The Catbird Seat

“It was just a week to the day since Mr. Martin had decided to rub out Mrs. Ulgine Barrows. The term ‘rub out’ pleased him since it suggested nothing more than the correction of an error—in this case an error of Mr. Fitweiler.”

Mr. Martin euphemizes an act as heinous and irreversible as murder as the mere correction of a mistake. He treats her as he would treat any office problem—as something to be eradicated. Not only that, but he also views the murder as the correction of someone else’s mistake.

“Mr. Martin had spent each night of the past week working out his plan and examining it. As he walked home now he went over it again. For the hundredth time he resented the element of imprecision, the margin of guesswork that entered into the business.”

Mr. Martin considers trivialities like guesswork and imprecision as mortal sins worthy of a death sentence. The planned murder of Mrs. Barrows has more uncertainty in it than his tasks at the office, and he is frustrated that he cannot bring more control to the situation. This is another way in which Mrs. Barrows forces him to deviate from his norms. 

“Man is fallible but Martin isn’t.”

Mr. Martin’s boss, Mr. Fitweiler, believes that Mr. Martin is infallible. He places Mr. Martin outside of fallible humanity itself. The arrival of Mrs. Barrows threatens Mr. Martin’s infallibility. If Mr. Fitweiler accepts any of her proposed changes to the department, it will cast doubt on Mr. Martin’s perfect, cherished record of efficiency.

“Mr. Martin dismissed all this with an effort. It had been annoying, it had driven him near to distraction, but he was too solid a man to be moved to murder by anything so childish. It was fortunate, he reflected as he passed on to the important charges against Mrs. Barrows, that he had stood up under it so well.”

Mr. Martin has tolerated Mrs. Barrows for two years. Even though she was only superficially annoying to him initially, her offenses accumulated and overwhelmed him. Rather than making an effort to work with her or to speak with her about their issues, Mr. Martin marvels at his own ability to postpone the murder for as long as he has.

“A gavel rapped in Mr. Martin’s mind, and the case proper was resumed. Mrs. Ulgine Barrows stood charged with willful, blatant, and persistent attempts to destroy the efficiency and system of F & S.”

Mr. Martin’s theatrics are part of the story’s humor. What could be a simple clash of temperaments leads to his sober appraisal that he can no longer allow Mrs. Barrows to live. The uncertainty she brings into his life is tantamount to a personal assault. He sits in a room and thinks about the ways in which she irritates him, but he imagines being in a courtroom, issuing a sentence to an irredeemable person.

“Gentlemen of the jury […] I demand the death penalty for this horrible person.”

The final offense was when Mrs. Barrows suggested that they might be able to get rid of some filing cabinets—an organizational change that could have increased efficiency. Her offenses are trivial, but Mr. Martin has built them up in his head and given them inordinate weight. That the suggestion of getting rid of filing cabinets is egregious enough to merit the death penalty says more about Martin’s intractability and instability than anything.

“Only once did he catch sight of his victim; she swept past him in the hall with a patronizing ‘Hi!’”

Mr. Martin’s interactions with Mrs. Barrows give the impression that she might not be as bad as he portrays her. It is possible that she greets him in a patronizing tone. However, it is also possible that he interprets everything she does negatively and uses his annoyance as evidence against her. When Mr. Martin quotes her in passing, she always sounds like she is in a good mood, and merely making small talk with a coworker. 

“Our most efficient worker neither drinks nor smokes […] The results speak for themselves.”

A former boss of Mr. Martin attributes Mr. Martin’s efficiency and success to his abstinence from cigarettes and alcohol. Mr. Martin associates drinking and smoking with vice and inefficiency. He knows that Mrs. Barrows originally approached and charmed Mr. Fitweiler at a party, and he assumes (without evidence) that alcohol was involved in Mr. Fitweiler’s decision to hire her.

“‘Heroin,’ said Mr. Martin. ‘I’ll be coked to the gills when I bump that old buzzard off.”

Mr. Martin grows more absurd in his threats as he escalates his theatrics for Mrs. Barrows. Not only does he abstain from alcohol and cigarettes, he now purports to be a heroin user capable of murder. He is trying every outlandish thing he can think of, knowing that no one will believe Mrs. Barrows’s accusations against him.

“‘I’m sitting in the catbird seat,’ he said. He stuck his tongue out at her and left.” 

Martin’s use of Mrs. Barrows’s colloquialism is the final piece of his plan. Sticking his tongue out at her is undignified. His use of the phrase “catbird seat” is a reminder of something he dislikes about her. Mrs. Barrows knows that he would never use the phrase without calculated irony, and she sees an opportunity to report him to Mr. Fitweiler and gain an advantage over him.

“He had two glasses of milk after brushing his teeth, and he felt elated. It wasn’t tipsiness, because he hadn’t been tipsy.”

Mr. Martin has a rigid sense of reality. Because he does not drink alcohol regularly, he cannot consider the possibility of having been tipsy. He dismisses his elation as having another source besides the temporary giddiness of the drinks. He is masterful in his self-deception and uses it to avoid ever seeing himself in an unflattering light.

“It is the nature of these psychological diseases […] to fix upon the least likely and most innocent party as the—uh—source of persecution.”

Mr. Fitweiler reinforces that Mr. Martin is the least likely culprit in Mrs. Barrows’s accusation, even though he was the actual instigator. As far as Mr. Fitweiler is concerned, it is more in keeping with Mrs. Barrows’s character to accuse Mr. Martin falsely than it is with Mr. Martin’s character to set her up. He also dismisses her complaint as evidence of a “psychological disease,” not taking her seriously.

“If you weren’t such a drab, ordinary little man […] I’d think you planned it all. Sticking your tongue out, saying you were sitting in the catbird seat, because you thought no one would believe me when I told it!”

Mrs. Barrows describes Mr. Martin perfectly. He is a drab little man whose self-importance and protectiveness of his work environment leaves no room for outsiders or compromise. In this quote, Mrs. Barrows offers the story’s most accurate characterization of Mr. Martin, even though she doesn’t know that he was planning to murder her.