Plain Murder

by C. S. Forester

  Young Reddy was worse off still; he was on the verge of breaking down. He was tortured with remorse. The visit of Mrs Harrison to the office, when, tearful, clad in sombre mourning, she had come to interview Mr Campbell, had been horrible. Mr Campbell, good old soul, had done what he could, but all the same the little suburban home was to be sold up and the children were to go to charity schools, and Mrs Harrison was to be reduced to a miserable dependence upon relatives. Reddy’s remorse was not alleviated even when he put two pound notes in an envelope, typed out Mrs Harrison’s address with Maudie’s typewriter and sent them off to her. But his fear was more acute even than his remorse. He had begun to sleep badly, and when he did sleep he dreamed horribly of arrest and trial and sentence and execution. He became noticeably thinner and paler. He wandered about his home like a ghost, worrying his mother distracted. Fortunately Mrs Reddy had the type of mind which attributed her son’s obvious trouble to the machinations of a woman.

  There came a day, only ten days after the murder, when the strain began to grow too great for Reddy. It was a Saturday morning, one of those Saturday mornings which are so particularly irritating because there is, on account of other firms’ delays, a whole day’s work to be compressed into it and no chance of enjoying Saturday amusements until it is done. Morris from his seat of power on his dais was dealing out work and encouragement and reproof lavishly to everyone in the room; but as much reproof as work, and not nearly as much encouragement. Pride of position was working powerfully still in Morris’s soul.

  ‘Haven’t you got those lay-outs finished yet, Howlett?’ he demanded. (Howlett was the new clerk.) ‘Get a move on, sonny. There’s lots more to be done after that. Clarence, come here a minute. D’you mean this bally woman to be cutting bread and butter or making wreaths? Cutting bread and butter? Then for God’s sake make her look as though she likes it. We want folk to buy bread you know, not to be scared of it. I don’t mind her looking sixty-five. That’s not a bad idea as a change; every ad. in every paper has a bright young thing of twenty-five with three children nowadays. But she’s got to look happy, man, jolly, as though this bread does her all the good in the world. Go and try again, and let’s have it back in ten minutes. Now what do you want, Reddy?’

  Reddy had come up to the table and was resting his hands on it, and his weight on his hands. His face was working horribly.

  ‘I – I can’t go on,’ he said. He half whispered this, so that the others in the room would not hear; and as he spoke he looked over his shoulder to make certain that no one was listening.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ demanded Morris, but he dropped his voice as well. He looked at the tortured white face. There were actually tears in the blue eyes.

  ‘I can’t, I simply can’t,’ said Reddy.

  Morris drew his brows together in the fierce scowl which Reddy had been dreading.

  ‘No, don’t!’ wailed Reddy. ‘I want to talk to you. I must, I tell you.’

  Reddy had come to him for sympathy; perhaps it would be better stated that what Reddy wanted was a fresh transfusion of courage which he knew Morris could instil in him if he liked. For Morris to display the contempt of and annoyance at his weakness to which Reddy knew he was exposing himself would be the last straw. The fact that Reddy had come for moral aid to Morris, whom he hated, was proof enough of Reddy’s need.

  Morris felt this dimly. Anyway, he did not allow his annoyance at the incident to overmaster him. He tried to bring a hint of kindliness into his tone.

  ‘Feeling a bit done?’ he said. ‘Working too hard?’

  Both of them knew that work had almost nothing to do with Reddy’s present condition, but Reddy agreed.

  ‘See here,’ said Morris. ‘Go out and get yourself a cup of coffee. Take some of these papers to read. You’ll feel better after a bit.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Reddy, and he was really grateful. ‘But I must see you, I must talk to you about – about – a—’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Morris. ‘I’ll see you at lunch-time. We’ll have lunch together. Go out and get a coffee, and come back when you feel like it.’

  Reddy went, and Morris shook off the memory of the unpleasant incident as best he could while he plunged anew into the mass of work on his table. But it recurred to him repeatedly; the white worried face came up before his eyes with tiresome iteration even while he dealt with matters of consuming interest. It was half an hour before Reddy came back again, slipping quietly into the room and crossing unobtrusively to his place.

  The work was finished somehow. Clarence was packed off, much to his delight, at a quarter past one, and Howlett followed him. Shepherd was given a mass of letters to post and told he need not return. Mr Campbell came in wearing his hat and coat.

  ‘I’m off now, Morris,’ he said; ‘and I’ve told the girls they can go. Nothing you want them for, is there?’

  ‘No, sir. Goodbye, sir,’ said Morris.

  So the three of them were left alone in the composing room – Oldroyd bent over an intricate job of filing, Reddy fidgeting restlessly in his chair, and Morris seated at his telephone. He was doing proof correction over that instrument – always a ticklish operation.

  ‘Now look at the bottom right-hand corner,’ he said – he held a proof copy of an advertisement appearing in a Sunday newspaper tomorrow in his hand, and presumably the invisible compositor at the other end of the wire held another. ‘That “H” beside the woman’s foot. Is that bad type or a bad pull? A bad pull? You’re sure? All right, then. And the last line of all, “Buy one on Monday.” You’ve used the wrong fount. We asked for Caslon Old Face, and that’s not Caslon. Oh, yes, we did. I’ve got the lay-out in front of me while I’m speaking to you. Well, can you get it right if you change the type? Or shall I wait for a second proof? Yes, I know what time you go to press. But it’s not our fault if you send the proof at the last minute like this. Well, mind you get it right, old man. You don’t want our Mr Campbell complaining to your boss, do you? All right, then. Goodbye. Yes, goodbye.’

  He hung the receiver on its hook with a sigh of relief.

  ‘That’s the last job I’ve got to do, thank God,’ he announced. ‘What about you, Oldroyd? Nearly finished?’

  ‘Just on,’ said Oldroyd, snapping down the clasps viciously. Huddersfield Town were playing in London that Saturday, and it was now too late for him to get to the match in time.

  ‘Reddy and I are going to lunch together,’ said Morris. ‘Coming?’

  ‘What’s the idea?’ asked Oldroyd cautiously. He was always suspicious now of any suggestion coming from Morris.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Morris. ‘I don’t know. This is Reddy’s idea. He’s afraid to lunch by himself, or something.’

  At which unkind speech Reddy felt more distressed than ever. He looked blindly at their unsympathetic faces.

  ‘You beasts!’ he said. ‘Yes, both of you. You – you—’ But Reddy did not possess the eloquence, especially at that moment, which could give even a sketchy idea of the tangled state of his emotions. His friendlessness and his peril left him unnerved. He actually began to sob, and at the sight of that Morris held back the testy contempt he was about to express.

  ‘Oh, pull yourself together, sonny,’ said Morris soothingly, ‘and tell us what’s the matter. You’ll feel better then. What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Reddy unhappily, ‘it’s just – it’s just – the awfulness of all this. What’s going to happen?’

  ‘Why, nothing, of course,’ said Morris, but he broke off his speech there for an instant while he peered into Mr Campbell’s room, and darted out into the corridor to make sure there was no one within earshot.

  ‘We’re as safe as houses,’ went on Morris, returning. ‘No one’s got any idea about the business at all. I can’t see what you’re worrying about.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not only that,’ said Reddy; ‘there’s Mrs Harrison an
d – and – everything.’

  By ‘everything’ Reddy meant his own lonely, troubled conscience.

  ‘Where’s it going to end?’ asked Reddy pitifully.

  ‘End?’ asked Morris in return. ‘End? It’s not going to end, I hope. There can’t be any end to this business for us.’

  By that speech, which Morris meant to be reassuring, he only accentuated the horror in Reddy’s face. Reddy saw extending before him a life of endless fear and endless remorse.

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ said Reddy. ‘I can’t. And I won’t. I’ll – I’ll—’

  ‘You’ll what?’ asked Morris sharply. The weakness of his late brilliant plan was beginning to reveal itself. Morris’s good fortune, Morris’s life itself, depended on the constancy of this frail creature.

  ‘My mother thinks there’s something wrong,’ said Reddy. He said that in preference to confessing his half-formed design of unburdening his troubles upon her. Reddy was not used either to a guilty conscience nor to having secrets from his mother.

  ‘Your mother thinks so, does she?’ said Morris grimly, and looked at Oldroyd. Oldroyd at the moment was more curious than frightened. He saw the implication in Reddy’s last speech, and he was curious to know how Mr Too-clever Morris proposed to escape from this dilemma.

  ‘What have you told her up to now?’ demanded Morris.

  ‘Nothing,’ bleated Reddy, ‘as yet.’

  He caught Morris’s furious eye, and continued unhappily:

  ‘Really I haven’t, Morris. But you don’t seem to care what I feel like, and I thought – I thought – well, I couldn’t go on like this by myself.’

  That bad temper of Morris’s was up in arms by now. He was furiously angry with this weak-kneed ninny who was imperilling everything. But he saw that he would have to restrain himself, to coax and to comfort. It was worse than dealing with a girl. With a girl there was nothing much at stake, and there were hundreds of other girls just as good to be had for the asking. But Morris had only one neck, and he did not want that dislocated because of a babbling fool. He appealed to reason.

  ‘Oh, dash it, old man,’ he said, ‘you’re not by yourself. We’re all in this with you. It’s all our faults, you know that. We’re standing by you, and you ought to stand by us. You can’t do any good by telling anyone, not a scrap of good. You feel worried now, and you tell your mother. Then she feels worried and tells someone else. The fat’s in the fire then. We’ll all be for it straight away. For God’s sake, Reddy, do you want to be – hanged?’

  ‘No,’ said Reddy and paused. ‘But – but—’

  What Reddy wanted to say was that, although he did not want to be hanged, he wanted possibly even less to be condemned to spend the rest of his life with this secret locked, unconfided, in his breast. And Morris saw that the appeal of reason was wanting. A man who can continue to say ‘but’ when faced with the prospect of hanging is not to be reasoned with. Morris screwed down his anger a little farther and tried to appeal to sentiment. Yes, it was far worse than dealing with a girl.

  ‘But you can’t let us down, old man. We’ve trusted you, you know, Oldroyd here and I have. We’ve put our lives, we’ve put everything in your hands. You wouldn’t let your pals down like that, would you?’

  That clearly had some effect, and Morris continued hastily:

  ‘I don’t know why you seem to hate me nowadays, old man. I thought you used to like me a bit once.’

  (Even Morris the unscrupulous felt a little ashamed somehow at using this cheap appeal. But it was the only way.)

  ‘It was because of that that I trusted you,’ he went on. ‘And Oldroyd here. You’re still pals with him, aren’t you? We’re friends together. Let’s stick to one another. Here, let’s shake hands on it.’

  It was a sentimental, silly situation; one of the kind Morris would hoot and jeer at inwardly if he came across it in a book or a play. But it suited the needs of the case. Reddy’s hand came out, and Morris clasped it firmly, looking Reddy straightly in the eyes.

  ‘There, that’s fine. Now shake hands with Oldroyd, too.’

  The little ceremony had an absurdly devivifying effect on Reddy; a gesture meant so much to the ridiculous, sentimental boy.

  ‘And now let’s come and have some lunch and forget our troubles,’ said Morris.

  Morris found comforting Reddy much more arduous and tiresome than planning murder.

  8

  Mrs Morris sat by the fireside in the house at the top of the hill waiting for her husband to come back from the office. Because she was waiting for her husband, which implies that her husband was not in the house at the moment, she was sitting in the only armchair. She would move out of it when he arrived; despite the fact that she enjoyed quarrelling with him, she was imbued with enough of the traditional working-class respect for the wage-earner to allow him the best of everything available without question. And at the moment Mrs Morris’s respect for her husband was considerably increased. Had he not brought her the glad news that his wages had been increased by ten shillings a week, and was he not passing on seven and sixpence of that increase to her for the housekeeping? A worse husband would have kept the secret of that rise in wages to himself and spent the money on the foolery men do spend money on. She was proud of her husband’s success. Already he was earning more than her own father had ever earned. It had been a bit of a struggle so far to manage with a whole house to themselves, but things would be easier now. Always until she had married, Mrs Morris and her family had lived in houses in which either she and her family were lodgers or in which her family took in lodgers. Living only two in a room, as they did at present, meant better conditions than Mrs Morris had usually known; her husband had climbed above the station in life in which he was born, and was a man of achievement in consequence. Mrs Morris felt really kindly towards her husband when she thought of the fine little joint she had in readiness for tomorrow’s Sunday dinner. It was good to have food like that to set before Molly and little John. She heard at last his key in the door and quietly transferred herself and her darning to the other, less comfortable, chair.

  He came in slow of step and weary, as she was growing used to seeing him.

  ‘Had your dinner?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and sat down in the armchair. They had nothing much to say to each other, these two.

  Morris proceeded to light a cigarette, and he sat smoking and gazing into the fire. Tired though he was, a new idea was fermenting in his brain. The exalted mood of high creative construction was close upon him, even though he did not yet recognize the symptoms. His wife, at least, realized that he was in a self-absorbed study, and she knew that it would be hard work to quarrel with him, even if she wanted to; and she was not particularly anxious to do so. Half a dozen recent quarrels, the news of the rise in wages and the purchase of that exceptional joint for tomorrow had brought a sufficiency of colour into her life for the present. She sat and darned placidly.

  But the quiet of the room could not last long. The door into the garden opened and someone looked in round the edge of it. It was Molly, and as soon as she saw her father she came scuttling into the room, leaving, of course, the door open behind her.

  ‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘Dad-dee!’

  She shook his arm.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ demanded Morris ungraciously.

  Molly had no answer ready; all she wanted to do was to attract her father’s attention; she never seemed able to learn that nowadays her father did not want to be disturbed by her.

  ‘We’re digging,’ said Molly, with a wave of her hand towards the garden. ‘Johnny and me are. In the garding.’

  John Morris, aged two, made his appearance at the door at that moment, wrapped in the overcoat and muffler of which he was so proud. Morris foresaw his peaceful afternoon ruined by the attentions of his children.

  ‘My God, what a draught!’ he said, glaring
at the door.

  Mrs Morris got up and shut it.

  ‘You didn’t ought to leave the door open like that, Molly,’ she said; and as she spoke the wild yells of John Morris, who could not open the door yet, came most penetratingly into the room.

  ‘Bless these kids!’ said Morris irritably. ‘Can’t you keep ’em quiet?’

  ‘They were quiet enough before you came in,’ snapped Mrs Morris. She took Molly by the arm, and such was the association of the ideas of being irritable and holding the little girl that she shook her quite unintentionally. Molly’s howls began to blend with the muffled sound of John’s sorrow outside.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ said Morris.

  ‘Be quiet!’ snapped Mrs Morris at Molly.

  ‘Oh, take ’em out, take ’em away,’ said Morris. ‘Here!’

  He dived into his trousers’ pocket and produced a sixpence, which he handed to his wife.

  ‘Ooh!’ said Molly.

  ‘Take ’em out and buy ’em sweets or something. Do anything you like as long as they’re away from here.’

  Mrs Morris would have been glad to refuse for many reasons, but there were still more reasons which forced her to obey. There would be no controlling Molly if that young woman saw the golden prospect of sixpennyworth of sweets torn from her. And there was something about her husband’s manner these days which told her it would be well to obey him. She took the coin a little ungraciously, for she had in her mind’s eye a picture of the walk down to the shops and, worse than that, the walk back again, pushing that heavy boy in his chair up that dreadful hill. But all the same she put on her hat and coat, taking them off the pegs in the hall, and she collected the children, and she started. Morris, wandering aimlessly round the house, looked out of the front window and saw them half-way down the hill. Molly was skipping fantastically at her mother’s side, wildly excited at the thought of sweets. John was in his push-chair, waving the wooden spade which his mother had been unable to induce him to leave behind. Mary herself was walking slowly, bracing back against the slope of the hill in a manner which her high heels did not render graceful, and holding on tightly to the push-chair in front of her. It crossed Morris’s mind that if she were to let go there was nothing to stop John, push-chair and all, hurtling down the street to the main road at the bottom, to the trams and the buses and the lorries.