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

  Table of Contents

  By the Same Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Big Boy, Little Boy

  Double Glazing

  The Nuggy Bar

  The Girl in Villa Costas

  How’s Your Mother?

  Parking Space

  Tickled to Death

  Private Areas

  The Thirteenth Killer

  Don’t Know Much about Art

  Unwilling Sleep

  The Haunted Actress

  About the Author

  By the same author

  The Charles Paris Mystery Series

  CAST, IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE

  SO MUCH BLOOD

  STAR TRAP

  AN AMATEUR CORPSE

  A COMEDIAN DIES

  THE DEAD SIDE OF THE MIKE

  SITUATION TRAGEDY

  MURDER UNPROMPTED

  MURDER IN THE TITLE

  NOT DEAD, ONLY RESTING

  DEAD GIVEAWAY

  WHAT BLOODY MAN IS THAT?

  A SERIES OF MURDERS

  CORPORATE BODIES

  A RECONSTRUCTED CORPSE

  SICKEN AND SO DIE

  DEAD ROOM FARCE

  The Mrs Pargeter Mystery Series

  A NICE CLASS OF CORPSE

  MRS., PRESUMED DEAD

  MRS. PARGETER’S PACKAGE

  MRS. PARGETER’S POUND OF FLESH

  MRS. PARGETER’S PLOT

  MRS. PARGETER’S POINT OF HONOUR

  TICKLED TO DEATH

  And Other Stories of Crime and Suspense

  Simon Brett

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Victor Gollancz

  eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 1985 Simon Brett.

  The right of Simon Brett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0059-4 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  BIG BOY, LITTLE BOY

  UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES he would have thrown away the letter as soon as he recognized the cramped handwriting, but Larry Renshaw was in the process of murdering his wife, and needed to focus his mind on something else. So he read it.

  Mario, the barman, had handed it over. Having a variety of postal addresses in pubs and bars all over London was a habit Larry had developed in less opulent days, and one that he had not attempted to break after his marriage to Lydia. The sort of letters he received had changed, though; there were less instructions from “business associates”, less guilty wads of notes buying other people’s extramarital secrets; their place had been taken by confirmations of his own sexual assignations, correspondence that could, by the widest distension of the category, be classed as love letters. Marriage had not meant an end of secrets.

  But it had meant an upgrading of some of the “postes restantes”. Gaston’s Bar in Albemarle Street was a definite advance on the Stag’s Head in Kilburn. And the Savile Row suit, from which he flicked the salt shed by Mario’s peanuts, was more elegant than a hotel porter’s uniform. The gold identity bracelet that clinked reassuringly on his wrist, was more comfortable than a handcuff. And, Larry Renshaw sincerely believed, much more his natural style.

  Which was why he had to ensure that he continued to live in that style. He was nearly fifty; he resented the injustices of a world which had kept him so long from his natural milieu; and now that he had finally arrived there, he had no intentions of leaving.

  Nor was he going to limit his lifestyle by removing those elements (other women) of which Lydia disapproved.

  Which was why, while he sipped Campari and vodka in Gaston’s Bar, he was murdering his wife.

  And why he read Peter Mostyn’s letter to take his mind off what he was doing.

  . . . and those feelings for you haven’t changed. I know over thirty years have passed, but those nights we spent together are still the memories I most treasure. I have never had any other friends. Nothing that has happened and no one I have met since has meant as much to me as the pleasure I got, not only from being with you, but also from being known as yours, from being made fun of at school as your Little Boy.

  I know it didn’t mean as much to you, but I flatter myself that you felt something for me at the time. I remember how once we changed pyjamas, you let me sleep in yours in your bed all night. I’ve never felt closer to you than I did that night, as if I didn’t just take on your clothes, but also a bit of you, as if I became you for a little while. I had never felt so happy. Because, though we always looked a little alike, though we were the same height, had the same colouring, I never had your strength of character. Just then, for a moment, I knew what it was like to be Larry Renshaw.

  It was wonderful for me to see you last week. I’m only sorry it was for such a short time. Remember, if there’s ever anything I can do for you, you have only to ask. If you want to meet up again, do ring. I’m only over here sorting out some problem on my uncle’s will and, as I’m pretty hard up, I spend most of my time in my room at the hotel. But, if I am out when you ring, they’ll take a message. I’ll be going back to France at the end of the week, but I’d really like to see you before then. I sometimes think I’ll take my courage in both hands and come round to your flat, but I know you wouldn’t really like it, particularly now you are married to that woman. It was quite a shock when you told me about your marriage. I had always had a secret hope that the reason you never had married was . . .

  Larry stopped reading. Not only had the mention of his marriage brought his mind back to the murder of Lydia, he also found the letter distasteful.

  It wasn’t being the object of a homosexual passion that worried or challenged him. He had no doubt where his own tastes lay. He didn’t even think he had gone through a homosexual phase in adolescence, but he had always had a strong libido, and what other outlet was there in a boys’ boarding school? All the other Big Boys had had Little Boys, so he had played the games tradition demanded. But, as soon as he had been released from that particular prison, he had quickly discovered, and concentrated on, the instinctive pleasures of heterosexuality.

  But Peter Mostyn hadn’t changed. He’d make contact every few years, suggesting a lunch, and Larry, aware that a free meal was one he didn’t have to pay for, would agree to meet. Their conversation would be stilted, spiralling round topics long dead, and Larry would finish up his brandy and leave as soon as the bill arrived. Then, within a week, one of the “poste restante” barmen would hand over a letter full of closely written obsequious gratitude and assurances of continuing devotion.

  Obviou
sly, for Mostyn the dormitory grappling had meant more, and he had frozen like an insect in the amber of adolescence. That was what depressed Larry. He hated the past, he didn’t like to think about it. For him there was always the hope of the big win just around the next corner, and he would rather concentrate on that than on the disaster behind him.

  He could forget the past so easily, instinctively sloughing off the skin of one shady failure to slither out with a shining new identity ready for the next infallible scheme. This protean ability had enabled him to melt from stockbroker’s clerk to army recruit (after a few bounced cheques); from army resignee to mail order manager (after a few missing boxes of ammunition); from mail order manager to pimp (after a few prepaid but undelivered orders); and from pimp to hotel porter (after a police raid). And it had facilitated the latest metamorphosis, from hotel porter to Savile-Row-suited husband of rich neurotic dipsomaniac (just before the inevitable theft inquiry). For Larry change and hope went hand in hand.

  So Peter Mostyn’s devotion was an unpleasant intrusion. It suggested that, whatever his current identity, there remained in Larry an unchanging core that could still be loved. It threatened his independence in a way the love of women never had. His heterosexual affairs were all brisk and physical, soon ended, leaving in him no adverse emotion that couldn’t be erased by another conquest and, in the women, undiluted resentment.

  But Peter Mostyn’s avowed love was something else, an unpleasant reminder of his continuing identity, almost a memento mori. And Peter Mostyn himself was even more of a memento mori.

  They had met the previous week, for the first time in six years. Once again old habits had died hard, and Larry had instinctively taken the bait of a free meal, in spite of his new opulence.

  As soon as he saw Peter Mostyn, he knew it was a bad idea. He felt like Dorian Gray meeting his picture face to face. The Little Boy had aged so unattractively that his appearance was a challenge to Larry’s vigour and smartness. After all, they were about the same age—no, hell, Mostyn was younger. At school he had been the Little Boy to Larry’s Big Boy. A couple of forms behind, so a couple of years younger.

  And yet to see him, you’d think he was on the verge of death. He had been ill, apparently; Larry seemed to remember his saying something over the lunch about having been ill. Perhaps that explained the long tubular crutches and the general air of debility. But it was no excuse for the teeth and the hair; the improvement of those was quite within his power. Okay, most of us lose some teeth, but that doesn’t mean we have to go around with a mouth like a drawstring purse. Larry prided himself on his own false teeth. One of the first things he’d done after marrying Lydia had been to set up a series of private dental appointments and have his mouth filled with the best replacements money could buy.

  And the hair . . . Larry was thinning a bit and would have been greying but for the discreet preparation he bought from his Jermyn Street hairdresser. But he liked to think that, even if he had been so unfortunate as to lose all his hair, he wouldn’t have resorted to a toupee like a small brown mammal that had been run over by a day’s traffic on the M1.

  And yet that was how Peter Mostyn had appeared, a hobbling creature with concave lips and hair that lacked any credibility. And, to match his physical state, he had demonstrated his emotional crippledom with the same adolescent infatuation and unwholesome self-pity, the same constant assertions that he would do anything for his friend, that he felt his own life to be without value and only likely to take on meaning if it could be used in the service of Larry Renshaw.

  Larry didn’t like any of it. Particularly he didn’t like the constant use of the past tense, as if life from now on would be an increasingly crepuscular experience. He thought in the future tense, and of a future that was infinite, now that he had Lydia’s money.

  Now that he had Lydia’s money . . . He looked at his watch. A quarter to eight. She should be a good five hours dead. Time to put thoughts of that tired old queen Mostyn behind him, and get on with the main business of the day. Time for the dutiful husband to go home and discover his wife’s body. Or, if he was really lucky, discover that his sister-in-law had just discovered his wife’s body.

  He said goodbye loudly to Mario, and made some quip about the barman’s new apron. He also asked if the bar-room clock was right and checked his watch against it.

  After a lifetime of obscuring details of timing and squeezing alibis from forgotten minutes, it was an amusing novelty to draw attention to time. And to himself.

  For the same reason he exchanged memorable banter with the driver of the taxi he picked up in a still light Piccadilly, before settling back for the journey to Abbey Road.

  Now he felt supremely confident. He was following his infallible instinct. The plan was the work of a mastermind. He even had a twinge of regret to think that, when he had all Lydia’s money, that mind would be lost to crime. But no, he did not intend to hazard his new-found fortune by doing anything mildly risky. He needed freedom to cram into his remaining rich life what he had missed out on in poorer days.

  Which was why the murder plan was so good; it contained no risk at all.

  In fact, although he did not consciously realize it at the time, he had got the murder plan at the same time that he had got Lydia. She had come ready-packed with her own self-destruct mechanism. The complete kit.

  Lydia had fallen in love with Larry when he saved her life, and had married him out of gratitude.

  It had happened two years previously. Larry Renshaw had been at the lowest ebb of a career that had known many freak tides. He had been working as a porter at a Park Lane hotel, whose management was beginning to suspect him of helping himself from the wallets, handbags and jewel-cases of the guests. One afternoon he had received a tip-off that they were on to him, and determined to make one last, reasonable-sized haul before another sudden exit and change of identity.

  Observation and staff gossip led him to use his pass-key on the door of a Mrs Lydia Phythian, a lady whose Christmas tree appearances in the bar left no doubts about her possession of a considerable stock of jewellery, and whose consumption of gin in the same bar suggested that she might be a little careless in locking away her decorations.

  So it proved. Necklaces, brooches, bracelets and rings lay among the pill bottles of the dressing table as casually as stranded seaweed. But there was also in the room something that promised a far richer and less risky haul than a fence’s grudging prices for the gems.

  There was Mrs Lydia Phythian, in the process of committing suicide.

  The scene was classic to the point of being corny. An empty gin bottle clutched in the hand of the snoring figure on the bed. On the bedside table, an empty pill bottle, dramatically on its side, and, propped against the lamp, a folded sheet of crisp blue monogrammed notepaper.

  The first thing Larry did was to read the note.

  THIS WAS THE ONLY WAY OUT. NOBODY CARES WHETHER I LIVE OR DIE AND I DON’T WANT TO GO ON JUST BEING A BURDEN. I’VE TRIED, BUT LIFE’S TOO MUCH.

  It was undated. Instinctively, Larry put it in his pocket before turning his attention to the figure on the bed. She was deeply asleep, but her pulses were still strong. Remembering some movie with this scene in it, he slapped her face.

  Her eyes came woozily open. “I want to die. Why shouldn’t I die?”

  “Because there’s so much to live for,” he replied, possibly remembering dialogue from the same movie.

  Her eyes rolled shut again. He rang for an ambulance. Instinct told him to get an outside line and ring the Emergency Services direct; he didn’t want the manager muscling in on his act.

  Then, again following the pattern of the movie, he walked her sagging body up and down, keeping her semi-conscious until help arrived.

  Thereafter he just followed instinct. Instinct told him to accompany her in the ambulance to the hospital; instinct told him to return (out of his hotel uniform) to be there when she came round after the ministrations of the stomach pump; instinc
t told him to continue his visits when she was moved to the recuperative luxury of the Avenue Clinic. And instinct provided the words which assured her that there really was a lot to live for, and that it was insane for a woman as attractive as her to feel unloved, and that he at least appreciated her true worth.

  So their marriage three months after she came out of the clinic was really a triumph of instinct.

  A couple of days before the registry office ceremony, Larry Renshaw had fixed to see her doctor. “I felt, you know, that I should know her medical history, now that we’re going to be together for life,” he said in a responsible voice. “I mean, I’m not asking you to give away any professional secrets, but obviously I want to ensure that there isn’t a recurrence of the appalling incident which brought us together.”

  “Of course.” The doctor was bald, thin and frankly sceptical. He did not seem to be taken in by Larry’s performance as the concerned husband-to-be. “Well, she’s a very neurotic woman, she likes to draw attention to herself . . . nothing’s going to change her basic character.”

  “I thought, being married . . .”

  “She’s been married a few times before, you must know that.”

  “Yes, of course, but she seems to have had pretty bad luck and been landed with a lot of bastards. I thought, given someone who really loves her for herself . . .”

  “Oh yes, I’m sure she’d be a lot more stable, given that.” The scepticism was now so overt as to be insulting, but Larry didn’t risk righteous anger, as the doctor went on, “The trouble is, Mr Renshaw, women as rich as Mrs Phythian tend to meet up with rather a lot of bastards.”

  Larry ignored the second insult. “What I really wanted to know was—”

  “What you really wanted to know,” the doctor interrupted, “was whether she was likely to attempt suicide again.”

  Larry nodded gravely.

  “Well, I can’t tell you. Someone who takes as many pills and drinks as much as she does is rarely fully rational. This wasn’t her first attempt, though it was different from the others.”