Murder Isn't Easy

by Richard Hull

  “Well, really, Latimer. Considering that at last it really is your turn to do something, I do think you might keep awake.”

  It was no good. I motioned him out of the room with a wave of my hand, but I could not recapture my thoughts. The opportunity was gone. It was extremely unlikely to return. Not that I could get Spencer to understand what he had done—I could not even get him to believe that I had not been asleep. Nor could I discover why he had come in. He just, he said, wanted to see what I was doing. To my mind it was nothing more than downright spying on my activities.

  However, there it was. It was no good trying to go on writing headlines now, so I began to think of another aspect of the problem—namely, the illustrations of the copy I should write. Now I freely agree that generally the copy ought to come first and the artwork after, but here had I been prevented from doing my work, and there was Thomas with absolutely nothing to do, eating his rather expensive head off. Even if we did not eventually use them it would be a good thing if he started to do a few sketches. It would, at any rate, stop him drawing pictures of Miss Wyndham, his favourite occupation in his spare time. Not that Thomas was anything of a portrait painter—he always left out the rabbit-like effect of her front teeth which was her only real characteristic—but I believe he hoped one day to improve that branch of his work. Anyhow, I should have had no objection in theory to his flattering the poor girl—she probably got very little of that sort of thing—had it not been that her head was so easily turned, and that during each portrait period she started making even more mistakes than usual in her typing, and actually becoming so conceited as to be insolent.

  So then, it would be an excellent plan all round for Thomas to have something to do, even if it was of no practical value. He could draw thumb-nail sketches of rain beating against a car covered with Galatz-si, the occupants of which could see out easily. For that matter he could design the lettering of the actual word to be used in all advertising. It should start with a bold round G, and all be abundantly simple and clear to carry out the effect of seeing clearly. Then he might try the effect of a steaming bathroom with two looking-glasses—one clouded and one clear. Wasn’t there a suitable quotation from Hamlet in that connection? Something about “Look upon this mirror and on that?”

  I went out to the outer office, partly to tell the office-boy to read up Hamlet during his lunch time and see if he could find the line I meant (but perhaps a Shakespearian concordance would be better and simpler. There might be other and equally good quotations) and partly to tell Thomas what I wanted to do.

  To my amazement Thomas actually started to raise objections.

  “But, sir, you have always told me never to draw in the air, so to speak. Never to start before you, but always to subordinate the art-work to the headline.”

  This was all the more annoying because it was perfectly true. On several occasions I had had to explain to Thomas that his work must be adjusted to mine, not mine to his.

  “This is the exception that proves the rule,” I answered, feeling at the time that it was not a perfectly satisfactory reply. “You see, we are in a great hurry, and there is no reason why you should not start. It is perfectly true that some of your work may be wasted, but I shall probably be able to fit in a great deal of it—and very likely we can find some use for the rest later on.”

  Still, however, Thomas very strangely hesitated. I have never really liked him very much, but before I had always found him at any rate well disciplined. He had never shown the least signs of having any tiresome artistic temperament, perhaps because he was not really much of an artist, so that it was all the more peculiar that he should be difficult over this. Looking back on it, it is strange that I did not simply give my orders and leave it at that. I did not normally allow Thomas to argue, but on this one occasion I did. It must have been some peculiar but correct instinct which caused me to do so. For if I had not, I should never have found out how treacherously Spencer was plotting behind my back to ruin the whole agency.

  The discovery came about this way.

  Finding that Thomas was continuing to be reluctant, I pointed out to him that he had no other work on hand.

  “Now have you?” I asked.

  “No, oh no.” The first negative had been too slow, the second too fast. At the same time I saw his eye glancing towards a rather bulky folder which lay on the top of a filing cabinet. Something, instinct again I suppose, made me pick it up and look at the contents.

  And what did I find in it? I really think that nobody could have guessed. At first I could not make out myself what it was. Judging by Thomas’s blushes I thought that I had caught him out doing some work for himself during office hours, but gradually I saw the full perfidy. It was a complete campaign, so far as the art-work was concerned, for this wretched Greyfields Company—a company, mind you, which was not, and probably never would be, in existence, and which we had definitely decided to have nothing whatever to do with! Or at least I had so decided, which comes to the same thing.

  But here were labels for tins, and a design for a trade-mark—a rather dreadful affair intended to symbolize the name, apparently—and elaborate coloured pictures of strawberries and plums and green peas. There was one remarkable piece, which must have taken hours to design, of a mixed salad of vegetables, carrots and beans and beetroots and tomatoes, and goodness knows what else. What it was meant to be used for, I had no idea, but the jéjeune efforts that were being made without my guiding hand, made me laugh out loud. Probably that was the best punishment that I could have devised for Thomas.

  Finally, on the floor I saw a roll of paper which I had not noticed before and, thinking that it was quite time that I investigated everything, I picked that up too. It proved to be the prize exhibit of all. It included the name and the trade-mark, and a bunch of the most improbable looking peaches and cherries—mixed, if you please, and far too large and too perfect to be credible—and some very amateur wording about Greyfields Gorgeous Fruit. I wonder they had not put ‘Grapes’ to keep up the alliteration. As I unrolled it, it seemed endless.

  “And for what is this monstrosity designed?” I asked.

  “The sides of buses.”

  “Indeed. And who told you to waste your time doing this sort of rubbish?”

  “Mr. Spencer.”

  “Oh, indeed. And since when has your art-work—if you can call this art”—I surveyed a bloated turnip—“been under the control of Mr. Spencer?”

  “Well, Mr. Spencer said ‘do it in your spare time when there is nothing else to do’. He said that some of it might be wasted, but that we should probably be able to fit in most of it, and that very likely we could find–––”

  “There is no need to be impertinent. I am quite sure Mr. Spencer never used the same words as I did. Meanwhile, I shall take—this.” I gathered up all the rubbish on which Thomas had no doubt wasted a considerable amount of time, and swept it together with a contemptuous gesture. Some of it, naturally, got a little crumpled, but it was just as well that Thomas should know that all his work was going to be scrapped. Of course, I was not going to let anything leave NeO-aD as agency work which was not supervised by me. Thomas should have known that.

  “And now ...” I was about to end.

  “The new campaign.”

  I am not quite sure whether Thomas intended to be impertinent, but he looked so innocent that I thought it more dignified to pretend that he was not parodying my favourite headline, so I contented myself by looking at him severely, and going on:

  “You will get on with your proper work—that which I have given you to do.”

  I wasted very little time on Spencer. I walked straight in to his room, and piece by piece held up the shocking stuff prepared under his direction, and at each I laughed loudly and easily. They were really funny. Then with one powerful gesture I tore them all in two, except the bus streamer, and threw them at him. I should have done the same to that too, if Spencer had not snatched it from me.

&nb
sp; With that I walked out again without saying a word. I should have liked to have destroyed them all, but to get that last one back would have meant an undignified scuffle. I have never seen anything to equal Spencer’s face, not even Thomas’s drawings of beetroots and tomatoes. He was, to use a cliché, livid and speechless with fury. If I had not gone out I am sure that he would have hit me; so, very wisely, I went.

  Of course, it was impossible to get on with any more work that day, and despite my desire to hurry as to the work on Galatz-si, there was nothing for it but to go home and try to work there. There I could think in peace.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Think, yes. But in peace, no.

  For a while I tried to keep my thoughts away from the unpleasant subject of Spencer. I began, for instance, by looking up the quotation in Hamlet, but when I found that the passage referred to pictures and not to mirrors, I lost interest. It was just my luck that it should fail to fit.

  Then I made another determined effort to think about Galatz-si, but it was no good. I could not keep my mind off the subject. After all, I had tried every method of which I knew to get rid of Spencer and they had all failed. I had tried the direct method of voting him off the Board; I had suggested that he should go away and continue to draw his share of the profits; I had tried to arrange the finance to buy him out—in short, every legal method had been attempted. There remained only more drastic ones. One thing only was certain, I would not tolerate him a minute longer than I could help.

  But how?

  When you come to think of it, the chief reason why people of Spencer’s type live as long as they do, is the difficulty of getting rid of them. It isn’t easy. In the old days, of course, there would have been a duel and I should think that Spencer would have met his match before he came of age, or else learned to behave with more forbearance. But simple solutions of that kind being obviously out of the question, it became necessary to use one’s brain.

  First of all the weapon. That was quite obvious—indeed I wonder that I had not thought of it more definitely before. Tonescu’s crystals, naturally. They were poisonous, they had been thrust into our hands, so to speak, so that there was no difficulty in getting them or accounting for their presence. As I have said before, my best ideas often come into my mind suddenly, completely formed, after a period when I have been thinking of them unconsciously for a long while.

  I suppose that really I had been making my plans to get rid of Spencer for a long while, without quite admitting to myself that I was doing so. It was, for instance, a stroke of genius to have refused ostentatiously to have in my possession any of the crystals, and then quietly to have taken a sample of them from the tin, which Barraclough had. By that means I should be able to call Barraclough as a witness, if it were necessary, and he would be bound to say that I had none. I had taken care to put on gloves when I took the sample, but even if my fingerprints were found on the tin, there had been at least one occasion when I had quite innocently handled it, namely when Tonescu first brought them to us.

  Then, too, I had taken care to see that they would dissolve readily and quickly in tea, as well as water, as it was in tea that I designed to give them. That was an experiment that I had carried out at home, and certainly they dissolved readily enough, but if by any chance Spencer felt any of them when stirring his tea with his spoon, he would be almost certain to think that they were just sugar. There would be nothing there to warn him, nor was there any particular smell. As to taste, I could not say. I had with very great bravery sipped one tiny drop, and so far as I could make out there was no very strong flavour, but more than one drop even I would not risk. Well, Spencer, as I well knew, generally waited until his tea was almost cold, and then swallowed it in one rather vulgar gulp, two habits which had frequently distressed me in the past, but now would both be of the greatest use to me.

  As to the method of putting it into his tea, that would be perfectly simple. Every afternoon at half-past four to the minute, punctuality being one of her few virtues, Miss Wyndham would go in to Barraclough with three cups of tea and three biscuits. Then she would come to me, and then finish with Spencer. It would be perfectly simple to ask her to get some piece of paper—indeed I frequently did use that moment to tell her to fetch something; it was so common an occurrence that Spencer had even protested about his tea cooling every afternoon in my office, which, as he drank it stone cold always, was obviously absurd, a mere pretext for a complaint simply because it was action that I had taken.

  With Miss Wyndham momentarily out of the way, I had only to drop in the crystals. There would be no need to touch the cup. After that for a while things would take their normal course. I had often noticed the different ways that the three of us reacted to so simple a thing as a cup of tea. Spencer, as I have said, would leave it neglected and then swallow it in one gulp, thus deriving no benefit or pleasure. Barraclough always made a point of not stopping for a second in whatever work he was doing—a pose of course. He would sip it while adding up a column of figures or reading through the draft of a letter. I usually stopped for a few minutes so as to allow the mild stimulant to exert its fullest influence in refreshing me, but then I daresay my brains had undergone as big a strain during the day as that of their two put together. Spencer, of course, used to grudge me those few minutes’ pause, but then he disapproved of everything I did.

  Before a quarter to five had struck, then, provided Tonescu’s crystals were adequate, all my troubles would be over. All those insults, those checks, those affronts, I had almost written ‘those humiliations’, only that Spencer never had enough brains to humiliate me, would be revenged. It was a very sweet thought.

  But before I could put it into operation, two more points had to be fully thought out, for I must be quite prepared for the subsequent enquiry into Spencer’s death. First, there must be nothing leading towards me, and secondly, there must be an alternative solution as to the way he died.

  As to the first point, it could again be subdivided into two. First, as it was known that I had none of the poison, I must not be found with any of it in my possession. To that end I would destroy all I had except what seemed essential for my purpose. I would carry it up there in an envelope which I could empty out into Spencer’s cup. Directly that was done I could drop the envelope out of the window. No one would think of looking in the street below, and in no time it would be swept away. I would even take the trouble to get hold of an envelope in no way connected with me. Perhaps the best thing would be to buy a cheap packet and throw away all but one.

  The second point was that I should have to find an excuse to get Miss Wyndham out of the room for a moment, but that, as I have already explained, was so usual as to require no comment at all.

  That point was easy. I really could see nothing to connect me at all with the event—except that we were known to quarrel. But for that matter Barraclough and he were on very nearly as bad terms. I toyed with the idea of so arranging things that the blame should rest on Barraclough, but ultimately I gave it up. For one thing, it would raise up an active enemy with personal reasons for enquiring into how Spencer died. For another, Barraclough would still be useful to me in doing the donkey work of NeO-aD.

  For very much the same reason I dismissed the idea of trying to implicate Thomas or Miss Wyndham. Besides, in their cases, though I imagine that they must naturally dislike Spencer, the motive would not be strong enough. But on every ground it would be very much better if I could make it appear that it was either suicide or an accident. Well, if people chose to think it was suicide, I did not mind, but knowing Spencer as I did, I could not think of any way of making it plausible. To commit suicide you must be unhappy, be conscious of some impending calamity or of having failed ignominiously; and Spencer was an incurable optimist with a hide like a rhinoceros. It would be much more likely that someone of my delicate artistic temperament would be driven to that. But Spencer—no!

  An accident then. Not a very easy thing to arrange, but not, I
felt, beyond my brain.

  The first point to work on was that there were actually in the drawer of Spencer’s table some of the crystals with which he would be poisoned. He had put them in a small flat tin, which had once contained that filthy and useless stuff, Flukil. I had seen him produce the tin when he asked Barraclough to let him have some to experiment with on the mirror, and I had noticed a day or so ago that the same tin had returned to his drawer. I remember at the time his resenting my comment on the appropriate use of a Flukil tin for poison.

  It might, then, be possible to slip in afterwards and upset the tin so that it would appear that he had accidentally knocked it over and in so doing upset some of the crystals into his cup? Not, I felt, a very convincing accident. Moreover, it had the highly undesirable effect of making me go into his room at a time when I would much rather not be present.

  I might of course go down very early in the morning—an unpleasant thought—or at some time when I could be sure that Spencer was out, and take the tin away, so that later on I could throw it through the ventilator which connected our two rooms. But again this did not seem convincing. Why, because there was a powder scattered on the floor, should it have got into his cup? No, that was no good at all.

  And then suddenly an idea began to dawn on me. If Spencer had taken Flukil once, he might take it again. Supposing that I bought a second tin of it and put it in his drawer in the place occupied by the old tin, which I would put at the other end of the drawer. Surely any one would deduce that the position of the two had been interchanged—I could myself without risk give evidence of where I had seen the tin containing the Galatz-si crystals—and that Spencer had intended to take some Flukil and had accidentally taken some Galatz-si.