Murther & Walking Spirits

Murther and Walking Spirits is, in a way, another ghost story, a genre Davies visited in his short story collection High Spirits (1982). In the very first sentence of the novel, "Gil" Gilmartin, the protagonist and narrator, is a film critic who comes home to find his attractive wife having an affair with a nerdy coworker, who strikes him with a walking stick in fear, causing his death. His ghost then attends a strange film festival. While the attendees see actual films, Gilmartin is shown "films" detailing the lives of his ancestors, such as one who was a Tory during the American Revolution or another who was a master carpenter who married a blue-blooded woman, only to have it end in a nasty divorce. The films, dealing as they do with more and more recent subjects, bring the novel to its modern-day conclusion. Gilmartin's ghost is able to cross over when his killer confesses to the newspaper editor, who chides him for the sin, but also for society in general: "It's a hot dinner for the wrongdoer and the victims struggle". Rather than surrender the killer to the authorities, the editor says his punishment should be to carry that walking stick for the rest of his life, akin to a "mark of Cain". Gilmartin also learns that prior to his death, he had impregnated his wife, and his ancestors' tribulations may have been shown to him as a sign the bloodline will continue. The final scene is where Gilmartin finds himself in the sky, being addressed by a feminine voice. Thinking it at first to be his deceased mother, she says she is not, but "the woman in the man", thinking of a remark one of his newspaper coworkers made.