Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973

He got up out of the chair and walked across the Persian carpet which would have fed me for a year, fingered the ring which would have kept me for five, nodded in fat well-fed synthetic sympathy.

I had known Parker for six months, ever since in fact he had bought the large house next to my Wiltshire cottage and we had got into casual conversation over the garden wall.

I had disliked him from the first. It wasn’t merely because he had money. Lots of people have money. It was because he had something more precious — leisure, unlimited leisure, and did nothing with it.

So I lost my temper with him and cried, “I have genius and cannot use it. You have nothing. You’re a parasitic clod and do nothing but loaf about on your late wife’s money.”

“Leave her out of this!” he cried.

I felt a hot flush of pleasure. Now I’d stung him. Then I heard my voice saying something I had no thought of saying.

Like all artists I am intuitive and now I heard myself saying: “It is just as well for you that coroners in little sleepy villages like ours aren’t inquisitive! Perhaps, that’s why you came down here to live before she... she died. I wonder if that was your wife’s handwriting in the suicide note?”

Parker’s face was pale. He put out a hand on the mantel to steady himself. His eyes looked wildly at me.

“You... you—”

“Yes, I guessed,” I said. “I knew.”

But I hadn’t. It was a brilliant shot in the dark.

It began then. I hadn’t thought of it before he was offering me money to buy my silence. He was quicker brained than I was.

“Thirty pounds a month,” he said.

“All right,” I said. I was still a bit dazed.

He smiled and then set his mouth. I realised he would have gone more but I was not greedy about money. With me it was but a means to an end.

“You will let me have a painting for each cheque and just to be business-like, give me a receipt.” He went over to the whisky and poured a drink for each of us.

“To our partnership,” he said. “And before you go I must pay you for your first picture.”

He was himself now and, no doubt, telling himself he had made a good bargain.

“Now write me out a receipt,” he said later, holding the check out and blowing on it. “You can leave the painting with Rodgers.”

Rodgers was his driver-valet.

For three months he paid me my money. I had no scruples about it. The world, I’d learned, was dog eat dog. I happened to be a genius and Parker wasn’t. I knew no laws as ordinary men know them. Oh, I’d give the world good value. I worked hard and slept easily.

With leisure my art grew and developed. I could sense a new maturity in it, a surety, a heady delight in my released powers.

Then suddenly I started to worry about Parker. I called on him.

“Materials have gone up and also I must have a few more creature comforts,” I said. “You must pay me five hundred a month.”

“Your paintings are going up in value,” he said, smiling.

He paid, of course. I lived as soberly as before. The extra two hundred a month I used to pay a private detective to watch Parker. Put it down to my intuition, but I was suddenly suspicious of what he might be planning. The detective discovered nothing.

After seven weeks he demanded more money and I agreed. It was not my money, so why should I lose his services? Parker agreed readily to pay more. The detective deceived me for four months before I realised that he was working for Parker:

“Two can play at this game,” I told myself and kept the detective on — and employed another.

Parker bought him too.

My relations with Parker remained cordial but distant. He posted me a check each month; I wrote him a receipt; and delivered a painting to Rodgers. I thought once or twice of cutting out this hypocrisy, but I had a stack of old canvases, worthless things that I despised. I know now why Parker wanted the receipts.

I met Parker occasionally. We spoke no more than “Good day” to each other.

Three months ago I started my masterpiece. It is a large allegorical painting to show the dichotomy in human nature, in Life itself. In the gross flesh of my sensual beings lurked the soul, in the sensitive eyes and the mysterious corners of the mouth.

But I put it badly. My vision was compelling and from deep inside me. For weeks I worked as in a dream, scarcely stopping except to snatch some food and a few begrudged hours of sleep. My dream began to take shape, to be frozen on the canvas. With my goal in sight at the end of last week, I eased up a little to gain strength for the last surge.

I had taken no notice of Parker or anything else for that matter. But now I observed that he went away for the weekend. During Saturday afternoon I found myself staring at the windows of his house and I knew suddenly what I had to do. I had to break in. I watched until I saw the housekeeper go off to the local at seven o’clock and an hour later when it was dark I burgled my way in. It was simple enough. I found a window unlocked, almost as though it had been left for me. I think now it had.