And another thing too. It had to be an accident over something Myrtle had the habit of doing, so there’d be no questions why she happened to be doing such a thing for the first time and croaked over it. That went for taking a moonlight row one night down the river and getting drowned; Myrtle doesn’t take moonlight rows. And I was being so careful I meant it to go even for being run over by a car on a lonely road, just in case Myrtle hadn’t the habit of being on lonely roads where there was no room for her and a car to pass abreast.
In fact, I thought up so many things it mustn’t be, that it didn’t seem like there was going to be much room left for anything it could be. But I was wrong at that. There was one thing.
The way I worked around to it was this. What was Myrtle in the habit of doing that might turn out dangerous?
For a time all I could think of was that Myrtle does the cooking herself, on the nights Kate’s out, on a gas-stove; and from the number of guys who’ve bumped themselves off that way for the purpose you’d say that gas-stoves are more dangerous than a sawed-off shot-gun in the hands of Alvin Karpis. But I couldn’t think up any plan of putting Myrtle on the spot that way without so much preparation and schemozzle that anyone would see there was something phoney.
It was queer the way I found the idea. Myrtle and I were talking over our lunch and all the time I was trying to think up a safe way of croaking her. When she began giving me my orders for the afternoon I loved her so much I could have strangled her.
‘Oh, and you must find ten minutes to run down to the garage at the corner and get me a new tin of aviation petrol,’ she said. She meant gasoline, but she called it petrol; all these Limeys do. ‘And don’t forget to take the empty tin with you.—Do you hear, Eddie?’ she snapped out.
I nodded. I guess I looked a bit glassy-eyed. Myrtle had just reminded me that every fortnight she washed her hair in petrol. I certainly felt grateful. That was going to mean curtains.
Well, after that it was just a choice of ways. At first I tried to work out how I could make a lighted match drop in the basin. It would have to be when Myrtle was about half-way through fixing her hair, so she’d have her eyes shut and her head over the basin. I didn’t feel too good about burning Myrtle up, but it couldn’t be helped. Then I thought that if I could get the match to light at the right time, when there was plenty of vapour in the room, she wouldn’t burn up. She’d blow up. It would be a whole lot easier for her. That made me feel not so bad.
The time would be when she finished soaking her hair and was ready to dry it. I’d seen Myrtle on the job, and I knew she kept the towel on a glass shelf above the basin. When she was ready for it she just groped up with her hand; of course, she kept her eyes shut. That made me wonder whether I couldn’t put something under the towel which would light up when Myrtle pulled the towel away, but I couldn’t get it. I could fix the towel all right, and get out of the house and down the road a piece before she was ready to use it, but I couldn’t figure out how to make something light up that way and be sure there’d be no trace left when the dicks examined the room.
Then I thought, if Myrtle was going to blow up anyways, why not blow her up with something else and everyone would naturally think it was the gasoline?
I knew I was getting pretty near it; and so I was. The next minute I saw the whole thing.
I’d help Myrtle get started and pour the gasoline over her head for her, like she’d made me do once before. Then, when she’d got her eyes shut and wouldn’t be opening ’em again, I’d lay a bottle with some fulminate of mercury on top of the towel and beat it. When Myrtle pulled the towel down, the bottle would drop on the floor. The bathroom floor is tiled. Drop an ounce of fulminate of mercury on it, and no one in that room is going to stand as much chance as a drummer for electrically-heated pants in hell. Everyone would naturally think it was the gasoline; and if the plan went sour on me and Myrtle saw the bottle, she’d have no more idea about the little crystals inside it than a New York traffic cop has about the Einstein theory.
Well, I walked round that plan for days. I took it out for walks with me, combed its hair and gave it all the beauty treatment I could think up; and the more I looked at it, the sweller it seemed.
The fulminate of mercury was easy. I’d made it a dozen times over in the States. You can’t be a tough guy and work any kind of a racket without needing to know something about bombs and detonators and all that. All I needed was some mercury, some nitric acid, and some spirits of wine; and I guessed I could buy those pretty well anywhere, and no questions asked. All I had to say was I’m an experimental chemist, or an experimenter in chemistry.
That’s my plan, and I’m going out right now to buy those chemicals. Myrtle’s due to wash her hair again next Wednesday, and I’ve got to be ready for it. I’ve been taking a few dimes out of Myrtle’s purse lately, and I’ve still got a buck or two of my own left over. It looks like I’ve got enough now for the mercury and fixings, so I’m going out right this minute to get them.
And the reason I’ve written it all out this way is I find it easier to see if I’ve overlooked anything. I don’t aim to make any mistake like the guys who got caught, and setting it all out on paper makes it good and clear. I’ve read through what I’ve written, and I can’t see anything wrong. The bottle with the fulminate in will be blown into a million pieces. I’m not sure whether the detonation will explode the petrol too, but I reckon there should be enough flame to set off the vapour. Maybe I’ll put some sulphide of antimony and potassium chlorate in to make sure. Anyways, if that happens I guess the whole house may go up, and I aim to be well down the road when it does. I’d pass the word to Kate if I could, but I can’t. She’ll have to take her chance.
Well, two thousand bucks a year is going to be plenty nice. Maybe if I sell out it will be nicer still. But nicest of all will be to get clear of Myrtle and be my own guy again. Plenty nice that will be. Plenty.
They say over here the bull only needs to tap you on the shoulder once. But over here they can’t detain you as a material witness and then beat hell out of you till you come clean. Over here they’ve gotta prove it.
Yeah—I’ll say they’ve gotta prove it!
[Eddie Tuffun’s manuscript ends here.]
V
From The Daily Tribune, Wednesday, September 29th, 193–.
‘A shocking explosion occurred yesterday at a house in Beverley Road, East Sheen, completely wrecking the bathroom and the walls of the adjoining rooms. The occupant of the bathroom at the time was literally blown to bits. It is reported that …’
POSTSCRIPTUM
I cannot refrain from adding a few words to the manuscript begun by my late husband, to satisfy my sense of artistic neatness, although I shall put the whole thing in the fire before the ink is dry.
My husband made a fatal mistake in not doing the same thing. It may have helped him to clarify his ideas by putting them down on paper, but he should have burned the results sooner. For naturally, when I noticed him engaged so prodigiously in an exercise so unusual to him as writing, my curiosity would not let me rest until I had found out what it was all about. I had already made the discovery that the key of a dispatch-case of my own fitted his bureau, so while he was out—actually buying his nitric acid and things—I took the opportunity of examining these papers.
To say that they interested me is to put it mildly. I had come to the conclusion already that I had made a fool of myself by marrying the little rat; but all women are prone to do that at my age. But I must confess that I had no idea what a real rat he was. For a few minutes it was quite a shock to me, although I am not easily shocked.
So when I had finished reading, I locked the manuscript away again and went up to my bedroom to think. I suppose that during the next hour I thought harder than I have ever done in my life before. After all, I had something to think about: what was I going to do?
I was not concerned for my life, of course. Now I knew, it was simple to escape the unpleasant end he had
planned for me. I had only to take the manuscript to the police to ensure that, and at the same time bring on him the punishment he deserved.
But that did not satisfy me. I wanted to turn the tables on him more completely than that, and dole him out a more poetic justice than he was likely to receive from the law. Besides, there was that ranch of his. I have always wanted to live on a ranch, though I certainly saw no prospect of achieving it. If I merely handed the little skunk over to the police, I should never see that ranch. Whereas if it was Eddie who by a most unfortunate accident got blown up instead of me … well, his will was genuine enough. I may have made a fool of myself in one direction, but I am not a complete fool. I had taken steps to make sure about the will. He really had a ranch, and it really would come to me if he died.
Anyhow, to cut a long story short I devised a very simple plan.
My husband made another mistake. He assumed that I knew nothing about chemistry. In these days of higher education for women it is never safe to assume ignorance on the part of a woman in any branch of science. As it happens, I had done chemistry at school and found it extremely interesting; so interesting that I had progressed a good deal further than the school curriculum allowed, and used to help the chemistry mistress in her own private experiments. I still had my old text-books, in a trunk in the attic. I went up there and got them out.
The upshot was that when Eddie came back, very pleased with himself, I had my plan cut and dried. He went upstairs, arid then came down to tea. Then I went upstairs—to get a handkerchief. Eddie, of course, did not offer to get it for me. Tough guys don’t do things like that.
It didn’t take me two minutes to find the bottles. He had hidden them behind some clutter on the top of the bathroom cupboard. I poured out a little of the nitric acid, and a little of the spirits of wine; I only wanted a very little.
The rest of tea we talked, funnily enough, about the ranch.
Afterwards Eddie went upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. He didn’t know that I went up and locked myself in the attic, any more than he knew that while he was busy making his fulminate of mercury I was just as busy dissolving a bit of a George IV silver teaspoon in nitric acid to make fulminate of silver. I was sorry about the teaspoon, which was one of a set, but it was all in a good cause. A sixpence of course has too much alloy.
Well, I suppose it was a curious situation that evening. Eddie was planning to murder me, and I was planning to get in first and murder Eddie; and we were as charming to each other as two snakes in love. In fact Eddie was so charming (Eddie could be charming when he wanted) that I nearly called the whole thing off, told him all about his little game, and suggested a fresh start with no murders on either side. But I knew it was only feminine weakness and fixed my thoughts on the ranch.
I didn’t say anything the next day about washing my hair. My silver fulminate wasn’t ready, and I wanted to give Eddie’s mercury every chance. Eddie didn’t say a word either. But the day after that I saw that the little two-ounce bottle hidden behind the clutter on the top of the bath-room cupboard was full of the grey crystals, and knew that Eddie’s experiment had been successful and everything was in order. I couldn’t help wishing, though, that he had managed to blow himself up during the process instead.
However, he hadn’t; so at lunch I said, quite casually, that I was going to wash my hair that afternoon and would Eddie see that there was plenty of aviation petrol in the can. Eddie nodded, as cool as a cucumber, and said he would. I was annoyed, seeing Eddie’s calmness, to notice how my own heart was thumping. I dislike weakness of any sort.
I knew Eddie would make for the bathroom directly after lunch. And he did. As soon as I saw him begin to go upstairs I hurried along to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure how much damage would be done, and I wanted to get Kate out of the house. I was so intent on that, that I quite forgot to take a consciously last look at Eddie.
Now, what I had done was this. Fulminate of silver is a great deal more dangerous stuff than fulminate of mercury. It goes off almost if you look at it. I hadn’t dared to make more than a pinch of it, but I could rely on that exploding at the slightest jar. So behind the clutter I had arranged a little see-saw. The bottle of fulminate of mercury weighed down one end of the little strip of wood that I had used as a cross-piece, and cocked up on the other end, but hidden behind a big jar of bath-salts, was the fulminate of silver, in a pillbox. As soon as Eddie took away the bottle, the pillbox, which was on its side with a match underneath to stop it rolling down the see-saw, would roll down the other way and drop on the tiled floor, where it would explode.
The explosion would make a sharp report, but of course so little of the stuff would do practically no damage. It was Eddie’s own fulminate of mercury that was going to do the real job. And the way I had ‘figured it out,’ as Eddie would say, was this. Eddie would naturally be nervous. The loud pop by his feet while he was still taking down his own bottle, would make him jump violently. The jump would occur before he had got his bottle much below the level of the top of the cupboard, because he would be handling it slowly and with caution. So before putting his bottle on the see-saw, I greased it gently all over with butter and fixed a piece of thin white cotton under the cork, pushing the latter home not too tightly.
The theory was this. Eddie, starting violently when my fulminate of silver went off, would have one hand still above the level of his head. The inevitable reflex action would be to jerk that arm down. The jerk would encounter the resistance of the cotton under the cork—nothing very much, but enough to pull the slippery bottle out of his hand; and at the same time the jerk would have been enough to dislodge the not-very-securely-fastened cork from its place and so not leave the bottle dangling in the air. The bottle would therefore fall on to the tiled floor—and that would be the end of Eddie.
Naturally, I did not work entirely on theory. In the attic there was a shelf at just about the height of the top of the bathroom cupboard. I experimented there until I had found just how far to push the cork in over the cotton loop to make everything happen as it should.
And it did happen. Nothing much would have been lost if the trap had failed; I could have sprung it later another way. But it didn’t fail. Even as I write I can feel the gratification of the theorist whose calculations work out exactly right. I suppose the designers of big guns feel much the same way, though their method of killing is more cumbersome than mine just as it is a great deal more expensive.
Kate apparently noticed nothing peculiar about my demeanour, for she has said nothing since and she would certainly have commented on the slightest deviation from the normal had she discerned it. Kate is very strong on premonitions and forebodings and all that kind of thing. In any case, when I told her to come out and let me show her the beans I wanted picked for dinner, as I should be busy and could not show her later, she came at once. We were actually among the beans when the explosion happened. Eddie could not have timed it for me better. What is more, I distinctly heard a little pop before the big explosion. The whole thing went precisely as I had planned.
Well, that is that, and they have been scraping Eddie off the shattered walls ever since. (Poor Eddie! He wasn’t so tough after all. I might even be sorry for him if I didn’t remember that ranch. And it was a perfect piece of poetic justice.)
And that, I submit, is the perfect murder. It is now past midnight; the police have gone; and not the slightest suspicion has been voiced that it might conceivably have been anything but an accident. The police have been remarkably active. They have traced Eddie’s purchases of mercury, nitric acid, and the rest already. From that, and the nature of the explosion, they know that fulminate of mercury was the cause. They have my own information that he was amusing himself with some chemical experiments, though I do not know what. They have seen my horror at learning that he must have been making fulminate of mercury; and my suggestion that he did not tell me because he knew I should try to stop him owing to the danger, is a perfectly reasonable
one. Nor have I attempted to hide the fact that I have some smattering of chemistry myself; I have even dug some dusty old text-books out of a trunk in the attic to prove it. But there is no trace in the attic of any experiment there: though even if there were, any such experiments would, of course, have been put down to Eddie.
They have no suspicion. I cannot understand how they ever could have any suspicion. And if they did, there is not the tiniest trace of proof. I repeat, it has been the perfect murder.
Now I am going along to the kitchen to burn this manuscript in the furnace, as I said, before the ink is dry. And in a month or two I shall be sailing for Arizona. As poor old Eddie would have put it: ‘Oh, boy!’
Ex-Supt. Cornish, C.I.D. investigates Anthony Berkeley’s Crime
… AND THEN COME THE HANDCUFFS!
MR. ANTHONY BERKELEY IS, I THINK, MORE successful in his clever and amusing parody of the new manner in American fiction than in his ‘perfect murder,’ ingeniously as he has worked it out.
True, on a first reading, many people will decide that Myrtle Tuffun is safe, and that no one will ever suspect that she is, in fact, the murderess of her husband. The American, at the time of his death, was himself preparing to commit murder. He was killed by the explosive with which he had planned to put an end to Myrtle. Police investigation will lay bare his antecedents and his true character. It will become obvious that he married Myrtle for the fortune which, in reality, she did not possess. Already his purchases of chemicals have been traced. The conclusion that he intended murder, and was killed by the premature explosion of the very dangerous substance he had manufactured, would appear to be natural. Why should the police bother to look further?
That, obviously, is Myrtle’s own view. She has found the whole business easy. In my opinion, it was far too easy. And the sense of false security into which she has thus been lulled will make it more difficult for her to meet successfully any new and dangerous turn in the investigation, will increase the possibility of her giving herself away.
Six Against the Yard Page 11