Shock Treatment
James Hadley Chase
Shock Treatment
1959
Synopsis
This is the story of Terry Regan, radio and T.V. salesman, who falls in love with Gilda, the wife of a ha
rd drinking bully who spends his life in a wheel-chair. Because of Gilda's fatal fascination, Regan decides to get rid of her husband so that he himself can marry her; and he hits on an ingenious murder plan. The murderer is to be the television set that stands in the husband's lounge.
But ingenious murder plans have habit of backfiring, and this one is no exception. Once again James Hadley Chase lives up to his reputation for sustained suspense, graphic and economical writing, and on the last page, a complete surprise.
Gilda Delaney had never ceased to blame herself for the accident which had crippled her husband. Three months after their marriage, she’d been driving Jack home after a party. He’d been drinking heavily and had fallen asleep. Halfway up a mountain road, a stationary car blocked the road: a car belonging to a friend of theirs. Gilda stopped the car and went over to ask the friend to move . . . and as she did so she saw her own car hurtle down the mountainside. She hadn’t applied the brakes properly . . . and as a result Jack became a helpless cripple . . . This was the story she told Terry Regan — a story he had no reason to doubt, infatuated as he was with her face — and body — and everything about her. It was only afterwards that he began to wonder . . .
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
I
ALL this I am to tell you about could probably never have happened in any other town except Glyn Camp.
Situated in the Californian hill district, Glyn Camp is one of those tiny Rip van Winkle summer resorts where writers, artists and those on pension make their homes in the peace and beauty of a district not all that far from the fun and games of the Pacific Coast.
I rented a reasonably comfortable cabin up in this district, and from the cabin, I ran a radio and television sales and service organization.
By road, my cabin was four miles from Glyn Camp, and once a week I drove into town to get my groceries, and then I would go along to Sheriff Jefferson’s office for a talk and a shot of his apple-jack which he manufactured himself.
Sheriff Jefferson has an important part in this story so I’d better say something about him now. He had been sheriff of Glyn Camp for the best part of fifty years. No one knew exactly how old he was, but it was agreed by those who had lived longest in the town that he was over eighty. He knew, and the town knew, that he was beyond his job, but that didn’t prevent the town electing him sheriff again when election time came around nor did it prevent him from taking on the new term. Glyn Camp without Sheriff Jefferson was as unthinkable as New York without the Statue of Liberty.
The other character in Glyn Camp I must mention before I go any further is Doc Mallard.
Doc Mallard had been practicing medicine for as long as Sheriff Jefferson had been administering the law. He was the only doctor in Glyn Camp, which was a notoriously healthy spot, and he seldom had anything to do. Anyone who happened to be seriously ill or who was about to produce a baby went wisely to Los Angeles State Hospital, some eighty miles down the mountain road.
Doc Mallard still had a handful of faithful patients; but they were dying off fast, and he now spent most of his time playing checkers with Sheriff Jefferson or sitting on the verandah of his shabby little cabin, staring emptily at the view.
On this hot summer morning I was down in town to pick up a TV set. After I had loaded the set onto my truck I went over to Jefferson’s office for the routine gossip.
We had a drink together and discussed this and that. After a while I said I had to get up to Blue Jay lake and I’d look in again next time I was in town.
“If you’re going up to Blue Jay lake, son,” Jefferson said, leaning back in his rocking chair, “there’s a chance for some new business for you. I hear there’s new people in Mr Williams’s cabin: a married couple. The man’s a cripple. He goes around in a wheel chair. I should imagine he’d be interested to have a TV up there.”
“I’ll call on him,” I said, taking out my reminder book. “Do you know his name?”
“Jack Delaney.”
“I’ll look him up on my way home.”
A cripple who lived in a wheel chair seemed to me to be a natural for a TV set. As soon as I had installed the radio I had just sold to one of my customers, I drove over to Blue Jay cabin.
I had been up there a couple of years back and remembered the place as a small but luxurious dwelling, with a magnificent view of the mountains, the valley below and the sea in the far distance.
At the top of the narrow lane was a gate. I had to get off the truck to open the gate, and then drive up the smooth tarmac road that led to the cabin that seemed to be clinging to the mountain side the way a fly clings to a wall.
There was a big glittering Buick estate wagon standing before the steps leading up to the verandah and I pulled up behind it.
A man sat in a wheel chair on the verandah. He was smoking a cigar, an open magazine on his knees.
He was around forty-five to fifty, a little overweight. There was that pinched, bitter look about his fleshy face of a cripple who has suffered, and his grey eyes were hard and cold.
I got off the truck and walked up the steps onto the verandah.
“Mr Delaney?”
He stared suspiciously at me.
“That’s my name. What do you want?”
“I heard you had just moved in, and as I was passing, I thought I’d see if I could fix you up with a radio or a TV set,” I said.
“Television? You can’t get any worth-while reception up amongst these mountains,” he said, staring at me.
“With the right aerial, you’d get first-rate reception up here, Mr Delaney,” I said.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Not with these mountains screening the beam.”
“Give me five minutes, Mr Delaney,” I said, “and I’ll prove to you I’m not wasting your time nor mine either.”
I went down to the truck and hauled off a small TV set, carried it up onto the verandah and set it on a table near him.
He put down his magazine and watched me as I got the special aerial I carried around with me from the truck.
Within seven minutes I had a picture on the screen that was as sharp and as clear and as free from interference as any picture you could wish to see.
It was my good luck they were showing a fight film. I learned later that Delaney was a fanatical fight fan. I saw at once the picture had caught his interest. He leaned forward, his face losing some of its bitterness as he stared at the lighted screen.
He watched the fight to the end. It lasted twenty minutes. It was a good meaty scrap with a couple of heavyweights pounding the daylights out of each other. One of them finally hung a bone crusher on the other’s jaw and, by the way he went down, I knew he wouldn’t get up inside the count, and he didn’t.
“How’s that for reception?” I asked, moving around so I could face him.
“I wouldn’t have believed it,” Delaney said. “It’s damned good. What’s the price of this thing?”
I told him.
“Isn’t there anything better?”
“Well, yes: there are plenty better. Would you be interested in a set that has a TV, radio receiver and VHF?”
He leaned back in his chair and stared at me. There was an arrogant expression in his eyes that irritated me.
“Who did you say you were?” he asked.
“Terry Regan,” I said. “I look after the district for TV and radio.”
“Maybe I should go to one of the big dealers in LA,” he said musingly. “I don’t care to deal with a one-man outfit. When I buy something, I buy the best.”
“That’s up to you, Mr Delaney,” I said, “but if you want the best, then it has to be hand-made. That’s something I specialize in. I could build you a set that would give you quality plus. It would include a twenty-five-inch screen TV set, an FM and radio tuner, a recorder player and a tape recorder. I’d also give you an electrostatic speaker as a separate unit.”
“Could you make a set like that?” His unbelieving, contemptuous tone riled me. “How do I know it would be any good?”
“I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I made a set along those lines for Mr Hamish, the writer, who lives a couple of miles from here. You have only to call him and he’ll tell you how satisfied he is with it.”
Delaney shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “What would a set like that cost?”
“Depending on the kind of cabinet you want,” I said, “I could do you something first class for fifteen hundred dollars.”
I heard a slight sound behind me, and for no reason at all, I had a queer, creepy sensation that crawled up my spine and into the roots of my hair.
I turned.
A woman stood in the doorway, and she was looking directly at me.
II
My first sight of Gilda Delaney is something I’m never likely to forget.
She was a little above medium height with a golden tan complexion that comes from hours out in the sun. Her hair was the colour of polished bronze and reached to her shoulders. Her eyes were big and as blue as forget-me-nots, and there was that look in them that a man, who is anything of a man, must react to, the way a fighting bull reacts when the matador flicks his cape in the moment of incitement.
She was wearing a red cowboy shirt and a pair of blue jeans, and what that combination did to show off her shape was something to see.
Delaney glanced around and stared at her, then he said in a flat, indifferent tone, “This is my wife.” He made it sound as if she was of no consequence. Looking at her, he went on, “This is Mr Regan. He’s the TV and radio man around here. He’s trying to sell me a TV set.”
“Isn’t that just what you want?” she said. She had one of those low, husky voices that went with her shape and the look in her eyes.
“It could be.” He stubbed out his cigar, then looked over at me. “Suppose I don’t care for this set you propose to build? What happens then?”
“If you don’t care for it, Mr Delaney,” I said, having to make an effort to keep my mind on business, aware of this woman as I had never been aware of any other woman before, “then I guess I’ll find someone else who’ll buy it, but I think you will care for it.”
The woman said, “You could get a lot of fun out of a TV set. You should have it.”
She nodded to me, her forget-me-not blue eyes moving over me inquisitively, then with a faint smile that meant nothing, she passed me and went down the steps, along the path and out of sight as she rounded the corner of the cabin.
I watched her until I lost sight of her. If you had been able to see the way she walked, the smooth roll of her hips, the power that was in her body, her upright carriage, you would have felt the same way as I felt, and I mean just exactly that.
Right at that moment, watching her as she moved down the steps, and along the concrete path, I wanted her more than I had ever wanted any other woman before.
Delaney said, “Well, okay, Regan, make the set. If I like it, I’ll buy it.”
I dragged my attention back to business.
Not a very satisfactory way of doing business, I thought; this guy sitting in his wheel chair could be a bluffer and a phoney. I could use up quite a bit of my savings building him a super set and he could slide out of buying it by saying he didn’t like it. But I wasn’t going to argue with him. I wanted to see her again, and this was the way I could see her again.
“Well, okay,” I said, “I’ll build it. It’ll take a couple of weeks. In the meantime you would probably like to have this set to carry on with.”
“Yes, leave it here,” he said. “I’ll pay you rent for it.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ll be happy to leave it on loan. You’ll need a permanent aerial. I’ll be out tomorrow to fix it for you. Will that be all right?”
“Sure,” he said. “Come out tomorrow. I’m always around.”
I left him sitting on the verandah, staring at the lighted screen of the TV set. As I drove down the tarmac I kept my eyes open for her, but she didn’t show.
I had her on my mind all the way back to the cabin. She was still in my mind when I went to bed that night, and she was with me when I got up and began to put my breakfast together.
I went out to Blue Jay cabin the following afternoon. I made it the afternoon because I thought there might be a chance she would be out shopping in the morning and I didn’t intend to miss seeing her.