Payment Deferred

Payment Deferred is an unusual crime novel in the sense that the murder happens at the outset, and there’s no mystery as to who did it or why. Rather, taking cues from “The Telltale Heart”, the novel focuses on the state of mind of a guilty criminal. Marble’s increasingly elaborate attempts to keep his crime secret from both his family and the authorities become a study of the damage that guilt can do to a person’s psyche. Marble soon finds himself wealthy beyond necessity, but his fixation on his money problems is quickly replaced by an all-consuming obsession over this much, much darker problem. William Marble is a spendthrift banker living in suburban London with his wife and children. He’s hard up for money, as his wife spends indiscriminately, he has a growing interest in whiskey, and rent will soon be due. But one night, a visitor calls James Medland, William’s nephew from Australia, is visiting to inform them of a death in the family. Medland is very wealthy, and very alone here at the other end of the world—and Marble, desperate for cash, quickly decides that he must do the unthinkable to get his hands on Medland’s bulging wallet.