Джеймс Чейз - There’s Always A Price Tag

‘I thought tonight we might go out together, Glyn,’ she said. ‘I’ve been neglecting you.’

I looked at her and it gave me a shock to realize how my feelings towards her had changed. At one time, just to look at that beautiful lush body and into those hard, glittering eyes, would have turned me into a pot of mush, but not now. I could see beyond the beauty. I knew what that cold, lovely mask of her face hid. I had learned better.

‘It’s not safe for us to be seen together, Helen. You know that.’

‘All right. Then let’s make a night of it here. I’m in the mood tonight.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a date.’

She crossed one shapely leg over the other and smiled at me. ‘May I ask who with?’

‘That’s my affair.’

‘I hope it’s not with Marian, because she’s doing a job for me that’ll keep her busy until her bedtime.’

I looked at her, feeling the blood rise to my face.

‘She’s coming out with me tonight.’

‘I’ve already told her she is not to go out. After all, Glyn, I engaged her. She is my servant and she takes her orders from me.’ She got slowly to her feet. ‘You mustn’t forget you’re only the hired help yourself: the unofficial nursemaid to a dead man. Don’t forget that, Glyn.’

‘Marian and I are going out tonight,’ I said evenly. ‘Tell her you don’t want her. Do you hear?’

She laughed. ‘Don’t be a fool. A girl like that is no use to you, and you are no use to her. You’d better stop this before it goes too far. You and I are linked together: not you and she.’

‘She’s going out with me tonight.’

‘All right, if you want to make a fool of yourself, go and tell her. She won’t go with you, and she’ll wonder why the hired help thinks he can countermand an order from me.’

She had me.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Then get out of here.’

She stared at me, lifting her beautiful eyebrows.

‘I said I was in the mood, Glyn.’

‘Get the hell out of here!’ I said, glaring at her. ‘I don’t give a damn what mood you’re in.’

‘So you are in love with her, you poor fool,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have believed it.’

She turned and went out of the room and down the stairs, leaving me hating her as I had never hated any other woman before.

I spent the rest of the evening sitting in an armchair, a bottle of Scotch within reach, while I thought of what I could have been doing if Helen hadn’t shoved in her oar, and cursing her.

I wondered how Marian was feeling about it, and I had an idea that although she would be disappointed, she wouldn’t be surprised. Each night she had gone out with me, she seemed to wonder why Helen didn’t want her.

Around ten-thirty I got fed up with my own company. I got to my feet, turned off the light and went over to the house. The lights were on in the lounge. I didn’t go in, but moved around the path until I could see through the window.

Helen was reading and smoking. Marian was sitting away from her, busily sewing some white silk thing that probably Helen had given her. The gramophone was playing. I stood out in the darkness watching Marian, listening to the music until the record finished, then as she got up to turn off the gramophone, I walked back to my apartment, undressed and got into bed. I lit a cigarette and lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling.

I knew now that I was in love with Marian. I knew too that I wanted to marry her. This was the first time I had ever wanted to marry a girl, and the thought gave me a queer feeling of excitement. She and I, I told myself, could go to Rome together. She could go on with her studies, and I’d be around to love her, to listen to her talk, to see the things with her that she wanted to see in Rome.

I wondered then if I should go ahead with this plan of mine to get hold of the insurance money. Suppose Marian found out what I was planning to do? I didn’t have to wonder how she would react. It would be the finish between us. But if I didn’t go ahead where was the money to come from to marry her and take her to Rome?

I lay thinking and smoking until well past two getting nowhere. I was half inclined now to chuck the plan, but I kept thinking of the dollars. This was my one chance of laying my hands on real money. If I didn’t go ahead, I would have to start working again and I knew what that meant. Thirty bucks a week, liquor, talk, and plodding from office to office; that wasn’t the kind of life I would want to share with Marian.

Sick of my thoughts, I swung my legs off the bed and got up. I decided to take a bath in the hope I’d go to sleep when I returned to my bed, and as I moved over to the bathroom, I happened to look out of the window that overlooked the west side of the house. I stopped, standing motionless, feeling my heart skip a beat. I could see the kitchen window with the moonlight reflecting on the glass. I saw a flicker of a light from behind the window as if someone had turned on a flashlight for a moment and then turned it off.

With shaking hands I pushed open my window and leaned out, staring towards the kitchen window. I saw the light again, then suddenly the lights in the kitchen went on.

What was happening? Who was in the kitchen? Was it Helen or Marian or some sneak thief?

I turned, grabbed up my dressing gown, flung it on and went out of the apartment and down the stairs as fast as I could travel. I raced across the closely cut lawn and reached the kitchen window, my breath whistling between my clenched teeth and my heart pounding.

Cautiously, I looked through the uncurtained window, and what I saw going on in the kitchen made the hair on the back of my neck lift into bristles.

Marian was standing by the deep-freeze cabinet. She was wearing a pair of pale blue nylon pyjamas and her feet were bare. She was removing the bottles of whisky from the top of the cabinet. As I watched her, I realized she must have been in the kitchen some minutes, for there were only six more bottles to come off the top before she had stripped it clear.

Fifteen yards from where I was standing was the back door that opened on to a short passage that led to the kitchen. I left the window and darted to the door, turned the handle and pushed, but the door was locked and bolted. I wasted three precious minutes while I tried to force the door open by putting my shoulder against the panels and shoving with all my strength. I might just as well have tried to push over the Empire State Building for all the reaction I got.

I was in the worst panic I’d ever been in: so scared I couldn’t think. When it dawned on me that I couldn’t get in by the door, I blundered back to the window with the intention of hammering on the glass to stop her opening the cabinet, but when I got back to the window, I saw I was too late. She had cleared off the last bottle, and even as I looked through the window, my breath rattling against the back of my throat, my heart racing, I saw her lift the lid and look inside.

Her back was turned to me so I couldn’t see her face. I expected her to drop the lid, start back and begin to scream loud enough to take the roof off, but she didn’t. She stood absolutely motionless, her hands holding up the lid of the cabinet, her dark, glossy head inclined forward as she looked into the cabinet.

It was then that my mind began to function, and I saw that the window-latch hadn’t been fastened. I got my fingernails under the window-frame and pushed it up. As I did so, she slowly shut the lid. Then she turned, and for the first time since I had arrived at the window, I could see her face. It was completely expressionless, and her big, blue eyes were as vacant and empty as the eyes of the dead.

I realized with a sense of shock that jarred me down to my heels that she was walking in her sleep.