It is on such a special occasion, the day let us say that his promotion from assistant to full professor is confirmed, that the Smiths first meet Miss X. Christine, let us call her. It sounds less sinister. Christine X.
Christine is eighteen years old, with long blonde hair, a fresh glowing complexion, and the kind of beauty God only gives to eighteen-year-old girls.
She has just joined one of the professor’s classes and is enthralled by his material and manner. That day she stays behind to check a reference and, flattered by her interest, Smith takes her home to lend her a book.
She stays to dinner. She is delighted with the canard en croûte, which pleases Mrs. Smith. She is also clearly delighted with the professor, which pleases him and amuses his wife, so that after Christine has gone they laugh about it over the washing-up.
The following day Christine X calls on the professor in his office. She is very serious. They talk for an hour. Then they make love on the floor between a filing cabinet and a bookcase with the girl’s head pillowed on pile of examination scripts.
A week later the professor leaves his wife.
In an earlier period there would now have existed a situation in which the professor might very well have wished his wife dead. Such goings-on once could have caused an academic all sorts of problems in his social and professional relationships. But things had changed. I refer you to E. K. Charleshead, who I see has just entered the hall—yes, please, do give him a round of applause; it is rare for one so young to achieve such distinction; let praise be unstinted—I was just referring, Dr. Charles-head, to your monograph on The Bourgeois Ethic in the Swinging Sixties. Stimulating. Provocative.
To continue. No, it is not Professor Smith’s abandonment of his wife that raises people’s eyebrows, it is the ruthlessness with which he expedites the divorce in order to remarry! Who marries these days, except if the accountants advise it?
But once remarried, the professor’s happiness seems complete. The only flaw in it is the apparent total alienation of his children. His two daughters shun him completely, while his son suffers some kind of breakdown and is caught in the British Museum Reading Room defacing some of the professor’s books with obscene drawings and obscener words.
Smith is filled with guilt and takes all the blame on to himself until five or six years later he has a series of heart attacks which nearly kill him. When he discovers that, as he lay at death’s door, not one of his children made enquiry after his state of health, though the doctors had informed them all, his guilt disappears and is replaced by an uncomprehending pain which might have hardened into resentment were there not other more pressing matters to occupy his mind and soul.
His health has been deeply undermined. From being a vigorous, handsome, athletic man in the prime of life, he has become a semi-invalid, fast slipping down the vale of years. He is not confined to bed or anything as extreme as that, but he has to take great care. He must carry a box of pills with him wherever he goes; he must always use the lift, never the stairs; and he knows that love’s little death might for him very easily become the real thing.
The passing years change Christine, too.
She wears her hair short and it now strikes the eye with the burnish of ripe barley rather than the soft gold of early corn. Her skin, too, has lost something of its freshness but cunning make-up can highlight the dark eyes and the full lips as well as nature ever did. She, too, has entered the academic life, and when her enemies murmur that she owes her rapid advance to her husband’s influence, her friends retort that she is twice as clever as he ever was, and ten times as clever as he has become.
In other words in ten years he has grown old and she has grown up.
You begin to see the shape of our model? Triangulation maps lives as well as landscapes.
Professor Smith, his first wife, and Christine—there’s one triangle. Now the time has come for another.
Let’s keep things nice and close for the sake of tidiness. Just as in our basic triangle it made sense to locate the second female among the professor’s students, now it makes sense to locate the second male among his colleagues. Let us call him C, a young lecturer whose research has won much acclaim and who looks set for a promising career. C has perhaps little grounds for liking or even feeling loyal towards Smith, who (so C alleges) has made a hamfisted effort to appropriate to himself some of C’s research results. We have all been research assistants in our younger days and know how narrow the line is between following instructions and finding out new directions for ourselves. Thus there is a cloud between C and the professor which perhaps obscures the moral issue (if moral issues still exist after this morning’s seminar on The Chemistry of Good and Evil!).
C and Christine are thrown into each other’s company, are mutually attracted, at first refuse to admit the attraction, then struggle against it, and finally bring it out into the open to overcome it, which as any student of criminology knows is like stripping a woman naked to combat the temptations of a revealing gown!
The precise circumstances of their fall are not important. It happened, shall we say, two years ago? They are both discreet people, thrown naturally together by their job, and if C has no great concern about the pain he might cause the professor, Christine has enough for both of them. She takes every precaution against discovery and is resolved to stay with her husband until, as seems not unlikely, another heart attack carries him off. He loves her as dearly as ever, so if our starting proposition is to apply here, something must happen which shows him the truth.
It is really very simple. C is a friend of the professor’s son, the one who had the trouble at the British Museum. One night they are drinking together and the son, David let’s call him, is still complaining after all this time about his father’s treatment of his mother. C is happy to join in a general condemnation of Professor Smith at all levels, but when David turns his attention to Christine, he angrily springs to her defense. David is intrigued and either guesses at, or is told of, the relationship. He retails the news to his mother next time they meet and his mother, after a day and a night spent in close discussion of the information with no more than ten or twelve friends, persuades herself that it is her duty to do something. I refer you to the chapter in Arturo Bellario’s Crime in the Third Reich on “Duty as Pseudo-Motivation.”
So the first Mrs. Smith telephones her ex-husband. He is enraged. He slams the phone down. It is a tissue of lies. His former wife is a monster. He will ring the police. He will ring his solicitor and issue a writ for libel. He will summon Christine and invite her to join in his anger. He will not hurt her by telling her anything. He trusts her absolutely. He trusts C. But not absolutely. C dislikes him. He feels uneasy with C. Christine and C spend a lot of time together. C is young. Christine is young. He is old. It is a year since he made love to his wife.
For the time being his thoughts stay there. That night he attempts to make love and fails. Christine assures him it does not matter. He turns away and lies open-eyed in the dark. Suddenly he knows it is true.
Of course as an academic and a scientist he will seek objective evidence. But this is not hard to find.
Captain Ribeiro told us yesterday something of the psychology of interrogation. Two people cannot long deceive a third, especially if they are not yet aware that he suspects them.
So there we have our model complex. I’m sorry if I seem to have laboured over its construction. And I am sorrier still if you feel that all my labour has just brought forth a mouse. For what is he going to tell us now? you ask. That Professor Smith, a sick old man in the throes of jealousy, would like to see his wife dead? Possibly he would! More likely, he would prefer to see C dead. But wishes are not crimes!
No, but they may be translated into crimes. And in this model, it seems to me very likely that the translation would take place.
The situation is more complex than might at first appear. It is not simple jealousy that is at work. Let us examine all the courses that are open to Profe
ssor Smith and see that, if he does opt for murder, it is not through a shortage of alternatives.
First, he might carry on as before, concealing his knowledge and hoping that his health might improve or that of the affair deteriorate.
Secondly, he might confront his wife and try to shame her or argue her into giving up her lover.
Thirdly, he might institute divorce proceedings either as a noble gesture aimed at freeing Christine from an intolerable situation, or as a salve to his own hurt pride.
Why does he choose none of these?
Not simply because he is unbalanced by jealousy. On the contrary, he thinks he is behaving perfectly rationally. No, the true reason for his decision to murder his wife might seem odd to a layman but the eminent criminologists here assembled will recall the wise words spoken by E. K. Charleshead in his seminar on Recidivism as Onanistic Impulse: “One motive may be more uncommon that another, but no motive is more unlikely than another.”
Professor Smith decides to murder Christine because of the acute pleasure he knows the situation must be giving his first wife and his estranged children.
Better then, you may say, he should murder his first wife. Yes, he thinks of that, of course; but she is distant, access is difficult, he has no desire that his deed should produce consequences unpleasant to himself.
So it has to be Christine.
Thus our model now shows us an extremely complex situation and perhaps I should now extend my opening proposition thus: a man who has more than one wife would like to see them all dead.
It has always seemed a shame to me that social scientists discard their models so readily once they have served their purpose. Anything which man has laboured to create deserves more than instant relegation to the scrapheap and I hope you will bear with me if, having brought Professor Smith so far along his road, I follow him a little further.
In any case just as the wish to see dead is not the same as the decision to kill, so the decision is still not the deed. Professor Smith now needs a method.
Well, if the professor moved in the same circles as we all do, he would not have far to look, for if there’s one thing that regular attenders at these conferences get in plenty, it’s methods of murder! It’s a standing joke, isn’t it, how well the homicide seminars are always attended. Of course, what we are considering on these occasions are the sociological and psychological problems, but what one remembers most vividly are things like Herr Doktor Schwarz’s diagrams of pressure points, Señor Martinez’s dexterity with knife and gun, or (more mundane but no less fascinating) Madame Rive’s list of eighteen toxic substances in common domestic use. Whatever the professor’s own discipline, such information as this is readily accessible to the academically trained mind. The first thing we all had to learn was how to find things out, was it not? Equally accessible would be all our treatises on police method and police psychology and Professor Smith would know as well as I do that when a wife dies in suspicious circumstances, the first thing the police do is look closely at the husband.
So his first task would, of course, be to create circumstances which did not appear suspicious.
As scholars yourselves, you can easily imagine the meticulous care with which he would approach the task. He would, I’m sure, have read widely enough to know that it is in fact reactions, not circumstances, which usually cause suspicion. I see from your smiles that you recognize I am quoting from my own book, Crime in Our Time, the chapter on “Information,” though lest I be accused of egotism I should point out that many of my findings were soon afterwards confirmed by no less a talent than E. K. Charleshead. The first thing the provident murderer must do is choose, or arrange, a time when those likely to create an atmosphere of suspicion are as far removed as may be from the sphere of influence. In this case, that would be (in descending order of potential troublesomeness) Christine’s lover, C; his son, David; and his first wife. His daughters present little problem, the younger being in California and the elder in a clinic for rehabilitation of alcoholics in, let us say, Yorkshire.
The academic mind always prefers the most elegant solution, so let us create one for our model.
Imagine Professor Smith to have close connections with, say, a Japanese university, whose vice-chancellor, an old friend, is currently visiting England. It is not difficult for him to arrange that C should be invited on very favourable terms to spend a term there—particularly as C is a young man of great promise and growing reputation. The necessary study leave presents no difficulty as it is to all intents and purposes in Professor Smith’s gift. But the real elegance of the solution lies in his contriving that the Japanese vice-chancellor, who knew him in his pre-Christine days, should also invite his son and first wife to pay him a visit. C’s proposed trip, plus the opportunity en route for visiting the younger daughter, are large inducements respectively, and the ill-assorted trio set off on the same plane.
I do not think we need to exercise our minds much on the method the professor chooses for disposing of Christine. If, as E. K. Charleshead has suggested in his fascinating analyses of death statistics in the decades immediately before and after the Second World War, as much as one per cent of natural causes and up to two point five per cent of domestic accidents are suspect, murder of relatives is second only to Monopoly as a popular family game. Someone as well organized as Professor Smith could have the deed done, the necessary enquiries carried out and the body cremated before word of the tragedy filtered through to Japan.
Now, it was my intention, having constructed this elaborate model, to use it to illustrate the wider criminological implications of my opening contention. But, alas, I fear my recent ill health sapped my strength even more than I was aware. No, no, please, do not agitate yourselves, I am not ill now, just a trifle exhausted and I fear that this, my last lecture, will have to remain more open-ended even than I had intended. Perhaps a happy result of this will be to permit a very free-ranging discussion. The psychologists among you might like, for instance, to consider whether Smith would be able to resist the temptation to make a confession, however obliquely. Academics are notoriously eager to publish their results! But I shall not stay for the discussion. I feel I have earned a good long rest.
And this leads me to conclude on a very personal note. As you all know, I am due to retire from my post at the end of next term. But I have decided for various reasons to bring the date forward and as from the end of this Conference I shall cease to hold my Chair of Criminology. I have spoken to my vice-chancellor on the telephone and he has agreed to accept my resignation, reluctantly he says. I hope, no, I am sure, he will not be so reluctant to accept my nomination of a successor. Indeed, there can only be one man for the job, my former research assistant, my present colleague, and my dear friend, E. K. Charleshead.
Finally, let me say that it is not my intention to return to England. I have few ties there since my recent bereavement, and my resignation has just about cut the last one. I am contemplating settling down here in Brazil and the authorities have indicated that they would make me most welcome. The attractions are many; a benevolent climate, a beautiful landscape, a lively culture, a sympathetic tax system; perhaps even, as Captain Ribeiro told us in his talk yesterday, the absence of a clearly defined treaty of extradition with the UK! Well, forgive an old man’s joke. But I like it here, and here, God willing, I shall rest.
Thank you for the kindness of your invitation, the courtesy of your hearing, and the comfort of your friendship.
I shall not soon forget you. And I hope that I shall be in all of your minds at some times.
And perhaps in some of your minds for ever.
I thank you. Thank you.
Goodbye.
Threatened Species
I don’t care for dogs. They combine creep and crap to a degree only found otherwise in PR men. No, I much prefer cats, the intellectual and hygienic superiors of both breeds.
But I have to admit that when you are woken at two a.m. by stealthy treadings outs
ide your lonely Lake District cottage, it would be some comfort to hear your devoted Doberman slowly rising to his feet at the foot of the bed.
Or even your devoted PR man.
Instead I had to rise slowly myself and my totally undevoted tom cat, Heathcliff, who was only here for the warmth, miaowed in protest. I ignored him, knowing full well that at the first sign of trouble he would be off the bed and under it.
Being dogless, I have always been ready to bark for myself and though I rarely sleep with a pistol under my pillow, I do keep a twelve-bore standing in the corner of my room whenever I’m staying at High Ghyll. There might be less likelihood of trouble on the Cumberland fells than in the middle of London, but if it does come, then there’s precious little help available tobenevolent climate, a beautiful landscape, a lively culture, a sympathetic tax system; perhaps even, as Captain Ribeiro told us in his talk yesterday, the absence of a clearly defined deal with it. And I had discovered early that it’s not female beauty or sensuality that most effectively lights the fire in men’s blood; it’s being alone.
But you’re never alone with a shotgun I thought as my fingers curled round the cold metal. I was thirty-five, widowed once and divorced once (both of which conditions most men consider synonymous with nymphomania), and ready to blast a large hole in any man foolish enough to come uninvited into my Lakeland stronghold.
I fumbled in my dressing-table drawer and found the two cartridges I kept there. I wasn’t yet so neurotic that I kept a loaded gun in my bedroom, particularly as Heathcliff, who used the stock as a scratching-post, usually managed to knock it over at least once a day. It was very dark and without my glasses I find it hard to see at the best of times. I should have collected them first, I decided, as with great difficulty I slid the cartridges into the breech, but as usual I wasn’t quite certain where I’d left them.
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