Plain Murder Read online

  ‘Mustn’t I! And why not? It’s the truth, isn’t it? You know it is!’

  Morris gave up the attempt to appear innocent.

  ‘Well, supposing it is. What of it?’ he demanded, and Oldroyd found it difficult to say anything in reply. He could only look at Morris. Then abruptly Morris turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Oldroyd staring after him. It was a wordless declaration of war, issued, as is not unusual, after the opening of hostilities. To Oldroyd, gazing after Morris’s striding form, came the realization that he was in deadly peril and that he had only himself to rely upon for his safety. From now onward he was engaged in a duel with Morris, a duel to the death with a fiend of strength and cunning. He felt fearful and shaken.

  15

  When Morris returned from his lunch his first act was to send his other assistants out to have theirs; he was always careful as far as possible of the comfort and well-being of his juniors. Possibly he may also have been influenced by his desire for solitude for the purpose of undisturbed thought. He sat down in Clarence’s chair; he turned over idly a few of the latter’s drawings and then lost himself in a maze of badly co-ordinated thought as he gazed out of the window. The bitterness of failure soon became much less acute. His vanity was sufficient to disguise it. It had been a good plan, well conceived and ably prepared. Why, he had made use, as ever, of the smallest scraps of circumstantial evidence. Had Oldroyd died that lunch-time, and had by any chance suspicion fallen upon him, there was not a man or woman in that office who would not have been prepared to swear that Oldroyd was a favourite and a friend of his, in whose favour he was always ready to stretch a point of office discipline. He had foreseen that anyone who observed the push he gave Oldroyd would never have been able to swear for certain that it was a push, and not an unsuccessful attempt to pull him back.

  The brilliance and soundness of the plan soon reconciled Morris to its failure. If anything, his opinion of himself was enhanced rather than diminished. His self-confidence came to his rescue. It would not be long before he could devise and execute another and more successful plan for the annihilation of Oldroyd. He felt the germs of several ideas sprouting in his mind already. He went over them carefully, weeding out the unpromising ones. The remainder he left to germinate still further in the watertight compartment mind of his before he should return to them. Having reached that satisfactory conclusion, he was quite ready to turn back again to normal office life at the very time when Miss Campbell came into the copy room again.

  ‘Hullo!’ said Morris.

  ‘Hullo!’ said Miss Campbell. She bestowed upon him her own particular charming smile, for Miss Campbell was not above trying to captivate this young man who had the supervision of her daily work, and in whose power largely lay the means to make her days comfortable or the reverse.

  ‘The usual good lunch, I suppose?’ asked Morris, with his very best manners.

  ‘Of course,’ said Miss Campbell.

  ‘And the usual good appetite?’ asked Morris with what he considered epigrammatic brilliancy.

  ‘The result of the usual good conscience,’ replied Miss Campbell.

  ‘Lucky girl,’ said Morris.

  ‘Why, isn’t your conscience as good as it might be?’ asked Miss Campbell.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ replied Morris, but he did not mean anything like what a person who knew all about his doings would have thought he meant; on the contrary, Morris felt his conscience to be singularly clear, and only said the opposite in order to begin a good gambit in the delicious game of badinage with his employer’s daughter.

  ‘Dear, dear,’ said Miss Campbell. She spoke ironically, but she was still young enough to be impressed by a man of thirty admitting to a guilty conscience.

  ‘Whatever have you been up to?’ asked Miss Campbell.

  ‘Oh, things I couldn’t tell you about,’ answered Morris, beaming benignantly.

  ‘Goodness! You must have been badly brought up,’ said Miss Campbell, her grey eyes wide, but with a smile in them. By this remark she gave Morris exactly the opening which his gambit had played for.

  ‘Yes,’ said Morris, ‘I’m afraid I came under bad influence when I was young. I hadn’t met you then, you see.’

  ‘And what difference would that have made, pray?’ asked Miss Campbell. It was the inevitable move in reply to Morris’s.

  ‘Ah!’ said Morris. ‘I think you would have had a good influence over me if we had met when I was young.’

  His tone implied that he did not mean what he said; his eyes implied that he did.

  For a moment Miss Campbell’s sense of humour nearly spoilt the situation; balancing her nineteen years against Morris’s thirty, she saw herself in short frocks at the age of seven, when Morris was eighteen. But the temptation to go on flirting with her boss was too strong for her.

  ‘Dear me!’ said Miss Campbell. ‘What a pity Fate has held us apart, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Morris, and his lustrous eyes burnt into Miss Campbell’s grey ones. Morris had a personality which could make itself felt; Doris certainly was well aware of the impact of his glance. She dropped her eyes, and there was an odd, curiously effective silence for a second or two. It was broken when Morris rose carelessly from Clarence’s chair.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said, moving slowly across the room, ‘time remedies everything in the end, doesn’t it? Perhaps—’

  But it can never be known what Morris was going to say next, for his sentence was cut short by the opening of the door and the entry of Oldroyd. Morris did not complete his sentence, and Oldroyd felt as he entered that he was cutting short someone’s speech, and felt intrusive and uncomfortable in consequence. His glance observed Miss Campbell at her table, and Morris lounging over to her, and he realized in what manner he had been intrusive. Even Miss Campbell, sitting at her table, felt an oddly annoying sensation of being caught. As for Morris, the glance he shot at Oldroyd told exactly how annoyed he was. Oldroyd mumbled something which a person of extremely quick ear might have guessed to be ‘Good afternoon,’ and hastened to his own place, while Miss Campbell proceeded to shuffle the papers on her table with unnecessary violence. It was, she felt, a ridiculous thing to feel self-conscious about – but there was no denying that Morris now had firmly caught her attention. He was to her now far more of a distinct individual than the elegant young men she met at dances in the evenings, despite the coarseness of his looks and the twang of his accent.

  Morris himself sat at his desk and allowed his thoughts to wander away from advertising and murder to love and success. Doris Campbell was undeniably a pretty little thing. She had a sprightliness and spirit which were in great contrast with those his wife displayed. She had unspoiled good looks, while his wife was lined and careworn. His wife had brought him nothing on their marriage, and a comparison between the dates of their wedding and of Molly Morris’s birth would have told much of the story of the motive of the marriage. Doris, on the other hand, was his employer’s daughter, and there was no son. Morris was well aware of the advantages a keen young advertising man would enjoy if he were the son-in-law of Mr Campbell, majority shareholder and managing director of the Universal Advertising Agency. But that necessarily implied marriage – anything less than marriage would be decidedly dangerous and disadvantageous, and Morris was a married man already. With any other married man the line of thought might well have ended there and then, although it was quite a likely one to be pursued so far. But with Morris it meant going a little farther. It being a case of an urgent desire on his part, he was not of the stuff to be deterred by apparent difficulties from trying to gratify it. Ideas began to sprout again in his mind, although even he found those ideas so terrible that he flinched from working them out fully. Yet in time to come, when he had acquired familiarity with those ideas, he might not find them quite so distasteful. Morris suspected that at that very moment, and he was almost glad when the return of Howlett an
d the others interrupted his line of thought. He started them briskly on their work and plunged into his own part of it with zest. During the afternoon he hardly interrupted himself at all to scowl across the room at Oldroyd’s unresponsive back.

  As for that young man, his brain was plunged into such a torment of thought that he did less than ever towards earning the salary paid him by the Universal Advertising Agency. His hands were still quivering a little after the shock he had undergone at lunch-time; he had been within an inch of death then, and it was an unpleasing novel experience. All the same, he did not fear nor hate the thought of death one half as much as he feared and hated Morris. He hated him for his cunning and his strength, just as he hated him for his coarse features and his thick hands and his burly shoulders and his greasy curls. Oldroyd felt half sick with his violent personal loathing for Morris. And added to that was his new suspicion that something was developing between Morris and Miss Campbell. Allowance must be made for Oldroyd’s unbalanced state of mind. By this time his suspicion of Morris was so acute that he tended to regard the simplest action on Morris’s part as inspired by sinister motives. He felt his muscles brace themselves even when Morris addressed some casual remark to Clarence or Shepherd. What deep plan Morris had under consideration with regard to Miss Campbell, Oldroyd could not even guess. He felt there was a plan, all the same. And, being frightened, Oldroyd could not help but think that it was a plan tending to his own hurt, and he became more frightened still. But Oldroyd had the highest kind of courage. The more frightened he felt, the tighter he stuck to his post. He refused to allow Morris to get the better of him.

  16

  For a full month life went on at the Universal Advertising Agency and in the home of Mr Charles Morris with only gradual change. Morris relapsed into his self-contained abstraction, which was becoming habitual to him at home. His wife noticed it, of course, but without paying particular attention to it. So far she had not been compelled to make any unusual demand upon his good nature or his patience. She was accustomed to his moody periods of thought.

  Nor was it surprising that Morris should be moody and thoughtful. He had enough, far more than enough, to keep any normal mind fully occupied. Besides the question of gratifying his main hatred of the moment, he had the beginnings of another scheme in his mind. Then there was his flirtation (it had grown to that by now) with Miss Campbell. Last of all, he was working out the details of a scheme which was not to be officially regarded as a crime against society – his Ultra-violet Soap Bonus Scheme.

  That was a really brilliant idea. The germs of it had been in his mind for some time, and now, despite his other preoccupations (or very likely because of them), they had begun to multiply and divide, until it was not very long before the complete idea was formulated. It was a really wonderful scheme, presenting all the desirable qualities an advertising idea could possibly have in the present state of society. It was original – and originality stands at the same premium in the advertising world as it commands everywhere else. It was simple. It would stimulate the sales of Ultra-violet Soap at the same time as it would start talk about it. It did not possess the radical defect of the great Mustard Club movement, because it would not stimulate the sale of other soaps besides Ultra-violet. Most important of all, from Morris’s point of view, was the fact that it would induce the proprietors of that commodity to spend more money through the Universal Advertising Agency, thereby increasing that firm’s commission and raising the standing of the originator of the idea even higher than it stood at present.

  Morris never had a moment’s doubt about the acceptance or the success of the plan. Both were clearly obvious and inevitable. Soon Morris was ready to put the scheme before higher authority, but with acute business caution he kept it to himself for a few days longer; he might think of some improvement; also, he might find a way of making his suggestion direct to the Ultra-violet Company and arranging for the matter to be entrusted solely to him – thereby setting himself up at once as a fully-established advertising agent with at least one opulent client. Yet all those golden day-dreams were soon to be shattered completely.

  Mr Campbell was clearly in a bad temper. Morris himself had made one bad mistake lately, and the rest of the staff had done worse still. Howlett and Oldroyd had been subjected to censure not merely from Morris, but from Mr Campbell in person. Morris could tell by now in what mood he would find Mr Campbell when summoned into the presence; a short sharp call on the buzzer implied bad temper, while a longer one meant good temper. It was a short sharp call which brought him into the managing director’s room that afternoon.

  ‘What the dickens does this mean?’ demanded Mr Campbell irritably. He brandished a sheaf of papers under Morris’s nose as the latter came to a stand by his chair. Morris looked, and his heart sank.

  ‘That’s the simplest job there is in the whole office, and some fool’s made a mess of it. Who the devil is there who can’t do simple proportion sums? Who is it who makes six inches at thirty shillings an inch six pounds ten?’

  Morris knew at once, but he found it impossible to answer in words.

  ‘Whose writing is this?’ demanded Mr Campbell. ‘Oldroyd’s, isn’t it? I thought as much. Well, that’s the last time he makes an ass of himself in this office. God only knows how many mistakes there are in this lot. I’ve found three myself already. Out he goes, Morris, soon as we decently can. We’ll give him a fortnight to find another job in, and a week’s pay after that if he hasn’t got one, and that’s the last of him.’

  Mr Campbell was in the blaze of furious passion one would not expect to see in a mild-tempered Scot. He hammered on his desk to accentuate his words, while Morris was incapable of reply. His own business sense was too acute for him to find any argument whatever in favour of Oldroyd.

  ‘Go and fetch him in,’ commanded Mr Campbell. ‘Fetch him at once, and we’ll settle this business out of hand.’

  Morris started to go, checked himself, moved again, halted again. He could not bring himself to the fatal action of being a party to the dismissal of Oldroyd.

  ‘Sorry to hurt your feelings,’ said Mr Campbell, milder already at the prospect of action, ‘but it’s got to be done, hasn’t it, now?’

  Morris saw one possible way of averting catastrophe, and he seized the opportunity. It was an enormous sacrifice, but it had to be gone through.

  ‘It’s not that, sir,’ said Morris, ‘but Oldroyd’s a better man than you’d think.’

  ‘You’ve said that before, and I don’t believe it,’ said Mr Campbell with a snort.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Morris, ‘I know what’s been making him so absentminded lately.’

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘He only started telling me this morning. It’s like this.’ And in a few glib words Morris reeled off the whole essentials of the Ultra-violet Soap Bonus Scheme. It was clear proof of its soundness as an advertising idea that it could be expressed in such a brief speech.

  ‘Hm,’ said Mr Campbell, clearly moved by the brilliance of the idea, ‘there’s a lot in that, as you say. But what about—’

  He asked a pertinent question which showed the rapidity with which he had grasped the point.

  ‘Oh, there’s no difficulty there, sir,’ said Morris. ‘You simply—’ His explanation called for very few words.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Mr Campbell. Then he suddenly saw more still, saw the whole beauty of the scheme spread before him. ‘And, by George, it’ll be easy enough to—’ What he said showed how deeply he was enchanted by the prospect.

  ‘So you think there’s something in it, sir?’ asked Morris.

  ‘Something in it! There’s a gold mine in it. I can’t think why no one’s ever thought of it before. Do you mean to tell me it was that lad Oldroyd who got this idea?’

  ‘I think so, sir. He hasn’t spoken to me about it before today.’

  ‘Why, it’s wonderful! I would never have thought he
had it in him. It’ll be the biggest thing this office has ever done.’

  ‘So you think the Ultra-violet Soap people will take it up?’

  ‘Positive. Certain. You and I know that clients are all damned fools, Morris, but no client would be such a damned fool as to let this go by. Go and get young Oldroyd, and I’ll tell him that I’ll take it up with the Ultra-violet people.’

  That was a new facer for Morris. He knew Oldroyd would be quite incapable of taking up the mysterious cues which would be rained on him the moment he came into the room.

  ‘Well, sir, I shouldn’t do that if I were you. You see – you see – Oldroyd only told me this in confidence this morning. I wouldn’t have told you now if you hadn’t been going to give him the sack. He wouldn’t like it if he knew I’d told you without his permission.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘Quite, quite. I see. Well, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Um. I think the best I can do is to talk to him this evening and get him to agree to my telling you. I thought this morning that you’d like the idea, but I couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘Not be sure, man? That’s not like you, Morris. It’s a brilliant idea. I thought you’d have jumped to it at once. It’s going to be the making of us. Goodness only knows how that boy Oldroyd came to work it all out so neatly.’

  Every word Mr Campbell said only twisted the barb more deeply in Morris’s wound. It had been maddening to lose the credit and the possible cash for his cherished idea; it was more maddening still to see all this credit bestowed upon a dolt like Oldroyd. And worst of all was it to be censured, however indirectly, for not having the brains to see the beauty of the plan immediately. What with the strain and annoyance, Morris was nearly beside himself. It may have been fortunate that Mr Campbell was too enchanted with the new idea to notice anything specially odd about his manner.

  ‘Very well, then,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘Speak to him about it tonight, so that you can tell me officially tomorrow.’