1956 - There's Always a Price Tag

by James Hadley Chase

  He was lying on the garage floor, face down, and for a long, frightening moment I thought she had been crazy enough to have killed him.

  She moved over to him, turned him over on his back, and I saw he was breathing. She took hold of him and hauled him to his feet. She handled him as if he weighed nothing at all. That shook me. I had carried him to his bedroom and I knew what he weighed. She must have been as strong as an ox to have handled him the way she was handling him.

  Dester lolled against her. The light fell on his face. His eyes were open and glazed; his jaw sagged.

  'Why can't you leave me alone?' he mumbled, trying to push her away. 'Take your hands off me. I'm going out, and no one's going to stop me.'

  A smile came to Helen's mouth: an awful little smile that made my flesh creep.

  'Of course, darling,' she said. 'I'm not going to stop you. I'm trying to help you.'

  She opened the off-side door of the Buick. She wasn't missing a trick. Why smash up a Rolls when you had something cheaper to use?

  This was it.

  She intended to drive him down to the gates, put his hands on the steering wheel and launch him on to the avenue. At the end of the avenue, down the steep hill, was the main highway, crammed with fast-moving traffic.

  At first glance it looked foolproof. If one of those fast-moving cars on the highway caught the Buick as it came out of the avenue the chances of Dester surviving were slight. Most of the people in Hollywood knew he was an alcoholic. They knew he drove when he was drunk. There was nothing in the setup to make the insurance company suspicious.

  Or was there?

  I remembered he had gone to San Francisco that morning. Had he fixed something with the insurance company? It flashed into my mind that there were loose ends, and you can't afford to have a single loose end when dealing with an insurance company.

  Suppose he wasn't killed outright? The Buick was big and solid. It would take a lot of smashing. If he wasn't dead when the cops reached him, he might talk. If he told them his wife had helped him into the car, and later, they found out - as they were certain to find out - that he was insured for three-quarters of a million dollars, that would be that.

  It wouldn't take the police long to find out Helen and I had been to the Foothills Club. What would they think when they discovered that she and I - her husband's chauffeur - had been dancing together?

  That would put me on the spot. The kid would tell them I had been left high and dry without a car and I had been anxious enough to get back to the house to give him ten bucks for the trip. The police would want to know why; they would want to know why Helen had sneaked away. If I didn't come clean, they might think I was also in the plot. Even if they didn't grab Helen on an attempted murder rap, even if they didn't try to tie me into the rap too, the insurance company would be tipped off and she would never dare try again; and if she didn't try again, I wouldn't get my share of the money.

  I was suddenly certain that this wasn't the way to do it. If Dester had to die, something much more certain and foolproof had to be thought up. There was too much hanging on his death to take any risk: too much risk to take any chances.

  As Helen walked around to the driving seat, I came out of the shadows and stepped into the light.

  She must have had nerves like steel. She didn't start nor cry out. The hard glare of the light fell fully on her face; except for a slight tightening of her mouth, there was no change of expression.

  She moved slowly towards me.

  'Oh, Nash, Mr. Dester insists on being driven to the Crescent Club,' she said quietly. 'I was going to take him, but now you are here, you had better.'

  The lie was as smooth as silk. If I hadn't known better I would have fallen for it.

  'Yes, madam,' I said, and I wished I had as good control over my face as she had over hers. My voice sounded husky, and I must have shown how rattled I was.

  I stepped past her to the Buick, got into the car and started the engine. She turned and walked away, disappearing into the darkness.

  Dester suddenly straightened up.

  'Don't drive out,' he said sharply. He spoke in his normal voice and that shook me. I turned to stare at him.

  'She wanted to get you out of the way, of course,' he said. 'How did you get back?'

  I continued to stare at him, aware that cold sweat was beading my face.

  He smiled crookedly at me. 'Don't look as if you've seen a ghost,' he said. 'How did you get back?'

  'A guy gave me a lift,' I said, and my voice sounded like the croak of a frog.

  'I had an idea she wanted to get rid of me,' he said. 'She's after the insurance money, of course.' He laughed. 'You wouldn't think a woman as lovely as she is could be so ruthless, would you?' He produced a cigarette and lit it. 'Well, now I know where I stand.' He opened the car door and got out. 'I think after all that excitement I'll go to bed. I want you to sleep in my dressing room tonight, kid. You never know: now she has started, she might try to finish it. I don't want her to be tempted to suffocate me while I'm asleep.'

  I knew I had to try to behave as any normal man would have behaved when he heard a thing like this.

  'But aren't you going to call the police?' I said.

  'The police?' He laughed. 'Of course not. She's only after the insurance money. I'm taking good care she doesn't get it, and once she realizes that she'll leave me alone.'

  I'm taking good care she doesn't get it.

  I very nearly gave myself away.

  What did he mean?

  'Let's go back to the house,' he went on and moved off across the tarmac.

  I turned off the garage light, ran upstairs, snatched up my pyjamas and shaving kit, then went after him.

  Together, we entered the still, silent house.

  As we came up the stairs, Helen appeared in the doorway of her bedroom.

  The sight of Dester with me behind him jolted her. Her face lost colour and her hand went up to her throat.

  'Nash's sleeping in my dressing room,' Dester said. 'He's keeping an eye on me. You might like to know in case you felt you should see how I am during the night.'

  He moved past her into his bedroom.

  I paused at the head of the stairs to look at her.

  We stared at each other for a long moment. I could see the naked hatred in her eyes. Then she turned and shut the bedroom door in my face.

  * * *

  I didn't sleep much that night. I kept thinking of what he had said about making sure Helen wouldn't get the insurance money. That had me worried for he had spoken with conviction. Was it possible that the premium was already overdue? It would be a joke on me if the policy wasn't worth anything now: and a joke on her too.

  There seemed no way I could find out what he had done. I wondered if I should go to Helen and put my cards on the table. She might know more than I did, but I finally decided this wasn't the time to show her what my game was going to be.

  Although I spent most of the night worrying my brain crooked, it didn't get me anywhere, and I was glad when I could get up and stop thinking.

  I drove Dester down to the studios as usual. He didn't say much on the way down, and he didn't refer to what had happened the previous night, but as he got out of the car, he said, 'I want you to move into the house, kid. Use my dressing room from now on. Get your things over. I want you to keep close to me all the time I'm in the house. Do you understand?'

  'Yes, sir,' I said.

  I kept clear of the house all that day, and at four I went back to the studios to pick him up.

  I could see he had been drinking heavily, and he seemed in a depressed mood. He got into the car without a word and I took him back to the house.

  He told me he was going out for dinner, and I was to be ready at eight o'clock.

  The house felt empty. There was no sign of Helen. As I lay on my bed, smoking and waiting for eight o'clock to come around, the only sound I could hear was Dester lurching about in his bedroom while he changed.


  When I brought the car to the front door, he came down the steps, heavy footed and slow. He was in evening dress, and in spite of his puffy, raw face and his bloodshot eyes, he still looked an imposing figure.

  'The Crescent Club,' he said, 'and stick around, kid. I'll have to be carried to bed tonight. I'm going to celebrate.'

  I didn't ask him what he was going to celebrate, and he didn't tell me. I had a book with me and I sat in the car in the club's parking lot and read.

  Around one o'clock one of the swank doormen came out of the shadows.

  'Come and pick up your drunk,' he said. 'We've got him propped up against the wall, but he's not going to stay like that for long.'

  I put my book away and drove around to the side door with the doorman trotting beside the car.

  Dester was about as drunk as I had seen him, and it took the doorman and I all we could do to get him into the car.

  'I hope this is the last time I see this lush,' the doorman said, stepping back and wiping his face with the back of his hand. 'I hear he's been kicked out of the Pacific.'

  'Why should you worry?' I said, getting back into the car. 'Your joint sells him the liquor, doesn't it?'

  I drove back to the dark, silent house. Passing the garage I saw Helen had taken the Cadillac out. I wondered where she had gone.

  I had to carry Dester up to his bedroom. As I laid him on his bed, he grunted, then passed out.

  I made sure he was asleep before I went over to the wall safe. I gave the handle a tentative tug, but the safe was locked.

  I looked through the drawers in the bureau and in most of the likely places; I went through his pockets after I had undressed him, but the key didn't show.

  I kept looking, but I didn't find it, and finally I turned off the light and went into the dressing room, leaving the communicating door open.

  I got undressed, turned out the light and lit a cigarette while I lay and looked out at the big moon and wondered what Solly would have to tell me in the morning. The whole setup seemed to be slipping through my fingers. Twice I had saved Dester's life. Maybe I was crazy to have stopped Helen from putting him in the Buick and letting him out into the traffic. The trick might have worked, and if it had, by now, I should be bargaining with her for my share.

  Then I remembered the loose ends. I thought of the police and how they would handle us, and I was glad I had stopped it.

  I got up soon after half past seven the next morning, looked into Dester's room and saw he was still asleep. I let myself out of the silent house and went to the apartment over the garage. After I had shaved and made myself a cup of coffee, I put a call through to Solly's apartment.

  He answered after a delay.

  'For sweet Pete's sake!' he moaned, 'You woke me up. Damn it! You said nine o'clock.'

  'Did you dig up anything?'

  'I said I would, didn't I? Let's get together some time today. And listen, you bring the five hundred bucks or I don't give.'

  'Come over here. I don't know if I'll be needed today so I'll have to stick around. We can talk here.'

  He said he would come after he had had breakfast and not before. I told him I'd have something for him here, and to get out his car and come right away. Grudgingly he said he'd be over, and forty minutes later I spotted him walking up the drive. At least he had had the sense to leave his car somewhere out of sight.

  'You're a lucky guy,' he said, sitting down at my table. 'That job could have taken me a week, but I ran into a newspaper guy I knew in the old days, and he had the whole thing at his fingertips.'

  I put eggs and ham in front of him. I didn't feel like eating myself, but I poured a cup of coffee.

  'Let's have it,' I said. 'What did you find out?'

  'How about something on account if you haven't got the five hundred here?'

  'You can have a hundred if that's any good to you.'

  He wasn't expecting that, and he stared at me pop-eyed.

  'You haven't started anything yet, have you?' he asked anxiously.

  'What do you mean?'

  'How did you get the money? Look, pal, this business worries me. If you're going to put the bite on this woman...'

  'Will you relax?' I said. 'Dester's paid me. He gave me an advance.' I took out my chequebook. 'So I can let you have a hundred.'

  'Not by cheque you won't,' he said hurriedly. 'That's okay. I'll trust you. When you pay me, I want it in cash.'

  'I don't believe you'd trust your own mother.'

  'I did once, and she gypped me out of fifty bucks,' he said, scowling. 'I don't know what game you're playing, but I do know any dough I get from you is going to be in small bills and not by cheque.'

  'Okay, okay, now tell me what you have found out.'

  'I was lucky. I ran into this newspaper guy by chance. His name's Mike Stevens, and he's on the World Telegram. He's a smart reporter and I thought it might pay off if I told him what I wanted to find out, and it did. He covered the case himself. The guy who fell out of the window was Herbert Van Tomlin: he was in the fur trade; an agent or something - a one-man show like mine, only he made it pay. He was a bachelor, had a small apartment on Park Avenue, ran a Cadillac, and when he wasn't working, he was having himself a good time. It came out at the inquest that he met your Mrs. Dester at the Fi-Fi Club: she was a cigarette-girl there. She took Van Tomlin's eye and he propositioned her. He suggested he should set her up in an apartment in return for the usual favours. She agreed, and he got her an apartment on the eighth floor on Riverside Drive.

  'Van Tomlin wasn't a chicken. He was nudging sixty, and, according to Stevens, he was crazy about the girl. She was then known as Helen Lowson. She cost him most of his spending money.' Solly paused to finish his ham, then shoved his plate away and fit a cigarette. 'Van Tomlin saw Helen nearly every night,' he went on. 'They went around the night spots together, and he spent more than he was earning. One night when he was in Helen's apartment, he had a heart attack. For a short time it was nip and tuck. She got a doctor in, and later this doctor gave evidence at the inquest. Stevens said anyone could see the doctor had been given the treatment by her. At the inquest, he couldn't say enough in her favour. His evidence turned the trick when the showdown came.

  'When Van Tomlin recovered from the attack, he took out an insurance policy in Helen's favour for twenty grand.'

  I felt the blood drain out of my face when he said that, and I got up and went over to the far side of the room, my back to him while I poured out more coffee. I didn't want him to see that bit of information had jolted me down to the heels.

  So she had been already mixed up in an insurance case! That put her right out on a limb. Insurance companies tip each other off. It was a safe bet that Dester's insurance company knew by now that his wife had been hooked into a previous insurance investigation.

  Solly went on talking: 'Van Tomlin didn't want her to be left high and dry if anything happened to him. He hadn't much cash, but so long as he kept working, he broke even. There was no secret about the insurance. He got the salesman around to Helen's apartment and she must have worked on the guy too. Van Tomlin told him he wanted to give her financial protection, and in view of his medical history, the premiums were pretty steep.

  'A month later, while he was in her apartment, he fell out of a window.'

  I came back with the coffee and sat down.

  'How did he fall out?' I asked in a voice I scarcely recognized as mine.

  'He was waiting for her while she took a bath,' Solly said. 'At the inquest she said she heard him cry out. She ran into the sitting room, naked and dripping wet, in time to see him clawing at his throat before the open window. He overbalanced and fell out before she could reach him.'

  I drew in a long, deep breath. This was even worse than I had imagined.

  'What did the coroner think?'

  Solly finished his coffee and pushed back his chair.

  'It wasn't what he thought that mattered. She had only to flash her legs at him and he was hap
py to take every word she said as gospel. What did matter was what the insurance company thought. Stevens got this first hand from the insurance salesman, a guy named Ed Billings, who had signed Van Tomlin up. Billings told Stevens that both he and his company thought something was wrong. Van Tomlin had only just paid the first premium before he fell out of the window. Billings went around to see Helen with the idea of scaring her out of making her claim. He didn't pull his punches. He warned her if she went ahead with the claim, they would fight her. He told her if the company raised doubt at the coroner's inquest the chances were she would find herself on a murder rap. He thought he was going to put the fear of God into her, but he didn't. She accused the company of trying to side-step their responsibilities and threatened to bring that out at the inquest. It so happened the company wasn't too solid financially. Adverse publicity wouldn't have done them any good.

  'It was the case of who held the strongest hand. On Helen's side the police were satisfied that Van Tomlin had died accidentally. The doctor was prepared to state on oath that Van Tomlin's heart was on the blink. Against that, the insurance company could point out that Van Tomlin had only paid one premium and Helen had the opportunity of pushing him out of the window. Billings underlined the fact that if the insurance company refused to settle the claim, the police would investigate further, and they might turn up something. In the end, they compromised. Helen accepted seven thousand instead of twenty, and the insurance company agreed to tell the coroner they were settling the claim, and once an insurance company shows willingness to settle a claim a coroner stops asking awkward questions. At the inquest the doctor said he was satisfied Van Tomlin had overbalanced during a heart attack and had fallen out of the window. The insurance company said they were going to settle the claim. Helen made eyes at the coroner, and everything went off nice and friendly.

  'She stayed on in the apartment for three or four months, then when her money began to run out, she looked around for another rich man. She met Dester. He was crazy enough to marry her, and you know the rest.'