In Africa it may be possible to hate an enemy to death; in Los Angeles, although the city is more unreal at times than any village of the Dark Continent, it just won’t work. Wilbur Dunn had been trying for some days now, sitting in his room with anger and resentment flowing through every fibre of his body.
Wilbur was a young thirty. He was healthy, athletic, handsome, and bone-lazy. Such a man finds life intolerable without money — lots of it. Not for him the drudgery of store or office. He wanted to be one of the fortunate few, the golden youth of California, who spend their carefree days by the pastel swimming pools with spectacular blondes, and their evenings on the town with more of the same.
Of course, Wilbur might have had quite a decent career as a professional man, since his Aunt Grace did send him to college. But all he’d managed to learn were a few social graces, and a sound tennis technique. Otherwise, he’d flunked in turn, mathematics, history, botany, chemistry, and even — this is almost incredible — an education course. But then he’d taken this last only to be near a certain girl. Quite a waste; she married a medical student.
The infuriating aspect of all this present frustration was that until last week Wilbur’s passport to such a dream world of boating, surfing, and night-clubbing had been virtually a certainty. As the only living relative of his Aunt Grace, he had been in line to inherit roughly one third of a million dollars, all in blue chip stocks — not stamps, mind you — stocks. This wasn’t because the old lady thought too highly of her nephew. He was charming, attentive, and good to look at, but a wastrel. Still, blood was thicker than water, charity begins at home — Aunt Grace was strong on such proverbs. And she wasn’t the type to endow cats instead, or hospitals, or missionaries.
Of course, it meant a few more years of cautious sponging on Wilbur’s part; he’d be stuck in this old house with its eighteen drafty rooms, instead of an apartment in Westwood. Aunt Grace was seventy, quite frail in build, but tenacious of life, with an appetite like an anaconda after a hard winter. Still, it oughtn’t to be more than five years, Wilbur thought. With luck, maybe much less — even tomorrow. Not many anacondas could survive all those gooey pastries the old gal lived on. For a third of a million, Wilbur could wait patiently, pinning his hopes on one particularly indigestible type of cream tart she favored.
And then, with his future assured in value, although the timetable was uncertain, Wilbur Dunn suddenly found his dream world dissolving into a bleak vista of endless scrounging. For into the life of Aunt Grace had come Colonel Derek Valentine. He was himself another Wilbur with thirty years added. He was tall, veddy British in manner, smooth as an oiled snake, and the hell of it was — from the nephew’s point of view — genuine enough to stand investigation. When he saw his Aunt succumbing, Wilbur had tried hard enough to find Valentine’s Achilles heel, only to discover that the old boy had really been an army officer. Only a captain, but a valid one, with service in India. And he did have a distant connection with an English family of respectable lineage. To be sure, he was not exactly the pride of his relations, but the man’s raffish past only made him more devastating to the old lady. It was, Wilbur reflected sourly, the inevitable result of too many bad romantic novels. What a pity TV had come so late in Aunt Grace’s life.
In any case, the unhappy nephew saw the handwriting on the wall in very large and depressing letters. Aunt Grace would surely marry the fortune hunter; the colonel would be her new heir. Maybe Wilbur would get a small legacy — the horrible old house, with its crushing tax bills — but definitely not enough to finance a career in the neon dream world he had sought so long. Blondes, fifths of good liquor, and swimming pools all come high, even in Southern California where they outnumber the oranges.
And so Wilbur sat in his room, full of hate and frustration. He saw through the window the sunny streets below, the jammed freeway some blocks down, the tanned, sturdy children playing; and the world was.sour on his tongue. If only Aunt Grace hadn’t met the colonel at church; or if only she had been considerate enough to die before that smooth character had taken her in; if only — at that moment one of the tall palms just outside the glass, whipping in a stiff breeze, shed a big frond. The feathery shaft, some four feet long, with a thick, woody base, just missed a boy on the walk. Undisconcerted, he seized it with delight, and waving the thing like a club, pursued his shrieking companions. They vanished around the corner.
Wilbur watched them out of sight, bemused. A falling frond. You had to look out for those palms in windy weather. Every now and then somebody got conked. Usually it meant just a bruise; possibly a slight concussion if the tree were tall enough, the frond extra large. An old person like Aunt Grace, with a thin skull — why, she might even be killed. Those trees on the street were at least forty feet tall — one or two, higher. That one in the middle of the block, for example. A frond from it could give you quite a sock. What did one weigh? Surely a pound, at the very least. Wilbur’s deceptively candid brown eyes narrowed. It was a cinch. All he’d have to do would be to get her out there on some dark night — a windy one — and slug Aunt Grace with the woody butt. A good tennis swing. Then he’d let out a yell, carry her in, and phone the doctor. What a pity; they’d been walking along, and down came the damned frond — a million to one shot, but the sort of thing that actually happened at least once a year in Los Angeles. Why couldn’t it have hit him instead? The thing couldn’t seriously injure a husky young man. Why a poor old lady? Even if they suspected something, nobody in the world could prove it didn’t happen just as he said. The money would still be his, and the colonel could hunt another pigeon.
Wilbur’s mental activity was now at a peak. It wouldn’t do to fool with a frond out there now, in daylight, but after dark... Yes; then he’d heft one, and see if the scheme really made sense.
So about nine in the evening, when Aunt Grace was hypnotized by a nauseating audience participation program, Wilbur slipped out for an informal botanical investigation. The fronds were disappointingly light; so much so, in fact, that he was in despair. The woody base was almost like balsa. Nevertheless he swung one of the bigger branches in a whistling vertical arc, and decided that even seven or eight ounces can deliver quite a whack. But the way to be sure was to strike first with something more effective, and then see to it that the frond was properly stained with blood.
It took some careful thought, but Wilbur finally realized that he needed something similar in shape and texture to the frond, and hard enough not to leave any tell-tale splinters in the wound. He found it in the hardwood leg of an old sofa that had been stored in the garage for many years. The piece of mahogany was about ten inches long, and quite massive at one end. It was hard and slick enough not to splinter. Besides, he would be careful to use no more force than was necessary. It would never do to have a wound that couldn’t have been caused by a falling frond.
Wilbur fixed a special pocket inside his topcoat to hold the little bludgeon. All that he needed now was a windy evening. In March that wasn’t too much to expect; and, sure enough, one came along, just right, on a Friday.
“Auntie,” Wilbur said at dinner, smiling at her warmly, “did you notice that the ‘Parisian’ is showing a fine love story tonight — the kind you go for.”
She took a large bite from a rich cake the size of a deck of cards.
“Who’s in it?”
“One of your favorites — Efrem Zimbalist.” He could see that she was interested. Efrem was right out of E. Phillips Oppenheim.