Murder Isn't Easy

by Richard Hull

  So far that was all good exploratory work, and Barraclough might just as well do it as do nothing, but then Spencer went on to suggest that I should prepare a complete advertising campaign.

  When I read that I could not help laughing in his face.

  “Glad you find something funny. What is it? Some typing mistake?”

  “No.” I thought I had better put it straight-forwardly. “Just the idea that we should prepare a campaign out of the air. You know as well as I do that would hardly be scientific advertising.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean a final campaign. Just a rough idea to convince them that we can do good work.”

  “But that’s exactly what we should not convince them of.”

  “Well, Nicholas, you said that—not me. I thought that you would feel certain that you could produce something for them. After all, you know, canners are easy. Lovely pictures of good-looking strawberries and luscious plums and bunches of parsnips fresh with the morning dew.” It was just like Spencer’s sense of humour to put in parsnips so as to bring one to earth with a bump, but that was a game two could play at.

  “And then, having spent a good deal of time drawing these pictures, you find that they are not going to can parsnips at all.”

  “Possibly not actually parsnips, but every canning company does peas.”

  “Precisely.” Barraclough, who had just come in, chipped in. “They all do peas. The established canners have got all the market there is. I don’t believe a newcomer would have an earthly chance.”

  “Unless he advertised well. That’s just the point. You see, what I want you to do is to let them know what they will have to spend to get their stuff well-established. In other words, how much spare working capital they must have, for of course for the first year or two, they'll have to spend capital advertising. So you could work out figures for them, while Nicholas here shows them pretty pictures.”

  “If I were to tell them,” was Barraclough’s answer, “how much capital they would have to lose, they would never start the company.”

  “There wouldn’t be any need to put it as high as that. I thought we’d put it down at about five thousand a year for the first three years. Couldn’t you work out something with that object in view?”

  Barraclough nodded. “I see. Decide on the answer and then work out the sum backwards. That would of course be much the most accurate way of getting at the best advice to give them.”

  I dislike Barraclough when he tries to be funny. Still, I could see his point.

  But as the discussion was drifting away from the really serious objection to the proposal, I brought it back again.

  “And meanwhile I am to draw what you very rightly call ‘pretty pictures'? Just pretty pictures in a vacuum!”

  “Well, what more do you want to know? You'll find in there all the ideas that the directors have got in mind as to what they propose to can first.”

  “Lots of things. I want to know if they can really get the stuff, fruit, vegetables, whatever it is—chickens for export, do I see?” I flicked over the pages. “I want to know their sales policy—to wholesalers, to agents, direct to the public, by mail——”

  “Quite a lot of that you would find answered there, if you would be so good as to read it through. And, my dear Latimer, have you ever heard of a mail order business in tinned plums?”

  “Well, I only wanted to know. Then”, I picked up the thread of my argument again, “I want to know what is the special advantage these people claim to have over their rivals. In other words, what is their selling point? Because, excuse my being obvious, that is what I shall have to lay stress on in the advertising.”

  Spencer shuffled about uneasily.

  “I do wish you would not go straight to details. Get the general idea first.”

  “But one can’t get the general idea until one has got the details. The whole science of advertising is to work backwards from the particular to the general. One must know every detail before one can possibly lay down the policy. It’s very difficult to get the advertiser to see that, but surely you ought to know it.”

  “I’ve heard you say it enough times, if that is what you mean.”

  “Well, it seems to be necessary. The repetition, I mean.”

  Perhaps I did rather snap the last words out, and certainly Paul was looking furious. At any rate Barraclough thought it necessary to intervene with what he called tact. Poor little Barraclough, he was always pathetically obvious, and never more so than when he tried to be tactful.

  “Just exactly what are the details of what you want Latimer to do? I mean I am sure you don’t want him to go to the trouble–––”

  “No trouble is too great. I will not have that suggested.” (Well, I had to protect myself somehow. Both of them were quite capable of saying that I had refused out of mere laziness.)

  “—of preparing copy and lay-outs and art-work of all sorts which may not be wanted. Besides, you know, art-work costs money.”

  “Always harping on the money side! We must not let ourselves be kept back for the sake of not risking a few pounds. We must occasionally throw a sprat to catch a whale.”

  I saw Barraclough shiver. He was in a constant state of alarm over the company’s finances. Sprats, in his experience, were apt to come expensive.

  “Yes,” I went on, “but the whale isn’t even formed!”

  “Don’t mix your metaphors, Nicholas.” It was one of Spencer’s most maddening tricks to change in a second from a violent temper to a vein of broad good-humour. “Look, it’s like this, I am well in with these people. I’m sure this canning company has a good chance of becoming a big thing—especially from an advertising point of view; once it gets started, all the advertising agents will be after them. I want to be in, not when the flag falls, but before it falls.”

  “And if it never does fall?”

  “Oh, it’s sure to fall all right. There’s plenty of money behind these people—yes, I’m glad to see you both brighten at that—and I want to make certain we get the chance. All I want is a few specimen designs in two or three different styles–––”

  “Thank you very much,” I interjected.

  “—for labels round the tins, for trade-marks, show cards, in fact all the preliminary work. The actual advertising need not be so detailed. As Nicholas says, we shall have to get down to selling points.”

  “A few designs in two or three styles and an unspecified amount of copy. Have you any idea of how much you are asking?”

  “A good deal, no doubt. But after all, you aren’t busy. You might just as well do that as sit here doing nothing. As for expense, Barraclough, Thomas can do the rough lay-outs and give an idea of the finished art-work. We need not go outside for art-work yet.”

  Rather to my annoyance I saw that Barraclough was beginning to give way, but I really was not going to waste my time on a wild goose chase.

  “I suppose,” I asked casually, “that if we do all this the company will definitely consent in writing to appoint us as its advertising agents? And I suppose they will pay for the work we do?”

  Barraclough instantly became technical.

  “The company isn’t formed yet. It cannot enter into a contract before it is. Though by a legal fiction–––”

  Spencer brushed him aside.

  “And as for paying, I should think they would if they ever used the stuff. But they won’t buy a pig in a poke.”

  That settled it.

  “Nor will I. I absolutely refuse to waste Thomas’s time or mine until things are more definite. Besides, you know quite well that preparing campaigns without being asked to do so is one of the things that the Institute definitely set their faces against.”

  “Oh, the Institute of Incorporated Practitioners in Advertising! Nicholas, Nicholas, you know perfectly well that when it suits you, you pour the utmost contempt upon them and maintain that you are far in advance of them, and are only going to listen to such of their ideas as seem to you right. But now, bec
ause it suits you, you quote them.”

  “Well, they may very well be right sometimes. And to my mind it happens that this is one of the occasions when they are.”

  “For heaven’s sake, man, listen to reason!” Spencer was boiling with rage by now. “Here’s a chance and you propose nominally on grounds of pure pedantry, but actually I believe out of pure laziness to risk the whole thing. It’s as bad as the way in which you lost us the Flaik-Foam business.”

  “That I lost! Of all the preposterous statements! When you refused to do the tiny bit of work you had to do, you mean, out of motives of mere bad-temper. Every time I see that campaign that you threw away, it makes me nearly cry.”

  “There was no talk that time about not preparing a campaign until we were appointed agents in advance, or until Macnair promised to pay us for your stuff, however dud it was! And there wouldn’t be that sort of chat now if it hadn’t been that I brought the idea up. You’ve got two reasons and two only for opposing this. One is that I suggested it, therefore you are against it. The other is pure, bone idleness; nothing more dignified or intellectual than pure, bone idleness!”

  “Well, so far as this morning is concerned, you have certainly wasted it. It is obviously quite impossible to go on discussing anything rationally in that frame of mind.”

  With that I got up quietly and with dignity, and put on my hat.

  “I shall go out to lunch now. Perhaps you will not be quite so impossible later on.”

  Spencer looked at his watch rather pointedly. It was only half-past twelve, and I had happened to be a little later at the office than usual that morning, but I could afford to ignore the point. In the first place it was his fault that I was not still at work; and in the second, as I have said before, I refuse to be the slave of the clock.

  Chapter Three

  I think that by now I have said enough for anyone to see what an impossible person Paul Spencer was to work with. Gauche, tactless, overbearing—those adjectives naturally sprang to the mind whenever you thought of him. But there were two characteristics of his which especially annoyed me—which must, I think, have been peculiarly irritating to anyone.

  The first was his incurable habit of losing his temper one second and recovering it the next, and for two minutes being perfectly charming. At the end of that, as likely as not, he was insulting you again; and while this performance was going on, he expected everyone else to keep their temper the whole time, or at any rate to recover it when he did. He used to play that trick more often on me than on anyone else. I don’t know what he took me for. A chameleon, perhaps.

  But the second characteristic was even more irritating. He had an intolerable habit of twisting things round so as to appear to be always in the right. The remark about the attitude of the Institute towards preparing a campaign was a typical example. I was perfectly accurate when I said that the Institute, with a desire to raise the standing of the profession, had very definitely set its face against doing detailed work on the chance of getting it accepted. They took the line that you ought only to work when you were sure of being paid for it. And on the whole a very reasonable line. I mean, do solicitors walk up to their clients and remark that as they thought they might be wanting to make a will, they had prepared one that they thought was the kind of thing which might be adapted to their needs? Or do chartered accountants offer you specimen balance sheets? Or wave income-tax forms in your face? As a matter of fact I’m not quite so sure about the latter, but my point is obvious.

  But there is a time to obey the desires of the Institute and a time to use common sense. The Greyfields Canning Company was obviously the first. The Flaik-Foam equally clearly had fallen into the second category. Yet, look how cleverly Spencer had managed to trip me up over the two! Of course a mere debating point, but still very irritating.

  By now I think that it must be obvious, as I have just said, that Paul Spencer was extremely difficult to work with. But I was still a long way from the conclusion that I ultimately came to. As yet Paul had not made himself quite impossible.

  That afternoon I decided that I was far too upset to do any useful work. One cannot work when one is disturbed. And so I took a stroll in the Park and thought over the possible means of getting rid of him.

  There was first of all the simple method of calling a meeting of the company and passing a resolution that he should cease to be a director. For that purpose I should have to get Barraclough’s support. I wondered how far I could rely on his intelligence? Well, that remained to be proved. It would be necessary to approach him when he was in a good mood. It would only require a little tact—surely it could be done?

  But if by any chance Barraclough proved obstinate or stupid, or got some wild idea in his head about loyalty—the little man was capable of that sort of old-fashioned notion—then I should have to try something else. At that time I hardly knew what, though I was sure that something could be done. I think that all I had in mind was a vague, rather sordid, idea of buying Spencer’s share. Though quite how, in the state my finances were in, I did not know. Probably I should have no difficulty in getting one of the banks to back me. I had read that they had money that they had difficulty in finding a use for. Meanwhile cooperation with Barraclough seemed the simpler solution.

  Unfortunately the next morning found him in one of his alarum-clock moods. We had an old client, Henriques, one of the standbys of the company as a matter of fact, for whom we had been running the same advertisement in the provincial press for some while. It was quite a good advertisement, and personally I saw no objection to letting it go on, but for some reason they had suddenly asked us to vary it, for no better cause that I could find out than that they thought a change would be nice. A foolish idea.

  However, stupidly, I had consented to do so. I had intended to do it on the afternoon of the day when Spencer interrupted me with his preposterous Greyfields Canning business, but all the excitement about that had driven it completely out of my head—which only shows how wrong he was to have said that I had nothing to do, and how unwise it always is to disturb the person who, if I may say so, is really the brains of the company.

  Accordingly it had not been done, and unfortunately time was getting short, with the result that Barraclough, as I have said, was in one of his worst alarm clock moods. He had even tried to get me on the telephone the previous day, but even though one of his messages had eventually reached me, I had of course taken no notice of it. I never work out of business hours. Still, perhaps it was unfortunate, because Barraclough was certain that one of his frantic messages must have found me, and consequently would talk of nothing else. I tried to take advantage of the opportunity by pointing out that it was all Spencer’s fault that I had been disturbed the day before, but the little man was beyond reason. He was merely in an insistent state of clamour that I should get on with a new advertisement for these people.

  Well, if I was to have Barraclough’s assistance in ejecting Spencer, I felt I had to humour him, and so—much though I hate working in a hurry—I sat down to try to oblige him by writing some new copy rapidly. There would, perhaps, just be time for Thomas to do some little thumb-nail sketch, but “I am afraid,” I told Barraclough, “there will be no time to get the client’s approval, nor for type-setting.” Accidentally, this cheered him up, oddly enough. Type-setting, I should explain, is the process of making one block, not only of the drawing, but of the whole of the advertisement, words and all. It ensures that one can get the exact type one desires, and the words arranged as one wants. In cases, such as this one, where the same advertisement was to be used in several different papers, it made certain that all were the same. You could have copies—stereos, they are called—of the parent block sent to each paper.

  Now I like to have my work type-set. I like to use unusual type, and now and then the papers—especially the smaller ones—cannot provide the exact variety I require. But it is expensive, and Barraclough, whose duty it was to answer any questions raised by the clients
about the cost of producing their advertisements, loathed having to justify that expense, really because I believe that in his heart of hearts he was not convinced about the necessity.

  In the case of Henriques, who kept a standard notice as to their drapery stores in the local press which circulated in the districts where they had a shop, he was particularly hard to convince. He used to say that the type-setting cost more than the advertisement, which was not true, unless you changed the advertisement every week, as I was always being urged to do.

  Consequently my decision not to worry about typesetting for one week at any rate, gave little Barraclough immense pleasure. Considering how valuable that was to me, I set to work quite happily, determined to do my best. If Henriques were to be under the disadvantage of having local and probably bad arrangements of type, I must be particularly bright.

  But it is not so easy to be bright in a hurry. We had been running for some while under the headline of ‘Perfect Cut and Perfect Fit’, and going on to talk about ‘the glory that was Savile Row and the grandeur that was Bond Street’, but I had had a lurking suspicion that I had been a little too classical. Still, it had served its turn, and the problem now was to think of another angle of approach. My first idea was ‘London’s Latest Lingerie for’ Canterbury, Sittingbourne, or whatever the town was where the shops were—I never could remember. Anyhow, it would have to vary for each branch.