And So To Murder Read Free

They grow morbid under it. They brace themselves for its coming, each time they see the lady open her mouth.
    Now Monica Stanton, to begin with, had no real grievance against that inoffensive form of entertainment known as the detective-story. She neither liked nor disliked it. She had read a few, which struck her as being rather far-fetched and slightly silly, though doubtless tolerable enough if you liked that sort of thing.
    But, by the time her aunt had finished, Monica was in such a state that she had come to curse the day Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born. It was a wordless, mindless passion of hatred. As for Mr William Cartwright – whose name Miss Flossie Stanton, with fiendish ingenuity, managed to drag into the conversation on every subject from tapioca pudding to Adolf Hitler – Monica felt that she would like to poison Mr Cartwright with curare, and dance on his grave.
    As usual, a trifle did it.
    Throughout the turmoil over Desire , Monica had kept up a stern outer front, though she was quaking with fear inside. She had had qualms long before the storm broke. The first qualm occurred when the original hot flush of literary inspiration had passed, and she realized what she had written. The second qualm occurred when she read the proof-sheets, and writhed. Afterwards it was mostly qualms.
    But she was not so much apprehensive as bewildered and furious. It wasn’t fair, she cried out to the mirror. It wasn’t just. It wasn’t reasonable.
    She had always wanted to write, and now she had proved she could write. And what happened? What happened? She had done an admirable thing, for which she could have expected a word of praise; and instead she was treated like a convicted felon. There returned to her some of the irrational, baffled feeling of childhood, when you do something from the very best of motives, and yet instantly every adult rises against you in wrath.
    ‘And I said to her father,’ declared Miss Stanton, in a heart-broken undertone: ‘“If only Monica had written a nice detective-story!”’
    After all, what on earth was all the fuss about? That was what Monica passionately demanded to know. Re-reading Desire in the grisliness of cold print, she could see that there were certain passages which might be called outspoken. But what of it? What was there to be shocked about? It was all perfectly normal and natural and human, wasn’t it?
    ‘And as I said to her father,’ confided Miss Stanton, bending closer, ‘“If only Monica had written a nice detective-story!”’
    Oh, God!
    And all the worse because the book boomed into success. Tipped off by the neighbours, a newspaperman came to interview Monica. She was photographed in the vicarage garden, and her real name appeared in print. The reporter also asked her some questions about Woman’s Right to Love. Monica, confused, gave some answers which sounded worse in print than they actually were. Canon Stanton had to write to his Bishop about this; Miss Stanton was furnished with spiritual ammunition for the next three weeks; and more reporters hurried to get their share of a good thing.
    ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ said the Planet , who was himself of a somewhat flighty literary turn. ‘Face like a Burne-Jones angel and probably a heart like Messalina.’
    ‘I dunno the dames,’ said the News-Record keenly, ‘but it sounds hot. Did you try to date her up?’
    ‘Of course,’ observed Miss Flossie Stanton – and for the first time a hideous note of complacency began to creep into her voice – ‘of course, the book is making money; oh, yes, quite a lot, I believe; but, as I said to my brother: “What is that?” What is it, indeed? After all, I believe Mr Cartwright made quite a lot of money. And, as I said to my brother: “If only Monica had written a nice detective –”’
    For Monica, that finished things.
    Towards the middle of August, before there had come any glimmer of events that were to shatter Europe by the end of the month,