Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense Read Free

she would be found before anything too serious happened. In this case . . . well, if you hadn’t walked into the room, I think she’d have gone the distance. Incidentally . . .”
    But Larry spoke before the inevitable question about why he came to be in her room. “Were there any other differences this time?”
    â€œSmall ones. The way she crushed up all the pills into the gin before she started suggested a more positive approach. And the fact that there was no note . . .”
    Larry didn’t respond to the quizzical look. When he left, the doctor shook him by the hand and said, with undisguised irony, “I wouldn’t worry. I’m sure everything will work out
for you
.”
    The insolent distrust was back in that final emphasis, but mixed in the doctor’s voice with another feeling, one of relief. At least a new husband would keep Mrs Phythian out of his surgery for a little while. Just a series of repeat prescriptions for tranquillizers and sleeping pills. And he could still charge her for those.
    Subconsciously, Larry knew that the doctor had confirmed how easy it would be for him to murder his wife, but he did not let himself think about it. After all, why should it be necessary?
    At first it wasn’t. Mrs Lydia Phythian changed her name again (she was almost rivalling her husband in the number of identities she had taken on), and became Mrs Lydia Renshaw. At first the marriage worked pretty well. She enjoyed kitting out her new husband, and he enjoyed being taken round to expensive shops and being treated by her. He found her a surprisingly avid sexual partner and, although he couldn’t have subsisted on that diet alone, secret snacks with other women kept him agreeably nourished, and he began to think marriage suited him.
    Certainly it brought him a lifestyle that he had never before experienced. Having been brought up by parents whose middle-class insistence on putting him through minor public school had dragged their living standards down to working-class and below, and then having never been securely wealthy for more than a fortnight, he was well placed to appreciate the large flat in Abbey Road, the country house in Uckfield and the choice of driving a Bentley or a little Mercedes.
    In fact, there were only two things about his wife that annoyed him—first, her unwillingness to let him see other women and, second, the restricted amount of pocket money she allowed him.
    He had found ways around the second problem; in fact he had reverted to his old ways to get around the second problem. He had started, very early in their marriage, stealing from his wife.
    At first he had done it indirectly. She had trustingly put him in charge of her portfolio of investments, which made it very easy for him to cream off what he required for his day-to-day needs. However, a stormy meeting with Lydia’s broker and accountant, who threatened to disclose all to their employer, persuaded him to relinquish these responsibilities.
    So he started robbing his wife directly. The alcoholic haze in which she habitually moved made this fairly easy. Mislaying a ring or a small necklace, or even finding her notecase empty within a few hours of going to the bank, were common occurrences, and not ones to which she liked to draw attention, since they raised the question of how much her drinking affected her memory.
    Larry spent a certain amount of this loot on other women, but the bulk of it he consigned to a suitcase, which every three or four weeks was moved discreetly to another Left Luggage office (premarital habits again dying hard). Over some twenty months of marriage, he had accumulated between twelve and thirteen thousand pounds, which was a comforting hedge against adversity.
    But he did not expect adversity. Or at least he did not expect adversity until he discovered that his wife had put a private detective on to him and had compiled a dossier of a fortnight’s infidelities.
    It was