Plain Murder Page 8

  Morris, now that he had the house to himself, could not settle down; perhaps that was why he had wanted the house to himself. He prowled restlessly round the house. He sat down for a few minutes by the fire, but only for a few minutes; soon he was on his feet again, walking about. There was a strange fermenting of thoughts and ideas within him, but he still could not recognize the premonitory symptoms of the descent upon him of inspiration. What was worrying him most was the revelation of how weak was his position (which should have been so strong) on account of Reddy’s ridiculous behaviour. Morris knew instinctively that the boy was quite capable of blurting out the whole business. Morris felt that he himself could probably keep Reddy from this suicidal act by the force of his own encouragement for a while, but there were difficulties, actual and potential, in the way. He could never be certain of keeping Reddy up to the mark. He might fall ill, or Reddy might – Reddy probably would, from the look of him.

  Anyway, he could not keep it up for ever; something would have to be done about it sooner or later, and in that case sooner would be much better than later. The question was what was there he could do?

  More than that, Morris was in his usual condition of high annoyance. He ought to have been annoyed with himself for not having foreseen this possibility earlier, but naturally he did not allow himself to be; that side of the picture did not present itself to his mind’s eye. Instead, he was furiously angry with Reddy. The weak-nerved little swine appeared intensely objectionable to him, and the prospect of having to continue to coax and cajole the boy, of making allowance for his absurd whim, simply infuriated Morris. And in this special case so much depended on keeping the boy up to the mark; all Morris’s new won promotion depended on it, the success which was at last to his hand – all this was as important to Morris as his life itself, which was also in the balance. Morris could picture financial ruin with all its horrors easily enough, for he had encountered it before; arrest and execution, on the other hand, were merely vague unpleasant possibilities to be avoided at all costs, but not nearly as vividly detailed in his mind.

  Morris’s caged prowlings round the house brought him up against the mirror which stood over the sitting-room mantelpiece. He checked himself and looked into it. He examined curiously the big virile face which looked back at him. There was the abundant dark hair with a bit of a wave in it, the irregular forehead, the intense brown eyes under their thick brows. The thick hooked nose betrayed an admixture of Jew in his ancestry – Morris knew that – and the hint was confirmed by the olive tint in his cheeks. The full lips and the heavy jaw did not help to make his face a handsome one, although Morris, peering at himself, was quite satisfied. He might have been better looking, just as his career might have been more brilliant, but in each case the full achievement was something to be rather proud of.

  To have climbed, with no education except what an elementary school had thrust upon him, to his present position was quite distinguished. To earn five ten a week and have five men working under him – and one of them a toff from a good school – was more than his old man himself could boast. Morris could see himself climbing higher yet, to a position of vast power and profit in the advertising world. He knew, he knew, that he had good ideas on the subject of advertising, and that he had a force of personality which would make itself felt. If the Universal Agency offered him too little scope he would leave it, later – or he would make it grow while he grew with it. He could see himself making a hundred thousand a year out of advertising before long; it was there for someone to make. And yet all these glorious possibilities were dependent on the whim of a white-faced boy whose moods were as flighty as a woman’s!

  Morris beat one hand into the other with rage as he thought of this. If only something would happen to stop the boy’s mouth! He would stop it himself gladly, he decided, but— The thick hands which could strangle the boy easily clenched hard as he realized the difficulties of that course. Perhaps that was the first time that Morris definitely came to consider the advantages which would follow Reddy’s death. Death, Morris realized without calculation, for such was his simple realist’s mind, was the only thing that would make Reddy safe. In that case, seeing that there was advantage to be gained from Reddy’s death, Morris would have been glad to know of Reddy’s death. No other consideration entered into the balance at all. Morris did not care in the least whether Reddy lived or died except from this particular point of view of his own advantage.

  It is perfectly true that Morris came more readily to examine the advantages which this would bring about in consequence of the killing of Harrison. One violent death having already occurred made it easier to begin to make calculations based on a second. It helped Morris to start considering the matter, and the anger he felt towards Reddy carried the debate a stage farther. One life more or less did not matter much to Morris; and he had progressed so far since Harrison’s murder that he had begun to look upon death as the suitable recompense for anyone who crossed his path. Morris was becoming a dangerous man. Idle expressions such as ‘an acquired taste for blood’ are not entirely pointless. They convey a definite possibility rather inexactly. Killing for killing’s sake is extraordinarily rare, but killing for quite inadequate motives is much more usual.

  All the same Morris, contemplating Reddy’s death, thought the matter over cautiously. An unexplainable tragedy such as had disposed of Harrison would be highly dangerous. Two mysterious deaths of people employed in the same small office would direct inquiry towards the few people working in that office, and Morris, with knowledge now of the thinness of the ice over which he had skated in the Harrison affair, could not possibly trust himself to arrange an event which would not yield evidence to the searching investigation over a narrowed field which would follow. He had no lack of confidence in his own powers, but he sorely misdoubted the possible effect of bad luck and unforeseen circumstances. So that the unexplainable, motiveless type of murder was too dangerous to repeat.

  Morris, by grasping this essential fact, saved himself from many of the pitfalls which beset most criminals. Too slavish repetition of a previous successful crime has brought many a man to the gallows – George Joseph Smith, who drowned his brides, is the standard example; fortunately, there are few criminals original enough or careful enough to vary their methods.

  Compelled, therefore, to think of some new device, Morris, now that his contemplation of Reddy’s death was in full swing, began to think of how Reddy could die without suspicion being roused which could turn in his direction. Suicide? Morris considered that possibility quite seriously. A deft exertion of his personality might possibly, even probably, induce Reddy to kill himself, but there was always the chance of farewell letters and things like that – Reddy was so damnably unreliable that Morris could see himself not trusting that the boy would not write and give the whole game away first; especially Morris, in his contempt for that wavering character, could not credit him with the amount of resolution necessary to carry the thing through to the end. He would probably make a botch of it.

  On the other hand, Morris could perhaps try to arrange Reddy’s death in such a way that someone else would be accused of the crime. Morris went into the infinite ramifications of this possibility with his usual thoroughness. But he could not come to any satisfactory decision. He did not know enough about Reddy’s home life to be able to plan well; the data were insufficient. And that sort of thing would call for much planning and ground-baiting beforehand. Even then any scheme he could build up would be a shaky, rickety affair at best, he felt. There would be too many weak points, even if he spent months over the business, and at present he could not evolve even the germ of an idea upon which to build.

  Morris at this point almost began to leave off considering the affair at all, despite the faint feeling of disappointment that would have brought. The surge of creative zeal within him was either illusory or wasted, he began to decide. He could think of no foundation on which to build up a plan for Re
ddy’s unsuspicious death.

  Then it was that the germ of the new idea came to him. For a few minutes he did not realize what was happening, but immediately afterwards, in less than ten seconds, he had evolved the whole scheme complete save for the minor details. Morris felt the warm flush of blood which he had known before, when Harrison’s conversation with Maudie had given him the hint he had needed. It was the instant of creation; for a space Morris’s mind, although a running river of thought, was in superb working order, logical and clear. He paced up and down again. Now that the main idea had come to him it was easy enough to work out details; not merely details of execution, which seemed to evolve themselves in his mind without conscious effort, but the equally important circumstantial details. Satisfied for the moment, he broke off his line of thought to follow out developments and consequences; they too, as far as he could see, were satisfactory enough. Turning the whole plan over and over in his mind, he could find no flaw, no objection. It called for an effort of self-control not to decide in favour of the scheme at once. His trust in this marvellous new power of his was such that he was on the point of making up his mind that the plan was exactly right; but he was cautious enough to control himself and put it on one side in his mind for further subconscious consideration before committing himself to it – Morris was of that obstinate breed which, once decided upon a course of action, find it impossible to draw back. And one disastrous failure – that of the scheme for extracting bribes from the Adelphi Studio – had taught Morris the need for caution. Morris was a far more dangerous criminal in consequence.

  When Mrs Morris and the children returned the mid-November darkness was falling, but Morris had not yet lighted the gas. He was sitting by the dying fire in the twilight, but it was instantly obvious to Mary that his irritable mood had gone, even though a rather abstracted one had replaced it. He took John on his knee, while Molly climbed on the arm of his chair, and he listened to their talk with some show of intelligence while Mary lit the gas and drew the curtains and bustled about preparing tea. He ate the sticky sweets which John and Molly pressed upon him, and he dandled John on his knee in the manner of any ordinary father. Some of the sixpence he had given Mary had been spent not on sweets for the children, but on crumpets for their father – a delicacy which had been all too unusual in the days before Morris received his one pound a week increase in salary. Morris liked them; he was a man of greedy appetite. It would have been obvious to anyone who saw him eating those crumpets – leather ones awash with melted butter, several of them – and washing them down with cup after cup of strong stewed tea, that there was one obvious reason at least for his frequent bad temper. Not that bad temper was at all in evidence at the moment. On the contrary, such was his good temper that he promised that on the morrow, if it were fine, he would take the children out for a walk in the morning, which meant extraordinary condescension on his part. Mrs Morris could hardly believe her ears when she heard him suggest it, and beamed on him delightedly when she realized that he was making a genuine offer.

  9

  On Sunday morning Morris woke at his usual time, and in response to what usually woke him – the noise of John and Molly playing in the next room. For a moment he experienced the usual depression, which turned to sleepy elation as he remembered that it was Sunday and that there was no need to get up immediately. With a murmured ‘Bless those kids,’ he turned over drowsily on to his other side to sleep again. It was a blessedly peaceful moment. He was just drifting off to sleep again when recollection came to him. He had to make a decision; the sudden shock of remembering this had him wide awake instantly. He began to go through his plan again, bit by bit, testing it, until he reached its consummation, and from there he proceeded onwards seeking out possible unpleasant consequences. In the end he decided that the plan was sound. Then in the laziness of Sunday morning he had to decide whether or not to carry it through.

  Mary, dozing blissfully, suddenly began to appreciate the fact that her husband had turned towards her, and put out inquiring little hands to him under the bedclothes; but he ignored her, and when she persisted he hunched over again on to his other side so as to be free to think. For his plan to work really well called for the execution of it on a Sunday, so that if he did not act today he would have to wait a week, and a week might be too long. Another essential part of the plan was the Sunday morning walk with the children, which would be a tiresome business. But on the other hand, in readiness for his decision, he had announced yesterday that he would take them, and it would be nearly as tiresome in its consequences to say that he had changed his mind. Young Reddy’s life see-sawed in the balance as Morris lay idly in bed debating these factors for and against. Then the balance swayed down definitely and irrevocably as Morris arrived at a final decision. And having done so, Morris was able now to drift off again into a comfortable doze; he had that keen brain of his under better control now and he could restrain its activity better – largely, of course, because there was not so much exciting novelty about making plans now.

  At breakfast it would have been difficult for anyone to discern any real difference in him. There might perhaps be an air of decision about him, a hard line or two round his mouth, which was not usually apparent. But he was not particularly abstracted to all seeming. Yet he may have appeared just a trifle anxious to start off in good time for that Sunday walk with the children.

  ‘Where are we going, Daddy?’ asked Molly as they left the house.

  ‘Park,’ replied Morris briefly. The air of decision was much more noticeable now, and he looked at his watch, and in consequence of the information gathered thereby he quickened his step, so that John in his push-chair felt he was really flying, while Molly had to trot beside him almost as fast as her short legs could carry her.

  ‘Are we really goin’ to the park, Daddy?’ asked Molly. ‘Oh, Daddy!’

  For the park was a long way away, in a northerly direction (towards the district where Reddy lived), and it was so far away that Mrs Morris had rarely found time to take the children there. They had come to look upon it as a rarely attainable paradise.

  Over the main road they went; they had to wait quite a long time before they could cross because there was so much traffic. There were plenty of motor-cars setting out for the country, because this was a fine Sunday although a November one, and there were the usual trams and buses – the road was quite thick with traffic; and, although Morris fumed a little at the delay, he found the presence of so much traffic very gratifying somehow. Once across, they hurried by the side streets as fast as Morris could walk comfortably, and much faster than Molly could walk comfortably. But Morris strode along unheeding; he paid no attention and made no reply to the few conversational openings which Molly found breath to make. Then they came to another main road, and when they had crossed that and walked a few yards up the next road they reached a big iron gate with stone pillars, and, passing through, the whole wonderful view of the park was opened to them. John began to sing, and even Molly forgot how hot and tired she was.

  But even in this lovely place Morris still appeared to be in a hurry, and he would not sit down on a seat and rest as Molly wanted him to do, nor would he go on to the grass and unstrap John from his chair as John wanted him to do. He hurried along the winding gravel paths, looking ahead as if he was seeking someone or something. Molly wanted to stop and look at the ducks being fed, but he did not bestow a glance upon them. They hurried round the lake with the rowing boats on it so fast that Molly could not see nearly as much as she wanted to see. The paths were full of Sunday morning people, and from every point of vantage Morris looked eagerly along the groups, as though searching for someone.

  And then Morris ceased to hurry. He abandoned his rapid stride in favour of a gait much more leisurely and suitable for a fine Sunday morning.

  ‘What did you say, dear?’ he asked, bending down a little to catch Molly’s childish comments on the beauties of the park.

>   Molly did not notice this magnificent condescension; she was merely pleased at at last having attention paid to her. Morris listened attentively; he took one hand off the back of the push-chair for Molly to hold, and the three of them went on very gently along the gravel path, with Molly holding her father’s hand and chattering to him gaily. They made quite a pretty, leisurely picture; so it certainly appeared to the young fellow and his father who were approaching in the opposite direction.

  ‘Why, it’s Morris!’ said Reddy suddenly. He turned a little pale at seeing him thus unexpectedly.

  ‘Hullo, old man,’ said Morris. ‘Good morning, Mr Reddy.’

  He beamed at them in the pleasant winter sunshine.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Mr Reddy. He had good old-fashioned ideas about being cordial towards his son’s superior in the office.

  ‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’ said Morris. ‘Taking the air, sir?’

  ‘Yes, my son usually comes for a walk here with his old father on Sunday mornings,’ said Mr Reddy, telling Morris exactly what he knew already.