Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 42, May 1947

The Hit That Missed by Walter Duranty

Walter Duranty, one of the most famous foreign correspondents of our time, is especially noted for his factual reports on Russia, where for many years he represented the New York “Times.” His career in the Soviet Union was climaxed in 1933 when he was chosen to accompany Maxim Litvinoff on the Russian statesman’s first visit to the United States.

Born in England, Mr. Duranty was educated at Harrow, Bedford, and Cambridge, and won classical scholarships at all three colleges. He has been called “a straight reporter, with a flair for the bizarre.” That flair has led Mr. Duranty into writing fiction. His success in two different literary fields is proved by his record — he is a Pulitzer Prize winner for reporting and an O. Henry Memorial Prize winner for short-story writing.

“A flair for the bizarre” would also lead a fiction writer — especially so aggressive and adventurous a newspaperman as Walter Duranty is in real life — to tales of crime and violence. In his story, “The Hit that Missed,” Mr. Duranty combines his reporting background with his nose for the bizarre: this unusual tale concerns an American news correspondent in Paris (also Mr. Duranty’s old stamping ground) who commits a “perfect” murder.

Why the quotation marks in the phrase “perfect” murder? Well, the tall, thin man in the smoking room of the transatlantic liner was listening to an Englishman, an American, and a Frenchman discussing murder. The tall, thin man disagreed with his drinking companions. He said: “The perfect murder is one that no one believes to be murder at all.” But when a murder is not discovered, not even suspected, how can there be a story about it? Think it over, dear reader: it is a bizarre paradox.

Copyright 1936, by the Crowell-Collier Publishing Co.

They do things better in England, said Colonel Hepplethwaite. “Of ninety murders committed in the metropolitan area of London last year the perpetrators were brought to trial in sixty-seven cases and there was only one acquittal. Forty-three of the murderers were hanged, twenty were sentenced to penal servitude for life, three were judged insane, and as I say, there was one acquittal. In fifteen of the remaining twenty-three cases the police were practically certain who had committed the crime but there was insufficient evidence to secure a conviction, which leaves only eight murders in a huge city like London that were unsolved mysteries, so to speak.”

Dr. Peabody clicked his fingers at the steward. “Bring me a champagne cocktail... this infernal boat’s rolling again... if I’m going to enjoy my lunch... yes, Colonel, you’re right. But in England you haven’t known the delights of Prohibition that gave the gangster business such a boost with us, and there’s our big alien population as well. In Boston last year there were two hundred and fifty killings. There were not more than a score of convictions, I’m sure of that, although I’ve forgotten the exact figures. I know, too, that only three of the murderers went to the chair.”

“But there is a distinction,” said the Frenchman, Dubois. “You speak of killings, and the Colonel referred to murders. Surely I am right in supposing that gang killings in your country are not really murder in the usual sense of the word but the results of a guerrilla, a little war, between different groups. They are—”

“But they’re murders just the same,” Hepplethwaite interrupted, “just as your crimes passionnels in France are murders, although the murderer is often acquitted, especially if she is a young and pretty woman.”

“Oh, that happens at home too,” said the American, laughing. “We not only acquit women murderers but give them a fat contract in the movies or vaudeville. But for all that the French police are pretty good, aren’t they, Dubois?”

The Frenchman nodded. “Yes,” he said, “we catch murderers all right in France, even if sometimes the young and pretty ones escape. In the long run, few of them go unpunished.”

“That’s what I say,” resumed Hepplethwaite. “ ‘Murder will out’ — that’s an old English proverb and it’s true. Take these ninety cases in London—”

“Just wait a minute, Colonel,” said the fourth member of the party in the liner’s smoking room, a tall thin man who had hitherto taken no part in the discussion. “You are confusing the issue entirely; you speak of ninety murders in London, but what you really mean is ninety open, flagrant murders, ninety murders known to the police. You forget the other ones, the undiscovered crimes,” He smoothed his gray hair reflectively with his hand.

The Colonel snorted. “Do you mean to say that our London police don’t know when a murder’s committed?” he asked indignantly.

The other smiled. “Of course I mean that. I’ll go further and say that the fact that the police do know is a proof that the murder is a failure — from an artistic point of view.” He waved his hand negligently. “Surely, sir, you must admit that the proof of any successful crime, especially murder, is that it is not discovered.”

“I don’t understand,” said Dr. Peabody. “If nobody knows about it, how can you say it’s a murder?”

“You can’t say; that’s just my point. Nobody can say, and nobody knows, except one person, the murderer himself... or herself. Let me give you an instance to explain what I mean, which in a nutshell is simply this: that the perfect murder, the artistic murder, is one that no one believes to be murder at all, in which the murderer has the best of motives for killing his enemy, but naturally does not wish to pay the penalty for his crime, and succeeds in killing him in such a way that not only does he not pay the penalty, is not even suspected, but that no one for a moment has the slightest idea that a crime has been committed, unless perhaps one might call suicide a crime.”

He gulped down his whisky-and-soda, put his hands flat on the table and leaned forward impressively towards Colonel Hepplethwaite. “The trouble with you, my dear sir,” he said, “is that you’re an Englishman and therefore cannot understand artists; the English never do. When you Englishmen say ‘Murder will out’ you are talking of banal, bourgeois crimes committed by the average ‘man in the street.’ But even in England there are other people besides the man in the street, and some of them are artists... Steward, another whisky-and-soda, please, with a little more whisky this time and a little less soda.”

The speaker was holding his audience as tight as the Ancient Mariner who clung to the button of the Wedding Guest. He paused for a moment.

“Now, gentlemen,” he resumed, “I see that you don’t appreciate the point I’ve been trying to make. Let me give you a definite instance, which happened to come to my notice several years ago. I may say that, although I became aware of the facts by an accident which is of no importance now, I can vouch for their authenticity.

“The story concerns an American news correspondent in France, who was what I believe they call ‘second man’ in the Paris bureau of one of the principal New York papers. He was a hard-working young man of average intelligence, or a little more, who had a most charming and beautiful wife. His chief, whom we may call Watkins, although that was not his name, was an old friend of this Anderson, a friend of his family, and a senior at college when the younger man was a freshman. He had helped Anderson to get the job in Paris and taught him a great deal about the work of a foreign newspaper correspondent. The two men were friends in the best sense of the word.”

He took a drink of the raw spirit and added firmly, “Yes, they were friends, the best of friends, that is to say, they were friends until — until Anderson’s home life began to go wrong. He loved his wife, you understand, loved her desperately and deeply, loved her more than his work or himself or anything in life.

“He thought she loved him too until somehow there in Paris he noticed a change in her. The first thing he noticed was that when he came home in the evening she didn’t seem interested in what he had been doing that day. Before, when he came home, she asked him what the news was and what stories he had been working on. You know what newspapermen are — they aren’t very well paid or anything, but if they’re any good they take a tremendous interest in their work.

“Well, as I say, Anderson’s wife shared his interest, and then — somehow — seemed to stop sharing. Then, it seemed to him, she lost interest in him too. He knew what that meant, but there wasn’t much that he could do about it. When two people are in love with each other and both cool off equally, there is something lost or broken and it is rather sad, but it doesn’t really matter very much or hurt either of them. If one, however, stays in love and the other falls in love with someone else, then it’s anguish and hot coals of fire for the one who stays in love. Anderson felt like that but there was nothing he could do about it, except watch and try to find out.

“The first thing which gave him a clue was that all of a sudden his wife began to come constantly to his office. Several times when he’d been out on a job he would return to find her sitting there talking with Watkins, who as head of the bureau had a room of his own beyond the main office where Anderson and two junior reporters worked. Anderson watched and waited until his suspicions became certainty. Watkins was the man, without a doubt. He was a tall and good-looking fellow, a bold lover and a bold gambler — always playing the market and for more than he could afford.

“Then one morning he came into his wife’s room — they had separate rooms by this time — when she was having breakfast in bed, and she hastily pushed a letter behind the pillow. She was not so quick that he failed to see that it was written on stationery from his office. He looked at her and a slow wave of red flowed up from her breast to her forehead, but she didn’t say anything. Then, at last, he knew.”

The thin man finished his whisky and ordered another, and pointed a finger at Colonel Hepplethwaite. “I suppose a man like you,” he said, “would have done nothing about it. The English always try to ignore unpleasant facts. And you, Doctor, might have gone frankly to your wife and offered her a divorce so that she could marry her lover. And a Frenchman, no doubt, would have shrugged his shoulders and taken a mistress for himself. But Anderson was different. You see, he loved his wife more than anything in the world. He loved her and he didn’t want to lose her. He thought a good deal about what he ought to do, and one day he noticed that Watkins had a paper knife on his desk, one of those sharp dagger knives which Japanese samurai use to commit harakiri, with a long thin blade that slides in and slits their bowels, slips in smooth and easy as if it was hot and their flesh was butter. He saw what a dangerous weapon it was and it gave him an idea.

“In the offices of foreign news correspondents, you understand, they always work on Sundays because it’s generally known that a story gets a better play on Monday in America, where Sunday is a quieter day than it is in Europe. I mean that all the sporting news and so on has been published in the Sunday paper, and so there’s more space for news from Europe in the Monday edition. Anyway, foreign correspondents think so and always work Sunday afternoons, but without their secretaries, doormen, and so forth.

“So one Sunday about six o’clock, when Anderson came into the bureau with three or four friends who had been to the races with him, he knew that he would find Watkins at work in his private room. He said to his friends, ‘You sit here in the reading-room’ — it was near the entrance — ‘while I go along and look at the evening papers and try to earn my salary. I won’t be long, because I expect my boss is there and he’s a terribly decent fellow; he’ll probably handle anything that has to be sent, if I tell him that I want to go out to dinner with you. I won’t be more than half an hour at the outside and there are some magazines here and all the latest papers from New York. You don’t mind waiting, do you?’ They said no, they didn’t mind.

“Then he went into the main room of the office, which was empty because one of the juniors was off on a trip to the South of France where they had had some floods, and the other was to cover the night shift from eleven onwards in the building of one of the Paris newspapers. Anderson sat down and read the papers for a few minutes, then typed out some notes on his machine, and Watkins came in from the inner room. He said, ‘Is there anything worth sending?’

“Anderson showed him his notes and they talked a little, and Anderson said he’d like to go out to dinner with his friends because there didn’t seem to be much to do. His chief replied, ‘That’s all right, Joe, I’ll take care of this stuff. Just give me those notes of yours and that clipping from the Temps, and let’s have a glass of beer before you run along.’

“Anderson knew he’d say that; he always said it. They kept the beer in an icebox in the corner. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll bring it along with a couple of glasses.’ Watkins took the notes and the clipping and went back to his room. Anderson opened the bottle and poured out the beer, but in the glass for Watkins, his friend, whom he now knew to be his wife’s lover, he put some knockout drops, methyl nitrate, or whatever you call it, not many of them, not enough to taint the breath or enlarge the pupils of the eyes; just enough to send a man quickly to sleep for an hour or less. They drank the beer and went on talking.

“After a very few minutes Watkins slumped in his chair and went to sleep. Anderson sat down at his chief’s typewriter and began a letter to Watkins’ brother, who worked in an insurance office in Los Angeles. He wrote, ‘Bill, old man, I’m in a hell of a mess; I’m on the wrong side of the market and far too deep. My accounts are all muddled and...’

“Anderson left it at that. Then he took the paper knife by the blade and unbuttoned the other man’s vest and unhitched his suspenders and pulled up his shirt, doing it all quietly and gently so as not to wake him. Doing it quickly and neatly, humming a tune to himself, the Plume au Vent tune from Rigoletto about Love and Life being feathers on the breeze, humming the tune to himself as if he felt carefree and happy. He set the hands of the sleeping man upon the hilt of the dagger and fixed the point high up between his ribs and drove it in swiftly and smoothly, like a hot knife through butter, direct and deep in his heart.

“Watkins made no sound but his body arched back in a sudden convulsion, then fell forward on the desk.

“Anderson went to the little washroom next to the private office and washed his chief’s glass, holding it carefully by the bottom with a towel so as not to blur the finger marks. Then he washed his hands, although there wasn’t much blood on them; there isn’t much outward blood when a thin blade pierces the heart; the victim bleeds to death internally. Next he poured some more beer into the glass, still holding it by the towel at the bottom, and whispered gently, ‘I drink to your health in hell and to my wife’s blue eyes,’ and put the glass back on the desk.

“Then he went out through the reporters’ office to the reading-room, saying as he went, ‘Thanks awfully, old man, and good night,’ and added to his friends out there, ‘That’s the kind of boss to have. There was a story tonight but he knew you folks were waiting, so he said, “Go ahead, Joe; I’ll write it, they’re waiting; go ahead and have a good time.” ’

“After that, you understand, the rest was easy. You know what it’s like, Monsieur Dubois, in Paris on a Sunday; no one comes into the office and the outer door is shut, and the concierge just pulls the latch for those who go in or out. As I said, the night work is done in the building of whatever French paper you are linked with, so no one found the body until the next morning.

“Then there was a fuss and one of the stenographers fainted. When the police came, they rang up Anderson and he said, ‘Why, it’s impossible! When I left him last night he was quite all right and as cheerful as could be; indeed my friends and I remarked how kind he was to stay alone in the office and do some work that I should have done. What’s that you say, a letter? I didn’t know he was writing a letter. He said he was going to write a dispatch for me, the one I had given him some notes about and a clipping from the Temps. What... he said he’s lost money on the Stock Market... Oh, well, I knew he was playing the market, but I didn’t know that he’d lost money.’

“It was as simple as that.

“You see, the French don’t want scandal about American newspapermen; the French don’t like scandal, anyway not that sort of scandal. So they hushed the story up as much as they could, and Anderson hushed it up as much as he could, and the coroner’s inquest — you know how things go in such cases — they hushed the story up too, with a neat little verdict of suicide while temporarily deranged by the strain of overwork. It was as simple as that.

“That’s what I mean, gentlemen, by saying that you’re all wrong about the percentage of detected murders and of murderers convicted, in Paris or London. This was a murder, but no one ever thought so; no one ever thought there was any crime at all — unless you call suicide a crime. Well, I suppose you want your lunch. I don’t feel hungry myself, so I think I’ll take a stroll round the deck. Perhaps we might meet this evening and have a rubber of bridge.” He scrawled a signature across the steward’s check for the drinks and walked out of the smoking-room.

The other three looked at each other in silence. Then Dubois laughed. “What a strange fellow,” he said. “Where did you find him, Peabody?”

“Oh, we were chatting on the deck,” said the doctor, “and he suggested a drink before lunch, and I said you were waiting for me and brought him along. That was a most curious story, and he told it with such intensity. I wonder who he is.”

Colonel Hepplethwaite beckoned to the head steward, who happened to be passing. “George,” he said, “do you know the gentleman who was sitting with us just now?”

The steward nodded. “Oh, yes, sir, he’s crossed with us several times — Mr. Howard Jackson. He writes for one of the American newspapers, perhaps you’ve seen his name. A very nice gentleman, and always before so gay and cheerful, he’d keep the ’ole smoking-room in a roar. But” — he lowered his voice — “poor Mr. Jackson, he’s had very ’ard luck this year. His best friend committed suicide recently, been speculating on the market, it seems, and got ’imself into a jam. That was a great blow to Mr. Jackson, because they were very old friends. And then on top of that his wife ran away from him with someone from his own office in Paris, one of his subordinates, a much younger man. Mr. Jackson isn’t one to talk much, but I can see he’s quite broken up about it.”