Plain Murder was the second of C S Forester’s crime novels and was published in 1930. It’s really a portrait of what came to be known later on as a psychopath, although Forester does not actually use that word. It’s comparatively short and fast-paced, with not a word wasted and a good balance between plot and character.
Forester writes in a rather detached style, and the overall effect is like a cross between Patrick Hamilton and Georges Simenon, with a similar sense of the characters being trapped by circumstances and their own limitations. The nineteen thirties atmosphere is like a black and white photograph. It’s no surprise that these books have been called “London Noir”.
It’s set in an advertising agency and when the story opens, three young men who work there are discussing what to do about the fact that their scheme to bribe clients has been discovered. Morris is the ringleader and he has rather pushed his colleagues, Oldroyd and Reddy, into going along with it. They fear dismissal without a “character” (a good reference), which would make it almost impossible to get another job. This is London on the verge of the great depression with no welfare safety net.
Morris realises that the manager, Harrison, has not yet told the owner of the company that he is going to sack the three of them. Noticing that the next day is Bonfire Night, he persuades the other two that the only way out is to murder Harrison. Oldroyd has a pistol and Reddy has a motorcycle; their participation is necessary for the plan to work and Morris convinces them that he alone will be criminally responsible. He carries out the killing, the noise of the shots covered by the fireworks, and then scornfully tells the other two that they are accessories to murder who could face hanging if discovered, so must keep their mouths shut about what he has done.
Morris appears to have got away with it. The police make no headway with their investigation and he is promoted to take Harrison’s place. The irony is that the working-class Morris is a much more vigorous and dynamic manager than the rather languid Harrison ever was.
Morris becomes more and more convinced of his cleverness and superiority, both as a successful criminal and someone who is going places in the world of advertising. Meanwhile, young Reddy’s conscience is troubling him deeply. Morris realises that Reddy is likely to blurt out exactly what has happened. He begins to think that he will have to be disposed of too. He approaches this problem like an artist thinking out a creative difficulty. Inspiration strikes when he sees his wife pushing their son’s pram at the top of the hill on the estate where they live. If she let go, there would be nothing to stop the pram running down the hill into the busy traffic on the main road at the bottom.
He contrives a meeting with Reddy and invites him to tea. While he is there, Morris slips away and tampers with Reddy’s motorcycle. Shortly after he leaves, the drive chain comes off because Morris has loosened it; the brakes won’t work because Morris has loosened them too and Reddy is unable to lose any speed as the bike accelerates down the hill and into the stream of traffic where he is killed. The police assume that the drive chain snapped accidently and the brakes were damaged in the subsequent crash. Forester suggests that the German police system, where every citizen has a file, might possibly have led the police to connect Reddy to Morris. If they had realised that Reddy worked at an office where the manager had been murdered in mysterious circumstances and that he had just left the house of another man who worked there, they might have taken a different view of events.
Morris has got away with it again. He now feels that he is a sort of superman and he starts to view other people as “mere tools and instruments that he could use and throw aside”. Forester tells us that the main characteristic of a criminal is “an unusual idea of the importance of his own well-being compared with the importance of the well-being, or the opinions, or the ideals of other people”.
The business goes from strength to strength and more staff are required. The owner brings his daughter to work there and Morris thinks she is a very attractive girl. If only he was not shackled to his wife! Here is another little problem for him to give some creative thought to. He is detached from reality now, completely misinterpreting the young girl’s mild flirting. And he realises that Oldroyd is becoming a problem for him too.
To go beyond this point would spoil the book for anyone who has not read it. I’ll just point out that there are three murders, one that the police can’t solve and two that are never thought to be murders at all. No-one is punished, or at least not by the law. The resolution is very satisfying to the reader. It’s a novel that is almost a hundred years old and has lost none of its power.
The Good Reader 