Twelve Red Herrings by Jeffrey Archer

Author:Jeffrey Archer [Archer, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: General, Short Stories, Mystery & Detective, Short Stories (single author), Fiction
ISBN: 9780312937713
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Published: 2005-09-01T16:53:34+00:00

YOU’LL NEVER LIVE TO REGRET IT.

AND SO IT WAS AGREED: DAVID WOULD LEAVE everything to Pat. If one of them had to die, at least the other would be financially secure for the rest of their life. David felt it was the least he could do for someone who’d stood by him for so many years, especially as he was the one who had been unfaithful.

They had known each other almost all their lives, because their parents had been close friends for as long as either of them could remember. Both families had hoped David might end up marrying Pat’s sister Ruth, and they were unable to hide their surprise – and in Pat’s father’s case his disapproval – when the two of them started living together, especially as Pat was three years older than David.

For some time David had been putting it off and hoping for a miracle cure, despite a pushy insurance broker from Geneva Life called Marvin Roebuck who had been pressing him to ‘take a meeting’ for the past nine months. On the first Monday of the tenth month he phoned again, and this time David reluctantly agreed to see him. He chose a date when he knew Pat would be on night duty at the hotel, and asked Roebuck to come round to their apartment – that way, he felt, it would look as if it was the broker who had done the chasing.

David was watering the scarlet clupea harengus on the hall table when Marvin Roebuck pressed the buzzer on the front door.

Once he had poured his visitor a Budweiser, David told him he YOU LL NEVER LIVE TO REGRET IT had every type of insurance he could possibly need: theft, accident, car, property, health, even holiday.

“But what about life?” asked Marvin, licking his lips.

“That’s one I don’t need,” said David. “I earn a good salary, I have more than enough security, and on top of that, my parents will leave everything to me.”

“But wouldn’t it be prudent to have a lump sum that comes to you automatically on your sixtieth or sixty-fifth birthday?” asked Marvin, as he continued to push at a door that he had no way of knowing was already wide open. “After all, you can never be sure what disaster might lie around the corner.” David knew exactly what disaster lay around the corner, but he still innocently asked, “What sort of figure are you talking about?”

“Well, that would depend on how much you are currently earning,” said Marvin.

^”$2o,ooo a year,” said David, trying to sound casual, as it was almost double his real income. Marvin was obviously impressed, and David remained silent as he carried out some rapid calculations in his head.

“Well,” said Marvin eventually, “I’d suggest half a million dollars – as a ballpark figure. After all,” he added, quickly running a finger down a page of actuarial tables he had extracted from his aluminium briefcase, ‘you’re only twenty-seven, so the payments would be well within your means.

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