Джеймс Чейз - There’s Always A Price Tag

‘We know Mrs. Dester and he didn’t get on together,’ Madvig put in. ‘Something went wrong early in their marriage. They had ceased to live together as man and wife for some time. It’s been said that Dester took to drink because of this. He was irresponsible. He ran up big debts. I can understand why she wanted him under control. We think Dester realized that once he was in the sanatorium he wouldn’t get out for some time. We think he lost his head, tried to persuade Mrs. Dester not to take him to the sanatorium and when she insisted, he hit and killed her. Then he took her to the forestry station, tied her so it looked as if she had been handled by kidnappers and has himself gone into hiding in the hope we’ll think he is in the hands of the kidnappers. I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t receive a ransom note from him.’

Maddux moved slowly over to me and stood in front of me. ‘And you, Mr. Nash, do you think Dester would murder his wife?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said through stiff lips. ‘He could be pretty quick tempered when he was drinking. He might certainly have hit her if she refused to do what he wanted. It could have been an accident.’

Well, at least, I had got the accident theory into the setup. But Bromwich wouldn’t stand for it.

‘It was no accident,’ he said. ‘No guy hits a woman that hard unless he meant to finish her.’

I felt suddenly sick. If they ever got me, they would never believe I hadn’t meant to kill her.

Maddux moved away.

‘Did Mrs. Dester know Dester was insured?’ he asked.

‘Not until I told her,’ Burnett said. ‘Nash will bear that out. He was with us when she asked me if he was insured.’

‘She didn’t know then?’

‘She asked me.’

‘Did you tell her the amount of coverage?’

‘I didn’t know myself until you told me.’

‘What did she say when you told her he was insured?’

‘She hoped he would borrow on the policy to pay his debts. When I reminded her that if he died after borrowing on the policy, there might be nothing left for her, she said she couldn’t possibly take the insurance money if it would help him when he was alive. I thought it did her a great deal of credit.’

Maddux looked at him, then he laughed. The hard, barking sound of his laugh shocked us. Burnett flushed angrily.

‘I can’t see there is anything to laugh at.’

‘I can,’ Maddux said. He pointed the stem of his pipe at Burnett. ‘If you think Helen Dester didn’t know her husband was insured for seven hundred and fifty thousand you have another think coming. She knew, and I’ll tell you why. She had been already involved in an insurance fraud. I make a practice to keep tabs on anyone who has been mixed up in any shady insurance racket even if that someone hasn’t had anything to do with my company. I keep a record of everyone who has made a doubtful claim because you never know if that someone will try something smart with us. I’ve kept tabs on Helen Dester for a long time. I know her background, and I know what made her tick. Fourteen months ago, she was the mistress of a guy named Van Tomlin. He insured himself in her favour for twenty thousand dollars. Not long after, when he was in her apartment, he fell out of the window. The insurance company wasn’t much, but at least they did threaten to fight her claim, but in the end they compromised and she collected seven thousand instead of twenty thousand. I don’t have to tell you if her claim had been on the level she would have taken the company to court, but she didn’t because she pushed Van Tomlin out of the window and the insurance company knew it!’

There was a short, electric silence. I was thinking: thank God we weren’t able to go ahead with the crack-brained idea of mine. I could see now it would never have worked; not when we would have been up against this guy.

‘Are you telling me that Mrs. Dester was a murderess?’ Burnett asked in a stifled voice.

Maddux showed his small white teeth in a grin.

‘That’s what I’m telling you: and I’ll tell you something else. Three years ago when she was twenty-four, she was a companion to an old lady who was stupid enough to leave Mrs. Dester five thousand dollars in her will and even more stupid to tell her what she had done. Two months later, the old lady fell downstairs and broke her neck.’

Madvig turned on Bromwich and glowered at him.

‘Why the hell didn’t you find this out?’ he snarled.

‘I’m looking for Dester,’ Bromwich said, his usual red face now purple. ‘I haven’t got around to Mrs. Dester yet.’

Madvig snorted, then turned to Maddux.

‘Well, she didn’t kill Dester, did she?’

‘How do you know? Where is Dester? How do you know he isn’t dead? How do you know she didn’t plan to kill him, fake a kidnapping, and collect the insurance money?’

‘Are you telling me she tied herself up, punched herself in the jaw and broke her goddamn neck?’

Madvig exclaimed, sitting forward, his purple face congested.

Maddux fetched out a box of matches and relit his pipe. His movements were deliberate. I felt my heart suddenly slow down. An icy chill crept up my spine. Something was coming. I could see that. I found I was clenching my fists and sitting forward as Madvig was sitting forward.

‘No, she didn’t do that,’ Maddux said. There was a cold, hard expression on his face that made everyone in the room stare at him. ‘But before you pin her death on Dester, you’d better start digging around for the other man.’ He paused, looking at Madvig. ‘For you can bet your last buck there is another man.’

It was lucky for me that both Madvig and Bromwich resented Maddux’s intrusion into the case. I didn’t realize this at the time, but subsequent facts were to prove that they were hostile not only to him, but to his ideas.

Madvig said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Maddux. We don’t want to make this case too complicated. As I see it, Dester killed her. That’s a straightforward theory. They drive away, she is found dead and he has disappeared. It looks a cinch to me. It’s happened thousands of times before, and it will happen thousands of times in the future.’

Maddux stared at him for a long, uncomfortable moment, then he shrugged his shoulders.

‘Okay. It’s not my business to tell you how to run this investigation, but remember what I said when you find Dester’s dead body: look for the other man.’

‘What makes you think Dester is dead?’ Madvig asked sharply.

‘When a guy is insured for three-quarters of a million and he comes to me to ask me to delete the self-destruction clause in his policy with a lame story that he doesn’t want to be tempted to do away with himself, I know there’s trouble coming. When I know he is married to a gold-digging murderess I know from which direction the trouble will come. When I hear he’s suddenly disappeared and she’s been found dead in mysterious circumstances I know a smart idea to defraud my company has been tried and has turned sour. We must find him.’

‘We’ll do that,’ Madvig said, his purple face turning a deeper shade.

‘And another thing: who inherits what’s left of his estate now his wife is dead?’ Maddux went on. ‘Did he leave a will?’

Something nudged me into life. Call it a hunch if you like, but I had a sudden feeling that no one must see the will that Marian found until I had had the chance of examining it. For all I knew Dester might just possibly have left me something, and if he had, I would be right out on a limb. So far, there was no motive that could be put down in black and white for me to have murdered him, but a mention in the will would supply the motive.

‘I don’t know,’ Burnett was saying. ‘I don’t think he made a will.’ He looked over at me. ‘You haven’t come across a will, have you, Nash?’