Grab Bag (22 page)

“Dear me,” said Inspector Fanshawe. “That does pose an interesting problem.”

“It does indeed. We questioned the mechanics, naturally, but it was the same story every time. Reputable people, known for sound work, had handled the car before and knew its quirks. Hadn’t taken it down bit by bit, of course, but had checked it thoroughly and couldn’t understand anything’s going so drastically wrong in so short a space of time. A different garage each time. There might have been negligence in one case, but surely not in four. One mechanic might have been bribed to lie, but hardly all of them. Anyway, a bribe would have meant Beardsley’s putting himself in another man’s power, which would have been stupid. Whatever he is, he can’t be that. No, he must have managed by himself. But—”

“Quite,” said Inspector Fanshawe. “What do you want me to do?”

“I have no idea,” said the superintendent. “I was hoping you might.”

He had got into the habit of turning over the really impossible assignments to Inspector Fanshawe. Somehow, she always managed to pull them off. Not for the first time, he studied the slim, exquisite figure before him with bewilderment and a certain uneasiness. Fragile as she looked, she was as tough as any man on the force. She seemed to have no nerves and no feelings, only a cool intelligence and lightning reactions. She was invaluable and he wished to God she’d been transferred to another division. Frankly, she scared the hell out of him.

As always, she zoomed straight to the point. “Beardsley’s between wives at the moment, right?”

“Yes. His latest bereavement was three months ago. It’s about time for him to start looking for another victim.”

“Then I assume what you really want is for me to make sure he finds her. Where would be the best place for me to get picked up?”

That was in truth exactly what he wanted, but hearing it stated so calmly appalled him. “Inspector Fanshawe, do you honestly mean you’d be willing to marry a man simply to get him pinched?”

She shrugged. “Women have married for sillier reasons. I shall need rather substantial expense money if I’m to be a good catch.”

It was not at all difficult for a single, lovely, and evidently affluent woman to become acquainted with Clayton Beardsley. From there it was just a step to the registry office.

The scoundrel had charm, there was no denying that fact. Had Inspector Fanshawe been the susceptible type, she could have been swept off her feet with no trouble whatsoever. But she wasn’t.

Superintendent Pearsall thought her totally devoid of emotions. In fact she had two. One was an ice-cold devotion to her duty as she saw it. The other was a burning-hot ambition to be Chief Inspector Fanshawe. Pulling off the single-handed capture and conviction of a four-time murderer would be another step up toward her goal. She couldn’t understand why Pearsall had hemmed and hawed about letting her take on the assignment.

At the end of a month, though, all she had accomplished was to learn what it felt like to be a rich man’s darling. Clayton Beardsley had done well out of his four previous wives and been lucky in Canadian oil. He had no pressing need for her hypothetical wealth and was being monotonously slow about making any move to get hold of it.

Another woman—almost any other woman—would have reveled in the attention she got. Her husband obviously delighted in showing off his new wife. He took her everywhere. He lavished furs and jewels on her, urged her to patronize the most fashionable dressmakers and never even winced when the bills came in. One would have thought he was as genuinely in love with her as he claimed to be.

Before taking up her perilous assignment, Inspector Fanshawe had done her homework. She’d pored over police reports of the four accidents, studied the gruesome photographs, learned all she could of Clayton Beardsley’s four previous
ménages.
Her quick mind had picked up a couple of points.

Beardsley’s love nests had all been either on high hills with steep, winding roads or near the sort of highway where every motorist who gets on it is impelled to drive much faster than he ought. And in every one of the four alleged accidents, at least one wheel had come off the car. How had Pearsall missed that? The only question was, how had Beardsley pulled them off? She puzzled over the problem all through the honeymoon and the first six weeks in her palatial new home.

Clayton, as she now found herself forced to call him, had always been far from the scene when the crashes occurred. The first time, he’d been driving a rented car, having left his own at the garage for his wife to pick up. After that, the Beardsleys had been two-car families. Sometimes it had been his wife’s car that got wrecked, sometimes his own. Invariably tires had recently been replaced or rotated, axles greased, brakes checked. Surely any tampering with the wheels would have been spotted by those skilled mechanics Beardsley always made a point of seeking out. Yet the wheels had come off.

The simplest way to make it happen would have been to loosen the cotter pin that held the wheel to the axle so it would fall out at an opportune moment. But could one depend on it to let go at a spot where the driver was most likely to crash? What if it fell out prematurely and went rattling around in the hubcap? Anyway, wouldn’t at least one mechanic have noticed a loose pin?

It was the candles on the dinner table that tipped the fifth Mrs. Beardsley off to the way her husband planned to kill her. Candles were built up by dipping wicks into layer upon layer of melted paraffin. What if a too-small cotter pin were dipped the same way? The wax would harden and keep the pin snugly in place. A little extra axle grease smeared around the hub would serve for camouflage. Even the sharpest-eyed mechanic would be unlikely to notice such an insignificant detail on a routine inspection.

The pin would hold all right for a while, until the friction of high-speed driving or violent braking generated enough heat to melt the wax. Once it loosened, the working of the joint would quickly wear it through, especially if it had been flipped back and forth with pliers before the waxing, to weaken the metal even further.

“Really,” said the newest Mrs. Beardsley to herself, “it’s brilliant.” She looked down the polished mahogany at her handsome husband with an admiration that, this once, was real.

From that evening on, she included the pins in her thorough safety check every time she took the car out. She had her own, of course, a sleek yellow Alfa Romeo. She had grown to enjoy it along with the other luxuries she was constantly having showered upon her. But the life of elegant indolence was boring her to distraction. She did wish Clayton would get on with the murder so she could make her pinch and move on to a more exciting case.

But her husband perversely refused to kill her. Far from tampering with her Alfa Romeo, he never even went near it. He was constantly cautioning her against driving too fast. His devotion showed no sign of slackening, but rather seemed to grow. He waited on her hand and foot. His lovemaking became even more sickeningly mawkish.

“You’re so completely unlike anyone I’ve ever known, Pamela my darling,” he’d gush. “So exquisitely detached, so serenely aloof, so infinitely above the messy emotional scenes with which other women always want to clutter up one’s life. You’re the most beautiful statue ever carved. I could look at you forever.”

And as the weeks continued to roll by, it began to appear Clayton Beardsley intended to do just that. The fifth Mrs. Beardsley had to face the horrible truth: her husband was in love with her. She was furious.

“I came here to be murdered,” she stormed to herself, “not idolized and fawned over and trapped into a lifetime of being dressed up and dragged around to expensive night clubs and fancy restaurants. If he doesn’t get on with it soon, I’ll—”

She’d what? Divorce a devoted husband simply because he refused to kill her? Fat chance she’d have of getting any judge to swallow that one! Desert him and ruin her career on the force? Not bloody likely. Stay here and die of boredom?

“What a ghastly mess I’ve got myself into!” Her emotion was deep and heartfelt.

That evening, Clayton Beardsley found his lovely bride in an unusually pettish mood. He outdid himself trying to please her.

The following morning after he’d gone to his office, she spent more time than usual tinkering with her yellow Alfa Romeo. Then she drove it very carefully to the nearest garage.

“Something is making a queer noise down inside,” she told the mechanic. “I wish you’d make it stop.”

“Have it right in no time,” he told her cheerfully.

Actually, it should take him a couple of hours to locate the screw she’d dropped strategically inside the engine. She enjoyed the walk back to the house. Naturally she cut across the fields. The highway was much too dangerous for pedestrians.

Clayton called from town later that afternoon. “I’m taking the 5:02 down, dearest. Is there anything I can bring you?”

“How good of you to ask, darling. Yes, would you mind terribly stopping at the garage on your way back and picking up my car? No, just a funny noise in its tummy. The mechanic said he’d have it ready by evening. Hurry home, sweet. I’ll have a cocktail waiting.”

“I suppose you’ll be resigning from the force now that you’re a rich widow.” Superintendent Pearsall tried not to sound hopeful.

“On the contrary, I can’t wait to get back to work.” The former Mrs. Beardsley flicked a disdainful finger at the sable cuff of her black Balenciaga coat. “Soft living doesn’t suit me at all. I do regret not having been able to pull off the arrest. I must confess I was rather hoping to get a promotion out of it.”

“You have that anyway,” he assured her, “for devotion over and beyond the call of duty.” The affable smile cost him a considerable effort. “It was ironic, his getting caught in his own trap like that.”

“Yes, wasn’t it? When he told me to take my car into the garage, I naturally became suspicious, especially after I’d checked it over and found nothing wrong but a screw dropped where it had no business to be. I did as he said, but then pretended I wasn’t feeling well and he’d have to pick it up himself. I took it for granted he’d either find an excuse not to or be extra careful driving home, then I’d have a chance to ferret out the evidence and confront him with it. But apparently he couldn’t resist the temptation to speed on the highway. It’s positively hypnotic, you know, watching everybody else whiz by. Clayton always drove much too fast anyway.”

“The car was demolished, as usual.” Superintendent Pearsall sighed. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know precisely how he managed the murders.”

“No,” said Chief Inspector Fanshawe, “I don’t suppose we ever shall. It’s a pity. Now what did you have in mind for my next assignment?”

THIS IS THE OTHER
story I dreamed, wrote, and sold. Unlike the first, though, it has undergone considerable revision.
Good Housekeeping
once changed the heroine’s sister’s name to Cora and ran a considerably different version as “Mine to Love” in their issue of August 20, 1966.

“You’ve got to feed the whole child.” Martine spoke decisively, as always.

“It’s about all I can do to feed the end that hollers.” Betsy spoke wearily, as usual.

“I know, dear. If you’d only planned—”

“How can you plan to have twins?”

“But did you have to have them so soon after Peggy?”

“Jim and I wanted our kids to grow up in a bunch. It’s more fun for them.”

“But darling, fun isn’t everything. You must develop their aesthetic awareness, too.”

“I don’t think mine have any.”

“Oh, but all children do, dear. I saw the most charming exhibition of Guatemalan hand-weaving yesterday, done by six- to ten-year-olds. So fresh and spontaneous.”

“Peg does hand-weaving. She made me this pot-holder at the playground.”

“Sweet.” Martine barely glanced at her niece’s clumsy effort.

“Don’t you think it’s sort of fresh and spontaneous?” Betsy hung the red-and-green-and-yellow mess back on its hook. Martine was right, she supposed.

Martine was always right. Martine had been graduated from high school with all possible honors while Betsy was squeaking through third grade by the skin of her brace-laden teeth. Martine had been May Queen and Phi Beta Kappa at college and would soon be vice-president of her firm. Martine wore designer models and gave perfect little dinners to amusing people. Betsy handed out peanut-butter sandwiches.

“You mustn’t vegetate in the suburbs,” Martine was saying for the fifty-seventh time since Jim and Betsy had bought the house. “You have to keep broadening your horizons.”

“Sorry.” Betsy shoved another load into the washer. “I don’t have the time right now.”

“But you could do it in little ways, dear. Put some glamour into your meals, for instance. Dine by candlelight. Serve exotic foods.”

“Jim likes steak and potatoes.”

Her sister left, wearing that what-can-you-do-with-her expression Betsy had been seeing all her life. Somewhere, right now, some aunt or other must be wondering, “Why couldn’t Betsy have turned out more like Martine?”

She slammed the empty coffee cups into the dishwasher. Betsy hated these unexpected flying visits. They always meant Martine had something to tell her for her own good. The awful part was, Martine always did. Maybe, deep down, Jim found his marriage boring. Maybe some day the kids would resent not having had a more well-rounded childhood.

The twins whooped in demanding lunch. “How about some nice cream of mushroom soup for a change?” she asked them timidly. The
yecch
was deafening.

Betsy tried again at dinner. She knew better that to tamper with the menu because if she served anything fancy, Jim would say in a sorrowful tone, “I thought we were having steak and potatoes.” But she went all-out on gracious touches. She set the table with flowers and hand-embroidered place mats. She shut her eyes to the probable consequences and gave everybody, even the twins, crystal goblets instead of peanut-butter tumblers. She put on the green velvet hostess gown Martine had given her for Christmas a year ago, that she never wore because it was much too beautiful to fry an egg or scrub a twin in. She still hadn’t got around to taking up the hem. Even with her highest heels, the skirt brushed the floor.