Rules for Perfect Murders - Peter Swanson Page 0,7
is a “double indemnity” clause that doubles the amount of the payoff if death occurs on a train. Walter and Phyllis, the unfaithful wife, break the husband’s neck in a car, then Walter poses as Nirdlinger and goes onto the train, himself. He wears a fake cast on his leg, and has crutches, since the real Nirdlinger had recently broken his leg. He figures that the cast is perfect because other passengers will remember seeing him, but not necessarily remember seeing his face. He goes to the smoking car at the back of the train and jumps off. Then Walter and Phyllis leave the dead man by the tracks, so it looks as though he fell.
“So, you’re saying it was definitely made to look like the murder from Double Indemnity?” I said.
“I am,” she responded. “I’m the only one, though, the only one who’s convinced of the connection.”
“What were these people like?” I asked. “The people who were killed.”
Agent Mulvey glanced toward the drop ceiling of the bookstore’s back room, then said, “As far as we can tell, there’s no way to connect them, besides the fact that all the deaths happened in New England, and besides the fact that they seem to be copycat murders from fictional sources.”
“From my list,” I said.
“Right. Your list is one possible connection. But there’s also a connection … it’s not really a connection, more of a gut feeling on my part, that all the victims … weren’t bad, exactly, but weren’t good people. I’m not sure any of them were really well liked.”
I thought for a moment. It was getting darker in the back room of the bookstore, and I instinctively checked my watch, but it was still early afternoon. I looked back toward the stockroom, where two windows looked out onto the back alley. Snow had begun to pile in both of them and the portion of outside that I could make out through the windows was as dark as dusk. I turned on my desk lamp.
“For example,” she continued. “Bill Manso was a divorced investment broker. The detectives who interviewed his grown children said they hadn’t seen him in over two years, that he wasn’t exactly the paternal type. It was clear that they disliked him. And Robin Callahan, as you’ve probably read, had been pretty controversial.”
“Remind me,” I said.
“I guess a number of years ago she broke up a marriage of one of her co-workers. And, subsequently, her own marriage. Then she wrote a book against monogamy—this was a while ago. A lot of people don’t like her. If you google her name …”
“Well …” I said.
“Right. Everyone has enemies now. But to answer your question, I think it’s a possibility that everyone who has been killed so far was a less-than-stellar person.”
“You think that someone read my list of murders,” I said, “then decided to copy the methods in them? And they wanted to make sure that the people they were killing somehow deserved to die? Is that your theory?”
She pushed her lips together, making them even more colorless than they already were, then she said, “I know it sounds ridiculous—”
“Or you think that I wrote this list, and then decided to test out the murders for myself?”
“Equally ridiculous,” she said. “I know it is. But it’s also unlikely, isn’t it, that someone would copy a plot line from an Agatha Christie novel, and at the same time someone would stage a train murder from a …”
“From a James Cain novel,” I said.
“Right,” she said. My desk lamp has a yellow-tinged bulb, and in the glow from it she looked like she hadn’t slept in about three days.
“When did you make the connection between these crimes?” I asked.
“You mean, when did I find your list?”
“I guess so. Yes.”
“Yesterday. I’ve already ordered all the books, and I’ve read all their plot summaries, but then I decided I’d come directly to you. I was hoping you might have some insight, that maybe you’d be able to connect some other unsolved recent crimes to your list. I know it’s a long shot …”
I was looking down at the printout she’d given me, reminding myself of the eight books I’d picked. “Some of these,” I said, “you couldn’t exactly copy the murders from them. Or you could, but they’d be hard to spot.”
“What do you mean?” she said.
I scanned the list. “Deathtrap, the play by Ira Levin. Do you know that one?”