<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

"Private Eye" is a short story by Lewis Padgett, about a murder that must be carefully planned, to evade the police department's ability to view the past. The story was first published in the January, 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

In the future, the police have the technology to see and hear into the past, back about 50 years. The police are using this technology to investigate Sam Clay, a man who killed his boss, Andrew Vanderman, apparently in self defense. They realize that Sam had plenty of motive, since Vanderman had married Sam’s former girlfriend, Bea, and had beaten him up once. But that was more than a year and half before the killing.

The truth is that Sam planned the murder very carefully, knowing all the time that once he killed Vanderman, his entire life would be scrutinized, including whatever he did in the months between gaining a motive and the actual killing. But he was careful; he pretended not to hold a grudge. He schemed to get himself hired as Vanderman’s assistant. He got engaged to another girl, named Josephine (thus eliminating the jealousy motivation). And knowing that Vanderman and Bea were not happily married, he went to the house when she was there and he was not. While there, she came on to him, and he seemed interested, until he 'accidentally' broke the house’s surveillance system. Then he rejected Bea’s advances clearly and forthrightly—the result is that when Vanderman looked at his house’s surveillance he would think Sam was cheating with his wife, but when the police investigated later, they would see that Sam was really not interested in her. The next day, when Sam went into work, Vanderman lunged at Sam with a whip (which Sam knew was there, of course), and Sam grabbed a letter opener (which he also knew was there), and stabbed Vanderman, apparently in the heat of the moment, and apparently in self defence.

Sam is cleared, and the police investigation stops. Sam is a passive man, who all his life has let people walk all over him, especially Bea (that’s why she ran off with Vanderman—a more assertive man; and also why she was not happy with Sam). Then Bea meets with Sam in a restaurant. Bea wants the more acquiescent Sam; she just knows that he couldn’t really have killed Vanderman, since he just doesn’t have that kind of strength in him. Sam is enraged; he knows that he has changed, and that this murder is the most assertive thing he’s ever done, but he cannot take credit for it without going to jail. In Bea’s eyes, he’s still a milquetoast. Sam angrily blurts out a confession. Bea doesn’t believe his confession, but she blackmails him anyway; he must marry her now, or else she’ll tell the police about his confession, and the police will use their technology to hear his confession in the restaurant, and he’ll go to jail.

Sam is distraught, but he realizes now that he has not defied the Eye—the police technology—he has simply hidden from it. A true act of defiance, which he decides he now needs, is to openly challenge the technology. Sam picks up a decanter, and smashes Bea in the head with it, killing her.

Additional Notes

The technology described in this book, granting the ability to view the past, without necessarily travelling into the past, was also the centerpiece of the 1947 short story "E for Effort" by T.L. Sherred. The same concept was used by Orson Scott Card in the novel Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, and in the 2006 movie Deja Vu.

This story has been reprinted in Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 11 (1949).