Tales from far and near/An Attempt at Murder

by Karel Čapek

AN ATTEMPT AT MURDER

By Karel Capek
(Translated by Paul Selver)

THAT evening Mr. Tomsa, a higher civil servant, was relishing his ear-phones and with a bland smile listening in on the wireless to a pleasant rendering of Dvorák’s dances. “That’s something like a tune,” he had said to himself contentedly—when of a sudden there were a couple of loud reports from outside and glass was scattered with a crash from the window above his head. (The room in which Mr. Tomsa was sitting lay on the ground-floor.)

Then he did what any of us would do: first he waited for a moment to see what would happen next, then, and not till then, he took fright, for he perceived that somebody had fired twice at him through the window by which he was sitting. Opposite to him in the doorway, a splinter had been ripped away, and beneath it a bullet was embedded. His first impulse was to rush into the street and with his bare hands seize the ruffian by the collar. But when a man is getting on in years and has a certain dignity to maintain, he generally gives a first impulse the miss and decides in favour of the second. That is why Mr. Tomsa made a dash for the telephone and rang up the police.

“Hallo!” he shouted. “Send someone here at once. An attempt has just been made to murder me.”

“Where is it?” said a sleepy and listless voice.

“Here, in my flat.” Mr. Tomsa flared up in sudden anger, as if police could have prevented it. “It’s perfectly outrageous to start shooting like this, for no reason at all, at a law-abiding citizen who’s sitting quietly at home. This has got to be looked into very strictly. It’s a fine state of affairs when—”

“All right,” interrupted the sleepy voice, “I’ll send someone to you.”

Mr. Tomsa fumed with impatience. It seemed to him an eternity before this someone made his appearance, but in reality only twenty minutes elapsed before a stolid police inspector reached him and was examining with interest the window through which the shots had passed.

“Someone’s been shooting here, sir,” he said soberly.

“I could have told you that,” burst forth Mr. Tomsa. “Why, I was sitting here by the window.”

“Seven millimetres calibre,” announced the inspector, extracting the bullet from the door by means of a knife. “Looks as if it’s been fired from an old army revolver. Just look here. The chap, whoever he was, must have been standing on the fence. If he’d been standing on the pavement the bullet would have gone in higher up. That means he must have been aiming at you, sir.”

“That’s funny,” observed Mr. Tomsa, bitterly. “I almost thought he was trying to hit the door.”

“And who did it?” asked the inspector, ignoring this interruption.

“I’m sorry I can’t give you his address,” said Mr. Tomsa. “I didn’t see the gentleman and I forgot to ask him in.”

“That makes things difficult,” rejoined the inspector placidly. “And whom do you suspect?”

Mr. Tomsa’s supply of patience gave out.

“Suspect?” he began irritably. “Man alive, I never saw the blackguard, and even if he’d been good enough to wait till I had blown a kiss to him through the window I couldn’t have recognized him in the darkness. My dear sir, if I knew who it was do you think I’d have bothered you to come here?”

“Well, yes, there’s something in that, sir,” replied the inspector, soothingly. “But perhaps you can think of somebody who’d profit by your death, or who might want to pay you out for something. . . . You see, sir, this wasn’t no attempted burglary; a burglar don’t shoot unless he has to. But there may be somebody who’s got a grudge against you. That’s for you to say, sir, and then we’ll look into it.”

Mr. Tomsa was taken aback. He hadn’t thought of it in that light.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said waveringly and cast a glance over the peaceful life he had led as a civil servant and a bachelor. “As far as I know, I haven’t an enemy in the world, most positively I haven’t. The thing’s quite impossible,” he added, shaking his head. “Why, I never fall out with anyone; I keep entirely to myself. I never go anywhere; I never poke my nose into anything. What should anyone want to pay me out for?”

The inspector shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know, sir. But perhaps you’ll think of something by tomorrow. You won’t be nervous here by yourself?”

“No,” said Mr. Tomsa in a reflective tone. “It’s queer,” he said to himself uneasily when he was alone, “why anybody should shoot at me—at me of all people. Why, I’m almost a recluse. I attend to my work in the office and I go home—why, I scarcely ever come into contact with anyone. Why should they want to shoot at me, then?” he said, wondering with increasing bitterness at such ungracious behaviour. Little by little he began to pity himself. “Here I’ve been slaving away like a horse,” he said to himself, “even taking work home with me, never extravagant, never giving myself a treat, living like a snail in its shell, and, bang! someone comes along to put a bullet in me. My goodness, it’s queer how fiendish people are,” marvelled Mr. Tomsa aghast. “What have I ever done to anyone? Why should anyone have such a shocking, such an insane hatred for me?”

As he sat on the bed, holding the boot he had taken off, he tried to reassure himself. “Perhaps there’s some mistake. The man must have taken me for someone else, someone against whom he had a grudge. That must be it,” he said to himself with relief, “because why, why should anyone hate me like that?”

The boot fell from Mr. Tomsa’s hand. “Well, of course,” he suddenly reminded himself with a slight sense of embarrassment, “that was a silly thing to do, but it was really nothing more than a slip of the tongue. I was talking to Roubal, and without meaning to, I made a nasty remark about his wife. Of course, everyone knows the minx carries on with Tom, Dick and Harry, and he knows it, too, but he doesn’t want to let people see he does. And I, ass that I was, stupidly blurted it out. . . .”

Mr. Tomsa remembered that Roubal had merely gulped and dug his nails into his clenched hands. “Good heavens!” he said to himself, horrified, “the man was cut to the quick. Why, he must be madly in love with her. Of course, I tried to smooth matters over, but, my word, didn’t he bite his lips! There’s no doubt he has good reason for hating me,” reflected Mr. Tomsa, gloomily. “I know he didn’t shoot at me—that’s nonsense, but I really couldn’t be surprised if—”

Mr. Tomsa stared at the floor abashed. “Or what about that tailor?” he reminded himself very constrainedly. “For fifteen years I used to order my clothes from him, and then one day I was told he was in the last stage of consumption. Of course, a man fights shy of wearing clothes that a consumptive tailor has been coughing into, so I stopped getting my suits from him. And then he came and begged and prayed of me, saying that he hadn’t got a stitch of work to do, that his wife was ill, and that he wanted to send his children away. Would I let him have my custom again? Good heavens! the poor fellow looked as pale as a ghost, and from the way he sweated I could see how ill he was.

“‘Mr. Kolinsky,’ I said to him, ‘look here, it’s no use, I need a better tailor; you haven’t given me satisfaction.’

“‘I’ll try my hardest, sir, he stammered, sweating with fright and shame; it’s a wonder he didn’t burst out crying. And I,” Mr. Tomsa reminded himself, “I just sent him away, saying ‘I’ll see,’ the sort of remark that poor devils like that know only too well. There’s a man who might hate me,” said Tomsa to himself in alarm; “it must be an awful thing to go and beg and pray of someone for your very life, and to be sent away so unfeelingly. But what was I to do with him? I know he couldn’t have done it, but—”

Mr. Tomsa began to feel more and more downhearted. “That was another unpleasant business,” he reminded himself, “the way I gave our office janitor a wigging. There was a file I couldn’t find, so I sent for the old fellow and called him names as if he’d been a school-boy—in front of other people, too. ‘This is what you call keeping things in order, I suppose, you idiot; you make the whole place look like a pig-sty. I ought to give you the sack.’ And then I found the file in my own drawer. And the poor old chap never murmured; he just trembled and blinked his eyes.”

A surge of heat caused Mr. Tomsa to wince. “A man can’t very well apologize to his subordinate,” he said to himself peevishly, “even if he has been a little hard on him. But how these subordinates must hate their superiors. Wait a bit; I’ll give the old fellow some cast-off clothes; but perhaps that would be too humiliating for him, too.”

Mr. Tomsa now found it unbearable to continue lying in bed, the counterpane was stifling him. He sat on the bed with his arms round his knees and stared into darkness. “Then there was that affair with young Moravek in the office,” he reflected with a pang. “He’s a well educated fellow and writes poems. And when he made a blunder in dealing with those papers I said to him ‘Do it all over again, young man, and I meant to throw the papers onto the table, but they fell under his feet, and when he bent to pick them up he was quite red, his eyes were red. I could have kicked myself,” growled Mr. Tomsa. “Why, I’m quite fond of the young fellow, and then to go and humiliate him like that, even without intending to!”

Another face floated into Mr. Tomsa’s mind, the pale and hollow face of his colleague, Wankl. “Poor Wankl,” he said to himself, “he wanted to be clerk-in-charge, and I was appointed instead. It would have meant a few hundred crowns more every year, and he’s got six children. I heard that he wanted to have his eldest daughter trained as a singer, but he can’t afford it and I was promoted over his head because he’s such a slow-witted duffer and a drudge. His wife’s bad-tempered and terribly skinny, through having to be always pinching and scraping; he swallows a dry roll for his midday lunch.” Mr. Tomsa lapsed into dismal thoughts. “Poor Wankl, he must feel terribly down in the mouth when he sees me without any family getting a bigger salary than he has; but how can I help it? I always feel rather uncomfortable when he looks at me in that surly and reproachful way of his.”

Mr. Tomsa rubbed his forehead on which the sweat of anguish had broken out. “Yes,” he said to himself, “and then there was a waiter who did me out of a few crowns; and I called up the proprietor and he dismissed the waiter on the spot. ‘You thief,’ he snarled at him, ‘I’ll see that nobody in Prague gives you a job.’ The man never said a word—just went away; I could see his shoulder-blades sticking out under his jacket.”

Mr. Tomsa sat down by his wireless set and put on the head-phones; but the wireless set was silent amid the silent night, the silent hours of the night; and Mr. Tomsa covered his face with his hands and recalled all the people he had ever met, the queer and paltry people who had meant nothing to him and of whom he had never since thought.

In the morning he called at the police-station; he was rather pale and ill at ease. “Well, sir,” asked the police inspector, “have you thought of anyone who’s likely to have a grudge against you?”

Mr. Tomsa shook his head, “I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “You see, there’s so many who are likely to have a grudge against me that—” ‘He made a helpless gesture with his hand. “The fact of the matter is you never can tell how many people you may have done harm to. You know, I’m not going to sit by that window any more. And I’ve come to ask you to let the whole matter slide.”