Read 1956 - There's Always a Price Tag for Free Online Page A

today. Well, never mind, take him away and do be careful not to drop him. When you have put him to bed, you might come down here again. I want to talk to you.'
    'Yes, madam.'
    I walked out, up the stairs and into Dester's bedroom. I laid him on the bed.
    It took me a little time to undress and get him between the sheets. As soon as his head rested on the pillow, he began to snore.
    I tucked him in, pulled the curtains, put a bottle of drinking water on the bedside table where he could get at it in a hurry, then went out, quietly closing the door.
    I walked down the stairs, aware that my heart was beginning to beat rapidly, and entered the lounge.
    I waited a moment, then said, 'You wanted me, madam?'
    She frowned, made an angry gesture with her hand and went on reading.
    I wondered how she would have reacted if I had taken the magazine away, jerked her out of the chair and mashed my mouth down on hers.
    I waited, my eyes on her in a hard, searching stare. I examined her complexion, the shape of her ears, the colour of her lipstick, the contours of her body the way any farmer will look at any cattle he is thinking of buying.
    I don't think she had bargained for this treatment. I saw the blood rise faintly to her face, and she suddenly threw down the magazine and looked up at me, her eyes glittering.
    'Don't stare at me like that, you damned oaf!' she said furiously.
    'I beg your pardon, madam.'
    'I told you last night you weren't wanted. I'm telling you again,' she said, sitting forward and staring at me with angry eyes. 'You now know what the job consists of. You can't like it; no one could. It is better for my husband to be without help. If he has no one to act as his nursemaid he will pull himself together. I am going to give you two hundred dollars in lieu of wages, and you're to pack and go immediately.'
    I didn't say anything.
    She had risen to her feet. She walked over to the desk, took from a drawer two one-hundred dollar bills and threw them on the table.
    'Take them and get out!'
    That's what I should have done, but, of course, I didn't.
    'I take my orders from Mr. Dester, madam. So long as he needs me, I am staying.'
    I turned and started for the exit.
    'Nash! Come back here!'
    I kept going, reached the hall, opened the front door and walked down the steps into the sunlight.
     
     

chapter three
     
    W ith my jacket off and my collar undone, a cigarette between my fingers, I lay on the bed and bent my mind to the situation as I knew it so far.
    It was obvious that Helen was waiting for Dester to die, and she was getting impatient with the wait. I could understand that: seven hundred and fifty thousand was a tantalizing sum to wait for.
    It seemed, if I could believe Simmonds and Jack Solly, that before very long Dester would be in financial trouble if he wasn't there already. The premium of a life policy as big as the one he held would cost a lot of dough: at a guess it would knock his income back something like eight or maybe ten thousand dollars a year. It didn't seem likely that he could continue to dish out that kind of money. I wished now that I had had time to examine the policy and find out when the next premium was due. It was more than probable he wouldn't be able to pay it and if he couldn't, the policy would lapse. Unless there was a special clause in the policy, there would then be no three-quarters of a million for Helen if he died. She probably knew that, and that was why she was so anxious to get rid of me. It seemed to me she was relying on Dester killing himself in a car smash before the premium had to be paid.
    But now she had failed to get rid of me, and the chances of Dester having a car smash were remote, what was she going to do? She had only a certain amount of time before the premium fell due, so she couldn't afford to wait for him to drink himself to death. What I wanted to know was whether she wanted that money badly enough to hurry his death along.
    I remembered what Solly had said: