Eight Perfect Murders(37)
“I did see that.”
“I would have killed him, if I had a chance. But it wasn’t me.”
“I know that.”
“It’s okay if you don’t. I know you’re doing your job, and I know you’re wondering what connection I have with all these murders. Truth is, I don’t have any, or at least not that I know of. After my wife died, I told myself that I would just go on living by myself, doing my job, reading books. I want a quiet life.”
“I believe you,” she said, and she looked at me with an emotion I couldn’t quite read. It seemed like affection. Or maybe it was pity.
“You sure?”
“Well, this crime scene, Elaine Johnson’s murder, does change things. It’s different from the others. It’s pointing directly at you, directly at the list.”
“I know it is. It’s giving me a very strange feeling.”
“Tell me more about Brian Murray. Would he have known Elaine Johnson?”
“He did, actually,” I said. “Well, I don’t know if he’d spoken to her, but he definitely knew her because Brian comes to all our readings, and Elaine comes, as well. Used to come.”
“How did the two of you end up buying the store together?”
“We were friends, not close, but he was in the store a lot, and we’d occasionally get a drink. When the previous owner decided to sell, I must have told Brian about it, about how I’d buy it if I had the money. I think he offered to come in right away. He had his lawyer write up a deal in which he provided the majority of the capital and I’d manage the business. It was a perfect arrangement. It still is. He doesn’t have anything to do with these murders.”
“How do you know that?”
I sipped my beer. “He’s an alcoholic, a functioning one, but barely. He writes his yearly book in about two months and takes the rest of the year off to drink. He’s sixty years old but looks seventy, and every time we hang out together he tells me the exact same stories. I just don’t see it. Even if for some reason he had murderous intentions, there’s just no way he could pull it off. He doesn’t even drive. He takes taxis everywhere.”
“Okay.”
“You believe me?”
“I’ll look into him, but, yes, I believe you. I used to read his books, actually, when I was a teenager. Ellis Fitzgerald was one of the reasons I wanted to go into law enforcement.”
“The early books were good.”
“I loved them. I remember that I could read an entire book in a day.”
Our oysters came, and the rest of our food shortly afterward. We didn’t talk anymore about the crime scene, or Brian Murray, or anything remotely personal. We ate, and Gwen went over her plan for the next day. She was going to go into the local FBI office and arrange for a scene-of-crime officer to conduct an investigation at Elaine Johnson’s house. She also wanted to talk with neighbors who might have seen a stranger, or at least a strange car, around the time of Elaine’s death.
“I can look into a bus that will take you back to Boston,” she said. “Otherwise you can come back with me, but it might not be until late in the afternoon.”
“I’ll wait,” I said, “unless you think it’s going to be another night. I brought a book.”
“Another one from the list?” she said.
“I did. I brought Malice Aforethought.”
After dinner, we drove back in silence to the hotel, then stood together in the harsh light of the empty lobby. “Thanks for coming on this trip,” she said. “I realize it’s probably an inconvenience.”
“It’s actually nice,” I said. “Get out of the city . . .”
“Visit the scene of a murder . . .”
“Yes,” I said.
We stood awkwardly for a moment. I did briefly wonder if Gwen had some romantic interest in me. I was only about ten years older than she was, and I knew that I was not unhandsome. My hair was completely gray now, more of a silver, really, but I’d kept all of it. I was slim and had a decent jawline. My eyes were blue. I took a step backward. I felt that shimmery glass wall between us, the one that kept me from becoming close to anyone except for ghosts. She must have felt it as well, because she said good night.
I went back to my hotel room and began to read.
Chapter 16
What impressed me about Malice Aforethought, back when I’d first encountered it just after college, was the cold determination of the murderer.
Edmund Bickleigh, we discover on the first page of the novel, has decided that he wants to kill his domineering, vindictive wife. He’s a doctor, with access to an array of drugs. Over the course of the first half of the book, he slowly turns his wife into a morphine addict. He does this by spiking her tea with a drug that gives her blinding headaches, then curing them with the opiate. Then he cuts her off from the morphine, enough so that she begins to fake his signature on prescriptions so that she can procure it herself. It becomes clear to the other residents of their country village that she is an addict. The rest is easy; one evening he simply gives her an overdose. There is no way he can be fingered for the crime.
I read most of the book that night, then finished it the following morning. It was hard to concentrate but there were times in the novel—it’s actually quite funny—that I was swept up in the story. As always, I thought back to the last time I’d read the book, how young I’d been, how differently I had reacted to the same words. When I’d first started at Redline Bookstore in Harvard Square after my time at college, Sharon Abrams, the owner’s wife, had given me a handwritten list of her favorite books, all mysteries but one. I’ve long since lost that list, but I have it memorized. Besides Malice Aforethought, she’d listed Gaudy Night and The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers, The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the first two Sue Grafton books, The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman, and The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, even though she said she’d never finished it (“I just love the beginning so much”). Her other favorite book was Bleak House by Charles Dickens; I guess you could say that it has mystery elements, as well.