The Man Who Killed Himself

by Julian Symons

  Consider it, though. How would A Brownjohn do this? Nothing easier. Obtain gelignite, fit it to vacuum cleaner, cleaner switched on, up goes she. But suppose Susan used the cleaner first?

  Second idea. Clare often uses motor mower. Make ditto arrangement with it, simple enough. Mower and Clare vanish together. Yes?

  Or electric shock, but not in bathroom, played out. Do it through electric iron in kitchen, fix wire so that she touches it while she’s doing some washing? Think again, A Brownjohn. Not advisable.

  Why not? Too ingenious. A Brownjohn is known to be a bit of an inventor, always fiddling with gadgets. If Clare’s thoroughly shocked or blows up (joke) friends will say: ‘Ah ha, Arthur B plays with racing cars, invented a dishwasher, etc. He’s the man, needn’t look further.’ Somebody tells the police.

  Stick to old favourites then and make a note, you must use nothing original, nothing mechanical.

  Be honest with yourself, AB. You can write and you can think, but you’ve not going to do it.

  Safety valve.

  He finished the diary entry, which was less coherent than usual, and closed the book. But he went on thinking. He was precluded by natural dislike of shedding blood from anything that involved the use of an axe, hatchet or bludgeon. A gun might be clean and humane, but he neither possessed nor was skilled in using one. Drowning was ruled out by the fact that Clare had a firm objection to going in or upon the water.

  The longer Arthur thought, the more he became convinced that he would be wise to stick to those old favourites, fire or poison. He considered, as he had often done before, the Rouse and Armstrong cases, and the Croydon murders.

  He may have been drawn to Rouse and Armstrong by the similarity between their situations and his own. Rouse had tried to escape the burden of a bigamous marriage and not merely two but several establishments, as well as a number of maintenance orders, by setting fire to his car with a body in it that he hoped would be identified as his own. The body was thought to be that of a tramp whom he had met. Like Arthur, Rouse had wanted to start a new life, but what absurd mistakes he had made! Letting himself be seen climbing out of a ditch after setting fire to the car, and then going straight off to one of his girlfriends. Arthur would never have been so foolish. The case fascinated him, but he had to acknowledge that even if he could have brought himself to kill a completely harmless stranger, the result would not really be what he wanted. It was true that he could simply disappear, but the truth was that he did not fancy being Easonby Mellon for ever. When you came right down to it, he had to admit that he wanted the money of which Clare had so unfairly deprived him by keeping it in her personal account, and if he wanted the money Arthur Brownjohn could not disappear.

  He considered Armstrong, the timid little solicitor who had borne so meekly his wife’s rebukes about his smoking and drinking, and had killed her by the use of arsenic. Here again he was struck at every re-reading by the stupid mistakes that had led to Armstrong’s downfall. With his objective successfully achieved, what must he do but try to poison a rival solicitor! And the carelessness of leaving a packet of arsenic in one of his pockets was really inexcusable. If only he had been content with a death that had been certified as heart disease, if only he had not been subject to the hubris that seems so often to affect the successful poisoner. The Croydon poisonings showed what could be done by somebody whose feelings remained firmly under control. Here, in 1929, three members of a united family had died, one probably by arsenic put into his beer, another by arsenic in her soup, the third by arsenic in her tonic. Nobody had been tried, let alone convicted, for these crimes, and – this was the really vital point that must be latched on to – the first two deaths had been certified as due to natural causes and there would have been no trouble at all had not the mark been overstepped by a third death. Again, there was no question of Arthur’s going on from one person to another in such an unreasonable, and as it might almost be called orgiastic manner. And there was one decisive point in favour of poison. In both the Armstrong and Croydon cases the doctors concerned had been friendly with the families, and had therefore been readier than they might otherwise have been to give a death certificate. At this point Arthur thought of old Doctor Hubble, and a warm delicious sense came to him that his problem was solved. He made a further diary note:

  ‘The modus operandi is ordered by the means that are to hand.’ He admired the phrase, which seemed to him like a maxim of Napoleon’s. Doctor Hubble was the means and the modus operandi would therefore be poison, although it would probably be desirable to avoid arsenic. When Arthur had settled this he felt much easier in his mind. He donned the clothing of Major Easonby Mellon, and went to meet Miss Patricia Parker.

  ‘Your secretary’s out again,’ she said when she arrived.

  ‘Yes. The fact is you’re rather a special case, Pat. I’ve got half a dozen names here, and I can give you them if you like, but frankly they’re not good enough for you.’ She did not comment on this, but smoothed her skirt over her knees. ‘You said you weren’t working?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘I’m wondering if we can’t find some crackerjack job.’

  ‘I can find a job easily enough. I thought this was a matrimonial agency, not an employment bureau.’

  ‘So it is.’ The Major laughed heartily. ‘But you present a problem we don’t often meet, Pat. I’ll be frank and say I find you damned attractive personally. I was hoping you’d come to lunch with me again today.’

  She looked at him and said, with complete self-possession, ‘Are you married?’

  It was an automatic reflex that made him say he was not. She nodded, and they went to lunch at the little place round the corner. This time she did not comment on the service, drank her share of the wine, and accepted the brandy that he offered to follow it. When he murmured over the brandy about somewhere he knew, she interrupted him. ‘Your flat?’

  Such brusqueness slightly disconcerted him. ‘As a matter of fact it’s a hotel. Very discreet, I can assure you.’ She simply nodded again.

  Over lunch he had been making a reassessment of her, and had come to the conclusion that she did not want to get married but simply wanted a man. Such a phenomenon was not unknown to him, and her conduct in the hotel room (it was the same hotel to which he had taken Joan and other ladies) confirmed this hypothesis. They stayed there until six o’clock, and he reflected at one point that the things she had refused to do for Parker must have been very unusual. Perhaps there was no Parker, he thought sleepily, perhaps she had been telling lies, but what did it matter? He closed his eyes, and opened them again to find her unmistakably ready for another bit of nonsense.

  ‘You’re finished.’

  ‘No no,’ he said gallantly. Major Easonby Mellon was never finished. It could not be denied however that he was distinctly exhausted when they parted, and not wholly sorry when she said that she had to be out of London for three or four days and would get in touch with him when she returned. When he got back to Joan he ate the enormous meal she had cooked and then fell asleep in the armchair watching television. That night in bed she dug him in the ribs.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, E.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘All these books now, they keep saying there’s no romance in being an agent, but I’ll tell you what, there’s no romance in being an agent’s wife. It’s just plain dull.’

  He did not reply. He was thinking about being married to Pat, which might be exhausting but would also be exciting. Then he began to think about Doctor Hubble.

  Doctor Hubble was a hairy man. Hair sprouted from his ears, nostrils and wrists and, although he must have been sixty years old, a thick thatch of glossy black hair lay on his head. He was big, red-faced, and had the reputation of being still a very useful golfer and a hard drinker. Tales of his going round to see patients when he was so drunk that he was hardly able to walk straight or write a prescription were legion, and Arthur had had confirmation of this on on
e occasion when Clare had influenza and Hubble came round to see her reeking of whisky. It was generally believed that he had once diagnosed acute appendicitis as a bit of a stitch from too much exercise, and that the patient had died. Clare liked him because she had known him for years and he was, as she said, a proper doctor who came when you asked him and had a real bedside manner, not like these young whippersnappers who just looked at you and then prescribed some drug or other. Doctor Hubble was a great man for a good old-fashioned bottle of tonic. His capacity for the part Arthur meant him to play was confirmed as soon as they began to talk in Hubble’s sitting-room.

  ‘You’ll have a drop of the hard stuff.’ He barely waited for assent before pouring two liberal tots of whisky. ‘And if you take my advice you won’t spoil it with soda.’ Arthur, who did not much like whisky and preferred soda to plain water, meekly took what he was given. ‘You said this wasn’t a professional visit.’

  ‘I owe you an apology.’ Hubble stared at him. ‘About Wypitklere.’

  ‘Wipe it clear? Oh, you mean that stuff for the car. Your invention.’ He laughed as if this were a joke. ‘Tell you the truth I haven’t used it yet. Slipped my mind.’

  ‘That’s good. I’ve discovered a small flaw in the formula, it doesn’t work quite as it should on certain types of glass. I don’t think you should use it. Perhaps you’d let me have it back.’

  The doctor rooted about uncertainly in a desk that was filled to overflowing with papers. Then he shouted for his wife, a thin wispy woman whose pallor provided a strong contrast to his abundant vitality. ‘Know where that whatyemaycallit is, tin of stuff Brownjohn here gave me a few days ago? Hope I haven’t given it to someone for rheumatism.’ He roared with laughter.

  The tin proved to be in the garage. When it was back in Arthur’s possession Hubble suggested another drink.

  ‘Thank you. Not quite so strong this time.’ He saw with pleasure that the doctor gave himself another generous measure. ‘There’s something else I wanted to mention. I’m a little worried about Clare.’ He launched into an exaggerated description of the gastric symptoms from which Clare said she suffered. ‘I wondered if you could come round and give her a check-up without, you know, mentioning that I’d been in to see you.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Let’s see, today’s Friday. I’m playing a round on Sunday morning. What say I look in afterwards, we met in the street and you asked me in for a drink before lunch? Don’t suppose there’s anything in it, but no harm in taking a looksee.’ Arthur assented. A visit after Hubble had played a round of golf and had several drinks in the club-house should be ideal.

  A hasty study of medical manuals had left him undecided about what poison it would be advisable to use, but he carried out these preliminary moves with what seemed to him considerable ingenuity. Clare used a tooth powder, not paste. Arthur had bought a jar of this and spent some of the time in replacing about half of the contents with powdered nux vomica. The change in appearance was almost undetectable, and on Friday night he substituted his jar for the one in the bathroom cabinet. The results were gratifying. Clare was slightly sick in the middle of the night and sick again in mid-morning. The beauty of this device was that he could end the sickness whenever he wished by replacing the harmless tooth powder. He did this on Saturday night, and then put back the powder containing nux vomica again on Sunday morning. Clare was sick during the morning, and when Hubble arrived she was ready to be examined and to tell him her symptoms in detail.

  The doctor was upstairs with her for thirty minutes. When he came down he said, ‘I’ll take that drop of the hard stuff you were offering.’ His eyes were slightly bloodshot. He drank half the whisky at a gulp. ‘That’s better.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Wrong eating.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Hubble glared at him. ‘I said, wrong eating. All these filthy health foods. I’ve told her so.’

  ‘But I thought they were good for you.’

  ‘They may be good for some people.’ Hubble sounded as though he were referring to Trobriand islanders. ‘Not for her. She needs red meat. What did she have last night? Grated stuff.’

  ‘I had it too.’

  The doctor ignored that. ‘I’ve put her on a high protein diet.’

  ‘But there’s nothing serious?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  Clare was more indignant than upset, but small steaks and chops made their appearance on the table and her attacks of sickness ceased. A brilliant idea had come to Arthur about the modus operandi – he did not care, even in his mind, to use the word poison. It had been given him by Hubble and it was especially gratifying because it fulfilled the maxim that out of defeat shall come forth victory. The ingredient in Wypitklere that had produced such drastic effects on glass was zincalium, a derivative of a metallic acid based on zinc. Would it not be possible to use zincalium as the modus operandi? On Tuesday morning Arthur left to take up his mid-week residence at Clapham. He left Clare the tooth powder containing nux vomica so that she might be satisfyingly sick in his absence. Perhaps she would call in Hubble, perhaps not. It really didn’t matter. When he returned next weekend he hoped to resolve the Clare situation for good.

  Chapter Six

  Wrong Effect

  Nobody loves a poisoner. In the long lists of means of murder it would probably be true to say that poison is the method most generally abhorred and despised. People will express sympathy with axe-killers, stranglers, gunmen, even with those who chop their victims’ bodies into bits, but not with poisoners. Yet Armstrong was thought of by acquaintances as an agreeable little man, and Crippen was in many respects amiable. Some poisoners like Neill Cream are far from agreeable characters, but many more are commonplace, emotionally undeveloped people who find themselves in a position from which murder by poison seems the only, or at least the simplest, way out. Once this has been decided the controls operating in their everyday life cease to be effective. So Arthur stopped thinking about Clare as a person at all, and managed to regard her as solely an object to be removed.

  He spent a large part of his three days at Clapham reading about the effects of zincalium and deciding on the best way of using it. ‘If zincalium is used with sufficient care and cunning for homicidal purposes we may get a succession of mild attacks of the acute symptoms with remissions,’ he read in one textbook. There was no time for that, but happily the tooth powder should serve the same purpose of providing a case history which stretched back a little way in time. If there was one aspect of the affair that gave him satisfaction it was the ingenuity of using a preliminary emetic that was perfectly harmless. Had that been done before? He thought not. He was pleased to learn that zincalium was not an exceptionally painful poison. It was accompanied by ‘nausea, vomiting, general uneasiness and depression,’ but did not cause a burning sensation or have the drastic effects of some other metallic poisons. It would have been pleasant to use a drug that caused Clare to cease upon the midnight with no pain, thereby avoiding all unpleasantness, but one must use the means that are to hand. What really disturbed him was the possibility that he might not be able to distil enough zincalium out of the Wypitklere to achieve the desired result. He distilled the zincalium in the kitchen at Elm Drive while Joan looked on, fascinated.

  ‘E, whatever are you doing?’

  ‘Distilling this, my dear.’

  ‘I see that, but what’s it for?’

  He looked up. ‘You’ve heard me talk about Flexner in the department?’

  ‘The expert in all those terrible germs and poisons. But I thought he was down at that place, what is it, Porton?’

  ‘Most of the time he is, but he’s been in the office recently, advising the Chief about disposing of a rather awkward customer, a Rumanian. He’s given some advice which the Chief is slightly doubtful about, and I’m just checking one of his conclusions. You know what the Chief’s like. He thinks someone from the other side may have got at Flexner.’


  He poured the mixture into a beaker. ‘If everything’s in order there should be a sediment at the bottom and a colourless liquid at the top.’ He watched the sediment settle with satisfaction, strained off the liquid above it, and poured it away.

  ‘Is that the way it should be? That powder?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘So Flexner hasn’t been got at?’

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘The Chief knows he can rely on you, doesn’t he?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not a bit of it. He’s probably got somebody else checking my conclusions. It may even be that this bit of research is a blind, and that we’re going to use quite a different method to deal with our Rumanian friend. But if the Chief hasn’t been fooling me there is enough of this powder here to kill a hundred people.’

  Here he was being optimistic, for the truth was that the textbooks he had consulted were extremely vague about the amount of zincalium needed. He would have to experiment, that was all. After the powder had dried he divided it carefully, putting the larger quantity into one envelope and the smaller into another. He sealed both packets and put the two of them into one big Manila envelope. Shades of Armstrong! But there was this difference, that he would burn the envelope immediately after use. No tell-tale traces would be found in his pockets.

  ‘A hundred people. Oh, E, I wish you could get out of it.’ Joan was almost in tears. He stroked her hair.

  ‘Sometimes I wish I could too. But once you’re in the service, you’re in it for life.’

  DIARY

  Sunday May 18

  2 am. Sitting at my desk. Peaceful. Just been down to see Clare. She is sleeping quietly, one hand clutching the coverlet. Stood looking at her, all colour gone from her face leaving it like milk. She seemed very young, I felt sorry for her. But the person I have to feel sorry for is myself. I have ruined everything.