd be the happiest man on earth. I would have grounds for divorce---attempted murder should be grounds if anything is---and I could marry Dorothy, legitimize my son and leave him with my name. I---well, for the chance of doing that, I'm willing to take the chance of Eve's trying and succeeding. I haven't got much to lose, and everything to gain. How otherwise could I ever marry Dorothy---unless Eve should predecease me, which is damned unlikely. She's healthy as a horse, and younger than I am, besides. And if she should succeed in killing me, but got caught, she'd inherit nothing; Dorothy and Jerry would get it all. That's the law, isn't it? That no one can inherit from someone he's killed, I mean. Well, that's the whole story. Will you take the job, Ed, or do I have to look for someone else? I hope I won't.”
I looked at Uncle Am---we never decide anything important without consulting one another---and he said, “Okay by me, kid.” So I nodded to Ollie. “All right,” I said.
3
We worked out details. He'd already checked plane flights and knew that a Pacific Airlines plane was due in from Seattle at ten fifteen that evening; I'd arrive on that and meanwhile he'd pretend to have received a telegram saying I was coming and would be in Chicago for a few days to a week on business, and asking him to meet the plane if convenient. I went him one better on that by telling him we knew a girl who sometimes did part-time work for us as a female operative and I'd have her phone his place, pretend to be a Western Union operator, and read the telegram to whoever answered the phone. He thought that was a good idea, especially if his wife was the one to take it down. We worked out the telegram itself and then he phoned his place on the pretext of wanting to know if his wife would be there to accept a C.O.D. package. She was, so I phoned the girl I had in mind, had her take down the telegram, and gave her Ollie's number to phone it to. We had the telegram dated from Denver, since the real Ed, if he were to get in that evening, would already be on the plane and would have to send the telegram from a stop en route. I told Ollie I'd work out a plausible explanation as to why I hadn't decided, until en route, to ask him to meet the plane.
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