Murder!: the Story

The moment the whole story turns on. Left alone, Harder hesitates a long time, picks up the rejected revolver, puts it down, and picks it up again. The back door opens suddenly, and, startled, he drops it into his overcoat pocket. Bennett's words are exact: "a thoughtless, quite unpremeditated act." He dare not take it out again. Franting pays, takes his revolver and leaves; Gontle, who has taken Harder for a separate customer, asks what he wants; Harder stammers that he would like to see some foils, apologises and leaves, in Bennett's word, "a thief".

III. The killing. Harder follows Franting to the Bellevue hotel and finds him in a chilly billiard-room at the end of a long passage, standing with his back to a small fire and an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Franting refuses to be talked to and delivers a long speech instead.

He knows his wife Emily has taken a ticket for Copenhagen, has seen to her passport and is packing. He knows Harder has interests in Copenhagen. He does not accuse Harder of being in love with her, but says he wonders why else a man takes such trouble. He then states his position: Emily has money and he has been living on her, but that is not his reason; he is fond of her, but that is not his reason either; his reason is that "a wife's a wife", and he feels particularly strongly about the marriage tie. He produces her letter, reads part of it aloud, tears it in two, twists one half into a spill and lights his cigarette with it.

Then he draws the new revolver, says he is not threatening Harder and has no intention of shooting him, and makes the threat that decides the story: if she deserts him, for Harder or for anybody or for nobody, he will follow her to Copenhagen or Bangkok or the North Pole and kill her with that revolver. "And now you can get out."

Harder believes him, and Bennett tells us why: Franting is not a man who argues, but he has grit and would not recoil from consequences. Harder steps forward, Franting steps forward to meet him, and Harder snatches the revolver from his pocket, aims and fires. Franting collapses across the edge of the billiard-table, dead, with a small reddish hole in his right temple.

Harder's two thoughts, in order. First: "Well, somebody had to die. And it's better him than Emily." He feels he has performed a righteous act, and is a little sorry for Franting. Second: fear, for himself, and for Emily, who would be friendless and the centre of a scandal.

IV. The escape. He will not go back down the corridor. He picks up Franting's fallen cigarette and throws it into the fender, puts on his gloves, draws the lace curtain, climbs over the window-sill into the courtyard, and lets himself out by a green wooden gate into an entry-passage and back onto the Marine Parade.

The stroke that saves him. He walks straight back into the hotel by the main entrance, greets the hall-porter, asks whether they have any rooms, is shown into the lounge, and orders a Bronx cocktail while he waits for the housekeeper. He pays eighteenpence for a shilling drink, says he has one or two little errands to do, and leaves.

Later, alone on the sea-wall, he drops the revolver into the sea. He reviews his position: nobody saw him enter or leave, he left nothing in the room, there are no finger marks on the sill because he had put on his gloves, no footmarks on the dry pavement. He remembers, on the train, one thing he has forgotten: the unburnt part of the letter, lying under the billiard-table.

V. The crossing. He catches the boat-train from Liverpool Street to Harwich, twice suffering a spasm of fear at a station and twice dismissing it as absurd. He cannot find Emily on the steamer and searches it from stem to stern in misery before she finds him. Her joy at finding him brings tears to his eyes. She asks how it went, and he tells her the one lie of the story: "I didn't go. Thought it best not to."

VI. The investigation. The Superintendent of Police and a detective-sergeant are in the billiard-room when a stout gentleman arrives in place of the doctor who has been called away. He is Dr Austin Bond, a celebrated amateur detective whose friendship with the heads of Scotland Yard obliges the police to be polite to him.

The Superintendent proudly displays his evidence: finger-prints on the window-frame, footmarks on the sill, and strands of inferior blue cloth. From these he has deduced that the murderer was a tall man in a blue suit, with a hole in the sole of one boot and only three fingers on his left hand, who came in and left by the window, and he has circulated the description.

Dr Bond asks to see the charwoman. He has noticed in the corridor that she has three fingers on her left hand. He has her take off her left boot and put her hands on the window, and her skirt is torn at the hem. Every piece of the Superintendent's evidence is hers, from cleaning the window that day.

Then he gives his own solution: the murderer is still in the room, and he points to the corpse. The left-hand pocket of the overcoat bulges; the Superintendent draws out a Webley Mark III, quite new, with three chambers empty. Franting, Dr Bond explains, was left-handed, having been perhaps the finest amateur light-weight boxer in England a dozen years before, and his lefts were more dangerous than his rights. The revolver fell into the pocket as his arm dropped. Finally Dr Bond picks up the fragment of thin paper blown from the hearth and reads it aloud: part of a letter, ending "I shall leave our home tomorrow. This is absolutely final. E."

And the two lies that make it work. The hall-porter tells the police twice that nobody entered the lounge, and that he was in his cubicle the whole time. Bennett tells the reader flatly that both statements are false: the man had been reprimanded the day before for leaving his post, had left it again, and was in fear of dismissal. The charwoman's evidence about the fire is accepted too. The perfect proof of suicide rests on a frightened servant protecting his job.

VII. The end. In the lobby of the Palads Hotel in Copenhagen, Emily reads an English newspaper account of the inquest, at which the jury returned a verdict of suicide, and her eyes fill with tears. She says she must get some mourning and go back to the flat. Harder watches her tenderly and thinks: "I was bound to do what I did. And I can keep a secret for ever."

A worked answer

Question. "Trace the steps by which Lomax Harder escapes detection."

A model answer. Harder escapes by a combination of one accident, three deliberate acts and two lies told by other people. The accident is the origin of the weapon: he pockets the revolver Franting had rejected without meaning to, startled by a door, so that no purchase and no record connect him to it. His deliberate acts are these. He puts on his gloves before touching anything and leaves by the window, so that there are no prints and no footmarks on the dry courtyard pavement. He then walks back into the same hotel by the front door, greets the hall-porter, asks about rooms and orders a cocktail, which places him in the building as an ordinary visitor at the very time the police will later be reconstructing. And he drops the revolver into the sea from the harbour wall, so that the weapon is unrecoverable. He makes one mistake, leaving the unburnt half of Emily's letter under the billiard-table, and that mistake becomes his best piece of evidence, because Dr Austin Bond reads it as a suicide note. The rest is done for him by others: the hall-porter, who had left his post against orders and feared dismissal, twice tells the police that nobody entered the lounge, and Dr Bond, having correctly demolished the Superintendent's clues as belonging to the charwoman, concludes from Franting's left-handedness and the revolver in his own pocket that he shot himself. The inquest returns a verdict of suicide.

The observation that lifts it. Almost nothing that saves Harder is his own cleverness. The story's argument is that detection fails through other people's ordinary motives, and that a man may be safe because a servant is afraid of losing his place.

Quick revision

Seven numbered sections: the essay on murder; the gunsmith; the killing; the escape; the crossing; the investigation; the end.

Quangate; Gontle the gunsmith; a Webley Mark III; Harder pockets the rejected revolver in "a thoughtless, quite unpremeditated act" and leaves "a thief".

Franting's speech: he knows about Copenhagen; a wife's a wife; he tears Emily's letter and lights his cigarette with it; he will follow her anywhere and kill her.

The escape: gloves, the window, the green gate, back in at the front door, a Bronx cocktail, the revolver into the sea, the letter forgotten.

The investigation: the Superintendent's clues all belong to the charwoman with three fingers; Dr Austin Bond finds the revolver in the dead man's own left-hand pocket, three chambers empty, and Franting was a left-handed boxer; the letter fragment reads as a suicide note.

The hall-porter lies twice, out of fear of dismissal, and that is what makes the suicide theory possible.

Verdict: suicide. Harder's last thought: "I was bound to do what I did. And I can keep a secret for ever."

Test yourself

1. How does Harder come to have a revolver? By accident. Left alone in the gunsmith's shop while Franting tests his purchase in the cellar, he picks up the revolver Franting had rejected, and when the back door opens suddenly he drops it into his overcoat pocket in what Bennett calls a thoughtless, quite unpremeditated act, and then dare not take it out.

2. What does Franting threaten, and why does Harder believe him? That if Emily leaves him, for Harder or anybody or nobody, he will follow her to Copenhagen or Bangkok or the North Pole and kill her with the revolver he has just bought. Harder believes him because Bennett tells us Franting cannot argue but has grit and would never recoil from the consequences.

3. What is the cleverest thing Harder does after the shooting? He walks back into the same hotel by the main entrance, greets the hall-porter, asks whether there are rooms and orders a cocktail in the lounge, so that his presence in the building is innocent and openly recorded instead of furtive.

4. Whose were the clues the Superintendent relied on? The charwoman's. She had cleaned the window that day; she had lost a little finger in a mangle accident; her boot had a hole in the sole and her skirt was torn at the hem. Dr Austin Bond noticed her hand in the corridor and demonstrated the whole thing at the window.

5. Why is the hall-porter's evidence decisive? Because he tells the police that he was in his cubicle throughout and that nobody entered the lounge, which is untrue: he had left his post against the rule and feared dismissal. His false statement is what makes it impossible for anyone to have come in, and so makes the suicide theory the only one available.