Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 3, March 1964

The Power to Kill by Philip Ketchum

The voluntary acceptance of self-limiting rules applies to murder as well as to other games. Equally applicable, a ruinous spoil-sport can make inroads into the best laid plans.

When I was eight years old I decided to kill my grandfather. He was a thin, scrawny man, bony, sharp featured, and he had a cackling laugh. He used it on me with a devastating effect. He laughed at my mistakes, my awkwardness, my petty rebellions. He was amused when I was caught doing something wrong. He scoffed at my games, my imagination, my daydreaming. I hated him more than anything in the world. One night he died in his sleep and I was heartbroken. I cried and cried and cried. People thought I cried because I loved him. They were wrong. I cried because he had escaped. Now I would never enjoy the great pleasure of killing him.

I remember Miss Tadbald, my sixth grade teacher. By that time I was twelve, thin, gangling, and not a very good student. I was a Boy Scout. I did not want to be a Boy Scout but my parents thought it would be good for me. Soon I was glad I had joined. As a Boy Scout I learned a lot of things about how to handle a knife, how to build a fire, how to tie knots. This knowledge would help when I killed Miss Tadbald. She had black, piercing eyes, a sharp nose, and a tight, thin mouth. She could look at me and see what I was thinking. If I made a mistake in a problem, she saw it. If I skipped my reading, she found out. If I whispered in class, she knew it was me. Others could do wrong, but not me. Day after day after day she made me stay after school, embarrassed me, took away my playtime. I made at least a dozen plans to trap her, torture her, kill her, but one day her mother got sick and she went back home to look after her. A substitute teacher took her place. Miss Tadbald never returned to the school. I never saw her again.

Then there was Lorena Whitcomb. I loved her, and I came to hate her. She was my first true love. I was seventeen when I met her. Before then I had experienced several puppy-love affairs, had developed a flickering interest in girls, but Lorena did not fit into such a category. She burst into my life with so much sweetness, and so much bitterness, it hurts me today to remember her. I became her slave, would have died for her. She destroyed my appetite, my honesty, my sense of responsibility. She was tall, slender, beautiful, had straw-colored hair, blue eyes, wide red lips. Her voice was sultry, tempting, promising everything. Her whisper could make me tingle. I did not want to believe it when I learned she was unfaithful, that she had turned away from me. The murder I devised would have been quite dramatic, but before I could accomplish it I came down with the mumps, and was put to bed. Then, while I lay suffering, my father got word he was to be transferred east. Of course I had to go too. Somewhere between the mumps and the trip east, Lorena disappeared from my life.

The university was good for me. It helped me grow up, it challenged my thinking. I learned a great many things. Some did not come from text books or class lectures. One of my extra-curricular activities was the achievement of a better understanding of murder. There were no classes on this subject, but murder is as old as man. There is a wide experience in the field. The history of every civilization is sprinkled with murder. Some are fine examples of the art and can be studied, analyzed, understood. I might even say there is a philosophy of murder, but I am afraid the average moralist would not accept such a view.

A few principles can be defined and be made understandable. They stand above morality, have little to do with ethics. Take the matter of the power to kill. This is an amazing gift. I have it; you have it; everyone has it, even the lowest and the most ignorant. This is an inherent possession. No one has to buy it, or earn it, or steal it. It is as free as air. I can take your life. I do not care who you are, how powerful you are, how strong, how wealthy, how important. If you are a king, or a prince, a president, a general or a peon, your life is in my hands. I can snuff it out, put a period to your living. All I need is to get a gun, point it at you, and pull the trigger. There is no trick to it at all.

What an amazing power — the power to kill. Aware of it, how can anyone feel small, unimportant, a nothing? In my hands rests your destiny. I can take your life whenever I wish. I am a veritable king. Beware of me — because you live only at my pleasure.

This is true of everyone, yet everyone cannot use the power to kill. I have done considerable research on the subject. In my notebooks are pages and pages of charts, analyzing this phase of the problem, but there is no need to set up and explain the probability equations. A number of generalizations can cover the matter. While everyone has the power to kill, who are those that can make use of it? Who are those that would back away? I think we can say this — that the tender cannot kill, nor the soft, nor the weak, nor the timid. Murder requires a toughness of character, a sense of harshness, a background of strength. We can say this in another way. To be a murderer, a man must be courageous, must have imagination, must be daring. Think about it for a moment, see if we are not right. We are considering murder — planned murder; designed murder; plotted murder. I tell you this definitely. To be a murderer requires all the fine qualities of manhood.

There is another point to analyze. I would set this up as a premise — that murder is one of the highest arts. If murder is one of the highest arts, then it should be reserved to those who can qualify as being worthy of it. I am not talking about the murderer now. I am considering the victims, those to be killed, and I would add that, if murder is one of the highest arts, then the unworthy, the ignoble, and the wishy-washy weak, should be excluded from such benefits.

Do you see what we have done? It is this: We have set up a governing chart covering the subject of murder. Since all have the power to kill, each is a potential murderer. Yet to be a murderer, a man must pass certain tests. He must be strong, courageous, imaginative, decisive, daring. And his victims must not be the unworthy, people of no importance. They must not be the ignoble, less than him, below his station. They must not be the wishy-washy weak, who will come to their own ends soon enough anyhow.

If I had not made a careful analysis of murder, I might have killed a number of my associates while I was at the university. One was a girl who was unappreciative. I was actually on the point of taking her life when I realized she was unimportant, a pretty girl but a nobody. By the time she was thirty she would be fat, flaccid, the mother of a brood of chubby children. There was a young man I nearly killed. He was in several of my classes, a big, bruising individual, crude as the farm he came from. Just in time I realized he was of the ignoble, an earthy person far below my station. There was a professor I thought of murdering, a very intelligent man but one of the wishy-washy weak, a man of no courage. He cringed in the ivory towers of his profession. I could afford to ignore him.

Actually, I am a very normal person, a mathematician, a scientist. I am also a potential murderer. I am aware of my power to kill. I have courage, imagination, daring, strength of character, and it is good that I have. Tonight I will need those qualities. Tonight I must kill someone. I have weighed all considerations. I know what I must do. My victim is not unworthy, she is not ignoble, she is not one of the wishy-washy weak. She is an important person, of high station, of character. I cannot ignore the challenge she presents. I will tell you about her, why I must kill her, and how I will do it. This is very important to me. To you, it can be a demonstration.

The name of my victim is Fleur Bronski. She is twenty-five, and rather attractive. For a number of months I have been living with her. She was lonely; I was kind. I may even have told her I loved her. Sometimes we are careless about the words we use. Surely, I could not have meant it seriously. More than anything, my living with her was a convenient arrangement, a temporary thing.

Fleur is an artist, possibly a good artist. She thinks. Most women never do. And she is honest. There are many fine things about her, and it is regrettable that I have to kill her, but what other course can I follow? She told me, yesterday, that if I tried to leave her, she would kill me. She was not hysterical, nor frantic, nor wild. She was very calm, very positive. I am sure she meant exactly what she said.

As evidence of this I must recount one of our conversations. It was held long ago, just after I had moved into her apartment. In straightening one of the drawers, I came cross a gun. It was fully loaded, a very lethal weapon, and as I held it in my hand I said, “Fleur, what’s this?”

“A gun,” she answered, and she even smiled.

“Where did you get it?” I asked curiously.

“In a store. I bought it.”

“But why?”

Her face sobered instantly. “Do you remember Aaron Friedlander? But of course you don’t. He was an art critic. Possibly the most important critic in the country.”

“A young man?”

“Silly! Of course not. He was at least eighty. An authority on art.”

“But where does the gun come in?”

“Do you remember my painting, Delilah at Midnight? It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. I submitted it in the Fall Festival Contest. I think I might have had a chance, but Mr. Friedlander didn’t like it. He made fun of it, ridiculed it, said it was horrible. He was an impossible man.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died right after the Fall Festival Contest. I think it was a heart attack.”

“But the gun...”

She smiled again. “Put it away, dear. I didn’t have to use it.”

I didn’t say a word as I replaced the gun but I was faintly excited, and I had a new respect for Fleur. She was a potential murderer, just as I. She had the courage, the strength, and the daring to use the power to kill. If Friedlander had not died of a heart attack, he would have died of a bullet.

In a way it is too bad I was unable to fall in love with Fleur. If I were a pedantic individual cut into an ordinary mold, I might have been satisfied with the monotony of marriage. Instead, I am a different breed of animal. I live by change, by variety, by new experience. I will wear no harness. I will not sink into the morass of comfort and conformity. I cannot walk flat-footed, but I walk on my toes. I soar above the earth. This is the way it must be, always. Margo Dupres is not a destination. I tried to explain that to Fleur, but it was beyond her. She was ridiculously jealous.

I went into the matter this morning, quite fully. Margo Dupres is a new experience. She is young, beautiful, and wealthy. She is of the generation and group which flies to Paris for breakfast after a night on the town here. Then, on impulse, they might decide to go skiing in Switzerland, or bathing at Biarritz. It is the go-go-go crowd, filled with excitement, adventure, fun. Someday I will do some serious writing. To prepare for it, I must sample everything that is possible.

“I think you are crazy,” Fleur said.

I shook my head. “No, this is a step I must take, a dip into another phase of living.”

“What will you do about money? You have been using mine. Now, will you live on Margo?”

I was even able to smile. Money is something I have never worried about. It is a shackle. I will have nothing to do with shackles.

“Will you marry her?” Fleur asked.

“What’s marriage?” I shrugged my shoulders. “A few words, a ceremony, a promise easily broken.”

“We didn’t get married.”

“Then we’ve nothing to worry about.”

“I think we should now,” Fleur said. “I want to get married.”

I sighed, and started again, explaining how I felt, but I got nowhere. Fleur could paint a canvas so wild it defied the imagination, a riot of colors and form, modern as tomorrow. But in her personal life and within the framework of her beliefs, she was very provincial. We had not married, but we would. She definitely counted on that, and in view of the breach between us, it became imperative.

I broke it off. I told her bluntly that I was leaving. That was that. But Fleur had a final word. If I left, she would follow me, find me, and kill me. She would do that if she had to follow me around the world.

That is the way things stand right now. Margo is waiting for me at Yacht Harbor. We will sail up the sound. We may stop at Shelter Island; we might head for Maine, or Miami. The destination is unimportant, but what about Fleur and the promise she made? Can I forget her? She has the power to kill. There is only one way to cancel her threat, and that is murder.

This morning, while she was away, I moved out my things. And now, this afternoon, I am waiting for her to return from the studio. Usually she gets back by three-thirty. If she is not late, I should be able to join Margo by six. She said we would sail on the tide, just at sunset.

A little while ago I looked at Fleur’s gun. It has not been used. It is still loaded. I had thought of using it, but I have changed my mind about that. Fleur is a gentle person. If she is to die, she should die gently. Therefore I have decided to make a game of it. I will be nice to her when she comes home. I will suggest that we go out for dinner. Before we go she will want a bath. She always does. And she takes a tub bath, never locks the bathroom door. What would be easier than to walk into the bathroom with a radio in my hand. She has a small set, and I have a long extension cord. I will plug in the set, turn it on, walk into the bathroom and drop the radio into the tub of water. It can be made to look accidental, or it can be made to look like a suicide. A simple plot, but very effective — a perfect example of the high art of murder.

Fleur just telephoned. She is on her way here and she seemed pleased that I answered the telephone. She said, “Darling, you’re already home? You surprise me.”

From her voice I knew that she was shutting her eyes to reality. She was still clinging to the belief that I would not leave her. I smiled, and let her have her dreams, and said, “I’ve been waiting for an hour.”

“Then I’ll hurry.” Fleur said. “I’ve a bottle of wine in the closet. Put it in the refrigerator. And don’t touch the canapes.” Fleur isn’t one of the world’s best cooks, but she can set up a paté de foie gras which is heavenly.

Fifteen minutes have passed. Fleur has not yet arrived. I did not expect her this quickly, but it had suddenly occurred to me that she’s not coming. Just a moment ago I felt a sharp cramp in my stomach. I thought it was a gas pain, but I was wrong. The pain is still there. It is growing stronger — and stronger — and stronger. It is even beginning to fog my thinking. That paté de foie gras — could it have been poisoned?

Definitely! And why am I surprised? The power to kill belongs to everyone. Fleur was quicker than I, that’s all. She has made me the victim. I have failed, but the example still stands. The art remains. You have the demonstration I promised. Fleur! Ah, what a woman!