I slightly increased the pace, but I couldn’t drive as fast as I wanted to. Other people stared; other people had remarks to make. I was sweating by the time I slowed down while the guard opened the gate.
This time he deigned to look at the car, and his eyes fell on Dester as he lay back against the cushioned headrest, his face the colour of a rotten tomato, his eyes glazed. The guard looked at me, grimaced, then spat in the road. Maybe he had every right to feel that way about it, but I was tempted to jump out of the car and knock his teeth down his throat.
Once out on to the wide boulevard I trod on the gas, but even then people stared at the Rolls as it swept past them. They knew I was taking home a drunk; I could tell it by their jeering grins.
It was a relief to get under cover of the drive-in of Dester’s residence where no one could stare. I pulled up outside the house and got out, opening the car door.
Dester sat rigid and motionless, his eyes once more fixed in that ghastly glaring stare. I tapped him on his knee.
‘We’re home, sir.’
I might just as well have been talking into a dead mike for all the reaction I got from him.
I couldn’t leave him in the car. I wasn’t going to wait out there in the hot evening sunshine. I reached in, caught hold of his coat front, hauled him out and over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift.
He must have weighed over two hundred pounds, but I’m strong and I’ve lifted heavier things than Erle Dester, but not much heavier. I lurched up the steps, opened the front door, crossed the hall towards the stairs.
Helen called from the lounge, ‘Is that you, Erle? I want you.’
There was a lilting jeer in her voice that told me she knew he was drunk. For a moment I hesitated, then I turned around and walked into the lounge with him like a sack of wheat over my shoulder.
She was sitting in a deep chair, a tea tray at her side, a magazine on her lap. She was wearing what is called an afternoon gown of biscuit colour chiffon. She looked very beautiful and at ease as she stared up at me, lifting her sharply arched eyebrows.
‘Oh, it’s you, Nash,’ she said, ignoring my burden. ‘I thought it was Mr. Dester.’
I was tempted to swing him off my shoulder into her lap, but I restrained myself in time. My role at the moment was to be the perfect servant so she couldn’t find any reason to sack me.
‘Yes, madam. I heard you call. I was about to put Mr. Dester to bed. He is a little unwell.’
‘How considerate of you. I was hoping he might be better 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
With 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: another guy threw himself out of a window because of her.
I had a hunch that this other guy might give me the key to the present setup. If I could find out who he had been and why he had thrown himself out of the window I might be able to assess better just how far she would go to get her hands on the money.
How could I find this out?
Dester had met her in New York. Presumably this other guy had thrown himself out of a window somewhere in New York.
It looked to me as if I would need outside help on this job. The obvious way to get the dope on this other guy would be to hire an inquiry agent, but inquiry agents cost money.
I suddenly snapped upright. Why was I all this interested? I asked myself. Why was I suddenly so determined to stick my nose into something that didn’t concern me? I knew the answer, of course, but I didn’t like admitting even to myself what the answer was.
When I had found that Helen would collect three-quarters of a million dollars at Dester’s death, a gnawing envy had taken hold of me. I began to ask myself if there was any chance to horn in and get a share of this money. I knew I had no claim to it, but it seemed to me that if Helen was planning to hurry Dester’s death along, then I had a claim. If I could prove she had hurried his death along, I would have a hold on her. I knew the word for that kind of thing, but I wanted some of that money so badly I didn’t flinch from the word.