Murder Is Easy (7 page)

L
uke sat in his bedroom. At lunch time he had sustained an interrogation by Mrs. Anstruther as to what flowers he had had in his garden in the Mayang Straits. He had then been told what flowers would have done well there. He had also listened to further “Talks to Young Men on the Subject of Myself” by Lord Whitfield. Now he was mercifully alone.

He took a sheet of paper and wrote down a series of names. It ran as follows:

He then took another sheet of paper and headed it VICTIMS. Under this heading, he wrote:

He added:

And after a pause:

He considered his lists, smoked awhile, then took up his pencil once more.

Luke sighed and started a fresh heading:

He read through what he had written.

Then he shook his head.

He murmured softly:

“—which is absurd! How nicely Euclid put things.”

He tore up the lists and burnt them.

He said to himself:

“This job isn't going to be exactly easy.”

D
r. Thomas leant back in his chair, and passed a long delicate hand over his thick fair hair. He was a young man whose appearance was deceptive. Though he was over thirty, a casual glance would have put him down in the early twenties if not in his teens. His shock of rather unruly fair hair, his slightly startled expression and his pink and white complexion gave him an irresistibly schoolboyish appearance. Immature as he might look, though, the diagnosis he had just pronounced on Luke's rheumatic knee agreed almost precisely with that delivered by an eminent Harley Street specialist only a week earlier.

“Thanks,” said Luke. “Well, I'm relieved you think that electrical treatment will do the trick. I don't want to turn a cripple at my age.”

Dr. Thomas smiled boyishly.

“Oh, I don't think there's any danger of that, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

“Well, you've relieved my mind,” said Luke. “I was thinking of going to some specialist chap—but I'm sure there's no need now.”

Dr. Thomas smiled again.

“Go if it makes your mind easier. After all, it's always a good thing to have an expert's opinion.”

“No, no, I've got full confidence in you.”

“Frankly, there is no complexity about the matter. If you take my advice, I am quite sure you will have no further trouble.”

“You've relieved my mind no end, doctor. Fancied I might be getting arthritis and would soon be all tied up in knots and unable to move.”

Dr. Thomas shook his head with a slightly indulgent smile.

Luke said quickly:

“Men get the wind up pretty badly in these ways. I expect you find that? I often think a doctor must feel himself a ‘medicine man'—a kind of magician to most of his patients.”

“The element of faith enters in very largely.”

“I know. ‘The doctor says so' is a remark always uttered with something like reverence.”

Dr. Thomas raised his shoulders.

“If one's patients only knew!” he murmured humorously.

Then he said:

“You're writing a book on magic, aren't you, Mr. Fitzwilliam?”

“Now how did you know that?” exclaimed Luke, perhaps with somewhat overdone surprise.

Dr. Thomas looked amused.

“Oh, my dear sir, news gets about very rapidly in a place like this. We have so little to talk about.”

“It probably gets exaggerated too. You'll be hearing I'm raising the local spirits and emulating the Witch of Endor.”

“Rather odd you should say that.”

“Why?”

“Well, the rumour has been going round that you had raised the ghost of Tommy Pierce.”

“Pierce? Pierce? Is that the small boy who fell out of a window?”

“Yes.”

“Now I wonder how—of course—I made some remark to the solicitor—what's his name, Abbot.”

“Yes, the story originated with Abbot.”

“Don't say I've converted a hard-boiled solicitor to a belief in ghosts?”

“You believe in ghosts yourself, then?”

“Your tone suggests that you do not, doctor. No, I wouldn't say I actually ‘believe in ghosts'—to put it crudely. But I have known curious phenomena in the case of sudden or violent death. But I'm more interested in the various superstitions pertaining to violent deaths—that a murdered man, for instance, can't rest in his grave. And the interesting belief that the blood of a murdered man flows if his murderer touches him. I wonder how that arose.”

“Very curious,” said Thomas. “But I don't suppose many people remember that nowadays.”

“More than you would think. Of course, I don't suppose you have many murders down here—so it's hard to judge.”

Luke had smiled as he spoke, his eyes resting with seeming carelessness on the other's face. But Dr. Thomas seemed quite unperturbed and smiled in return.

“No, I don't think we've had a murder for—oh, very many years—certainly not in my time.”

“No, this is a peaceful spot. Not conducive to foul play. Unless somebody pushed little Tommy What's-his-name out of the window.”

Luke laughed. Again Dr. Thomas's smile came in answer—a natural smile full of boyish amusement.

“A lot of people would have been willing to wring that child's neck,” he said. “But I don't think they actually got to the point of throwing him out of windows.”

“He seems to have been a thoroughly nasty child—the removal of him might have been conceived as a public duty.”

“It's a pity one can't apply that theory fairly often.”

“I've always thought a few wholesale murders would be beneficial to the community,” said Luke. “A club bore, for instance, should be finished off with a poisoned liqueur brandy. Then there are the women who gush at you and tear all their dearest friends to pieces with their tongues. Backbiting spinsters. Inveterate diehards who oppose progress. If they were painlessly removed, what a difference it would make to social life!”

Dr. Thomas's smile lengthened to a grin.

“In fact, you advocate crime on a grand scale?”

“Judicious elimination,” said Luke. “Don't you agree that it would be beneficial?”

“Oh, undoubtedly.”

“Ah, but you're not being serious,” said Luke. “Now I am. I haven't the respect for human life that the normal Englishman has. Any man who is a stumbling block on the way of progress ought to be eliminated—that's how I see it!”

Running his hand through his short fair hair, Dr. Thomas said:

“Yes, but who is to be the judge of a man's fitness or unfitness?”

“That's the difficulty, of course,” Luke admitted.

“The Catholics would consider a Communist agitator unfit to live—the Communist agitator would sentence the priest to death as a purveyor of superstition, the doctor would eliminate the unhealthy man, the pacifist would condemn the soldier, and so on.”

“You'd have to have a scientific man as judge,” said Luke. “Someone with an unbiased but highly specialized mind—a doctor, for instance. Come to that, I think you'd be a pretty good judge yourself, doctor.”

“Of unfitness to live?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Thomas shook his head.

“My job is to make the unfit fit. Most of the time it's an uphill job, I'll admit.”

“Now just for the sake of argument,” said Luke. “Take a man like the late Harry Carter—”

Dr. Thomas said sharply:

“Carter? You mean the landlord of the Seven Stars?”

“Yes, that's the man. I never knew him myself, but my cousin, Miss Conway, was talking about him. He seems to have been a really thoroughgoing scoundrel.”

“Well,” said the other, “he drank, of course. Ill-treated his wife, bullied his daughter. He was quarrelsome and abusive and had had a row with most people in the place.”

“In fact, the world is a better place without him?”

“One might be inclined to say so, I agree.”

“In fact, if somebody had given him a push and sent him into the river instead of his kindly electing to fall in of his own accord, that person would have been acting in the public interest?”

Dr. Thomas said drily:

“These methods that you advocate—did you put them into practice in the—Mayang Straits, I think you said?”

Luke laughed.

“Oh, no, with me it's theory—not practice.”

“No, I do not think you are the stuff of which murderers are made.”

Luke asked:

“Why not? I've been frank enough in my views.”

“Exactly. Too frank.”

“You mean that if I were really the kind of man who takes the law into his own hands I shouldn't go about airing my views?”

“That was my meaning.”

“But it might be a kind of gospel with me. I might be a fanatic on the subject!”

“Even so, your sense of self-protection would be active.”

“In fact, when looking for a murderer, look out for a nice gentle wouldn't-hurt-a-fly type of man.”

“Slightly exaggerated perhaps,” said Dr. Thomas, “but not far from the truth.”

Luke said abruptly:

“Tell me—it interests me—have you ever come across a man whom you believed might be a murderer?”

Dr. Thomas said sharply:

“Really—what an extraordinary question!”

“Is it? After all, a doctor must come across so many queer characters. He would be better able to detect—for instance—the signs of homicidal mania—in an early stage—before it's noticeable.”

Thomas said rather irritably:

“You have the general layman's idea of a homicidal maniac—a man who runs amok with a knife, a man more or less foaming at the mouth. Let me tell you a homicidal lunatic may be the most difficult thing on this earth to spot. To all seeming he may be exactly like everyone else—a man, perhaps, who is easily frightened—who may tell you, perhaps, that he has enemies. No more than that. A quiet, inoffensive fellow.”

“Is that really so?”

“Of course it's so. A homicidal lunatic often kills (as he thinks) in self-defence. But of course a lot of killers are ordinary sane fellows like you and me.”

“Doctor, you alarm me! Fancy if you should discover later that I have five or six nice quiet little killings to my credit.”

Dr. Thomas smiled.

“I don't think it's very likely, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

“Don't you? I'll return the compliment. I don't believe you've got five or six murders to your credit either.”

Dr. Thomas said cheerfully:

“You're not counting my professional failures.”

Both men laughed.

Luke got up and said good-bye.

“I'm afraid I've taken up a lot of your time,” he said apologetically.

“Oh, I'm not busy. Wychwood is a pretty healthy place. It's a pleasure to have a talk with someone from the outside world.”

“I was wondering—” said Luke and stopped.

“Yes?”

“Miss Conway told me when she sent me to you what a very—well—what a first-class man you were. I wondered if you
didn't feel rather buried down here? Not much opportunity for talent.”

“Oh, general practice is a good beginning. It's valuable experience.”

“But you won't be content to stay in a rut all your life? Your late partner, Dr. Humbleby, was an unambitious fellow, so I've heard—quite content with his practice here. He'd been here for a good many years, I believe?”

“Practically a lifetime.”

“He was sound but old-fashioned, so I hear.”

Dr. Thomas said:

“At times he was difficult…Very suspicious of modern innovations, but a good example of the old school of physicians.”

“Left a very pretty daughter, I'm told,” said Luke in jocular fashion.

He had the pleasure of seeing Dr. Thomas's pale pink countenance go a deep scarlet.

“Oh—er—yes,” he said.

Luke gazed at him kindly. He was pleased at the prospect of erasing Dr. Thomas from his list of suspected persons.

The latter recovered his normal hue and said abruptly:

“Talking about crime just now, I can lend you rather a good book as you are interested in the subject! Translation from the German. Kreuzhammer on
Inferiority and Crime.
”

“Thank you,” said Luke.

Dr. Thomas ran his finger along a shelf and drew out the book in question.

“Here you are. Some of the theories are rather startling—and of course they are only theories, but they are interesting. The early
life of Menzheld, for instance, the Frankfurt butcher, as they called him, and the chapter on Anna Helm, the little nursemaid killer, are really extremely interesting.”

“She killed about a dozen of her charges before the authorities tumbled to it, I believe,” said Luke.

Dr. Thomas nodded.

“Yes. She had a most sympathetic personality—devoted to children—and apparently quite genuinely heartbroken at each death. The psychology is amazing.”

“Amazing how these people get away with it,” said Luke.

He was on the doorstep now. Dr. Thomas had come out with him.

“Not amazing really,” said Dr. Thomas. “It's quite easy, you know.”

“What is?”

“To get away with it.” He was smiling again—a charming, boyish smile. “If you're careful. One just has to be careful—that's all! But a clever man
is
extremely careful not to make a slip. That's all there is to it.”

He smiled and went into the house.

Luke stood staring up the steps.

There had been something condescending in the doctor's smile. Throughout their conversation Luke had been conscious of himself as a man of full maturity and of Dr. Thomas as a youthful and ingenuous young man.

Just for a moment he felt the rôles reversed. The doctor's smile had been that of a grown-up amused by the cleverness of a child.