Trial and Error (2 page)

“With one dissentient,” said the clergyman firmly. “You've made out a very specious case for murder, but there's one insuperable answer to it: murder can never be justified, in any circumstances at all.”

“Oh, come, sir,” objected the major. “That's not an argument, is it? It's merely an assertion, incapable of proof. I mean, I might just as well say that sometimes murder can be justified. It's a dead end.”

Ferrers's eyes twinkled. “Do you mean to say, Major, that you haven't yet discovered that nine tenths of Jack's arguments are only assertions? What else can a poor parson do when he's called upon to defend what no one can prove? He can only fall back on repeating what he considers to be axioms. And if we don't accept them as axioms of course there's a dead end.”

“You'd be a better man if you did accept some of them, Lionel,” retorted the parson amiably.

“I doubt it. But of course you have to say so.”

“Yes,” said Mr Todhunter. “Then what it all amounts to is that the man with only a few months to live can't do anything better than commit a murder, of the type defined. You really believe that?”

“I'm not going to run away from a nasty word,” Ferrers smiled. “Whether you call it murder or elimination, that's what I believe.”

“A man in such a position would be well placed to commit a righteous murder, wouldn't he?” hazarded Mr Chitterwick. “I mean, if he timed it properly there would be no fear of the strongest practical argument against murder—the hangman.”

“Yes, that is perfectly true,” said Mr Todhunter with interest. “But if we decide on murder, what kind of murder is he to commit? Two of you seemed to be in favour of a political murder, with the idea of benefiting the whole world, or at any rate a whole nation, and two preferred the private murder. It would be interesting to hear the arguments on either side.”

“Oh, I withdraw Mussolini,” Major Barrington offered. “I didn't make the suggestion very seriously. Besides, it's more than I'd care to do, to take the responsibility of deciding whether a Mussolini or a Hitler doesn't fulfill some need in the world today, if only on the principle that things have got to be worse before they can be bettered. In other words, like Ferrers, I don't believe in political assassination.”

“And you, Dale?”

“Well, if the major withdraws Mussolini I'll withdraw my candidate. Though I must say I'd like to see every dishonest politician in this country shot.”

“Would there be any left?” smiled Ferrers.

“Oh, come now,” protested the clergyman. “There'd be Stanley Baldwin.”

“And his pipe.”

“Of peace, yes.”

“Peace at any price—even fifteen hundred million pounds. Yes, and his pigs. Well, they'd be useful to fill up the vacancies in the cabinet. We should never notice the difference.”

“Oh yes, we should,” grinned the major. “Pigs wouldn't sign outrageous agreements with French prime ministers and let us down with a thud all over the world and then have to be publicly disowned. Pigs would have their uses.”

“Yes,” said Mr Todhunter. “Then the idea now seems to be that the private murder is to be preferred to the political assassination. Well, it would be interesting to hear what kind of private person would confer most benefits on his fellow creatures by dying.”

“A newspaper proprietor who deliberately deceives his readers to further his own ends,” suggested the major.

“Wouldn't that mean all newspaper proprietors?” asked Mr Chitterwick with unwonted cynicism.

Ferrers looked pained.

“Oh, we'll except the
London Review
of course,” the clergyman told him. “We all know that the
London Review
stands alone in the newspaper world. Lionel wouldn't be working for it otherwise.”

“The
London Review
isn't a newspaper,” Ferrers pointed out.

“Well, my vote would be for a really vindictive anonymous letter writer,” said Dale. “No one does more harm, and no one is more difficult to bring to justice.”

“Except a blackmailer, don't you think?” supplied Mr Chitterwick.

“Well, you ought to know something about murder, Chitterwick,” Ferrers said. “Two, isn't it, that you've been mixed up in?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so, in a way,” agreed Mr Chitterwick uneasily. “But. . .”

” “No, no. All in confidence. Between friends and so on. Guaranteed not for publication. Come on.”

Protesting, Mr Chitterwick was bullied into relating one or two of his experiences.

The decanter circulated for the third time.

Mr Todhunter allowed the discussion to drop. Any further attempts to keep it going would, he felt, look suspicious. In any case he had learned what he wanted to know.

For Mr Todhunter had been told by his doctor a week ago that he could not possibly live for more than a few months; and he had called together this carefully chosen group of assorted persons to advise him, all unwittingly, what to do with the time that remained to him.

And greatly to Mr Todhunter's surprise, it appeared that he had been advised, with remarkable unanimity, to commit a murder.

PART I

Picaresque

MR TODHUNTER IN
SEARCH OF A VICTIM

CHAPTER I

When Mr Lawrence Todhunter learned from his doctor that he was suffering from an aortic aneurism and must not expect to live for more than a few months, his first feeling had been one of incredulity.

“Well, how old are you?” asked the doctor, seeing his unbelief.

“Fifty-one,” said Mr Todhunter, buttoning his shirt again over his bony chest.

“Exactly. And you've never been very fit.”

“Of late years,” agreed Mr Todhunter solemnly, “no, certainly not.”

The doctor swung his stethoscope. “Well, what can you expect? Your blood pressure's been too high for years. If you hadn't followed my directions so carefully, you'd have been dead long ago.” The doctor, an old friend, spoke with what seemed to Mr Todhunter unseemly callousness.

He produced what was intended for a cynical laugh but which sounded to his own ears more like a cackle of rather cheap bravado. “Yes, but to be told that one can't last longer than a few months . . . I mean, it's a situation that seems to belong to romantic fiction rather than real life.”

“It happens often enough in real life,” returned the doctor drily. “After all, there are plenty of incurable diseases, apart from the kind of thing that you're suffering from. And there's always cancer. The body must give out sooner or later. It's an exceedingly complicated mechanism, you know. The wonder is that all its parts continue to function as long as they do.”

“You seem to regard death very lightly,” observed Mr Todhunter not without resentment; and by “death” he meant “my death.”

“I do,” retorted the doctor with a little smile.

“Eh?” For a moment Mr Todhunter was quite taken aback that anyone could regard death lightly, and in particular his own death.

“I said, I do. No, no, I'm not a religious man. At least, not religious in any orthodox way. I just happen to believe quite firmly in survival.”

“Oh!” said Mr Todhunter, somewhat blankly.

“I also believe that this present life on the physical plane is a damned nuisance; and the sooner we're out of it the better. To ask for sympathy for a dying man seems to me tantamount to asking sympathy for a man coming out of prison into freedom.”

“The deuce it does,” remarked Mr Todhunter, staring. “I must say, for a man who likes good claret as much as you do, that sounds a bit thick.”

“A prisoner must have his consolations. Sympathy,” continued the doctor, warming to his subject, “on behalf of those left behind in prison, yes. They have a personal loss; though their feeling ought to be one of envy rather than grief. But in your case, my dear fellow, even that is absent. You have no wife, no children, not even any close relatives. You're extremely lucky. You can walk out of prison with an untroubled mind.”

Mr Todhunter, who did not consider himself at all lucky, grunted a little angrily.

“However,” relented the doctor, “if you don't see it that way, I suppose we must try to keep you in prison as long as we can; though I must say I wish I had your chances. Frankly, you remind me of that poor old chap in Madame Tussaud's who was released from his cell in the Bastille by the mob and never got over it.”

“Don't talk such damned nonsense,” said Mr Todhunter wrathfully.

“You mustn't get angry,” advised the doctor. “That's the first thing. No strong emotions, please, or you'll be shot out of prison straight way. Likewise, no violent exertion. Walk slowly, never run, rest every second step going upstairs, no excitement, be on your guard all the time against any sudden strain. It'll be a drab life, but you can prolong it that way if you really want to. We can't cut down your diet much further, or I'd do that too. In any case, the aneurism is almost bound to burst within six months—well, a year at the outside—however careful you are. You asked me to be frank, you know.”

“Oh yes, I did,” Mr Todhunter agreed bitterly.

“Rest as much as you can,” the doctor went on. “Avoid all alcohol. No smoking. Heaven help you, if I were in your shoes I'd run straight home from here and arrive there dead. Made your will, I suppose?”

“I never knew,” said Mr Todhunter with distaste, “what a damned old ghoul you are.”

“Nothing of the sort,” retorted the doctor indignantly. “Ghoul be blowed! That's just your infernal conventionality, Todhunter. You always were a conventional old stick. It's the accepted thing to be sorry for the dying—yes, in spite of religion which teaches us that anyone who isn't a scoundrel is going to be a whole lot better off dead—so you think I ought to be sorry for you; and when I tell you I envy you instead, you call me a ghoul.”

“Very well,” said Mr Todhunter with dignity. “You're not a ghoul. But I can't help wondering whether your unselfish anxiety for my welfare can have coloured your diagnosis. In other words, I think I'd like a second opinion.”

The doctor grinned and drew a slip of paper towards him. “You won't get me rattled that way. By all means have a second opinion, and a third, and a fourth. They'll only confirm me. Here's an address for you. A very sound man, perhaps the soundest for this kind of thing. He'll soak you three guineas, and you'll jolly well deserve it.”

Mr Todhunter slowly put on his coat.

“I wonder,” he said with reluctance, “whether you're not really such an ass as you sound?”

“You mean, whether there's something in what I've been saying? My boy, there's a whole lot in it. In my opinion the case for survival is proved—scientifically proved. And what does that give us? Well, no state can be lower, and consequently more unpleasant, than the physical one. That means that any subsequent state must, for the ordinarily decent person, be considerably more pleasant. It absolutely follows therefore that——”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr Todhunter and took his leave.

2

Feeling slightly unreal, Mr Todhunter took a taxi to Welbeck Street. Although well able to afford it, this was actually the first time he had ever taken a taxi from Richmond, where he lived, to the West End; for Mr Todhunter was as careful in matters of money as in matters of health. But the occasion seemed to demand a taxi this time.

The specialist took his three guineas and confirmed the doctor's diagnosis, and prognosis, too, in every detail.

Shaken, Mr Todhunter took another taxi. He was a cautious man and seldom made up his own mind on any point until he had canvassed the views of at least three other people. He therefore caused himself to be driven to a second specialist, who could not conceivably be in a league with either of the other two men. When this third opinion proved in complete agreement with theirs, Mr Todhunter allowed himself to feel convinced.

He took a taxi back to Richmond.

3

Mr Todhunter was a bachelor.

The state was his own choice; for in spite of his complete lack of anything which might be expected to rouse a lady's passion, it had often been hinted to him that he should change it. Not that Mr Todhunter was repellent to the other sex. His nature, which he was unable to disguise under a cloak of cynical disillusion, was a singularly sweet one. Mr Todhunter was in fact one of those unfortunate persons who court disappointment after disappointment by always believing the best of their fellow creatures. No amount of enlightenment had ever convinced Mr Todhunter that his friends could ever be capable of ignoble actions. He knew that in a way grown men can bully children, that apparently decent women do write exceedingly indecent anonymous letters and that there must be a great deal of unpleasant behaviour in this far from perfect world. But it was always other people who behaved in these strange ways, never Mr Todhunter's own friends or acquaintances. To these Mr Todhunter automatically credited his own high standards; and if emphatic evidence to the contrary were ever offered him, Mr Todhunter with much indignation ignored it.

This trait of his was apparent at once to any woman over thirty, and they naturally looked on Mr Todhunter as the heaven-designed husband. Younger women might have looked askance at his gaunt, bony frame, his bald little head which poked forward on his shoulders to address them, and his dusty coat collar, no less than at his old-maidish fussiness, his concern with his own health, his indifference to their attractions and even his slightly obtrusive scholarship. They might have looked so askance, had not Mr Todhunter possessed something which outweighed any lack of appeal to the passions and any number of dusty collars, namely, a very snug little private income.

It was this snug little income which allowed Mr Todhunter to live in a comfortable house in a chosen street in Richmond, looked after by a housekeeper, a housemaid and a man to do the boots, the garden and the furnace.

Not that Mr Todhunter lived in complete complacency in all this comfort. His conscience troubled him, making him feel at times quite guilty that he should thus be indulged when over two million of his fellow countrymen were existing only on pittances. Not even the fact that the government, by direct and indirect methods, relieved him of at least half his income for the purpose of benefiting his own nationals and killing those of other countries, could assuage Mr Todhunter's qualms. Not content therefore with reflecting that out of his eleven or twelve hundred a year he was maintaining directly in tolerable comfort one housekeeper, one housemaid and one elderly man, that he must be maintaining elsewhere in irksome idleness at least one able-bodied but thwarted worker and his family, that he was maintaining a substantial portion of one unknown civil servant, probably superfluous, and that he was giving to the country each year at least half a dozen shells and perhaps a vital part of a machine gun or two—not content with all this, Mr Todhunter was accustomed to devote such other gleanings from his income as he could save to certain private charities of his own preference and to the ready hands of anyone who turned up at his front door with a tale of hard luck.

Returning now from his consultation with the second specialist, Mr Todhunter sank down into an armchair in his library just in time for tea. Tea was served to Mr Todhunter in his library precisely at fifteen minutes past four each day. If it arrived at fourteen minutes past four, Mr Todhunter would send it away again with instructions for it to return at the proper time; if it had not appeared by fifteen and a half minutes past four Mr Todhunter would ring his bell and raise gentlemanly hell. Today, since Mr Todhunter was unprecedentedly absent, tea was a full five minutes late: and Mr Todhunter, slumped in his chair, said not a word.

“Coo!” as the house-parlourmaid observed to the housekeeper two minutes later. “And me expecting to have the sugar basin thrown in me face, as you might say. He's had bad news, mark my words.”

“That'll do from you, Edie,” replied Mrs Greenhill austerely.

But Edie was right, and both of them knew it. Nothing less than bad news could have made Mr Todhunter overlook such a lapse.

4

In Mr Todhunter's mind strange thoughts were coursing.

They continued to course for the next week, becoming stranger and stranger.

It had taken him just three days, spinning it out as long as possible, to make sure that his affairs were in order; and of course they were. After that there had seemed to be nothing to do but sit about and wait and never hurry upstairs. This seemed to Mr Todhunter a morbid as well as a boring business.

It was then that the strange thoughts began first to invade Mr Todhunter's mind; for after another three days he had decided that he could sit about no longer. He must do something. What, he did not know. But something. And something, if possible, out of the ordinary. Mr Todhunter began to feel, not without surprise, that he had really been excessively ordinary all his life, and if this drab record were ever to be broken now was the time. In fact Mr Todhunter, most conventional of men, began for the first time in his life to experience a strange, unholy urge to do something spectacular, just once, before he passed out.

Unfortunately the only spectacular deeds that he could remember on the part of others seemed so futile. Hadn't someone once thrown herself under the hooves of the Derby horses in order to prove that women ought to have the vote? Hadn't people been thrown out of the public gallery of the House of Commons for being spectacular at the wrong moment? And of course there was Moseley, most spectacular of all and—dear, dear, dear!—most futile. Though of course there was Lawrence of Arabia too. But Lawrence's chances were not likely to come anyone else's way.

What, then, Mr Todhunter began to ponder with increasing frequency as he sat in his comfortable library in Richmond and stroked his long fingers together—what, then, was it possible for a man in his position to do of a nature sufficiently startling to satisfy this strange new urge towards self-assertion but which would yet not involve the lifting of any heavy logs, the running violently up any stairs or the consumption of alcohol? There seemed no answer.

Nor was there anything in Mr Todhunter's previous life to suggest an answer.

Mr Todhunter had always lived what is called “a sheltered life.” First of all he had been sheltered by his mother; then by a kindly regulation which forbade the enlisting of semi-invalids in the British army during the late European War and so prevented Mr Todhunter from attending that function—much against his will but, one could not help feeling, much to the British army's benefit; then, at the very private school where he had felt himself impelled to work at one period in order to avoid the self-reproach of idle uselessness, he had been sheltered by the young gentlemen themselves who, ragging fiercely any other master whom they could, yet had enough of the Proper Spirit to realise that ragging Mr Todhunter would be just about on a sporting par with standing a baby of two in boxing gloves up against the school champion. Since his mother's death some years ago Mr Todhunter had been most efficiently sheltered by his elderly housekeeper; and always he had been sheltered from the only really unbearable tribulation of this world by an adequate private income. So far as previous experience went, therefore, Mr Todhunter simply had none to help him.