Why the quotation marks in the phrase “perfect” murder? Well, the tall, thin man in the smoking room of the transatlantic liner was listening to an Englishman, an American, and a Frenchman discussing murder. The tall, thin man disagreed with his drinking companions. He said: “The perfect murder is one that no one believes to be murder at all.” But when a murder is not discovered, not even suspected, how can there be a story about it? Think it over, dear reader: it is a bizarre paradox.
Copyright 1936, by the Crowell-Collier Publishing Co.
They do things better in England, said Colonel Hepplethwaite. “Of ninety murders committed in the metropolitan area of London last year the perpetrators were brought to trial in sixty-seven cases and there was only one acquittal. Forty-three of the murderers were hanged, twenty were sentenced to penal servitude for life, three were judged insane, and as I say, there was one acquittal. In fifteen of the remaining twenty-three cases the police were practically certain who had committed the crime but there was insufficient evidence to secure a conviction, which leaves only eight murders in a huge city like London that were unsolved mysteries, so to speak.”
Dr. Peabody clicked his fingers at the steward. “Bring me a champagne cocktail... this infernal boat’s rolling again... if I’m going to enjoy my lunch... yes, Colonel, you’re right. But in England you haven’t known the delights of Prohibition that gave the gangster business such a boost with us, and there’s our big alien population as well. In Boston last year there were two hundred and fifty killings. There were not more than a score of convictions, I’m sure of that, although I’ve forgotten the exact figures. I know, too, that only three of the murderers went to the chair.”
“But there is a distinction,” said the Frenchman, Dubois. “You speak of killings, and the Colonel referred to murders. Surely I am right in supposing that gang killings in your country are not really murder in the usual sense of the word but the results of a guerrilla, a little war, between different groups. They are—”
“But they’re murders just the same,” Hepplethwaite interrupted, “just as your crimes passionnels in France are murders, although the murderer is often acquitted, especially if she is a young and pretty woman.”
“Oh, that happens at home too,” said the American, laughing. “We not only acquit women murderers but give them a fat contract in the movies or vaudeville. But for all that the French police are pretty good, aren’t they, Dubois?”
The Frenchman nodded. “Yes,” he said, “we catch murderers all right in France, even if sometimes the young and pretty ones escape. In the long run, few of them go unpunished.”
“That’s what I say,” resumed Hepplethwaite. “ ‘Murder will out’ — that’s an old English proverb and it’s true. Take these ninety cases in London—”
“Just wait a minute, Colonel,” said the fourth member of the party in the liner’s smoking room, a tall thin man who had hitherto taken no part in the discussion. “You are confusing the issue entirely; you speak of ninety murders in London, but what you really mean is ninety open, flagrant murders, ninety murders known to the police. You forget the other ones, the undiscovered crimes,” He smoothed his gray hair reflectively with his hand.
The Colonel snorted. “Do you mean to say that our London police don’t know when a murder’s committed?” he asked indignantly.
The other smiled. “Of course I mean that. I’ll go further and say that the fact that the police do know is a proof that the murder is a failure — from an artistic point of view.” He waved his hand negligently. “Surely, sir, you must admit that the proof of any successful crime, especially murder, is that it is not discovered.”
“I don’t understand,” said Dr. Peabody. “If nobody knows about it, how can you say it’s a murder?”
“You can’t say; that’s just my point. Nobody can say, and nobody knows, except one person, the murderer himself... or herself. Let me give you an instance to explain what I mean, which in a nutshell is simply this: that the perfect murder, the artistic murder, is one that no one believes to be murder at all, in which the murderer has the best of motives for killing his enemy, but naturally does not wish to pay the penalty for his crime, and succeeds in killing him in such a way that not only does he not pay the penalty, is not even suspected, but that no one for a moment has the slightest idea that a crime has been committed, unless perhaps one might call suicide a crime.”
He gulped down his whisky-and-soda, put his hands flat on the table and leaned forward impressively towards Colonel Hepplethwaite. “The trouble with you, my dear sir,” he said, “is that you’re an Englishman and therefore cannot understand artists; the English never do. When you Englishmen say ‘Murder will out’ you are talking of banal, bourgeois crimes committed by the average ‘man in the street.’ But even in England there are other people besides the man in the street, and some of them are artists... Steward, another whisky-and-soda, please, with a little more whisky this time and a little less soda.”
The speaker was holding his audience as tight as the Ancient Mariner who clung to the button of the Wedding Guest. He paused for a moment.
“Now, gentlemen,” he resumed, “I see that you don’t appreciate the point I’ve been trying to make. Let me give you a definite instance, which happened to come to my notice several years ago. I may say that, although I became aware of the facts by an accident which is of no importance now, I can vouch for their authenticity.
“The story concerns an American news correspondent in France, who was what I believe they call ‘second man’ in the Paris bureau of one of the principal New York papers. He was a hard-working young man of average intelligence, or a little more, who had a most charming and beautiful wife. His chief, whom we may call Watkins, although that was not his name, was an old friend of this Anderson, a friend of his family, and a senior at college when the younger man was a freshman. He had helped Anderson to get the job in Paris and taught him a great deal about the work of a foreign newspaper correspondent. The two men were friends in the best sense of the word.”
He took a drink of the raw spirit and added firmly, “Yes, they were friends, the best of friends, that is to say, they were friends until — until Anderson’s home life began to go wrong. He loved his wife, you understand, loved her desperately and deeply, loved her more than his work or himself or anything in life.
“He thought she loved him too until somehow there in Paris he noticed a change in her. The first thing he noticed was that when he came home in the evening she didn’t seem interested in what he had been doing that day. Before, when he came home, she asked him what the news was and what stories he had been working on. You know what newspapermen are — they aren’t very well paid or anything, but if they’re any good they take a tremendous interest in their work.
“Well, as I say, Anderson’s wife shared his interest, and then — somehow — seemed to stop sharing. Then, it seemed to him, she lost interest in him too. He knew what that meant, but there wasn’t much that he could do about it. When two people are in love with each other and both cool off equally, there is something lost or broken and it is rather sad, but it doesn’t really matter very much or hurt either of them. If one, however, stays in love and the other falls in love with someone else, then it’s anguish and hot coals of fire for the one who stays in love. Anderson felt like that but there was nothing he could do about it, except watch and try to find out.