1956 - There's Always a Price Tag Read Online Free Page A
Author: James Hadley Chase
make sense to me. From what I've heard it is due to her he started to hit the bottle. I can't figure out what her game is.'
As I drove over to my apartment house to collect my few belongings before returning to the Dester residence, I couldn't figure out what her game was either, but I was now determined to find out.
chapter two
A s I pulled into the three-car garage, I saw the Cadillac convertible was missing. It wasn't hard to guess that the beautiful Mrs. Dester had taken herself out to lunch. The time was a quarter after twelve, and I thought it might be an idea, now that the house was empty, and if I could get in, to take a look around.
A window above the porch was open. It was an easy climb up on to the top of the porch, and simple to push up the window and step into a long passage that went past the head of the stairs.
There were seven bedrooms, three bathrooms and two dressing rooms on the landing; five of the bedrooms were under dust sheets. Dester's bedroom was facing the stairs, and Helen's was at the other end of the passage.
I didn't go into any of the rooms. I opened the doors and looked at the rooms from the doorway.
Helen's room was large. A lot of money had been spent on it to make it luxurious. There was one of those huge beds you see so often on the movies, raised on a dais, with an oyster coloured quilted headpiece and a blood red bedspread. There were comfortable lounging chairs, a desk, a radiogram, an elaborate dressing-table, fitted closets and diffused lighting. It was a pretty nice retreat for a wife who wanted to sleep alone. It was easy to see by its immaculate luxury that no man found his way in there.
Dester's room was smaller and as comfortable as Helen's but it looked neglected; even without going into the room I could see a film of dust on the flat surfaces of the furniture. It was easy to see Helen didn't spend much time looking after it.
It took me less than five minutes to see what I wanted to see, and then I went downstairs. I skipped the lounge and explored the other five rooms; all of them were under dust sheets which is one way of solving the domestic help problem.
Here was evidence to prove that Simmonds had been speaking the truth. It certainly looked as if Dester was on his way out. He was still putting up a show: the outside of the house looked prosperous enough, but this closing down of the rooms showed which way the wind was blowing.
I returned to the apartment over the garage, changed out of my uniform, checked over my money that now amounted to ten bucks, and then walked down to the corner of the road where I picked up a bus that took me into the centre of the town.
I had a cheap lunch at a place I usually went to, then I walked over to Jack Solly's office on Brewer Street.
I had worked for Solly now for the past year. He called himself an advertising consultant and contractor. At one time he had been the sales manager of Herring & Inch, the big advertising contractors in New York. He had owned a Cadillac, a six-room apartment, a five-figure income and a closet full of clothes. But he had always been an opportunist, specializing on making a fast buck, and he had tried to make himself a little extra on the side by offering some of Herring & Inch's accounts to a rival firm for a substantial rake-off. Someone ratted, and Solly lost his job, his income and his Cadillac in that order: worse, he was black listed and he soon discovered he had no hope of ever working for another firm of advertising contractors. So he came to Hollywood with what he had saved from the wreck and opened an office and started in to work for himself.
He now handled the business of small shopkeepers, one-man offices and the like and just managed to scrape up a living.
Solly was a tall, thin bird with a face like a hatchet, deep-set stony black eyes and a mouth like a gin— trap. He was a tough character, and as the years passed, and his lack of success sank in, and his need for money
As I drove over to my apartment house to collect my few belongings before returning to the Dester residence, I couldn't figure out what her game was either, but I was now determined to find out.
chapter two
A s I pulled into the three-car garage, I saw the Cadillac convertible was missing. It wasn't hard to guess that the beautiful Mrs. Dester had taken herself out to lunch. The time was a quarter after twelve, and I thought it might be an idea, now that the house was empty, and if I could get in, to take a look around.
A window above the porch was open. It was an easy climb up on to the top of the porch, and simple to push up the window and step into a long passage that went past the head of the stairs.
There were seven bedrooms, three bathrooms and two dressing rooms on the landing; five of the bedrooms were under dust sheets. Dester's bedroom was facing the stairs, and Helen's was at the other end of the passage.
I didn't go into any of the rooms. I opened the doors and looked at the rooms from the doorway.
Helen's room was large. A lot of money had been spent on it to make it luxurious. There was one of those huge beds you see so often on the movies, raised on a dais, with an oyster coloured quilted headpiece and a blood red bedspread. There were comfortable lounging chairs, a desk, a radiogram, an elaborate dressing-table, fitted closets and diffused lighting. It was a pretty nice retreat for a wife who wanted to sleep alone. It was easy to see by its immaculate luxury that no man found his way in there.
Dester's room was smaller and as comfortable as Helen's but it looked neglected; even without going into the room I could see a film of dust on the flat surfaces of the furniture. It was easy to see Helen didn't spend much time looking after it.
It took me less than five minutes to see what I wanted to see, and then I went downstairs. I skipped the lounge and explored the other five rooms; all of them were under dust sheets which is one way of solving the domestic help problem.
Here was evidence to prove that Simmonds had been speaking the truth. It certainly looked as if Dester was on his way out. He was still putting up a show: the outside of the house looked prosperous enough, but this closing down of the rooms showed which way the wind was blowing.
I returned to the apartment over the garage, changed out of my uniform, checked over my money that now amounted to ten bucks, and then walked down to the corner of the road where I picked up a bus that took me into the centre of the town.
I had a cheap lunch at a place I usually went to, then I walked over to Jack Solly's office on Brewer Street.
I had worked for Solly now for the past year. He called himself an advertising consultant and contractor. At one time he had been the sales manager of Herring & Inch, the big advertising contractors in New York. He had owned a Cadillac, a six-room apartment, a five-figure income and a closet full of clothes. But he had always been an opportunist, specializing on making a fast buck, and he had tried to make himself a little extra on the side by offering some of Herring & Inch's accounts to a rival firm for a substantial rake-off. Someone ratted, and Solly lost his job, his income and his Cadillac in that order: worse, he was black listed and he soon discovered he had no hope of ever working for another firm of advertising contractors. So he came to Hollywood with what he had saved from the wreck and opened an office and started in to work for himself.
He now handled the business of small shopkeepers, one-man offices and the like and just managed to scrape up a living.
Solly was a tall, thin bird with a face like a hatchet, deep-set stony black eyes and a mouth like a gin— trap. He was a tough character, and as the years passed, and his lack of success sank in, and his need for money
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