Payment Deferred, published in 1926, is an early novel by C S Forester. In theme and tone it is quite different from the Hornblower series he is most famous for today, or his other later novels based on military and naval history, such as The General or The Good Shepherd.
This is a crime novel in the true sense of that term, a psychological study of the effect of a murder on its perpetrator. It’s startlingly different from detective stories that were published the same year, by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, and it’s still quite surprising that something as black as this was written almost a century ago.
The tone and sort of life described is rather reminiscent of the novels of Patrick Hamilton, but without the humour. Something, perhaps the sex references, highly unusual in a British novel of this vintage, reminds me strongly of the work of Georges Simenon, the standalone novels that do not feature Inspector Maigret, that he called “romans durs”. There is also a reference to the 1920’s flu pandemic that today’s reader can’t help noticing.
Mr Marble is a bank clerk, married with two children, living in a shabby south London suburb in the years immediately after the great war. He is in serious financial trouble when temptation presents itself in the form of a wealthy nephew on a visit from Australia. Mr Marble’s hobby is photography, so there is a convenient bottle of potassium cyanide in his cupboard. The murder takes place offstage; it is hinted at by the scream that Mrs Marble thinks she has heard when half asleep and her puzzlement at the muddy state of her husband’s suit.
The whole tragic sequence of events that unfolds derives from the fact that Mr Marble has buried the body in the garden. He takes to sitting alone with his secret in the back room, blotting out his fear of the hangman with whiskey, while keeping an eye on the untended scrubby garden to make sure no-one notices anything.
The house is rented. Mr Marble becomes obsessed with getting enough money to secure the freehold to prevent someone else moving in and finding the body. His frantic desperation spurs him on to use his financial knowledge as a foreign exchange clerk to do a little insider trading. The irony is that it is only his guilt that makes him daring enough to take the risk. His scheme succeeds beyond his expectations, making him wealthy, but the problems for this most unhappy of families are only just beginning.
Mr Marble can drink all the whiskey he wants now, as he contemplates the garden, while reading a book from his newly acquired library on crime. Eventually, of course, things move beyond his control.
The novel is grimly compelling, because the reader can see from quite early on that things will end badly and that Marble’s crime will be discovered. The suspense comes from wondering exactly how it will all play out. The end, when it does come, is both a surprise and bitterly ironic. The title is highly appropriate for a novel where money plays such an important role.
The Good Reader 