Continental Crimes by Martin Edwards

Author:Martin Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2017-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

The Perfect Murder

Stacy Aumonier

The short stories of Stacy Aumonier (1877–1928) have long been relished by connoisseurs. James Hilton, author of Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr Chips, and also an occasional writer of crime fiction, reckoned that Aumonier’s best work ranked with the finest short stories ever written, while the present-day crime novelist Christopher Fowler, writing in The Independent, said his stories ‘should rightly be regarded as classics—but aren’t. Worse, his work has vanished completely…Yet John Galsworthy and Alfred Hitchcock were admirers of his style, his way with suspense, his wit, humanity and lightness of touch. He was described as “never heavy, never boring, never really trivial”.’

Aumonier was born in London, his surname giving a clue to Huguenot ancestry. His father was a sculptor, and his uncle a well-regarded artist. Aumonier himself was a capable painter, exhibiting in the Royal Academy, and he wrote and performed in sketches for the stage with some success before earning widespread acclaim for his short fiction. Gifted and personable, he seemed to lead a charmed life until he contracted tuberculosis. He sought treatment for the disease in Switzerland, but died there at the age of 51. This story, which appeared in The Strand magazine in 1926, was singled out for praise by Julian Symons in his influential study of the genre, Bloody Murder.

***

One evening in November two brothers were seated in a little café in the Rue de la Roquette discussing murders. The evening papers lay in front of them, and they all contained a lurid account of a shocking affair in the Landes district, where a charcoal-burner had killed his wife and two children with a hatchet. From discussing this murder in particular they went on to discussing murder in general.

‘I’ve never yet read a murder case without being impressed by the extraordinary clumsiness of it,’ remarked Paul, the younger brother. ‘Here’s this fellow murders his victims with his own hatchet, leaves his hat behind in the shed, and arrives at a village hard by with blood on his boots.’

‘They lose their heads,’ said Henri, the elder. ‘In cases like that they are mentally unbalanced, hardly responsible for their actions.’

‘Yes,’ replied Paul, ‘but what impresses me is—what a lot of murders must be done by people who take trouble, who leave not a trace behind.’

Henri shrugged his shoulders. ‘I shouldn’t think it was so easy, old boy; there’s always something that crops up.’

‘Nonsense! I’ll guarantee there are thousands done every year. If you are living with anyone, for instance, it must be the easiest thing in the world to murder them.’

‘How?’

‘Oh, some kind of accident—and then you go screaming into the street, “Oh, my poor wife! Help!” You burst into tears, and everyone consoles you. I read of a woman somewhere who murdered her husband by leaving the window near the bed open at night when he was suffering from pneumonia. Who’s going to suspect a case like that? Instead of that, people must always select revolvers, or knives, or go and buy poison at the chemist’s across the way.

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