by Richard Hull
Murder Isn’t Easy
Richard Hull
About the Author
Richard Hull was born Richard Henry Sampson in London on 6 September 1896 to Nina Hull and S.A. Sampson, and attended Rugby School, Warwickshire. When the First World War broke out, his uncle helped him secure a commission in the Queen Victoria’s Rifles. At the end of the war, after three years in France, he returned to England and worked as an accountant.
His first book The Murder of My Aunt, written under the pseudonym Richard Hull, was published in 1934. The novel, set in Dysserth, Welshpool, is known for its humour, narrative charm and unexpected twists. Hull moved into full-time writing in 1934 and wrote a further fourteen novels over the span of his career.
During the Second World War, he became an auditor with the Admiralty in London, a position he retained for eighteen years until he retired in 1958. While he stopped writing detective fiction after 1953, Hull continued to take an interest in the affairs for the Detection Club, assisting Agatha Christie with her duties as President. He died in 1973.
Also By Richard Hull
The Murder of My Aunt
Keep It Quiet
Murder Isn’t Easy
The Ghost It Was
The Murderers of Monty
Excellent Intentions/Beyond Reasonable Doubt
And Death Came Too
My Own Murderer
The Unfortunate Murderer
Left Handed Death
Last First
Until She Was Dead
A Matter of Nerves
Invitation to an Inquest
The Martineau Murders
This edition published in 2018 by Ipso Books
Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
Originally published in Great Britain in 1936 by Faber and Faber
Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA
Copyright © Richard Hull, 1936
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Author’s Note
It need hardly be said that all the characters in this book are fictitious. I have however been nervous lest the name “NeO-aD” should resemble that of some actual organization. So far as I can tell there is no company or firm of that or any similar name, but if there is, no reference to it is intended.
Richard Hull
Part I
Design And Plot
Chapter One
There is a limit to the extent to which the folly of any man can be allowed to ruin a business, and beyond that limit Paul Spencer has certainly gone.
But first I suppose I must explain what our business is, because its very nature makes it peculiarly easy for one man, by pure incompetence and obstinacy, by an absolute refusal to listen to reason, to render entirely useless everything that is done by his colleagues, however well they may work.
Ours is not an old established business, nor is it commonly classed as one of the learned professions. Nevertheless, for the promotion of trade, nothing is more important. We are in fact Advertising Agents—a profession which many people are apt to look down upon. They fall into the common error of thinking that it is clever to sneer at an advertisement; they consider that the proper thing to do is to laugh at them, and they hint that they themselves could write very much better ones.
I only wish they would try before they make that sort of statement! They would soon find out that it is not just a trick of style, a parrot-like reproduction of stereotyped phrases, but literary work requiring the most careful thought. Why, in writing an advertisement every comma is important!—and can you say that of a novel?
Then think of the artistic side of it. Not only have your words to be illustrated—and it is the production department of the agency that produces the idea, though perhaps you may hire someone to do the actual mechanical process of drawing it; in fact we have a man called Thomas permanently employed to do lettering and what we call lay-outs—but you have to consider the kind of type you will use, and the size of the type, to weigh up the pros and cons of which word shall receive the maximum emphasis, of exactly what arrangements and spacing of the words will be most certain to attract the eye of the public, carry conviction, and produce action. Not an easy matter I assure you.
But before I go on to demonstrate why Paul Spencer must be got rid of, perhaps I had better say something of the history and organization of NeO-aD (NeO-aD NeVeR NoDs is our slogan). It was originally my idea. I had studied advertising for a long while and I saw just where all the other agencies were wrong. They failed to study the sales problem of the client; their methods were not sufficiently modern, not thoroughly scientific. I had thought, of course, of attaching myself to one of the existing organizations and by exercising my personality, gradually grafting competency on to it, but so far as I could see, in all of them there would be too much deadweight to shift. So I decided to start my own company.
That very word “company” was the cause of my first mistake. I thought that it was necessary for a company to have capital, and that was a thing I had not got. Moreover, I thought that there was a great deal to be done by the secretary of a company, and so I got hold of Barraclough. Of course now I know that capital is really quite unnecessary. You just create some shares and some goodwill to go on the other side of the balance sheet and on you go. You can always borrow money somehow—besides one should never let oneself be kept down by want of cash. As for Barraclough’s duties as secretary of the company, so far as I can make out he fills in one return a year for Somerset House. And for that I have saddled myself with having to give away a third of the profits that I earn!
Of course, as he is a director of NeO-aD, we do make Barraclough do something. He keeps the accounts for instance and arranges the contracts with the newspapers, what we call “space-buying”, and looks after the general running of the office. Still we could have hired a clerk at two pounds a week to do that.
Barraclough, then, was my first mistake. My second was Paul Spencer. However well I might be able to design an advertising campaign, there had to be a client for whom to design it. I wanted therefore someone to go and find business. Someone who would get himself known, or rather who could get my work known, who could make people listen to him, in short who was a good salesman of the idea that NeO-aD should be appointed the agents of reputable companies.
After that all he would have to do would be to get their consent to the plans we proposed and keep in touch with them and keep them happy—take the directors and sales-managers out to lunch occasionally and so on—work which would take time that I should not be able to spare from my productive duties, but which surely was easy for an energetic, blustering type of man with plenty of personality and, of course, a reasonable amount of tact.
I must admit that Spencer seemed exactly the kind of man for whom I was looking.
I had known him for some time. He was a good-looking man of a fair type, rather fat perhaps, but that gave him an appearance (entirely erroneous as a matter of fact) of being good-tempered. He seemed to have plenty of life, plenty of bustle. He was, I knew, a little—how shall I put it?—coarse. He would never take ‘No’ for an answer, I was aware, but on the whole that seemed to me to be an advantage rather than the reverse. When once he saw a chance of getting the handling of a campaign into the office, I thought that he would never rest until the order
was booked. Strange how when thinking of Spencer one falls into the jargon of salesmanship!
Up to a point I was right. I must admit that he is energetic, that he quite frequently brings in work. But what I had not realized was his incredible tactlessness. He cannot keep a client. Sooner or later he always goes and quarrels with him—generally sooner. Nor is he in the least persuasive. I supply him with ideas which any client must immediately accept if they were put to him in the right way, and he comes back not only without having convinced the man, but actually leaving him disgruntled. I have even known Spencer bring back alternative suggestions! And that brings me to another trouble I have with him.
I thought when we started that our respective spheres were clearly defined. Spencer was to keep his eyes open and find work. I was to do the work, and Barraclough was to make himself useful where he could—I am almost tempted to say, if he could. But I never expected to find Spencer making suggestions as to how a campaign should be prepared, any more than I thought that it would be necessary for me to do the contact work of the agency. Yet from the very first that is exactly what he did. To begin with I listened patiently enough to the amazing nonsense he talked, but after a while this began to pall. Besides one can point out the error in something which is nearly but not quite right, but it is impossible to argue about something which is merely fantastic. I began to find it harder and harder to counter his amateur suggestions for a selling plan, for, remember, he was always very able when it came to an argument. He never really had a case at all, but he always knew how to put it. Nothing would ever convince him that he would do very much better to mind his own business.
“My dear Latimer,” he said to me the very first time I suggested it to him, “but it is my business.”
As I write I can still remember vividly the confident tone of his voice. He was, of course, trying to make me lose my temper, that was one of his tricks, and he was very well aware that I hated sentences beginning ‘My dear Latimer’. Besides, he generally used to call me Nicholas in those days; he only used my surname when he wanted to annoy me. However, I was determined to keep calm, and so instead of the direct negative which was the only real answer to the statement, I asked him in what way he thought it was his business.
“Your share, you know,” I went on, “was, I thought, confined to getting work to do—just that, no more, except taking a third of the profits.”
I could see that last remark had stung him. He must have known even then that he was not worth to the company what he took out of it.
He flushed a bit, but a little thing like that would not stop Spencer arguing. He even followed up my point, pretending to misunderstand it.
“Precisely, and I want to see that third as large as possible. Consequently it is very much my business to see that when I go to the Flaik-Foam people” (the campaign in question) “I have got something to show them which they are likely to take.”
“I entirely agree. But what I am trying to suggest—I am afraid I cannot have put it clearly enough—is that it is my business to produce work which they will take; yours merely to go and show it to them.”
“And you think with that I have only to go in order to conquer?”
I shrugged my shoulders. There was no need to put it so crudely as that! But that was Paul all over; always trying to put one in the wrong! It was unnecessary to imply that I was conceited. Besides, it was not true.
Seeing that he had hurt my feelings, Spencer shifted his ground cleverly.
“Let me try to explain on your own lines. You always tell me—and I quite see your point—that you cannot produce good work unless you are convinced of the merits of the product. You’re always preaching ‘conviction’ to me. Fairly enough, I own. Well, I’m the same. I can no more go and sell that caption ‘One Flaik-Foam Makes the Bath a Joy’ to old Macnair than fly. It’s too long and it’s got too many capitals. You see, I am not convinced. Sorry,” he added carelessly, in a voice that expressed no sorrow at all, “but there it is.”
I think it is very greatly to my credit that I refrained from striking him there and then. And what was the result of all this obstruction? An absolute impasse! He, if you please, refused categorically to go down to the Flaik-Foam people with what he was pleased to describe as second-class work and I, naturally enough, refused to draw up another campaign to be the butt of his ignorant criticisms until he had at least attempted to sell that one.
Of course it would have been taken. I had recommended the use of various of the women’s papers—Woman and Beauty, Wife and Home and Woman’s Journal if I remember right. Besides which there was a rather daring suggestion of the Royal and one or two other magazines; and the copy was some of the most arresting I had ever written. Barraclough had added a few figures and some rather good notes about circulation. He did that sort of thing quite well at times.
But as Spencer refused to take it along to Macnair there seemed no chance of its ever being seen. After a fortnight I hit on the bright idea of sending it all by post and explaining that Mr. Spencer very much regretted that he had been unable to bring it down himself as he had been in bed with a cold.
When it was returned without comment I was very surprised until I learnt that Spencer had been down the day before my campaign reached them and explained that I had done some work, but that as I (if you please) was not satisfied with what had been produced, he must ask Macnair to wait another week. Of course Macnair had said that Flaik-Foam must be put on the market at once and he could wait no longer.
I often see the Flaik-Foam advertisements. They take quite a lot of space in the daily papers—Sketch and Mirror chiefly. Not a bad alternative to the women’s papers, but the ‘copy’ strikes me as very poor. If only Spencer had been more sensible they might be using our copy instead.
Chapter Two
After that, of course, relations were a little strained. Not that openly there was any breach. To all outward appearances things went on in much the same way as before. There was so much to be done and we were so often bound to work together that it was impossible to do anything except work with external unity.
But naturally I could not forget. Every time I saw one of the Flaik-Foam advertisements I was reminded of what Spencer had caused us to lose. Each time I read the indifferent work that was being put in the press for them, my fingers itched to improve it. Moreover, though I am very slow to take offence, when once I do, I never forget.
Still there was, as I say, plenty to occupy me during business hours. Not that I ever spend a very great number of hours at the office. Very often I find it possible to concentrate more easily in the seclusion of my own flat. Besides, mine was entirely productive brain work in which, if you try to increase the quantity, you only decrease the quality. The routine work was no part of my business, a truism which, curiously enough, I could never get Barraclough to see. He was always in a perpetual state of flutter about dates when various journals went to press, and whether our blocks and stereos would be ready in time. I never could convince him that any paper will always really wait a few days. Barraclough, you see, was always a nervous, fidgety little man. I have often noticed that these figure men are very narrow-minded, very easily bullied by a printed statement that copy must be received by such and such a date. In short, slaves to the clock and the calendar. I flatter myself that my artistic spirit has raised me far above such pedantry.
But while Barraclough was as irritating as an alarm clock (and rather like one in the way he was constantly going off into squeaks about having blocks for the Chemist and Druggist by ten a.m. on the twentieth of the month) and so hindering me from turning out my very best work, Spencer was always trying to make extra work for me. I think he had a vague idea that if he kept me busy, I might forget Flaik-Foam. Of course he was wrong, and particularly wrong in the way he tried to extort work from me.
It was some weeks later that he came into my room, carrying a long type-written memorandum. It was one of his tiresome tricks that instead of saying anythin
g, he had it typed, with the result that I never could get Miss Wyndham to do any of my work. He said—and it was a remark worthy of Spencer’s tact—that it was typed to make sure that I should not forget it this time, an allegation in the form of a sneer which was most uncalled for. I had just once forgotten one thing. At least, he said I forgot it. To this day I am not at all sure that I had ever been told.
That, however, is beside the point—my memory is really excellent. To return to this particular memorandum. It was headed ‘The Greyfields Canning Company’.
“Greyfields?” I asked. “Where on earth is Greyfields?”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. It’s in Essex as a matter of fact.”
I laid the paper down. “But it does matter. One must know everything.”
“Suppose, then, you read what is there first.”
Ostentatiously I pulled out a scribbling block and wrote on it, murmuring the words aloud as I did so.
“Greyfields. Somewhere in Essex. Where.” I drew a line across the sheet and added brightly. “I can put down all the extra points I shall want to know as they come to me and we can discuss them all afterwards. Meanwhile, I’m rather busy–––”
“Oh, no, you’re not. You were only daydreaming, you know, when I came in.”
By bad luck I had no papers in front of me and Paul Spencer’s entrance had so completely broken my chain of thought that I could not remember what was in my mind. I know it was some extremely original plan for linking ourselves up with moderate-sized businesses which looked like growing into large ones, but it had entirely gone from my brain, I fear, for ever.
Reluctantly I picked up the paper and started to read it. It appeared that some people were thinking of starting a canning company in some remote corner of Essex. The whole thing was entirely in the air, but Spencer was so convinced that it would come off, that he wanted all sorts of things done as a pure speculation. He wanted Barraclough, for instance, to go into the figures of the proposed venture and get an idea of what capital they would want, and how much profit they might reasonably expect to make on each tin, so that we could recommend an appropriation of possible profits to be spent on advertising, so much for strawberries, and so much for peas, and so much for new potatoes—which was to be a speciality.