The Ability to Kill by Eric Ambler

Author:Eric Ambler [Ambler, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-95011-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

* I hasten to absolve Glasgow of intent to deceive. The former address was 131 Clarence Place. When Clarence Place was incorporated into Sauchiehall Street, re-numbering of the houses was unavoidable.

† Not his Sauchiehall Street house; an earlier one, 11 Berkeley Terrace.

3

France

Gentlemen, I have received a number of private requests from members for information about the current murder situation in France.

Several of these requests have been made almost furtively; others in such equivocal terms that I have only been able to guess at their real meaning. However, all of them seemed to be based on a common attitude. As one member remarked with a leer: ‘Put the words “France” and “murder” side by side, breathe on them gently and—click—you have crime passionel. Right?’

Others were even more enthusiastic. France, they assured me, is the country in which the heart rules the head, where the feelings of the deceived husband or the discarded mistress are fully understood by toddlers of both sexes long before they learn to read, where love conquers all. Nowhere else, they said, have juries so much sympathy for the unhappy killer; nowhere else is justice so benevolent. And was there not a famous criminal lawyer who said that, if he had committed murder and hoped to get away with it, he would sooner be tried by a French court than any other in the world? Almost certainly there was. France is the one place where the murderer is understood and appreciated. Vive le crime passionel!

I feel it necessary to warn any of you gentlemen who may be thinking of basing a family excursion to France on those assumptions, that the facts are different. Under the circumstances, too, I thought it as well to advise your Honorary Secretary that, much as I enjoy the company of female murder-tasters, it would, in my opinion, be prudent in this case to neglect to notify the female membership of the Society of the time and place of this little talk.

Attempts are always being made to ascribe to the murders of this country or that a distinct national flavour. The characteristic American murder, for instance, has been held to be the open air shooting; those murderers who cut their victims up, put the pieces in trunks and deposit them in the cloakrooms of main line railway termini are attributed mainly to England; the nineteenth century Scottish poisoners, it is said, form as clearly differentiated a group as the Renaissance Italians.

However, there is one fact about murder in France of which we can be absolutely certain. If there is such a thing as a characteristically French murder, it is not the crime passionel. Even in the thirties, the number of murders which came into that category was a bare twelve per cent of the total. And, gentlemen, take note of this; with a few pathetic exceptions, the only French killers who have ever successfully used the conception of the crime passionel as a defence have been women. Where a woman is concerned, indeed, a crime passionel does not have to be committed in a moment of sudden overwhelming emotion.

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