Tell It to the Birds
James Hadley Chase
When a small-time clerk insures his life for $50,000 and then suddenly dies ten days later, it doesn’t take a genius to work out something suspicious is going on. So when Maddox, the top man in the insurance business, finds out, he is determined to get to the bottom of it. And this means trouble for someone. In fact it means trouble for the beautiful, auburn-haired Meg Barlowe, a woman with a serious past.
James Hadley Chase
TELL IT TO THE BIRDS
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
At the far end of the narrow road, scarcely wide enough to take two cars and bordered by high prickly hedges, Anson finally found the house he had been looking for for the past hour. The house hid behind a barrier of overgrown shrubs that stood either side of shabby double gates. It wasn’t until Anson got out of his car and approached the gates that he had his first glimpse of the house. He didn’t immediately look at it because his attention became riveted on the garden.
Although quite small with a twenty foot square lawn as immaculate as the surface of a billiard table, the garden presented a horticultural picture seldom seen outside professional floral exhibitions.
Everything, including a miniature fountain, a tiny waterfall, massed bedding plants, blazing with colour, standard roses in perfect bloom, flowering shrubs and even a dove cot was there.
For several moments, Anson stood at the gate staring at the garden, then he looked beyond the garden to the house.
By comparison, the house was as surprising as the garden. It was a two storey brick and wooden structure with a red tiled roof. At one time, the wooden face of the house had been painted a dark green, but the rain, the wind and the sun over the years had played havoc with the paint work, and the house now presented a shabby, neglected and uncared-for appearance. The windows were streaked with dust and dirt. The brass door knocker was black with grime. To the left of the house was a two car garage with a broken window and many of its roof tiles missing.
Anson looked at the garden, then at the house, then at the garden again. He stepped back and read the name painted in crude white letters on the gate: “Mon Repos”.
He zipped open the well worn leather document case he was carrying and took from it a letter he had received that morning. He read it again:
Mon Repos.
Nr. Pru Town National Fidelity Insurance Corporation Brent Dear Sir,
I would be glad if your representative would call between two and four o’clock any afternoon this week.
I have a few pieces of jewellery worth about $1,000 which my husband thinks I should insure against theft or loss.
Yours, etc.
Meg Barlowe.
Anson pushed open the gates, drove the car onto the tarmac drive, then walked up the drive to the house.
Heavy,rain clouds hovered threateningly overhead. The sun, obscured by the clouds, made a faint, brave light over the spectacular garden. In an hour or so, Anson thought, as he reached for the dirt grimed knocker, it would be pouring with rain. He lifted the knocker and rapped twice.
There was a pause, then he heard quick footfalls; the door opened.
Anson remembered to the moment of his death his first meeting with Meg Barlowe.
At the age of fourteen, Anson had his first sexual experience. His parents had gone on a short trip, leaving him in charge of the hired help: a woman some twenty years older than Anson:plain, fat and a Quaker. His parents had been gone less than four hours when the woman had come into Anson’s bedroom where he tad been lolling on the bed, reading a lurid paperback. Half an hour later, Anson had moved from his youth to corrupt manhood, and from then on, the sexual hunt was ever present in his alert, active mind. This first experience left him with a conviction that didn’t last long, that all women were easy. Later, when he discovered his error, he preferred to consort with prostitutes rather than be bothered to persuade and woo. He was fastidious in his choice, and the women he went with cost him a considerable amount of his weekly earnings.
Beside this constant sexual urge, Anson had yet another weakness: a persistent and incurable urge to gamble. He had little luck. The combination of paying for his sexual pleasures and losing to his bookmaker had him continually struggling to keep solvent. His shrewdness, personality and drive had gained him a Field Agency of the National Fidelity Insurance Corporation that covered three small prosperous towns: Brent, Lambsville and Pru Town. This district offered a rich field for an energetic insurance salesman. It was a farming district, and most farmers owned two or three cars, were interested in life insurance and anxious to insure their crops and property. But what Anson earned, he threw away until he was now facing a financial crisis that alarmed even his irresponsible conscience.
Before leaving Brent for his weekly visit to Pru Town and Lambsville, he had received a telephone call from Joe Duncan, his bookmaker.
In his wheezy asthmatic voice, Duncan had said, “Listen, Anson, you know what you owe me?”
Anson had said, “Sure, Joe. Relax. You’ll get paid.”
“You owe me close on a thousand bucks,” Duncan said. “You settle on Saturday. If you don’t, Sailor will be around to talk to you.”
Sailor Hogan was Joe Duncan’s debt collector. At one time he had been the light heavy weight champion of California.
His viciousness was legend. If he failed to collect a debt, he left a permanent mark on the welsher.
But Anson wasn’t worried about a mere thousand dollars. If the worst came to the worst, he could scrape that amount up by borrowing from his friends, selling his TV. set and even hocking his car, but the pressure was now on, and as he hung up, he remembered he owed Sam Bernstein, the local money lender, eight thousand dollars and he had to the end of the year to settle or else… When he had signed I.O.U. back in June, next June seemed a long way off. He had plunged the whole of the borrowed money on a rank outsider at 100 to 1 from a tip straight from the stable boy and the horse had turned out to be exactly what it was: a rank outsider.
This day was Tuesday. Anson had five more days ahead of him in which to find a thousand dollars to keep Duncan quiet. This wasn’t an impossible task, but he flinched from the thought of how to raise eight thousand dollars for Bernstein. But here, at least he had time.
Because he was now getting anxious, Anson was a little too persistent, a little too pressing, and when a salesman gets into that state of mind, he doesn’t and never will sell insurance.
This week had begun badly, but he was a salesman enough and optimistic enough to assure himself it should finish well.
As he lifted the knocker on the shabby, paint peeled door of this shabby house standing in this extraordinary garden, he had a presentiment that his luck was about to change.
Anson looked at Meg Barlowe as she stood in the doorway, regarding him with her large, searching cobalt blue eyes.
At the sight of this woman whom he judged to be a year or so younger than himself, Anson experienced a rush of blood through his body that inevitably happened when he met any woman who awoke his sexual feelings.
She was tall: an inch or so taller than himself, and built with the strength and durability of a wooden wedge. She had broad shoulders, a provocative bust, a small waist, neat hips and long legs. She wore a close fitting orange sweater and black tight fitting slacks. Her auburn coloured hair was caught back with a strip of green ribbon. All this he took in at a glance. She wasn’t beautiful. Her mouth was a little too large, and her nose too solid for perfect beauty, but she was the most sensational and sensual looking woman Anson had ever seen.
For a long moment they stared at each other, then her red lips parted as she smiled, showing white, even teeth.
“Good afternoon,” she said.
Automatically, but with a conscious effort, Anson moved into his sales approach. His expression, schooled by years of experience, was bright, friendly and alert.
“Mrs. Barlowe? I am John Anson. National Fidelity Insurance Corporation. I have a letter from you…”
“Of course… do come in.”
Still aware that his heart was thumping, Anson followed her through a dark little hall into the living-room.
It was a big room, comfortably furnished. There was a bright log fire burning in the oversized fireplace. Before the fireplace stood a vast settee: large enough to seat four people comfortably. There was an oval shaped table in the bay window. On the table was a portable typewriter and a mass of papers, carbons, and a Webster’s Dictionary.
As Anson moved into the room, he became aware of dust and dirt everywhere. The room had the same uncared for appearance as the exterior of the house.
The woman walked over to the fireplace and now stood, her back to the fire, her hands on her hips, looking at him.
Disconcerted by the quizzing expression in her eyes, Anson walked over to the window.
“What a garden you have!” he said. “You must be very proud of it!”
“My husband is.” She laughed. “He thinks of nothing else.”
Anson turned. His eyes moved over her body.
“Is it his profession?”
“Not exactly. He wants it to be. Right now, he’s with Framley’s Store in Pru Town. He is in charge of their horticultural department.” She waved to the settee. “But do sit down, Mr. Anson.”
He came around the settee and sat down at the far end, disturbed by being so close to her. She knelt on the seat away from him.
An air crash out at sea. They have to wait six months before it does happen. Immediately the news is flashed to the terminal, the boy friend puts the woman’s name on the passenger list. He also takes care of the ticket receipt and so on.
The woman has moved out of the district where she used to live and is keeping out of sight. He telephones her, warning her of the crash. Then later, her sister puts in a claim for the money showing proof supplied by the boy friend that the woman, her sister, was on the plane.” She paused, took a sip of her drink, then looked at him. “Of course the details have to be worked out, but that’s the general idea… do you think she would get away with it?” During the twelve years he had been an insurance agent, Anson had become familiar with the tricks and dodges dreamed up by people ambitious to swindle insurance companies. Every week, he received a printed bulletin from Head Office setting out in detail the various swindles attempted. This bulletin came from the Claims Department run by Maddox who was considered to be the best Claims man in the business.
For the past three months, when money had become so desperately short, Anson had thought of ways and means by which he himself might swindle his company. But for all his shrewdness and experience, he realized he could never succeed unless he had someone on whom he could rely to help him. Even then, there was always Maddox who was said to have a supernatural instinct that told him a claim was a phoney the moment it was laid on his desk.
“It’s a nice idea,” Anson said. “It might even be believable as fiction, but it would never work in real life.” She looked enquiringly at him. “But why not?”
“The sum involved is too large. Any claim over fifteen thousand dollars is examined very closely. Suppose this woman insured with my company. The policy would go immediately to the Claims department. The head of this department is a man who has been in the racket for twenty years. During this time, he has had something like five to eight thousand phoney claims to deal with. He has so much experience he can smell a bad claim the way you can smell a dead rat. So what does he do when he gets this policy? He asks himself why a woman should be insuring her life for such a big sum. Who will benefit? Her sister? Why? Is there a boy friend around? He has twenty experienced investigators who work for him. He’ll turn two of them onto this woman. In a few days he will know as much about her as she knows about herself. His men will have unearthed the boy friend at the air terminal.
Once they have dug him up, then God help them both if she is supposed to have died in the air crash. No, it wouldn’t work in real life. Make no mistake about that… not with Maddox around.” Meg made a face, then shrugged.
“Oh well! I thought I was onto a good gimmick. I’m disappointed.” She drank some of the whisky, then reaching forward, she picked up the poker and stirred the fire into a blaze. “Then it is very difficult to swindle an insurance company?” she asked without looking at him.
Again, Anson felt an intense prickle of excitement run through him.
“Yes… unless…”
She was staring into the fire, a little flushed by the heat, her eyes reflecting the red of the flames. “Unless… ?”
“It could be done, but it needs two people to do it. One couldn’t do it.”
She twisted around to look at him.
“That makes me think that you have thought about it,” she said. “If you do get an idea would you share it with me? I’d write the story and we could go fifty-fifty if I sold it.”
He finished his drink, set down the glass and reluctantly got to his feet.
“If I think of anything, I’ll call you.” She stood up. They faced each other; again Anson’s eyes moved over her body.
“If you do think of something, you could come out hers, couldn’t you? It’s not far from Brent, is it? We could talk over the whole thing and I could get the idea down on paper.”
He hesitated, then said what was in his mind: “I guess your husband won’t want me around after a day’s work.” She nodded.
“You’re right. Phil isn’t sociable and he hasn’t much patience with my writing, but on Monday and Thursday nights he is always at Lambsville. He takes night school there and he stays the night with a friend of his.”
Anson’s hands suddenly turned damp. “Does he? Well…”
“So if you get an idea, you’ll always find me alone here on those two nights. Don’t forget, will you?”
She moved to the door and opened it. Picking up his document case, Anson followed her to the front door. As she opened the doer, he said, “By the way, does your husband carry any life insurance?”
“No. He doesn’t believe in insurance.”
They looked at each other and Anson quickly shifted his gaze.
She went on: “I’m afraid there is no hope for you in, that direction. Other salesmen have tried to sell him insurance. He just doesn’t believe in it.”
Anson stepped out into the rain.
“Thanks for the drink, Mrs. Barlowe. If I get an idea for you, I’ll call you.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry about the jewellery.” She gave him a quick smile as she closed the door.
Scarcely feeling the rain on his face, Anson walked down the drive towards his car.
From behind the curtains Meg watched the car drive through the gateway and onto the lane. She watched Anson get out of the car and shut the gate then return to the car. She remained motionless until the sound of the car engine had died away, then she turned swiftly, crossed to the telephone and dialled a number.
There was a short delay, then a man’s voice came over the line.
“Yeah? Who is this?”
“Meg. The fish bites.”
There was a pause, then the man said, “Hook him first before you crow,” and the connection was cut.
CHAPTER 2
Anson’s weekly routine included two days in Pru Town. He stayed the night in the Marlborough hotel. At one time he had wasted much time in chasing the local prostitutes, but now, from experience and impatience, he had fixed a date with Fay Lawley, an easy going blonde who worked at a cigar store on Main Street. For sixty bucks and a dinner, she was willing to go with him to his hotel where the desk clerk who knew Anson well, looked the other way as he look her up to his room.
When Anson a
rrived at the hotel after his first meeting with Meg Barlowe he had every intention of following his usual routine, but while he was shaving he began to compare Fay with Meg and it occurred to him with surprising force what a cheap hustler Fay was. Disconnecting the razor, he sat on the edge of his. bed and lit a cigarette. He told himself he had never met another woman to touch Meg, and she had actually invited him to visit her when her husband was away for the night! Surely that could only mean one thing!
The thought of having an affair with her made him breathless. Again he considered Fay’s flashy cheapness, her high pitched giggles and her vulgarity. Acting on the spur of the moment, he reached for the telephone, but there was no answer to Fay’s number. Irritated, he hung up and went back into the bathroom to complete his shave.
It was while he was slapping after-shave lotion on his face that he heard movements in his bedroom. Frowning, he went to the bathroom door and found Fay looking through his wallet.
At the sight of him, she dropped the wallet hurriedly back on the chest of drawers.
“Hello sweetie,” she said. “I thought I’d surprise you.”
Anson looked her over, his face expressionless. A week ago, he had thought Fay Lawley an exciting woman. Now, comparing her with Meg, he saw her shortcomings. She was shabby,
I overdressed, dyed and sordid. “You did surprise me,” he said, coming into the bedroom. “Or did I surprise you?”
Fay giggled and put her hand to her mouth. It was this movement that Anson was so used to that now drew his attention to her tobacco stained, chipped teeth.
“John, darling,” she said, sinking down on the bed, “I have a favour to ask you.”
He remained motionless, looking at her.
“I’m in trouble,” she went on after a long and awkward pause. “I’ve got to have a hundred bucks by tomorrow or I’ll lose my room. I’m behind in the rent.”
Tell It to the Birds Page 1
