Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense (2 page)

He said goodbye loudly to Mario, and made some quip about the barman's new apron. He also asked if the bar-room clock was right and checked his watch against it.

After a lifetime of obscuring details of timing and squeezing alibis from forgotten minutes, it was an amusing novelty to draw attention to time. And to himself.

For the same reason he exchanged memorable banter with the driver of the taxi he picked up in a still light Piccadilly, before settling back for the journey to Abbey Road.

Now he felt supremely confident. He was following his infallible instinct. The plan was the work of a mastermind. He even had a twinge of regret to think that, when he had all Lydia's money, that mind would be lost to crime. But no, he did not intend to hazard his new-found fortune by doing anything mildly risky. He needed freedom to cram into his remaining rich life what he had missed out on in poorer days.

Which was why the murder plan was so good; it contained no risk at all.

In fact, although he did not consciously realize it at the time, he had got the murder plan at the same time that he had got Lydia. She had come ready-packed with her own self-destruct mechanism. The complete kit.

Lydia had fallen in love with Larry when he saved her life, and had married him out of gratitude.

It had happened two years previously. Larry Renshaw had been at the lowest ebb of a career that had known many freak tides. He had been working as a porter at a Park Lane hotel, whose management was beginning to suspect him of helping himself from the wallets, handbags and jewel-cases of the guests. One afternoon he had received a tip-off that they were on to him, and determined to make one last, reasonable-sized haul before another sudden exit and change of identity.

Observation and staff gossip led him to use his pass-key on the door of a Mrs Lydia Phythian, a lady whose Christmas tree appearances in the bar left no doubts about her possession of a considerable stock of jewellery, and whose consumption of gin in the same bar suggested that she might be a little careless in locking away her decorations.

So it proved. Necklaces, brooches, bracelets and rings lay among the pill bottles of the dressing table as casually as stranded seaweed. But there was also in the room something that promised a far richer and less risky haul than a fence's grudging prices for the gems.

There was Mrs Lydia Phythian, in the process of committing suicide.

The scene was classic to the point of being corny. An empty gin bottle clutched in the hand of the snoring figure on the bed. On the bedside table, an empty pill bottle, dramatically on its side, and, propped against the lamp, a folded sheet of crisp blue monogrammed notepaper.

The first thing Larry did was to read the note.

THIS WAS THE ONLY WAY OUT. NOBODY CARES WHETHER I LIVE OR DIE AND I DON'T WANT TO GO ON JUST BEING A BURDEN
.
I'VE TRIED, BUT LIFE'S TOO MUCH
.

It was undated. Instinctively, Larry put it in his pocket before turning his attention to the figure on the bed. She was deeply asleep, but her pulses were still strong. Remembering some movie with this scene in it, he slapped her face.

Her eyes came woozily open. “I want to die. Why shouldn't I die?”

“Because there's so much to live for,” he replied, possibly remembering dialogue from the same movie.

Her eyes rolled shut again. He rang for an ambulance. Instinct told him to get an outside line and ring the Emergency Services direct; he didn't want the manager muscling in on his act.

Then, again following the pattern of the movie, he walked her sagging body up and down, keeping her semi-conscious until help arrived.

Thereafter he just followed instinct. Instinct told him to accompany her in the ambulance to the hospital; instinct told him to return (out of his hotel uniform) to be there when she came round after the ministrations of the stomach pump; instinct told him to continue his visits when she was moved to the recuperative luxury of the Avenue Clinic. And instinct provided the words which assured her that there really was a lot to live for, and that it was insane for a woman as attractive as her to feel unloved, and that he at least appreciated her true worth.

So their marriage three months after she came out of the clinic was really a triumph of instinct.

A couple of days before the registry office ceremony, Larry Renshaw had fixed to see her doctor. “I felt, you know, that I should know her medical history, now that we're going to be together for life,” he said in a responsible voice. “I mean, I'm not asking you to give away any professional secrets, but obviously I want to ensure that there isn't a recurrence of the appalling incident which brought us together.”

“Of course.” The doctor was bald, thin and frankly sceptical. He did not seem to be taken in by Larry's performance as the concerned husband-to-be. “Well, she's a very neurotic woman, she likes to draw attention to herself . . . nothing's going to change her basic character.”

“I thought, being married . . .”

“She's been married a few times before, you must know that.”

“Yes, of course, but she seems to have had pretty bad luck and been landed with a lot of bastards. I thought, given someone who really loves her for herself . . .”

“Oh yes, I'm sure she'd be a lot more stable, given
that.
” The scepticism was now so overt as to be insulting, but Larry didn't risk righteous anger, as the doctor went on, “The trouble is, Mr Renshaw, women as rich as Mrs Phythian tend to meet up with rather a lot of bastards.”

Larry ignored the second insult. “What I really wanted to know was—”

“What you really wanted to know,” the doctor interrupted, “was whether she was likely to attempt suicide again.”

Larry nodded gravely.

“Well, I can't tell you. Someone who takes as many pills and drinks as much as she does is rarely fully rational. This wasn't her first attempt, though it was different from the others.”

“How?”

“The previous ones were more obviously just demands for attention, she made pretty sure that she would be found before anything too serious happened. In this case . . . well, if you hadn't walked into the room, I think she'd have gone the distance. Incidentally . . .”

But Larry spoke before the inevitable question about why he came to be in her room. “Were there any other differences this time?”

“Small ones. The way she crushed up all the pills into the gin before she started suggested a more positive approach. And the fact that there was no note . . .”

Larry didn't respond to the quizzical look. When he left, the doctor shook him by the hand and said, with undisguised irony, “I wouldn't worry. I'm sure everything will work out
for you
.”

The insolent distrust was back in that final emphasis, but mixed in the doctor's voice with another feeling, one of relief. At least a new husband would keep Mrs Phythian out of his surgery for a little while. Just a series of repeat prescriptions for tranquillizers and sleeping pills. And he could still charge her for those.

Subconsciously, Larry knew that the doctor had confirmed how easy it would be for him to murder his wife, but he did not let himself think about it. After all, why should it be necessary?

At first it wasn't. Mrs Lydia Phythian changed her name again (she was almost rivalling her husband in the number of identities she had taken on), and became Mrs Lydia Renshaw. At first the marriage worked pretty well. She enjoyed kitting out her new husband, and he enjoyed being taken round to expensive shops and being treated by her. He found her a surprisingly avid sexual partner and, although he couldn't have subsisted on that diet alone, secret snacks with other women kept him agreeably nourished, and he began to think marriage suited him.

Certainly it brought him a lifestyle that he had never before experienced. Having been brought up by parents whose middle-class insistence on putting him through minor public school had dragged their living standards down to working-class and below, and then having never been securely wealthy for more than a fortnight, he was well placed to appreciate the large flat in Abbey Road, the country house in Uckfield and the choice of driving a Bentley or a little Mercedes.

In fact, there were only two things about his wife that annoyed him—first, her unwillingness to let him see other women and, second, the restricted amount of pocket money she allowed him.

He had found ways around the second problem; in fact he had reverted to his old ways to get around the second problem. He had started, very early in their marriage, stealing from his wife.

At first he had done it indirectly. She had trustingly put him in charge of her portfolio of investments, which made it very easy for him to cream off what he required for his day-to-day needs. However, a stormy meeting with Lydia's broker and accountant, who threatened to disclose all to their employer, persuaded him to relinquish these responsibilities.

So he started robbing his wife directly. The alcoholic haze in which she habitually moved made this fairly easy. Mislaying a ring or a small necklace, or even finding her notecase empty within a few hours of going to the bank, were common occurrences, and not ones to which she liked to draw attention, since they raised the question of how much her drinking affected her memory.

Larry spent a certain amount of this loot on other women, but the bulk of it he consigned to a suitcase, which every three or four weeks was moved discreetly to another Left Luggage office (premarital habits again dying hard). Over some twenty months of marriage, he had accumulated between twelve and thirteen thousand pounds, which was a comforting hedge against adversity.

But he did not expect adversity. Or at least he did not expect adversity until he discovered that his wife had put a private detective on to him and had compiled a dossier of a fortnight's infidelities.

It was then that he knew he had to murder her, and had to do it quickly, before the meeting with her solicitor which she had mentioned when confronting him with the detective's report. Larry Renshaw had no intention of being divorced from his wife's money.

As soon as he had made the decision, the murder plan that he had shut up in the Left Luggage locker of his subconscious was revealed by a simple turn of a key. It was so simple, he glowed from the beauty of it.

He went through it again as he sat in the cab on the way to Abbey Road. The timing was perfect; there was no way it could fail.

Every three months Lydia spent four days at a health farm. The aim was not primarily to dry her out, but to put a temporary brake on the runaway deterioration of her physical charms. However, the strictness of the fashionable institution chosen to take on this hopeless task meant that the visit did have the side-effect of keeping her off alcohol for its duration. The natural consequence of this was that on the afternoon of her return she would, regular as clockwork, irrigate her parched system with at least half a bottle of gin.

And that was all the plan needed. His instinct told him it could not fail.

He had made the preparations that morning, almost joyously. He had whistled softly as he worked. There was so little to do. Crush up the pills into the gin bottle, place the suicide note in the desk drawer and set out to spend his day in company. No part of that day was to be unaccounted for. Gaston's Bar was only the last link in a long chain of alibis.

During the day, he had probed at the plan, testing it for weaknesses, and found none.

Suppose Lydia thought the gin tasted funny . . .? She wouldn't, in her haste. Anyway, in her descriptions of the previous attempt, she had said there was no taste. It had been, she said, just like drinking it neat, and getting gently drowsier and drowsier. A quiet end. Not an unattractive one.

Suppose the police found out about the private detective and the appointment with the solicitor . . .? Wouldn't they begin to suspect the dead woman's husband . . .? No, if anything that strengthened his case. Disillusioned by yet another man, depressed by the prospect of yet another divorce, she had taken the quickest way out. True, it didn't put her husband in a very good light, but Larry was not worried about that. So long as he inherited, he didn't care what people thought.

Suppose she had already made a will which disinherited him . . .? But no, he knew she hadn't. That was what she had set up with the solicitor for the next day. And Larry had been present when she made her previous will that named him, her husband, as sole legatee.

No, his instinct told him nothing could go wrong.

He paid off the taxi-driver, and told him an Irish joke he had heard in the course of the day. He then went into their block of flats, told the porter the same Irish joke, and asked if he could check the right time. Eight-seventeen. Never had there been a better-documented day.

As he went up in the lift, he wondered if the final refinement to the plan had happened. It wasn't essential, but it would have been nice. Lydia's sister had said she would drop round for the evening. If she could actually have discovered the body . . . Still, she was notoriously bad about time and you can't have everything. But it would be nice. . . .

Everything played into his hands. On the landing he met a neighbour just about to walk his chihuahua. Larry greeted them cheerfully and checked the time. His confidence was huge. He enjoyed being a criminal mastermind.

For the benefit of the departing neighbour and because he was going to play the part to the hilt, he called out cheerily, “Good evening, darling!” as he unlocked the front door.

“Good evening,
darling,
” said Lydia.

As soon as he saw her, he knew that she knew everything. She sat poised on the sofa and on the glass coffee table in front of her were the bottle of gin and the suicide note. If they had been labelled in a courtroom, they couldn't have been more clearly marked as evidence. On a table to the side of the sofa stood a second, half-empty bottle of gin. The bloody, boozy bitch—she couldn't even wait until she got home, she'd taken on new supplies on the way back from the health farm.