The Ability to Kill Read Online Free Page B

down, his hat falling off. I saw he had a bald patch on the crown of his head. He just gurgled. I pressed his throat hard. My grip is very strong … people have always said that I have a terrific grip. He did not resist. It was all very sudden. The man did not realise what was happening. I pushed his face back. After making a peculiar noise, the man was silent and I thought he was dead or unconscious.’ Rouse then got out of the car, poured a can of petrol over the man, loosened a petrol pipe, took the top off the carburettor and put a match to the whole thing. As the flames roared up, he ran.
    Two young men returning home from a dance saw him a moment or two later on the road. One of them asked him what the blaze was. ‘It looks as if somebody has got a bonfire up there,’ was the reply.
    But the unexpected encounter had disconcerted him. After it, he seemed to lose his head. Instead of going into hiding for a time, and then ‘starting afresh’ as he had planned, he went to visit the colliery owner’s daughter in Wales. To her, of course, he was known by his real name. When he saw it published in the newspapers in connection with the burning car case—the car registration plates had not burned—he left hastily for London and a hiding place. But it was too late. He was known to be alive. Within twenty-four hours he was trying to explain to the police that it had all been an accident. He did not convince them. Four months later he was hanged.
    The identity of the dead man was never established. Rouse, so fond of his many children, was not even mildly interested in the person he had murdered. His confession ends with a paragraph which reads like an afterthought prompted by a question.
    ‘I am not able to give any more help regarding the man who was burnt in the car. I never asked him his name. There was no reason why I should do so.’
    There is a petulant note to it. It recalls G. J. Smith’s surly observation on being reproached for a similar want of feeling: ‘When they’re dead, they’re done with.’
    * It was published, on the day after his execution, by the London
Daily Sketch.

Trials for Murder

1
The Reporter
    A Wimpole Street doctor tells me that a strikingly high proportion of his Rolls-Royce-owning patients are privately convinced that if ever they were to lose all their money and be compelled to work with their hands, they could immediately become perfect butlers. He calls it the ‘Crichton’ fantasy.
    Most of us, of course, enjoy Mitty-like moments in which we see ourselves triumphantly employing skills—conducting symphony orchestras, cooking cheese soufflés—which we do not in fact possess. Usually, as with the Rolls-Royce owner, the skill in question is safely divorced from the dreamer’s true abilities. There may be, and probably is, an underlying psychological relationship between the two; but it is unlikely that the dream of glory is ever going to be challenged by the reality of a practical test.
    In the case of some writers, however, that danger does exist. Most susceptible are those with no experience of newspaper work. They are prone to special fantasies. Of these, the ‘W. H. Russell,’ which takes the dreamer off as a war correspondent, is currently dangerous only if the dreamer speaks an African or South East Asian language. The ‘Rebecca West,’ however, is a different matter.
    It seems harmless. The dreamer is reporting a murder trial. There he sits in the press seats of a crowded court, gathering the facts, weighing the evidence, shrewdly anticipatingcounsel’s next move, and watching that small muscle twitch in the neck of the accused. His novelist’s (or playwright’s) insights probe sensitively for the hidden truth, the reality beyond what is being said. His professional compassion, even as the murderer describes the trouble he had forcing the dismembered body of the child into the kitchen mincer, is there ready to invest the creature with human dignity. Beautifully