The Perfect Murder Read Free Page B

second. We have a maid who comes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And both of us make use of a chauffeur, whose sympathies tend toward my own.
    My wife? Well, the less said the better. To know anyone is to empathize with them, isn’t that true? But you must know the basics, I suppose. She is a woman of excessive appetites whether at the table, in bed, in society, or in the stores. She is attractive, middle-aged, and is given to outrageous manipulation. I could go into the details of how she received all her father’s money (leaving her two sisters in the cruel position in which I once found myself: forced to marry money rather than make it), but it is a story so familiar that it is the concept behind a thousand books. Her current obsession is the cause of my grief and of my inspiration. She is having an affair with my best friend, and neither suspects that I know.
    He—that is, the man who has set upon my head the horns of the cuckold—is no innocent. But then, what man is when it comes to such matters? He simply chose not to think with his head or his heart. He succumbed to the oldest temptation. For our purposes, let us call this man Blazes Boylan. What can I tell you of this poor slob? That he is a businessman, that he is divorced, that he was once my best friend? I am resisting the desire to paint him as a fool. Even though he is, although no more a fool than most of the members of our wretched sex. Blazes was born to all the comforts and privileges life in this country offers a man willing to learn to read. He has made a considerable fortune.
    But, in America, becoming rich requires only the concentration of one’s mind and the suspension of one’s morals. Like so many men, Blazes suffers from an unidentified ennui. It is a sense of boredom that has suffused his character so profoundly and so serenely that he thinks having an affair is an act of danger and triumph. As I said, he is an average man.
    I saw Blazes at the club the other day. He tried desperately to keep up the appearance of our friendship. He didn’t do nearly as good a job as I did. We were sitting in the parlor drinking coffee. I replaced my cup gingerly atop my saucer and grunted, in the way we men are supposed to do, “So, my bachelor friend, getting any these days?” Were this a movie, no doubt the hapless Blazes would knock his cup onto the floor. But this is real life, and, as I said, Blazes is only as foolish as most men. He grunted right back, in the way we men are supposed to do, “Wish I were!” But his eyes—it’s always the eyes—tightened ever so gently at the corners, revealing the unexpected horror of this conversation. My eyes lit up sweet and boyish, as if we had just finished chucking each other on the shoulder. My eyes are my most precious asset.
    All of this is beginning to sound rather familiar, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t it? I would not be writing you if I could give this familiar story an extraordinary ending. As it is, this story is tediously ordinary. It is up to you to raise it to the status of Homer with an unordinary finale. As a framework for that ending, I fancy that my wife should be the recipient of your respective talents, that I should wind up free, and that the unthinking Blazes should find himself in the dock incapable of presenting a convincing alibi against the ample evidence so painstakingly discovered by the police detectives.
    Moreover, this evidence must be so compelling that it completely refutes the police’s well-founded, initial suspicion of me. That would be a story worth telling.
    There is one other detail you should know. Unlike my wife, Blazes is a fellow of specific and timely habits. Yet in one habit, they are both flawlessly punctual. At 5:00 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he leaves his office to walk home. At the same hour, my wife leaves to take her afternoon constitutional. They meet at a nearby inn, share a drink in the bar, and leave separately by 5:30 p.m . They both arrive a