Murder Isn't Easy

by Richard Hull

  “If you would be so good as to tell me what the matter is I will ascertain if Mr. Barraclough is disengaged. Probably he will make an appointment with you for some other date.” I should have liked to have produced a diary and allotted her something like three o'clock on the following Thursday week, but Mr. Barraclough never would let me make his appointments for him.

  At that, Mrs. Higgins tapped her elbows with her bony fingers and gave a little stamp.

  “I see your Mr. Barraclough this morning and I do not leave this office until I have seen him, and you may take that as quite final.”

  Well, there was nothing else to do, so I told her that I would enquire what Mr. Barraclough’s wishes were. If I could manage it, she should be kept waiting some time. Well, I usually try to help people, but this Mrs. Higgins annoyed me. Just as I was going she condescended to explain her business a little.

  “You can tell him.” she said, “that I’ve come about my mirror.”

  I didn’t really like delivering that message to Mr. Barraclough. It was so vague. He was often rather cross in the mornings, but there it was, there was nothing else to do. But, to my surprise, he seemed quite interested. I had to show Mrs. Higgins in at once, and I didn’t like the triumphant look she gave me, as much as to say:

  “There, you’ve had to do it after all, you see.”

  Just as I shut the door behind her I remembered that it was on a mirror that Mr. Spencer had experimented with Galatz-si, and of course I ought to know all about what happened to it. So I just waited quietly in the passage and listened.

  Well, there was a terrible row. It seemed that Mr. Spencer had put the stuff on too thick, which is just what Mr. Spencer would have done, and the result was that it had damaged the glass, eaten it away, Mrs. Higgins said, so that it was no good any longer as a mirror and was getting rapidly worse.

  “It started with just one or two queer spots a few days ago and now all one corner has rotted away completely; that’s the corner where he rubbed this stuff on.”

  “Are you sure?” Mr. Barraclough had said.

  “Quite. He had the impertinence to do it without telling me, but he did have the goodness to mention it afterwards. Quite proud, he was, of the way the steam would not settle on it—the saucy man. And his jokes about my being able to have the water hot in future, whereas it is always hot enough, except for a salamander. But that Mr. Spencer was always making silly remarks like that, even to me. He knew well enough I did not appreciate them.”

  “I really do not know that I can accept that,” I heard Mr. Barraclough reply. “There might be many other reasons why the mirror has decayed.”

  “None,” snapped Mrs. Higgins. “And I'll tell you another thing which proves it. He said he had upset a few drops on another part of the mirror, and that’s beginning to go too. Right down vicious stuff it must be. If it eats into your inside like it does into my glass, no wonder he and the other gentleman here died quickly.”

  I must admit I was rather enjoying this, even though the last remark was a bit gruesome. It was quite unusual to hear Mr. Barraclough being put down like this. I only wished that I could see his face. Eventually however he got a word in.

  “I am sorry to hear of the damage to your mirror, but what has it to do with me? Except that I am very much obliged to you for telling me. I am afraid that Mr. Spencer must have used too strong a solution.”

  “What’s it got to do with you, young man? You or your company are going to pay for it.”

  I very nearly gave myself away by laughing out loud. We all knew very well how very much Mr. Barraclough disliked paying for anything. Quite what he said I don’t know, but I think he said that any mistake that Mr. Spencer made, concerned him alone and that she had better apply to his executors.

  But Mrs. Higgins was not so easily disposed of.

  “Stuff and nonsense,” she said. “He did it because you told him to, as part of the company, and the company is liable. I’m not leaving here until I am paid.”

  I could not help wondering if Mrs. Higgins’s rather large black bag contained her dinner. She seemed quite determined to spend a long while with us, and really I think she would have carried out her threat. But whether she would or not I never found out as Mr. Barraclough made what was probably a mistake—or perhaps it was the best thing he could do. He offered her a pound as compensation, carefully saying that he did not admit liability.

  “A pound, young man! Do you think I can buy another one for that? I believe it cost my dear husband over twenty, but I'll take fifteen!”

  Now I don’t believe that either of them had the slightest idea of what a mirror of that size did cost, and I know I did not, but I have always thought that there were mirrors and mirrors, and that a good deal depended on the frame, but I may be wrong.

  Anyhow, they started bargaining and if they didn’t know much about mirrors, they both knew a good deal about haggling. I think that if they ever met again, which of course they won’t, that Mr. Barraclough would win, but as it was, he was at a disadvantage because he did not want to waste time. Eventually they agreed at eight pounds five shillings, which is five shillings more than half the difference, between the pound Mr. Barraclough offered and the fifteen pounds she wanted—at least it isn’t but that’s how she worked it out.

  Even then there was a dispute about whether it should be a cheque or cash. But that argument Mrs. Higgins was bound to lose because we never keep much petty cash in the office, so I did not wait for the end of that but hurried back to my own desk just in time to hear Mrs. Higgins leave and find Mr. Barraclough ringing through to tell me to get him M. Tonescu on the telephone.

  Soon afterwards he ran off without saying where he was going, which was most unusual, and I went in to tidy his papers and found the manuscript.

  In the excitement of that I forgot to tell Percy what I had heard, but before Mr. Hoopington reached us, I did just mention it. It was then that Percy told me one of the other things that I said I would mention later. He said at once:

  “Take it from me, old girl, we’re going to find out that this Tonescu is a rotter in some way or other.”

  “Why, whatever makes you say that?” I asked.

  “Well, do you remember the first day he came here he got excited and talked in Rumanian? Well, I thought at the time it wasn’t, because I recognized a few words and they were Welsh. You know I learnt just a little so that I could pretend I’m a Welshman for a joke, because of my name? Well, I can’t talk enough to follow everything people say, but I believe he was talking Welsh and pretending it was Rumanian—so I’m sure we shall find out all the rest of him was a sham.”

  “Oh, but Percy, oughtn’t you to have said so?”

  On that he turned on me almost angry—it’s the only time I’ve known him be.

  “Well, I wasn’t sure. And a fine lot of loyalty you and I owe to this concern! Besides, perhaps there may be some words the same in both, like English and Latin.”

  Well, of course, I saw all that at once.

  But afterwards, when the whole thing came out, it was proved that Percy was quite right all the time. It seems that M. Tonescu was not a Rumanian at all, but a Welshman called Tony something, Williams, I think, and that the stuff wasn’t made at Galatz at all—for all I know, there isn’t such a place—but that he had it done up by someone else who was in the swindle with him somewhere in Hoxton and that they both knew quite well that in time it would destroy any glass that it was put on to.

  Apparently he pretended to be a Rumanian so as to play a sort of confidence trick on Mr. Latimer. I think he must have overheard Mr. Latimer say at the Exhibition just before he first met him that he was an advertising agent, perhaps say something about providing capital, and so have wanted to pretend to meet him by chance and to be very ignorant, and to be ready to do whatever he was told. (All that part of the diary was really Mr. Latimer’s, of course.)

  Anyhow, thinking that he was just a stupid foreigner, even Mr. Barraclough had not
taken him seriously, although they had all taken the product seriously, and so they had not found out enough about him, and he had been able to be vague and get away with all sorts of things. I heard afterwards, too, that the Rumanian bank reference was forged, and I suppose it would be easier to do that than to forge an English one. Well, everyone knows that the banks abroad aren’t the same as ours.

  Of course, until Mr. Barraclough came back, I did not realize quite how serious it all was. But I could see that it did matter, because if Galatz-si was going to eat into Mrs. Higgins’s mirror, perhaps it would eat into all other glass, unless of course Mr. Barraclough was right when he said that Mr. Spencer had used too strong a solution.

  That, of course, was the first thing that he thought of too. After he had telephoned to M. Tonescu (and how much he said to him I don’t know), he went straight off, so I heard afterwards, to look at his own car. As it happened he hadn’t used it for several days, perhaps weeks, and he wanted naturally to look at the windscreen.

  And when he did see it and found that it was beginning to go wrong too, sort of mouldy-like, it must have been an awful shock, because of course that meant that all the rest would go soon, too, and then goodness knows what would happen. I suppose Tonescu’s company would have had to replace them all if they had got the money, but whether NeO-aD were liable, too, I never really did find out. At any rate we had made a great reputation with Galatz-si, and if that was going to turn out to be no good after all, it would be bound to do us a great deal of harm. Sort of reaction, you know.

  But all this was just thinking about what the future might be, and as a matter of fact it hardly mattered at all amongst so many other things which all happened that day. Because while Mr. Barraclough was looking at his car, and I suppose going on to see M. Tonescu, Mr. Hoopington arrived.

  Well, neither Percy nor I wanted to talk to him in front of the office boys. Those lads were supposed chiefly to go and fetch voucher copies of papers and magazines (‘books’ as we call them in the advertising profession) and make themselves useful generally, which they seldom were. They were always out when they were wanted, and in when they weren’t.

  So of course now they were in. Now I think Mr. Barraclough has said that he had moved into what was Mr. Latimer’s room and that his old room was empty. So Percy and I took Mr. Hoopington into there, and there we showed him what we had found.

  Chapter Three

  Well, of course he was very interested. He said he would like to read it all through, but of course there wasn’t time then, and anyhow Mr. Barraclough had a shocking small handwriting which I always have said is the mark of a mean man. Mr. Latimer’s wasn’t too easy to read, as well I knew, though he did generally dictate, as causing more trouble, so we just showed him that there was a bit written by Mr. Spencer, and that it was what he was writing just before he died, and I also just mentioned what nasty ideas Mr. Barraclough had had about us.

  Mr. Hoopington said that that was the final piece of evidence for which he had been waiting, and then he began to outline to us what his theory had really been all the time. Actually he wasn’t able to tell us everything just then because of course he hadn’t long, but because we had helped him—and for one other reason which I shall mention later—he promised to tell us all about it afterwards, and I must say I think that was ever so good of him. So, later on he filled in all the details besides those which became quite public property soon after.

  He told us that the first thing which had seemed curious to him was when Mr. Barraclough saw the envelope on the balcony below. It seemed to him funny that it should have stuck there.

  Then he looked for finger marks on the window of Mr. Latimer’s room, and there weren’t any, whereas there were plenty of Mr. Barraclough’s on his window sash. Still, that was natural enough and quite possible, and Mr. Barraclough said he had opened his window during the afternoon. All the same, Mr. Hoopington thought it was funny that Mr. Barraclough should so definitely call attention to the envelope, especially as it seemed to be more under his window than Mr. Latimer’s.

  So he changed his mind and decided not to go on questioning Mr. Barraclough that night, but to get rid of him at once and experiment. He found that he had difficulty in getting any envelope to lodge on the balcony, and it would not go there except from Mr. Barraclough’s room.

  Now, Mr. Hoopington was always fair and he never liked rushing things, so he didn’t jump to any conclusions from that, but he saw which way it pointed, and when he went down to the street below and found another exactly similar envelope, also with traces of Galatz-si, he was almost sure that he knew what had happened.

  You see, that pointed to someone having failed to get the envelope to stay at the first shot. So someone wanted him to find that envelope—in other words it was a false clue deliberately laid, and it was Mr. Barraclough who called attention to it.

  Directly Mr. Hoopington had seen that, the whole thing got a lot clearer, and after he had been out to our home, it was plainer still, because I told him how I took round the tea and he saw that Mr. Barraclough could have put the poison in both their teas before it ever reached Mr. Latimer!

  Well, I must say he must have done it under my nose, and I don’t now remember anything suspicious; perhaps he did it while he was taking sugar, I do remember a bit of fumbling then, I think. Well, anyhow, that must have been it, and then just as Mr. Latimer was dying, he went in and hit him in the face and scattered the crystals about just to make it look like what he was writing, and I must say he must have had a nerve to do that, besides it not being at all a nice thing to do to go hitting a dying man like that.

  At first I couldn’t think why he wanted to do it but Mr. Hoopington made that clear to me. Of course it was just to throw suspicion on Mr. Spencer because of the accident that had happened to him. But really there Mr. Barraclough was a bit too clever, which serves him right, because it seems that he had to hit him while he was still alive or else his eye wouldn’t bruise properly. It’s not the sort of thing that a girl likes talking about and I really do apologize for putting it in, but one must say everything, even if it is gruesome, but it seems that the amount of discoloration was so slight that allowing for the time that the poison would take to act, it ought to have been more, because I think Mr. Hoopington said (though I don’t quite understand) that after you are dead, you don’t bruise.

  Oh, and Mr. Hoopington thinks that Mr. Barraclough thought of pretending that the crystals being scattered about were to represent the mud, but that finally he came to the conclusion that that was too far fetched and I must say I think it was.

  But the great thing is that it is something I said which helped Mr. Hoopington. I was ever so thrilled when I heard that!

  You see, Mr. Barraclough said that only one door opened in any of the three rooms, and that was Mr. Spencer going to Mr. Latimer and coming back again. Well, that must have been four doors anyway, but I thought I had heard Mr. Barraclough’s door open and someone go in to Mr. Latimer’s room and then come back, and I said so. I even said so at the Coroner’s inquest, but nobody seemed to take much notice there because they said Mr. Barraclough was in a better position to hear. Well, so he was, but all the time Mr. Hoopington had noticed the point, and in the end it proved that I was right.

  I couldn’t understand, not quickly, why Mr. Barraclough had added so much to Mr. Latimer’s diary, but Mr. Hoopington explained it. I wish he could do the explaining now. He is so clever! What he says, is that Mr. Barraclough started with the idea of killing Mr. Spencer and putting the blame on Mr. Latimer, and so getting them both out of the way. Well, I don’t think that was at all a nice thing to do, but that’s what Mr. Hoopington says he intended to do. Then he got hold of Mr. Latimer’s diary and he saw how angry he was and he began to think of the bits he would put in to make it look as if Mr. Latimer had done it. All those bits about the tin and the poison which are ever so complicated and not written a bit like the way Mr. Latimer wrote. Well, all those Mr. Barraclo
ugh added. Mr. Hoopington says he added them so as to have his story pat.

  You see, the most important thing he thought was to get rid of Mr. Spencer. I don’t know why he thought that so strongly, but my woman’s instinct told me he hated him, and a woman’s instinct is never wrong. I think it was jealousy for a man who was better than what he was.

  Then he read what Mr. Spencer wrote and saw the chance of murdering them both and saying they killed each other, and so he did it, and afterwards added the last bit that he pretended Mr. Latimer wrote so as to see he had got all the details right. That Mr. Latimer had sent me out for the Daily Mail schedules was a piece of luck he worked in later.

  After that he thought he would keep the story up. It meant that he threw himself so fully into the idea of their killing each other, that he almost grew to believe it himself. Also he wanted to put down what Mr. Hoopington said to him to make sure he hadn’t made any mistakes, and even there he kept up the pretence with himself, perhaps in case anyone ever found it, because there isn’t any proof against him in it; at least I don’t think so, but Mr. Hoopington says there are some bits which might have made him guess.

  Then it gets too complicated for me to understand, because not only did he leave a clue, the envelope, to call Mr. Hoopington’s attention, as he hoped, to Mr. Latimer, but he put the second tin into Mr. Spencer’s drawer. The idea, Mr. Hoopington thinks, was that first of all Mr. Hoopington should be made to think of an accident or suicide, and then of course find out that it wasn’t, and then Mr. Barraclough hoped that the police would think that it was Mr. Latimer’s idea to deceive them by pretending it was. In other words they were to think that it was Mr. Latimer’s way of getting out of the murder if Mr. Spencer alone had been killed. I must say I find it too complicated to follow, but Mr. Hoopington thinks it was rather clever, only rather too clever.

  But anyhow, he made a mistake in not leaving Mr. Spencer’s writing where it was. Because I told the Inspector about that (me again!) and he couldn’t think where it went, but he didn’t think it had been thrown out of the window because he thought that he would have found it when he was looking for any more envelopes.