Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 5, October 1960

A Professional Job by R. M. Eggleston

All Quinn really wanted was to become a widower... by the arsenic route.

John Quinn’s profession was unusual. It would not have been wide of the mark to call him a dealer in arsenic and for such a relatively inexpensive substance, the rewards were astonishingly high. They usually came from insurance companies.

It was, in fact, almost an ideal occupation. It required little work beyond the exercise of patience and charm, and it had only one drawback. After each triumph Quinn had to change his name and address. And even that wasn’t too bad if you liked travel.

Fortunately, Quinn liked travel and under six different and respectable names he had buried six eminently respectable and incredibly dull wives.

His latest was Angela. And she might have been made just for him. She was dull, stupid, had a large and tempting bank balance and no relatives or close friends to prove troublesome or ask disturbing questions. She was physically robust, too — remarkably so for a woman in her middle-forties.

The insurance company doctor had been most cooperative, even though unsuspecting, in confirming that she was in the best of health.

It was amusing to reflect how greatly his report had pleased and flattered her. Flattery! That was Angela’s chief fault, in Quinn’s eyes. She thrived on flattery. And without it she sulked.

He sighed. It must be lunchtime. Time for another of those monotonously unappetizing meals, with Angela’s brainless conversation, and damnably uninspiring face. He went inside. Lunch was ready. It was boring from beginning to end.

“Angela, darling! There’s nothing I like better than beef stew. It’s wonderful of you to make it so often.”

She simpered: “I know it’s your favorite dish, dear. Besides,” she giggled girlishly, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

Also the way to a woman’s bank balance, thought Quinn with infinite covetousness.

“Everybody says you’re looking so much better now than when we arrived,” she chattered on squirrel-fashion as they ate. “Marriage agrees with you. There’s no doubt of it.”

Quinn’s fork stopped in mid-air. “Everybody says— Just who is everybody?”

Surprised at his tone, she faltered: “Why the neighbors, of course. The butcher, the grocer, well... just everybody.”

“I don’t think I care for this discussion of my health among strangers,” said Quinn icily. “We’ve only been here three months. You can’t be on first-name terms with most of these people yet. But you seem to feel you can discuss my stomach as if it was community property.”

The one thing he couldn’t afford was a gossiping wife. Angela had nobody elsewhere who remembered her. Why did she have to start putting down roots here.

“Well,” she said, with a look of reproach, “the best way to get on first-name terms with anybody is to make friends. And everyone likes to talk about illnesses.”

Right at that moment Quinn decided to advance the date of Angela’s first dose of arsenic.

“Oh, well.” He smiled, and patted her hand. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. But it gives a man a queer feeling to know his stomach is well-known where he isn’t. You’re such a good conversationalist when you try. Can’t you make friends some other way? Pass me the horseradish, will you?”

“Why?” she asked, hurt. “Didn’t I season the stew enough, darling?”

“Yes, dear,” he replied wearily, “I just like horseradish, that’s all. The stew is wonderful, as I just told you. One of your best.”

A week later, Quinn was a mildly puzzled man. Angela had taken the first quarter-grain of arsenic astonishingly well. In fact, there had been no symptoms at all.

He had followed his usual routine and given it to her in a cup of coffee — her customary nightcap. The arsenic had come from the same container that had done for Janice, Margaret and Lucy, his three most recent wives.

I wonder if arsenic sometimes fails to act as a poison, mused Quinn to himself. But the medical directory he’d consulted in the Public Library didn’t seem to think so.

Angela had the disgusting habit of eating lettuce sprinkled with a mixture of sugar and milky-looking anti-nausea mixtures.

So Quinn’s next step was to take her picnicking and feed her several of these, one with a generous addition of arsenic. She ate every bit of it; every crumb. But beyond saying that the lettuce seemed a bit off, it didn’t affect her in the slightest.

Quinn scarcely slept that night. For the first time since his apprenticeship to the widower-creating profession, panic was entering his mind. What if she was immune to arsenic? He’d have to spend the rest of his life with her unless he could think of something else. And in his panic, Quinn couldn’t think of anything else that was safe.

He listened to Angela snoring beside him. For one wild second, he thought of pushing her with violence from the roof of a building. But then better, less dangerous, thoughts prevailed.

“You didn’t sleep too well last night, dear,” said Angela solicitously next morning. “I hope you didn’t catch a chill on that picnic.”

“Oh no,” he laughed. “I probably over-ate, that’s all.”

But when he didn’t sleep well the next night either, Angela insisted on calling Dr. Barnett.

Quinn was furious. “That quack wouldn’t know pneumonia from measles,” he fumed. “He should have been disbarred from the medical profession. He’s a menace to the community. At least he should retire before he becomes a wholesale murderer!”

“But dear,” said Angela in surprise. “You chose him yourself. You went to him when you had that touch of rheumatism.”

Quinn knew. He had gone to Dr. Barnett with the cleverly feigned touch of rheumatism simply because he was the biggest medical blunderer for miles about. That made Barnett his doctor — the one to be called when Angela became violently ill. But it didn’t mean he wanted the fool to treat a case of over-worry over a wife who refused to be murdered.

But Angela insisted. And Dr. Barnett, round, chubby, smiling and utterly useless, came.

“You do look a bit under the weather,” he admitted when he saw Quinn. “But it’s nothing much. Just a run-down state of health. Nerves — overstrain. Take it easy, don’t worry, and get plenty of rest. I’ll give you some pills to take three times a day after meals.”

Quinn decided then that the only thing to do was to give Angela a big dose to begin with and cautiously build up on it. Not too big, of course, because even Dr. Barnett might become suspicious if she died too suddenly. But he couldn’t afford to give her a lot of small doses, and wait out results. Her immunity was already astonishing, almost beyond belief. Continued small doses might very well make her impregnable!

He gave her a grain and a half... and confidently sat back for results.

Angela simpered, was dull, boring and made more unappetizing meals. She didn’t even display a minor reaction to the arsenic.

In desperation he went to the container and poured out just over two grains of the poison, made Angela a cup of jet-black coffee and put the dose into it.

“Coffee’s rather strong tonight, darling,” she said. “You don’t want me to stay awake, do you?”

But there was no reaction.

Quinn was now a quivering nervous wreck. His eyes were red, his face flushed, his head ached and he felt like running into the street and screaming.

Angela was very worried over his health. Dr. Barnett prescribed more medicines and less worry. He took Angela aside and dwelt upon his concern at length. He informed her that unless there was an immediate improvement, he would have to send Quinn to the hospital.

Quinn, who heard the conversation, grinned mirthlessly! Don’t worry! What a mockery that was — when your wife swallows arsenic with more relish than she’d eat whole-grain caviare!

For a day or two he toyed with the idea of thallium. But since the notorious cases in Sydney, Australia, chemists had become wary of anyone outside the medical profession buying thallium. And even a dumb doctor like Barnett would be curious to know why Angela’s hair was falling out.

There was only one thing left to do — give her a killing dose. Three grains, enough to kill an ox.

He’d become so desperate, so frantic that he had forgotten all about Dr. Barnett’s reactions if Angela died suddenly.

Lunch that day was the usual stew. Feeling as ill as he did, Quinn could barely stomach it, even though it was plastered with horseradish to give it some taste. Midway through, Angela heard the kettle boiling and ran out to make tea.

Quickly he emptied the powder over her stew and stirred it until nothing showed.

Angela came back with the tea and poured them both a cup. Then she settled down to her meal.

At the end she was still smiling happily. She pushed the plate away and sighed, comfortably. “I love good food,” she murmured. “But I don’t like horseradish sauce.” Suddenly her voice changed, to a hard tone he had never heard before: “Not as much as you do.”

He looked up in surprise. Somehow she looked like a cruel eagle instead of a boring fool.

“Didn’t know you’d begun to talk in your sleep, did you?” She went on relentlessly. “Well, you have. It proves you’re getting senile — dear. And guess what you talked about! I couldn’t believe it myself at first... not until you got on to the business of our getting each other insured. What a lovely coincidence.”

His head seemed to be spinning. It ached, his bones ached. “Coincidence,” he repeated.

“That’s it — dear. You were so dull and stupid when I met you and you were loaded with cash and you had no close relatives or friends who could make trouble. You seemed ideal for my purpose. And you were dead set on marrying me for my money. Just like the other three—”

Dimly, through a haze, it struck Quinn he was in some sort of a delirium. He seemed to hear Angela say she was in the same profession. “Three? You mean you murdered three husbands?”

“Funny, isn’t it,” she laughed. “You did it all for me. You took out the insurance policies, and you made sure we had a fool for a doctor.”

Her voice changed. “I guessed you kept your stuff in that locked drawer. I borrowed your keys when you were asleep one night and changed it over to magnesia — looks just the same. Clever, don’t you think?”

Once again she was laughing, but Quinn could scarcely hear her.

“Dr. Bennett won’t be at all surprised to hear you’ve had a sudden collapse. He warned me, in fact.”

Quinn tried to rise from his chair. But he couldn’t.

And, as he died, Quinn was aware that Dr. Bennett would sign the death certificate without any feeling other than sympathy.