Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense (7 page)

And, when it came to it, it was all going to be remarkably easy. All of her charges seemed to be sorted out over the holiday. Now Nimrod was all right, Mrs Grüber was in a state of ecstasy, full of plans for the huge Christmas dinner she was going to cook for herself and the dog. Mrs Walker was going to stay with her daughter, which meant that she would see the grandchildren, so she couldn't complain for once. Even smelly old Mr Kitson had been driven off to spend the holiday with his married sister. Rather appropriately, in Bath. The rest of her cases had sorted themselves out one way or the other. And, after all, she was only going to be away for ten days. She felt she needed the break. Her Senior Social Worker had wished her luck and told her to have a good rest, and this made Jean realize how long it was since she had been away from work for any length of time.

She just had to check that Mr Morton was all right, and then she was free.

Harry was steeping his trousers in mixed-up Polyfilla when he heard the doorbell. It was difficult, what he was doing. Really, the mixture should have been runnier, but he had not got out enough water before he boarded up the door to the kitchen and bathroom. Never mind, though, the stuff would still work and soon he'd be able to produce more urine to mix it with. He was going to use the Polyfilla-covered trousers to block the crevice along the bottom of the front door. His pyjamas and pullover were already caulking the cracks on the other one.

He congratulated himself on judging the amount of Polyfilla right. He was nearly at the end of the last packet. By the time he'd blocked in the plug sockets and the ventilation grille he'd found hidden behind the television, it would all be used up. Just the right amount.

He froze when he heard the doorbell. Lie doggo. Pretend there's no one there. They'll go away.

The bell rang again. Still he didn't move. There was a long pause, so long he thought the challenge had gone. But then he heard an ominous sound, which at once identified his caller and also raised a new threat.

It was the sound of a key in his lock. That bloody busybody of a social worker had come round to see him.

There was nothing for it. He would have to let her in. “Just a minute. Coming,” he called.

“Hurry up,” the girl's voice said. She had told him to hurry up. Like the new checker, she had told him to hurry up.

He picked up his ratchet screwdriver and started to withdraw the first of the screws that held the large sheet of chipboard and its padding of bedclothes against the front door. At least, he thought, thank God I hadn't put the sealing strips along here.

Jean's voice sounded quite agitated by the time he removed the last screw. “What's going on? Can't you hurry up?”

She had said it again. He opened the door narrowly and she pushed in, shouting, “Now what the hell do you think you're—”

Whether she stopped speaking because she was taken aback by the sight of the room and her half-naked host, or because the ratchet screwdriver driven into her back near the spine had punctured her heart, it is difficult to assess. Certainly it is true that the first blow killed her; the subsequent eleven were unnecessary insurance.

Harry Morton left the body on the floor and continued methodically with his tasks. He replaced the chipboard and padding over the door and sealed round it with his trousers, sports jacket, shirt and socks, all soaked in Polyfilla. Then he blocked up the plugs and ventilator grille.

He looked round with satisfaction. Now that was real insulation. No one could die of cold in a place like that. Always had been daft, his sister. But he didn't relax. One more final check-round with the candle, then he could put his feet up.

He went slowly round the room, very slowly so that the candle wouldn't flicker from his movement, only from genuine draughts.

Damn. It had moved. He retraced a couple of steps. Yes, it fluttered again. There was a draught.

By the fireplace. That fireplace had always been more trouble than it was worth.

It needed more insulating padding. And more Polyfilla to seal it.

But he'd used everything in the room and there was no water left to mix the Polyfilla with. He felt too dehydrated to urinate. Never mind, there was a solution to everything. He sat down with his notebook and pencil to work it out.

Well, there was his underwear, for a start. That was more insulation. He took it off.

Then he looked down at Jean Collinson's body and saw the solution. To both his problems. Her body could be crammed into the chimney to block out the draughts and her blood (of which there was quite a lot) could mix with the Polyfilla.

He worked at his own pace, unscrewing the boxwork he had put around the marble fireplace with his ratchet screwdriver. Then he pulled out the inadequate insulation of pillows and Do-It-Yourself magazines and started to stuff the body up the chimney.

It was hard work. He pushed the corpse up head first and the broad hips stuck well in the flue, forming a good seal. But he had to break the legs to fit them behind his boxwork when he replaced it. He crammed the crevices with the pillows and magazines and sealed round the edges with brownish Polyfilla.

Only then did he feel that he could sit back with the satisfaction of a job well done.

They found his naked body when they broke into the flat after the Christmas break.

He would have died from starvation in time, but in fact, so good was his insulation, he was asphyxiated first.

M
URDER
,
LIKE ALL
great enterprises, repays careful planning; and, if there was one thing on which Hector Griffiths prided himself, it was his planning ability.

It was his planning ability which had raised him through the jungle of the domestic cleaning fluids industry to be Product Manager of the
GLISS
range of indispensable housewives' aids. His marriage to Melissa Wintle, an attractive and rich widow with a teenage daughter, was also a triumph of planning. Even his wife's unfortunate death three years later, caused by asphyxiation from the fumes of a faulty gas heater while he was abroad on business, could be seen as the product of, if not necessarily planning, then at least serendipity.

But no amount of planning could have foreseen that Melissa's will would have left the bulk of her not inconsiderable wealth to Janet, daughter of her first marriage, rather than to Hector, her second husband.

So when, at the age of fifty-two, Hector Griffiths found himself reduced to his
GLISS
salary (generous, but by no means sufficient to maintain those little extras—the flat in Sloane Street, the cottage in Cornwall, the Mercedes, the motor-boat—which had become habitual while his wife was alive) and saddled with the responsibility of an unforthcoming, but definitely rich, step-daughter, he decided it was time to start planning again.

Hector Griffiths shared with Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and other lesser prophets and evangelists the advantage of having written his own Bible. It was a series of notes which he had assembled during the planning build-up to the launch of
NEW GREEN GLISS—WITH AMMONIA
, and he was not alone in appreciating its worth. No less a person than the company's European Marketing Director (Cleaning Fluids) had congratulated him on the notes' cogency and good sense after hearing Hector use them as the basis of a Staff Training Course lecture.

Hector kept the notes, which he had had neatly typed up by his secretary, in a blue plastic display folder, of which favoured Management Trainees were occasionally vouchsafed a glimpse. On its title page were two precepts, two precepts which provided a dramatic opening to Hector's lectures and which, he had to admit, were rather well put.

A. EVEN AT THE COST OF DELAYING THE LAUNCH OF YOUR PRODUCT, ALWAYS ALLOW SUFFICIENT TIME FOR PLANNING
.
IMPATIENCE BREEDS ERROR, AND ERROR IS EXPENSIVE
.

B
.
ONCE YOU HAVE MADE YOUR MAJOR DECISIONS ABOUT THE PRODUCT AND THE TIMING OF ITS LAUNCH, DO NOT INDULGE SECOND THOUGHTS. A DELAYED SCHEDULE IS ALSO EXPENSIVE
.

A third precept, equally important but unwritten, dictated that before any action was taken on a new product, there should be a period of Desk Work, of sitting and thinking, looking at the project from every angle, checking as many details as could be checked, generally familiarizing oneself with every aspect of the job in hand. Thinking at this earlier, relaxed stage made it easier to deal with problems that arose later, when time for thought was a luxury and one had to act on impulse.

It was nearly three months after Melissa's death before Hector had time to settle down to the Desk Work for his new project. He had been busy with the European launch of
GLISS SCOURING PADS
and had also found that clearing a deceased's belongings and sorting out a will, even such a simple and unsatisfactory one as Melissa's, took a surprising amount of time. Janet had also needed attention. Her mother's death had taken place at Easter, which meant that the girl had been home from her Yorkshire boarding school. Janet, now a withdrawn fifteen-year-old, had unfortunately been asleep at the time of Melissa's accident, had heard nothing and so been unable to save her. Equally unfortunately, from her step-father's point of view, she had not been in the bathroom with her mother when the gas fumes started to escape, which would have solved his current difficulties before they arose.

But, as Hector always told the eager young men in beige suits and patterned ties on the Staff Training Courses, success rarely comes easily, and the wise manager will distrust the solution that arrives too readily.

No, Janet was still with him, and he did not regret the time he had devoted to her. His plans for her future had not yet crystallized but, whatever it was to be, prudence dictated that he should take on the role of the solicitous step-father. Now she was such a wealthy young woman, it made sense that he should earn at least her goodwill.

He smiled wryly at the thought. Something told him he would require more of her than goodwill for the occasional handout. The flat in London, the cottage in Cornwall, the motor-boat and the Mercedes demanded a less erratic income. He needed permanent control of Janet's money.

But he was jumping to conclusions. He always warned Management Trainees against prejudging issues before they had done their Desk Work.

Hector Griffiths opened the blue folder on his desk. He turned over the page of precepts and looked at the next section.

1.
NEED FOR PRODUCT (FILLING MARKET VOID
,
INCREASING BRAND SHARE
)

It took no elaborate research to tell him that the product was needed. Now Melissa was dead, there was a market void, and the product required to fill it was money.

Unwilling to reject too soon any possibility, he gave thought to various methods of money-making. His prospects at
GLISS
were healthy, but not healthy enough. Even if, when the Marketing Director (U.K.) retired and was replaced by the European Marketing Director (Cleaning Fluids), Hector got the latter's job (which was thought likely), his salary would only rise by some 25 per cent, far off parity with the wealth he had commanded as Melissa's husband. Even a massive coincidence of coronaries amongst the senior management of
GLISS
which catapulted Hector to the Managing Director's office would still leave him worse off.

Career prospects outside
GLISS
, for a man of fifty-two, however good a planner, offered even less. Anyway, Hector didn't want to struggle and graft. What he had had in mind had been a few more years of patronizing his underlings in his present job and then an early, dignified and leisured retirement, surrounded by all the comforts of Melissa (except for Melissa herself).

So how else did people get money? There was crime, of course—theft, embezzlement and so on—but Hector thought such practices undignified, risky and positively immoral.

No, it was obvious that the money to ease his burdens should be Melissa's. Already he felt it was his by right.

But Janet had it.

On the other hand, if Janet died, the trust that administered the money for her would have to be broken, inevitably to the benefit of her only surviving relation, her poor step-father, desolated by yet another bereavement.

The real product for which there was a market void, and which would undeniably increase Hector Griffiths' brand share, was Janet's death.

2.
SPECIFIC DESCRIPTION OF PRODUCT

Fifteen-year-old girls rarely die spontaneously, however convenient and public-spirited such an action might be, so it was inevitable that Janet would have to be helped on her way.

It didn't take a lot of Desk Work to reach the conclusion that she would have to be murdered. And, following unhappy experiences with the delegation of responsibility over the European launch of
GREEN GLISS SCOURING PADS,
Hector realized he would have to do the job himself.

3.
TIMING OF LAUNCH

This was the crucial factor. How many products, Hector would rhetorically demand of the ardent young men who dreamt of company Cortinas and patio doors, how many products have been condemned to obscurity by too hasty a schedule? Before deciding on the date of your launch, assess the following three points:

A. HOW SOON CAN THE PRODUCTION, PUBLICITY AND SALES DEPARTMENTS MAKE THE PRODUCT A VIABLE COMMERCIAL PROPOSITION
?

B. HOW LONG WILL IT BE BEFORE THE MARKET FORCES WHICH REVEALED A NEED FOR THE PRODUCT ALTER? (N.B. OR BEFORE A RIVAL CONCERN ALSO NOTES THE NEED AND SUPPLIES IT WITH THEIR OWN PRODUCT
?)

C. WHAT SPECIAL FACTORS DOES YOUR PRODUCT HAVE WHICH CREATE SPECIAL NEEDS IN TIMING
? (e.g.
YOU DO NOT LAUNCH A TENNIS SHOE CLEANER IN THE WINTER
.)

Hector gave quite a lot of Desk Work to this section. The first question he could not answer until he had done some serious Research and Development into a murder method. That might take time.