Rules for Perfect Murders - Peter Swanson Page 0,48

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.

I remember being so touched by the fact that she’d written this list for me that in the space of about two weeks I read everything on it, even rereading the books I was familiar with. And reading Malice Aforethought back then I remember feeling buoyed by its grim outlook on humanity. It’s satire, essentially, ripping the idea of romance to shreds. Reading the book at the Hampton Inn in Rockland, it felt more like a horror story this time. Bickleigh, obsessed by a life he cannot have, kills his wife in a brutal fashion, and it destroys his life. He is infected forever by the act of killing.

Just before noon Gwen texted to tell me that she’d be ready to leave Maine no later than four. I texted back that she should take all the time she needed. I had decided to walk