The Perfect Murder (4 page)

And has he now, in the easy and contemptuous way in which he has usurped the wife you don’t particularly want but very particularly need, gone that one step too far? Is
he
the subject of your perfect crime, rather than your wife, so that ridding yourself of her while retaining her money is merely lagniappe, the juicy by-product of your primary activity, being his total and permanent discomfiture? You needn’t be embarrassed to admit this to me, nor to yourself, if it be true; clarity will be needed, if you are to succeed at your endeavor.

There is another point to be made, in this same area.

If revenge against Blazes Boylan for the ongoing insult of his very existence is in fact the primary motive here, then the joke will not be complete unless Blazes
knows
who did for him, and can’t prove it. The best way to effect this happy result would be, of course, if he were present when you killed her—placing him at the scene of the crime—but you could prove that you were not. Having
seen
you there, Blazes would be very likely to squander all his energy trying to get oblivious policemen to believe him, when the story he would have to tell would be thoroughly without credibility from word one.

Let’s see if we can arrange it. You say that Blazes
was
your best friend, that at the moment you are both—for your differing reasons—attempting to keep up at least the appearance of that close bond, and that you are more successful at the pretense than he. (Don’t be surprised if he thinks
he’s
the more successful dissembler.) I take it your friendship has revolved around the more usual manly pursuits common to successful and reasonably healthy men of such wealth: golf, perhaps tennis, sailing in temperate weather. You would probably think of hunting as somewhat too déclassé for your present situation, since I don’t doubt that you are at all times affected by a prickly awareness of the distance you have traveled upward through the classes in this classless nation.

But what of shooting? Target shooting, in a building constructed for the purpose. The right gun club can lend a man as much cachet as the right racquet club. At once, then, join the most upper-class gun club it is within your social, economic, and geographic potential to join. In your seemingly casual (but actually quite strained) chats with Blazes, refer to this new enthusiasm, making sure to emphasize how many other important men you have rubbed elbows with there. If he doesn’t himself suggest after a week or so that he join the club, you make the suggestion yourself; offer, with hearty camaraderie, to
put him up
for the club. Psychologically, he cannot refuse. He will join. You will shoot together. You now know that on the day you have selected, the criminological laboratory’s tests
will
demonstrate that Blazes has recently fired a gun.

Part one is complete. It has been easy, enjoyable, and even utile, since your marksmanship will have improved since you have joined the gun club, and your marksmanship will soon be put to the test.

But first, as to that local inn, the one to which Blazes and your wife repair for their ongoing discussion of the Paphian mysteries. I know so little about it, save that it serves drinks in its bar, and would appear to have a large number of rooms: 1507 is not the number of a room in a
small
inn. Such a place surely has a restaurant as well, and elevators. You know of it; does it know of you? I think I can safely suggest not; it sounds a fairly large and anonymous place all in all, an inn that’s more Holiday’s than Mistress Quickly’s.

However, the fact that the same room is always available for them every afternoon suggests that either Blazes or your wife has some connection with the management, either personally or through business. Since you mentioned no such connection, it is unlikely to be through your wife. So Blazes, I assume, is a good friend of the manager, perhaps, or alternatively he is a significant member of the combine of local businessmen who jointly own this blot on the landscape. Because of this influence of his, that same room is made available to him three times per week, is serviced by the maid upon his and your wife’s departure, and is returned to the stock of available rooms, paper ribbon around the toilet seat and all, before your wife is seated across the dinner table from you at home.

You need a key to that room, or the inn’s passkey. You will probably have to stay a night or two at the inn, and for this reason you will need a new identity. This is because you will have to pay for your room with a credit card, since cash is an anomaly today and you cannot afford anomalies. So you should get your new identity at once, even before you join the gun club, to give that person time to accumulate a paper existence.

There is nothing simpler to obtain than a false identity. First, choose a city in a state other than your own. Second, go to the library and look at the microfilms of that city’s newspapers. What you are looking for is the obituary notice of a child born within a year of your birth who died before he was two. Sadly, the obituary pages of a large city will certainly provide what you need.

Next, you go to that city and rent a small apartment; for this, you can pay cash. Using that return address, and giving yourself the name of the dead infant, write to that state’s Bureau of Vital Statistics and request a copy of your birth certificate; that is, the dead infant’s birth certificate. When you receive it, use it to get a driver’s license and Social Security card, explaining in both offices that you have lived abroad with your parents since you were a teenager. With driver’s license and Social Security number in the new name—Minor DeMortis, let us say—you open a checking account in one bank and a savings account in another, depositing cash. You then apply for a gasoline company credit card and open two department store charge accounts, both of which will need no more than the bank references. With those, apply for normal credit cards.
Then,
at long last, you reserve a room at the inn in question, as Minor DeMortis.

Have you the patience for all this? There is little in your history to suggest any such thing. Before you begin this operation, ask yourself if you can really carry it through to the end. Of course,
until
the end, you will not have committed any major crimes—though a few minor ones, like the lies necessary to establish the new identity—so you can abandon the plot at any point if you decide you can live with your humiliation after all.

Assuming you have decided to go forward, let me tell you what to say when you phone the inn. You say you will arrive after eight
p.m
., and that you have been told by another traveler that Room 1507 has such-and-such a desirable feature; will it be available? (Plan B. If Room 1507 is not available, or if it has no desirable feature to which you can refer, or if you don’t believe you can play that scene believably, you rent
any
room, lock yourself out with the key inside, and manage to get your hands briefly on the passkey when the security man comes to let you in. The soft plastic for the impression is in your palm.) (Plan C. If the security man merely gives you another copy of the key to
your
room, knock on the door of 1507 when the murder moment arrives and claim through the closed door to be the inn’s manager, come to make certain the air conditioner won’t blow up again.)

It will be necessary to alter your appearance somewhat when you are Minor. Don’t do complicated, difficult, and time-consuming things like false noses. You must of course hide any really noticeable feature, like a saber scar on your cheek, but generally in disguise the less the better. A cane and slight limp, different hair style, spectacles, that sort of thing. And Minor will speak slowly and a bit artificially, since he’s been out of the country for so long.

Whenever
you are Minor, including alone in his apartment, maintain that façade.

Around now, it will be time for you to go to one of those pioneer states where any lout can buy a gun, and buy a gun.

And now you begin a correspondence between yourself and Minor. Minor writes first, explaining that he’s just recently back in America after many years, and that your company has been suggested to him as something he might be interested in investing in. You respond, favorably. More correspondence continues, noted by your secretary. On the day that Minor stays at the inn, inform your secretary you’re having lunch with the fellow.

That’s the way you study Room 1507, to find the appropriate hiding place. The closet? The tub, behind the shower curtain? On the floor behind a sofa? Circumstances will decide. (If no hiding place at all presents itself, return to Plan C above.)

Eventually, the climactic day will come. Your secretary will have made reservations for you to take a morning flight to Minor’s city, to stay at a hotel there, and to take another morning flight back tomorrow. You take the flight, you check into the hotel, and you immediately take the next flight home, proceed to the inn, enter unobserved (easy in a large public place), and secrete yourself in Room 1507 prior to Blazes’ and your wife’s arrival.

The point at which you reveal yourself to the scoundrels is up to you. Make it as dramatic as you wish. You may choose a moment which would lend itself to low comedy. Please yourself. In any event, emerge, show the gun in your gloved hand, announce you will kill them both. The idea here is to get each of them to verbally betray the other while pleading for their own miserable lives.

Having attained that satisfaction, you shoot your wife twice, in front of Blazes’ horrified eyes. “And now you!” you announce. He begs, he pleads, he grovels. You permit yourself to be swayed. At last you agree, as emotionally as you can muster, that you must have been mad. “Give me the gun,” he says. You hand it to him, spray him with Mace, drop the Mace can near your wife’s body (it would be nice if it were hers anyway), and leave. (To facilitate your escape, it might be best to choose an entry moment when Blazes is entirely disrobed.)

Whether you hide in an unoccupied room (using your passkey copy) until pursuit leaves you in its wake, or make an immediate retreat would depend on the physical layout of the inn. (If you’re up to it, it might be very nice to both enter and leave the inn disguised as a little old lady in a motorized wheelchair.) You return to the airport, take the evening flight to that other city, give yourself a hearty meal in a large bustling restaurant, pay with your own credit card, and return to the hotel, where you will find a great horde of policemen eager to talk to you.

Be truthful, within reason. Tell them you and your wife have not been getting along, that you knew about the affair with Blazes, that financial considerations kept you from leaving her, and that you cannot claim to be sorry that Blazes killed her. As to your own whereabouts, you and Minor DeMortis had a long and leisurely dinner here tonight and were probably eating your appetizers at the moment your wife was being killed by Blazes. The police, no doubt, will disbelieve you, but will have no excuse to take you in until they’ve checked your alibi. You assure them you will stay the night in this hotel, as planned, and fly home in the morning on the flight already reserved, where
of course
you will present yourself to the local constabulary. Eventually, they will leave. A few minutes later, so will you.

You must become Minor DeMortis before you leave the hotel room. Exit by the most unobtrusive egress and go to Minor’s apartment, where the answering machine with which you have provided it will give you one or more messages from the police. Respond. The police will come to Minor’s apartment. You (Minor) will be shocked by what they tell you, but of course you’ve never met the dead woman, and know her husband only slightly. “We’ve corresponded, and have now met twice.” Yes, you two had dinner together, and yes, it was at such-and-such a restaurant and at such-and-such a time. After dinner, you both came to this apartment to discuss business, until the original you went off to your hotel.

If
you
were going to be put on trial, the Minor DeMortis flummery would fall apart, but you shall not be. Minor will make and sign a statement for the local police in one state, who will forward it to the local police in another state. The investigating officers will find all that correspondence in your business files. A background check on Minor DeMortis will prove him to be a solid-enough citizen, with no criminal record and no previous connection with you.

Over the next few weeks, you’ll have to find time to become Minor DeMortis in his apartment every so often, during which intervals Minor will call the police to ask about further developments and wonder if he’ll be called to testify anywhere. Minor will be very helpful, very forthcoming. Until, that is, the inevitable day when Blazes is indicted for the murder of your wife. From that instant on, there will never again be any official interest in Minor DeMortis.

You will have alibied yourself. Except for Plan C, which I admit offends my artistic sense and which I therefore hope you will have no need to employ, I believe this scenario is certainly elegant enough for a scalawag like yourself.

SIR,

You get an F from me, twice over. F for tact and F for accuracy. You have the effrontery to address me as your “dear friend.” I am no friend of yours. I would rather rub noses with a Rottweiler. The alacrity with which you propose to murder your wife is depraved; your desire to frame your best friend is iniquitous; and your prose style is the pits.

Clearly, you are a megalomaniac. You need help from a psychiatrist, not a bunch of mystery writers. But I know as sure as death and taxes that you will ignore this sensible advice. It is symptomatic of your condition that you will ignore everything I say about the state of your mind. I am at liberty to call you all the names in my thesaurus (which is just as big as yours), but out of mercy to anyone else obliged to read these pages I’ll settle for psychopath, degenerate, and slubberdegullion. I like
slubberdegullion.
I know nothing will dissuade you from your murderous purpose because you are impenetrable. You are manifestly crazy, dangerous, and a menace to society. You have one saving grace, and that is why I shall respond to your invitation. You are filthy rich.