Murder Isn't Easy

by Richard Hull

  “I think that even Nicholas must admit that if that point of view is put properly to Tonescu, he must see that it is quite reasonable.”

  “I should think it most unlikely. You see I have seen Tonescu. You have not. I should say that he was thoroughly temperamental.”

  “He can be as temperamental as he likes, but I agree with Barraclough. Without those two safeguards I recommend that we don’t touch the thing with the end of a very long barge pole.”

  “In other words you both want to kill the plan—solely because I suggested it.”

  “Don’t be childish,” Spencer had the impertinence to say. I shall not forget that insult, nor shall I forgive the opposition that he was making solely on personal grounds. Once more, however, Barraclough attempted to pour oil on the troubled waters, and as usual merely succeeded in making things worse. Eventually, however, after a discussion of an appalling length—all our conferences at NeO-aD were apt to be protracted—I induced them to consider the proposed business favourably and consented that we should investigate it fully, and that possible financial safeguards should be carefully explored, a watering down of Barraclough’s original inflexible attitude.

  And that was all the gratitude I got for bringing in this valuable piece of business! Truly, as I said at the start of these notes, there is a limit to the extent to which the folly of any man can be allowed to ruin a business. My only doubt is whether I ought not to include Barraclough as well as Spencer. But no, Spencer is the real stumbling-block. I must never forget for a minute that it is Spencer who must go.

  But as if ingratitude was not enough, I was positively subjected to insult. Spencer had the impertinence to complain that I was interfering in his domain by introducing a client!

  “Well,” I said, “if you don’t do your work, someone has to do it for you.”

  “The tu quoque is exactly what I want to bring out when I bring work in. You neglect your own work, which is production, and you would be the first to make an outcry if I started to do it for you, but you have no hesitation in taking on something you know nothing about and forcing both Barraclough and me to dance to your piping.”

  “Back to that canning thing again!”

  “Yes. Back to Greyfields. We shall want to do so sometime.”

  “I doubt it. But anyhow that is no reason why I should not introduce Tonescu.”

  “None—provided that Greyfields is not neglected. But I only wish to point out that if I do not complain at your intrusion, you must not complain if I enter your province.”

  I could afford a superior smile.

  “I think you will find it rather a difficult province to enter—for the amateur.”

  For once Spencer’s pretense of indifference to whatever I might say gave way. He was frequently bad-tempered, but never before had I been able to make him lose control of himself by a direct statement. I suppose it was the truth that rankled so bitterly. He leapt to his feet and upset a table in so doing. For a moment I thought he was going to strike me, but eventually he contented himself with mere vulgar abuse before he crashed back into his own room and slammed the door with a resounding bang.

  Even if there is a slight lack of harmony amongst us, Spencer should not advertise the fact to Thomas and Miss Wyndham and the office boys.

  If this goes on much longer it will be a question merely of method as to how I eliminate Spencer. I wonder now if I could so arrange things that suspicion would fall upon Barraclough? Not perhaps to so great an extent as to cause him to be actually convicted, but sufficient to frighten him. Perhaps on the whole, though, it would not do. Apart from being rather difficult to arrange, it would be a nuisance to have Barraclough away from the office. I mean, someone in authority—even if only with limited authority—must be available to answer the telephone or deal with the unexpected visit of a client.

  Besides, Barraclough is very useful in dealing with press representatives, those ceaseless intruders in an advertising agency’s office.

  No, though I am more and more coming to the conclusion that Spencer must die—and die soon—I think I shall leave Barraclough out of it.

  Chapter Seven

  The curse of an advertising agency and, at the same time, the charm, because of its variety, is the impossibility of concentrating on one thing.

  It would seem natural that having before us this extremely interesting problem of Tonescu, we should have been thinking of that to the exclusion of everything else. But such a course was quite out of the question. There was always routine work to do.

  You see, advertising, to be of any value, must have continuity, and only a very few of the really big spenders are able to keep up a continuous campaign to the public. That they profit by it is certain, but it is more than a small business can be expected to contemplate. So, now and again, even if the work is well done, the sales do not immediately respond, and really a company should work its finances with that as a possible danger—an improbable one of course, and one which scientific methods of preliminary research, such as we used when the client would permit it, should almost entirely obviate. Still, small businesses must be cautious, and besides, we have to recommend them to be. We cannot afford bad debts!

  But while continuous advertising to the public is an ideal not always obtainable, except to a limited public, such as Henriques’ announcements in the Kentish press, to the trade it is not only possible, but essential. That really is why trade papers prosper, and also why, unfortunately, they are so numerous. There is no trade which is not catered for by at least two papers, except, I believe, that the Undertakers have only one.

  But as for some of the others, they abound. Motoring, medicine, and drapery are the three biggest sections. Motoring papers of course go, not only to the trade—they are bought also by that part of the public which is especially interested. The same may be said of medicine—who, by the way, may be slightly hurt at being referred to as ‘trade’. I mean no insult. We always classified them as such in a rather comprehensive way. But because there were so many, I had got Barraclough to draw up rather a valuable summary of facts about all such papers. He became peculiarly interested in the medical ones. I believe he had notes on over a hundred journals of that sort.

  Now the real point of an announcement in a trade journal is simply that your name shall appear—if possible, prominently. I have always considered that it mattered very little what you said in them, especially in those which were trade and trade only, such as the Grocer’s Gazette or the Baker and Confectioner. The same would not be quite true of the British Medical Journal or the Autocar. But I could never get Spencer to see my point as to the purely trade papers, and of course he encouraged the client. Clients like to see something different every week. I never could be sure why. I think partly natural perversity, because they knew it annoyed me, and partly desire to see how much work they could get out of me for nothing.

  I am, of course, thinking of a particular client; a personal friend of Spencer’s and a personal enemy of mine. He had some cure, I expect a quite inefficient cure, for influenza, which he insisted, contrary to my advice, in advertising weekly in small spaces in the Chemist and Druggist and in that alone. Now I have not a word to say against the Chemist and Druggist, but it is not a complete campaign. I mean, you might get Flukil on to the shelves of every chemist in Great Britain—in fact probably had—but you did not get it off those shelves and into the hands of the public just by using that. It was not fair on the paper. Moreover, it was one of the very few journals who had strict conscientious objections to paying commission to agents—I never could understand their point of view—and so we had to make a special charge to Flukil.

  Naturally that gave Spencer’s friend an opportunity to say that we cost him something—I believe Spencer egged him on—and he took it out of us by insisting on having different copy each week.

  Each week! For the first six weeks or so I found it quite easy, but when I suggested that we should now return to the original and so go on in a
cycle, I was met with a blank refusal. So, having already said the six best things about it, I was forced to go on saying the second best things, and after that the third, and so on. Naturally they were not so good, and then Flukil—I never could remember that man’s name—began to complain. Personally I should have washed the whole thing out, but Spencer, who never could see how much of my brains he used up on trivialities, insisted on my obliging his friend. What makes me particularly certain that Spencer was behind Flukil’s complaints, was that when I absolutely refused to produce something new, or when I simply had no time to deal with it, Barraclough put in some nonsense of his own, and Flukil always rang me up and congratulated me on the wording. Barraclough’s stuff, I need hardly say, was so hopeless that it must have been a deliberate plot.

  I only give this just as one example of what was constantly happening to pull me back from the heights and keep me tied down and prevented from soaring.

  While, then, I was struggling to find the two hundred and sixty-ninth thing (or thereabouts) to say about Flukil, and was deciding to adopt ‘Summer Colds’ as a headline, I could not be concentrating on Tonescu as I should. The point I wanted to get down to was what to call the substance.

  It was, I gathered, something that you could yourself rub on to glass, wherever you liked, quite simply. A good name I felt was all important. It should suggest to your mind at once that windscreen wipers were unnecessary, that you would be able to see clearly, however heavy the rain. That is to say, that is what the name should imply so far as cars were concerned. As to mirrors, something that suggested that no mist would form on them, was what was wanted. The trouble was to get one word to imply both. I mean things like ‘Clerevue’ or ‘Exrain’ would imply the first and ‘Nevcloud’ or ‘Alclear’ the second. Perhaps ‘Everclear’ would do both. But it hardly included the connection with glass.

  I was just, I felt, on the verge of a really good idea, when the telephone bell rang and I found myself once more distracted by an absurd and trivial interruption. Henriques, if you please, had the impertinence to be dissatisfied with the advertisement we had put in for them about beads! They complained that so far as they could make out it had sold no beads at all.

  “But what do you expect,” I somewhat incautiously began to answer. Before I had time to explain my point old Henriques himself interrupted me.

  “We expect, Mr. Latimer, that when we pay for space in a large number of papers and allow you to put in whatever you please, that the effect will be an increase in sales. That is what we expect, and I think it is well that you should know it. Not, as has happened in this case according to the figures before me from each of our branches, an instantaneous and proportionately substantial decrease.”

  “You did not give me time to finish. Of course, ultimately, that not only will be what you expect, but what I am sure will happen. But you forget the time factor. I was going to say, ‘But what do you expect in four days?’ The increase in sales, you know, cannot be instantaneous. Now, if you persevere with that advertisement for another six weeks, I am sure–––”

  “Six weeks! At the present rate of decrease our sales will be a minus quantity in less than a month.”

  I forbore from pressing the mathematical point. A month may be four weeks or five. Clearly Henriques was not thinking accurately. Besides, before I had time to say anything he went on:

  “No, I absolutely refuse to have that nonsense repeated. Let me read one phrase of it to you. ‘The very latest models from London and from Paris’. Apart from the fact that it sounds like accidental blank verse, no one ever talks about models in connection with beads. Besides, our windows are plastered with ‘Buy British’, and you make our advertisements talk about Paris! Several customers have made some very acid comments on it and the people from whom we bought the beads are turning very nasty about it.”

  “Where did you get them from?”

  “An English house. But where they were made, as a matter of fact, I have no idea. That is exactly what makes it so very awkward. I rather suspect that they are, in fact, Japanese.”

  “I see. I wish I had known all this.”

  “So do I. And I go further. I think you ought to have found it out before you rushed into print recklessly.”

  Now, as a matter of fact, it was Henriques’ own insistence at the last moment, coupled with Barraclough’s officious telephoning to find out whether they liked ‘And Now—The New Hat’ which had caused me to make any mention of beads at all. I tried to suggest this tactfully to Henriques, but it was no good. He was determined to judge merely by results, and by results of such a short period too—although there was some substance in his point about country of origin. Seeing therefore that logic would be wasted upon him, I determined to appease him by offering to put in whatever he liked. I mean of course whatever selling point he liked. I had no intention of letting him actually write the wording. Unfortunately, however, he misunderstood me and I had to listen to another lecture.

  “Oh, so now I am to write the advertisement, am I? Would you mind telling me what advantage we get from employing you? First we leave it to you, give you a free hand and let you behave exactly as you wish. That was what you asked for and what we granted, and now at the first breath of criticism—and criticism founded on facts, mind you—you calmly suggest that we should do the work, while you confine yourselves to taking the commission.''

  Now dealing with angry clients is not really my department. It is Spencer’s. It was entirely wrong that Henriques should have been put through to me at all. For that Miss Wyndham was to blame. She should have seen to it that I was not worried, but as Barraclough was saying only a day or so before, that girl was getting thoroughly careless. It is my view that she has fallen in love with Thomas. Of course, if she has, she will be quite useless and we had better sack them both at once.

  However, there it was. Henriques had been put on to me and I had to do my best to calm him down. Before I was quite aware what I was doing, I had foolishly promised to do all sorts of things for him. So far as I can make out, for the future, Henriques will be as bad a curse as Flukil, and between the two of them I shall get no peace, no time to produce constructive ideas at all. Besides, there was a very definite threat that if he did not get results and get them quickly, Henriques would go elsewhere. I hate being judged by results, especially over a short space of time; it is not fair; besides, it makes me nervous, and so I do not do myself justice. It would never do to lose Henriques. They were a very useful piece of bread and butter.

  No sooner was the telephone conversation over (and my arm was aching by the time it was), than I went to the outer office to explain her mistake to Miss Wyndham. But it was not my lucky day. She was almost insolent and quite impenitent.

  “Well, Mr. Latimer, what was I to do? Mr. Spencer was out and Mr. Barraclough had had about as much of Mr. Henriques as he could stand. He said that it was your copy and he thought you ought to defend it.”

  “That will do, Miss Wyndham. Please understand in future that clients are not to be put on to me.”

  I am glad to say that Miss Wyndham realized that she had been put in her place. As I went out I saw that one of the boys whose duty it was to collect voucher copies of the papers and run messages generally, was grinning at her discomfiture. As I shut the door behind me, I fancy I heard Thomas taking it out of the boy. Now why should Thomas worry to interfere with what is not his business? I am getting more and more suspicious that he and Miss Wyndham are becoming far too close allies.

  Chapter Eight

  I know nothing more fascinating than to watch the effect of the unusual on the commonplace, and of this Tonescu has afforded me a most interesting example. I have very much enjoyed watching the reactions to him of Spencer, a typical, florid, unthinking, insular Englishman, and of the reticent, dry, cautious Barraclough, who must certainly have some Scottish blood in him. But the chance that I was in the outer office when Tonescu arrived, gave me the opportunity of observing in addition, t
he attitude of two ordinary English people, namely Miss Wyndham and Thomas. Tonescu was something of a class they had never had to do with previously.

  Miss Wyndham’s face was an absolute sight. At any time she has a slightly surprised expression, due, I think, more to her protruding teeth and receding chin than to the fact that she is startled, although her brain is so limited that anything which is the slightest trifle out of the ordinary, does amaze her. Whenever I see a newspaper announcing some ordinary fact as a ‘surprise’ or a ‘sensation’, I always picture Miss Wyndham standing with her mouth open, showing those rabbit-like teeth and peering over her pince-nez and saying “Fancy! Well I never!” in awestruck tones.

  As for Tonescu, his arrival made her completely dumb, especially as the importance of the occasion caused him to lapse into Rumanian. She merely sat and goggled at him. What she would have done if I had not come to the rescue I cannot imagine. Had hysterics I should think. She always fails in an emergency. Thomas, on the other hand, took another familiar English attitude—I believe he is Welsh, as a matter of fact, but it is immaterial. He assumed that because the man was speaking a foreign language, he could not understand English, and anyhow was a person to whom the ordinary rules of intelligence did not apply. He stared at Tonescu as if he was an exhibit from the Zoo or Madame Tussaud’s, and then turned back to the space by the window devoted entirely to him to give him light and, as far as possible, freedom from interruption, and remarked, apparently to his drawing block: “You don’t say so, old cock. Personally I don’t believe a word of it.”

  On the whole I do not think Tonescu realized that he was being talked about. Anyhow I came quickly forward to relieve the situation. Of course, afterwards I told Miss Wyndham and Thomas what I thought of their behaviour, rather to the annoyance of Barraclough who considers the discipline of the outer office to be his province, whereas, in fact, the artist must come under the control of the production department, and anyhow, if I cannot tell the typist how not to receive clients when I see her making a mistake, things are impossible.