"You Might Say This Is the Story of a Murder — Although Nobody Was Killed"

"A Kind of Murder."
By Hugh Pentecost (Judson Philips, 1903-89).
First appearance: EQMM, August 1962.
Reprinted in EQMM (U.K.), December 1962 and EQMM (Australia), February 1963.
Short short story (8 pages).
Online HERE (PDF).
(Note: Crimped text.)

"I have lived for many years with the burden on my conscience of having been responsible for the existence of a walking dead man."

Sometimes a murderer doesn't need to use a weapon—indeed, doesn't need to do anything at all.

Principal characters:
~ Pentecost (narrator): The murderer.
~ Silas Warren: The victim.
~ Henry Huntingdon Hadley: The headmaster.
~ Major Durand: The bully.
~ Sammy Callahan: The class cutup.
~ Teddy: The quadruped.

Resources:
- Wikipedia HERE and the GAD Wiki HERE have much to say about "Hugh Pentecost," with a little more on the IMDb HERE.
- Mike Grost has a substantial entry about "Pentecost" on his Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection HERE, while Mystery*File has paid visits to other works by Philips HERE and HERE.
- One of Pentecost's series characters was John Jericho, featured in six novels and a couple of dozen EQMM short stories; see The Thrilling Detective HERE and FictionMags HERE for more.
- Also from FictionMags we learn that Philips started his writing career in the '20s and kept it going for another sixty-four years.

The bottom line: "Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death."
   ― Anton Chekhov