Murder For Revenge

“You could justify our presence within these sacrosanct confines by the single ma

“You wish to be introduced as my lawyers?” I asked.

“I invite you to consider a word,” said Mr. Cuff. “Hold it steadily in your mind. Remark the inviolability which distinguishes those it identifies, measure its effect upon those who hear it. The word of which I speak, sir, is this: ‘consultant?’”

I opened my mouth to object and found I could not.

Every profession occasionally must draw upon the resources of impartial experts-consultants. Every institution of every kind has known the visitations of persons answerable only to the top and given access to all departments-consultants. Consultants are supposed to be invisible. Again I opened my mouth, this time to say, “Gentlemen, we are in business.” I picked up my telephone and asked Mrs. Rampage to order immediate delivery from Bloomingdale’s of an ornamental screen and then to remove the breakfast tray.

Eyes agleam with approval, Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff stepped forward to shake my hand.

“We are in business,” said Mr. Clubb.

“Which is by way of saying,” said Mr. Cuff, “jointly dedicated to a sacred purpose.”

Mrs. Rampage entered, circled to the side of my desk, and gave my visitors a glance of deep-dyed wariness. Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff clasped their hands before them and looked heavenward. “About the screen,” she said. “Bloomingdale’s wants to know if you would prefer one six feet high in a black and red Chinese pattern or one ten feet high, Art Deco, in ochres, teals, and taupes.”

My barnies nodded together at the heavens. “The latter, please, Mrs. Rampage,” I said. “Have it delivered this afternoon, regardless of cost, and place it beside the table for the use of these gentlemen, Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff, highly regarded consultants to the financial industry. That table shall be their command post.”

“Consultants,” she said. “Oh.”

The barnies dipped their heads. Much relaxed, Mrs. Rampage asked if I expected great changes in the future.

“We shall see,” I said. “I wish you to extend every cooperation to these gentlemen. I need not remind you, I know, that change is the first law of life.”

She disappeared, no doubt on a beeline for her telephone.

Mr. Clubb stretched his arms above his head. “The preliminaries are out of the way, and we can move to the job at hand. You, sir, have been most exceedingly, most grievously wronged. Do I overstate?”

“You do not,” I said.

“Would I overstate to assert that you have been injured, that you have suffered a devastating wound?”

“No, you would not,” I responded, with some heat.

Mr. Clubb settled a broad haunch upon the surface of my desk. His face had taken on a grave, sweet serenity. “You seek redress. Redress, sir, is a correction, but it is nothing more. You imagine that it restores a lost balance, but it does nothing of the kind. A crack has appeared on the earth’s surface, causing widespread loss of life. From all sides are heard the cries of the wounded and dying. It is as though the earth itself has suffered an injury akin to yours, is it not?”

He had expressed a feeling I had not known to be mine until that moment, and my voice trembled as I said, “It is exactly.”

“Exactly,” he said. “For that reason I said correction rather than restoration. Restoration is never possible. Change is the first law of life.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, trying to get down to brass tacks.

Mr. Clubb hitched his buttock more comprehensively onto the desk. “What will happen will indeed happen, but we prefer our clients to acknowledge from the first that, apart from human desires being a deep and messy business, outcomes are full of surprises. If you choose to repay one disaster with an equal and opposite disaster, we would reply, in our country fashion, there’s a calf that won’t suck milk.”

I said, “I know I can’t pay my wife back in kind, how could I?”

“Once we begin,” he said, “we ca

Mr. Cuff’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “You wish that my partner and myself punish your spouse.” “I didn’t hire you to read her bedtime stories,” I said. Mr. Cuff twice smacked my shoulder, painfully, in what I took to be approval.

“Are we assuming that her punishment is to be of a physical nature?” asked Mr. Clubb. His partner gave my shoulder another all-too-hearty squeeze.

“What other kind is there?” I asked, pulling away from Mr. Cuff’s hand.

The hand closed on me again, and Mr. Clubb said, “Punishment of a mental or psychological nature. We could, for example, torment her with mysterious telephone calls and anonymous letters. We could use any of a hundred devices to make it impossible for her to sleep. Threatening incidents could be staged so often as to put her in a permanent state of terror.”

“I want physical punishment,” I said. “That is our constant preference,” he said. “Results are swifter and more conclusive when physical punishment is used. But again, we have a wide spectrum from which to choose. Are we looking for mild physical pain, real suffering, or something in between, on the order of, say, broken arms or legs?”

I thought of the change in Marguerite’s eyes when I named the ____________________ Hotel. “Real suffering.”

Another bone-crunching blow to my shoulder from Mr. Cuff and a wide, gappy smile from Mr. Clubb greeted this remark. “You, sir, are our favourite type of client,” said Mr. Clubb. “A fellow who knows what he wants and is unafraid to put it into words. This suffering, now, did you wish it in briefer extended form?”

“Extended,” I said. “I must say that I appreciate your thoughtfulness in consulting with me like this. I was not quite sure what I wanted of you when first I requested your services, but you have helped me become perfectly clear about it.”

“That is our function,” he said. “Now, sir. The extended form of real suffering permits two different conclusions, gradual cessation or termination. Which is your preference?”

I opened my mouth and closed it. I opened it again and stared at the ceiling. Did I want these men to murder my wife? No. Yes. No. Yes, but only after making sure that the unfaithful trollop understood exactly why she had to die. No, surely an extended term of excruciating torture would restore the world to proper balance. Yet I wanted the witch dead. But then I would be ordering these barnies to kill her. “At the moment I ca

Mr. Cuff dropped his hand, and Mr. Clubb nodded with exaggerated, perhaps ironic, slowness. “And what of your rival, the seducer, sir? Do we have any wishes in regard to that gentleman, sir?”

The way these fellows could sharpen one’s thinking was truly remarkable. “I most certainly do,” I said. “What she gets, he gets. fair is fair.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Mr. Clubb, “and, if you will permit me, sir, only fair is fair. And fairness demands that before we go any further into the particulars of the case we must examine the evidence as presented to yourself, and when I speak of fairness, sir, I refer to fairness particularly to yourself, for only the evidence seen by your own eyes can permit us to view this matter through them.”

Again, I looked helplessly down at the bottom drawer. “That will not be necessary. You will find my wife at our country estate, Green…”