The corpse was worth a fortune but the murder did it for love.
Tell It To The Birds

" When a small-time clerk insures his life for fifty thousand dollars and then dies ten days later, I know this is a phoney claim. "Those who have already read James Hadley Chase's Double shuffle and Shock treatment won't need to be told that Maddox, the best man in the Insurance Claims business, is about to make trouble for someone and that someone is the lush, auburn-haired Meg Barlowe ... a woman with a past. And what a past.
Aided by Steve Harmas, chief investigator of the National Fidelity Insurance Corporation, Maddox strips the wraps off an ingenious insurance swindle.
Extract:
"This is it, he thought. There is a time when everyman worth a nickle must make up his mind what to do with his life. I've put off my decision long enough. I'll never get anywhere without money. With Meg to help me and with fifty thousand dollars to get me started, I'll reach up and take the sun out of the sky."

"Anson looked searchingly at her. His eyes moved over her body. He thought: you meet a woman and she starts a chemical reaction in you. You think there is no one like her in the world, the something happens, and it is finished. She means less to me now than the used plate after a good meal, and how little can that be?"