be taking a more favourable view of her character than is justified. Let us assume that she is tougher and more resilient, and that remorse does not make her life a hell. Her secret may still be uncovered.
The person who has committed murder and done it without being detected, usually suffers from the delusion that the method which has proved safe once, will be equally safe on another occasion.
Smith, for instance, thought that he had discovered an infallible technique for doing away with unwanted women. Chapman cherished the same belief. They both killed once too often—and then the whole ghastly story of their multiple murders was laid bare.
Is there any reason to suppose that Hawkins, having disposed of Springer, will stop short at that? Her narrative shows that she thinks it an easy matter to commit murder, and is no longer afraid of the police. Her first crime proves that she is prepared to kill from motives that must appear flimsy to any normal person. I think it is highly probable that, in a year or two, a situation will again arise in which she will be able to convince herself once more that murder is a reasonable and laudable act. And next time she will be more confident, and perhaps more careless.
Whether she is careless or not, if she chooses to repeat herself and to stage another apparent accident, the chances of detection are at least fifty per cent greater than on the first occasion. Every policeman knows that coincidences do occur, but he also knows that coincidences of this kind may repay close investigation.
Whatever happens in the present case, therefore—and there may, even now, be an unpleasant surprise in store for Hawkins—I should not be at all astonished if, in the end, she stood in the dock on a murder charge and were made to pay the penalty of her crimes.
I can imagine the reader saying: ‘But the character whom Margery Allingham has depicted is not at all so bad as you have painted her. True, she has committed murder, but she has done so from no sordid motive. She killed a man who was an utter waster because she wanted to save her friend. Really, I think you are being a little unfair. You are taking altogether the wrong view. There can be no comparison between Margaret Hawkins, who is quite a sympathetic character, and the criminals whom you have mentioned.’
There are certain sentimental people who always feel sorry for the convicted murderer—so much so that they have no pity to spare for his, or her, victim. There are others who, while horrified by certain murders, find excuses for others. But there is no excuse—there can be no excuse for murder. Human life is sacred, unless it has been forfeited to the law and is taken, after due legal process, for the protection of society. But no private individual can be allowed to assume the functions of judge and executioner. That way lies anarchy.
Also, what authority does the reader have for concluding that Springer deserved to die, or that Margaret Hawkins’ motive for killing him was so purely disinterested? Only Hawkins’ own narrative. And it is my experience that criminals always try to put the best face possible upon their crimes. Investigation might reveal facts which would show both Hawkins and Springer in a different light. Even on her own account of these happenings, Hawkins is both callous and cunning. There may be something more sinister still in the background which has been suppressed.
I take off my hat to Miss Allingham for having written a very clever story, and devised a particularly ingenious method of murder. But I’m glad, for her sake, that it is only a story.
Father Ronald Knox
IT WAS HIGH HOLIDAY IN THE STREETS OF SAN Taddeo; shops, factories, even restaurants were empty, and few citizens had the courage to absent themselves from the great square, in which the bronze statue of Enrique Gamba was to be unveiled. For was not Enrique Gamba the Inspirer of the Magnolian Commonwealth; and was not any slight put upon him apt to be regarded in the light of unpatriotic activity? That meant prison for certain; and the Magnolian prisons, although herds of apparently harmless people had entered them of late, never showed any large returns of discharged inmates—nor, on the other hand, did they find it necessary to increase their accommodation. Anxious relatives would receive, instead, a tactful intimation that So-and-so had unfortunately succumbed to the rigours of the climate, or that he had been shot by the warders in an attempt to escape. Everybody knew what that meant. There was rejoicing, therefore, in the streets of San Taddeo, and many were the huzza’s raised, and caps thrown into the air, especially among those citizens who stood nearest to the police, and had reason to suppose that the police were looking.
The statue of Enrique Gamba was not to be unveiled by Enrique Gamba himself. Not that he suffered from the kind of modesty which would have made it hard for him to deliver an oration in his own honour; indeed, it had been understood until yesterday that he was to be the principal speaker. But yesterday afternoon word had gone round that the Inspirer was suffering from a slight cold in the throat; he would not be present at the unveiling, which took place at nine o’clock in the evening, but would content himself with taking the salute of the troops on their way back, and, immediately afterwards, broadcasting a few words to the nation. These autumn evenings were chilly, and the doctors insisted that he should not leave his house. Broadcasting, it hardly needs to be explained, involved no necessity of leaving the house. There was a specially designed microphone in a soundproof room in his suite from which, after pressing a button to silence all the programmes from all stations, he could gate-crash the hearing of every listener in Magnolia. His second in command, General Almeda, was provided with a similar convenience, for he made almost as many speeches as the Inspirer himself. No other such contrivance, it was said, existed in the world.
Naturally it was General Almeda who stepped into the breach on the present occasion, and unveiled the statue. And who had a better right? For had not General Almeda, while the sittings were in progress, that had tempestuously wooed and won the sculptress? A girl fresh from the University had been charged with perpetuating, for all time, in unaging bronze, the features of the Inspirer: that hawklike nose, that resolute chin, those rugged eyebrows. It was as the Señora Almeda that she was present to-day; and you may be sure that it thrilled her to listen to the man she was in love with—for she was really in love with him, not with his power or with his uniform—praising her own art, while he praised the man who had united beyond all precedent the people of Magnolia, abolished the national debt, and exchanged a flood of telegrams with the League of Nations.
Almeda himself was a genuine soldier; although he was a giant of a man, he did not look the part of national hero quite so well as Gamba. In the recent coup d’état—I beg its pardon, the recent Liberation—he had appeared for a time to be playing a lone hand, with the army at his back; then, quite unexpectedly, he had joined hands with the rising movement of Gamba, which had all the publicity and all the gunmen at its disposal. This coalition shattered the constitutional parties, and left Gamba supreme ruler of Magnolia, with Almeda as his right-hand man. Naturally enough there were wiseacres who whispered (you never spoke above a whisper in San Taddeo, if you could help it) that Almeda was not best pleased with a position which forced him to play second fiddle. But no outward sign of disagreement showed itself between the two men; and certainly it would have been impossible to speak of Gamba’s achievements in more glowing terms than Almeda used, on that long-remembered evening of October..
I do not propose to weary the reader with a full account of the speech. If he is in the habit of ‘trying to get foreign stations,’ he will before now have intercepted a torrent of Magnolian eloquence, from Gamba, from Almeda, or from the irrepressible Dr. Lunaro, very much in the same vein. Whenever Magnolian statesmen find themselves in
