by John Rhode
‘I chose this particular discrepancy merely as an example,’ Dr Priestley replied. ‘It happened to be a simple one to demonstrate. But I am not fully convinced that it is of no importance. Mr Knott endeavoured to represent the granting of a bonus to Victor Harleston as a perfectly normal event. He did so, no doubt, because he wished to justify his insistence on the grant. But why should the partners have taken such divergent views upon the matter?’
Jimmy ventured to reply to this. ‘Mr Slater admitted to me that he disliked Victor Harleston, sir,’ he said. ‘And though he declared that his personal dislike had nothing to do with his opposition, it probably influenced him in spite of himself.’
‘That may be,’ said Dr Priestley. ‘But were I in charge of this case, I should make inquiries in the offices of Messrs. Slater & Knott. I should ask how many clerks had received bonuses in the course of the last ten years, say, and I should inquire into the circumstances of each case where such a bonus had been granted.’
‘But what on earth would you gain by it, Professor?’ Hanslet demanded.
‘I might gain nothing. Surely you would be the first to admit that, in any case, the greater part of your investigations proved fruitless. On the other hand, I might ascertain a fact of some considerable importance. I might become in a position to judge between the statements of Mr Slater and Mr Knott. I might learn the respective reliance to be placed on each.’
Dr Priestley seemed disposed to say no more and shortly afterwards Hanslet and Jimmy left the house. But next morning they held a conference in the superintendent’s room, in the course of which they exchanged their views more fully than they had yet done.
‘You take it from me, Jimmy,’ said Hanslet confidentially, ‘when the Professor gets an idea into his head, there’s always something behind it. If he believes that there’s some connection between these two murders, you may take it that a link exists somewhere. And what that link is, we’ve got to find out.
‘Now, I’ve been thinking this over since last night, as I dare say you have. That point about discrepancies in the statements is a pretty shrewd one. I don’t see what possible object Knott can have had in lying to you. It seems to me that the truth is this. Harleston would have got his bonus in the ordinary way, but for Slater’s opposition. Slater didn’t know that you had already questioned Knott about the bonus. But he did know that Knott was no longer in a position to contradict anything that he might say. So, when you questioned him, he gave you a false impression, to account for Harleston not having received his bonus before.
‘You accepted Slater’s statement implicitly because you believed that he could have had no interest in either crime. But I’m beginning to wonder whether Slater isn’t the link that the Professor hinted at.’
‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ Jimmy replied doubtfully. ‘But I don’t quite see how.’
‘Of course you don’t see how. Detection would be an easy enough business if one could always see things like that straight off. We’ve got to think out the various possibilities and test them in turn until we find the right one. Here’s quite a reasonable theory to begin with. The relations between the two partners were not so honest and above-board as appeared. Slater’s retirement may not have been due to the reasons he told you. Something may have happened of which nothing has been allowed to transpire. But Knott knew the secret and Harleston shared it with him.
‘For some reason, their possession of that secret was inconvenient to Slater. I won’t attempt to guess what form that inconvenience may have taken. But Slater determines to put an end to the situation. And the only way to do that was to get rid of both Knott and Harleston.
‘Knott presented no particular problem. He was a frequent visitor to Torquay, and could safely be left to the attention of Gavin Slater. There are lots of questions that you didn’t ask while you were down there, Jimmy, besides those which the Professor pointed out last night. Was it purely by chance that Mrs Slater was out that night? Or had her father and husband contrived somehow that she should be? However, that’s by the way. I think you and Superintendent Latham between you have pretty well got that crime fixed. Gavin Slater was the murderer, no doubt, but was his father the instigator of the murder?
‘Harleston was a more difficult customer to tackle. He couldn’t be invited to Torquay without arousing his suspicions. He must have known that Slater didn’t like him and he would naturally wonder what was behind such an invitation. He didn’t go out anywhere and so there was no chance of knocking him on the head in a dark corner. He had to be murdered at home, and Slater must have puzzled his head as to the best way of doing that.
‘We agreed long ago that Harleston’s murderer must have possessed certain knowledge. And we didn’t then see how anybody but a member of his family could have been aware of the necessary details. But Slater might very well have known them. He was still a partner in the firm, and though he had retired from active work, Knott reported to him at frequent intervals. He is certain to have known that Harleston was doing the audit for Novoshave. He was a friend of Harleston’s father, and knew all about his family, even to the fact that a share in Hart’s Farm had been purchased for Philip. There is no impossibility involved in the theory that he sent Harleston the poisoned shaving cream.
‘But that doesn’t let out Philip or his sister. I don’t for a moment suppose that Slater acted without their co-operation. He probably knew very well that Victor’s death would be a relief to them both. So they fixed it up between them. Slater was to supply the means and Philip and Janet between them were to remove the evidence subsequently. All that Philip was asked to do before the event was to hand over one of his tins of nicotine.
‘That’s the line we’ve got to work on, Jimmy. I’m not going to interfere with your case. It seems to me that you’ve done well enough so far. But, if I were you, I’d get back to Torquay and have another look round. You may find something that will fit in with our theory. And an affair like this is like a jigsaw puzzle. As soon as you get the first few pieces put together, the rest fall into their places quite naturally.’
6
Jimmy’s first care upon arriving at Torquay was to call upon Superintendent Latham. The two compared notes.
The superintendent had nothing to report. No traces of the missing body had been found. But he agreed with Jimmy that the time had come to make a detailed search of Mr Slater’s house.
They carried this out together without delay. Mr Slater raised no objections. These frequent invasions of the police did not appear to perturb him. But Gavin was furious. He threatened to complain to the chief constable and to the local member of Parliament. Finally he marched out of the house, insisting that his wife should accompany him.
Jimmy, remembering the Professor’s remarks, sent for Lizzie. He questioned her as to Mr Knott’s arrival at the house. He had come in a taxi from the station. When she had opened the door to him, he had taken off his hat and overcoat and given them to her.
‘What did you do with them, Lizzie?’ Jimmy asked.
‘I hung them up in the cupboard under the stairs, sir,’ she replied. ‘That’s where Mr Slater and Mr Gavin always keep their coats and hats.’
‘Let’s have a look into that cupboard, Lizzie,’ said Jimmy. ‘You’d recognise Mr Knott’s overcoat again if you saw it, I expect?’
‘Oh yes, sir, it was dark blue and rather heavy.’
They looked into the cupboard together. There were several coats of various ages and styles hanging there, but there was not a dark blue one among them. At least, not at first sight. But Jimmy lifted them off their pegs one by one. And beneath a rather dilapidated raincoat he found what he was looking for. ‘Why, there it is, sir,’ Lizzie exclaimed. ‘That’s Mr Knott’s coat.’
It certainly answered to the description which Lizzie had given. But Jimmy was not satisfied. He looked on the inside and found a strip of linen sewn on to the lining. This strip was marked with the name, ‘Edward Knott.’
‘Is th
is the peg that you hung the coat on, Lizzie?’ Jimmy asked.
‘No, sir,’ she replied. ‘I hung it on one of those empty ones there. Somebody must have moved it. And I don’t know why Mr Gavin hung his own raincoat over it. There are plenty of empty pegs, as you can see for yourself, sir.’
Jimmy had already noticed that. It looked very much as though Mr Knott’s coat had been deliberately concealed from view.
‘What about Mr Knott’s hat?’ he asked.
‘Mr Knott was wearing a bowler hat, sir, which looked quite new. I hung it on the same peg as his coat, but I don’t see it anywhere now, sir.’
But a search failed to reveal any sign of a bowler hat. But there were other places besides the cupboard in which the hat might have been concealed. The superintendent and Jimmy set to work to examine the house from top to bottom. The process took some considerable time. They took one room after another, leaving no corner unexamined. Lizzie, who accompanied them, told them the purpose to which each room was put.
Eventually they reached Gavin Slater’s dressing-room. It was plainly furnished with a large wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a few chairs. A single bed stood against one wall and Lizzie, in reply to a question of Jimmy’s, stated that it was upon this that she had found Gavin Slater lying on the previous Thursday morning.
They devoted even more attention to this room than they had to the others. They looked under and behind the furniture without finding any trace of the missing hat. Jimmy removed the clothes hanging in the wardrobe, and searched through the pockets. He found nothing to reward his efforts. Then he turned his attention to the chest of drawers. He took the drawers out one by one, looked behind them and then proceeded to examine their contents. The bottom drawer, when he came to it, was full of summer underclothing which had apparently not been disturbed since it had been put away. Jimmy took out the garments one by one and laid them on the floor. But before he had emptied the drawer he felt something hard hidden beneath the underclothing. He withdrew this and found it to be a cylindrical tin. He thought at first that it must be a tin of fifty cigarettes, although, since the wrapping had been torn off it, it was impossible to say so with certainty. He opened the lid and immediately a queer smell greeted him. It was perfectly familiar and he had no difficulty in recognising it at once. The smell was that of a foul pipe, and he knew well enough by now that that was characteristic of nicotine. The tin was about half-full of a thick, colourless, oily liquid. Jimmy glanced at this hastily, then rapidly replaced the lid.
Superintendent Latham glanced at him curiously.
‘What have you got there?’ he asked.
Jimmy was acutely conscious of Lizzie’s presence. ‘I’m not quite sure, sir,’ he replied. ‘But I’d like to take it away for further examination.’
The superintendent made no objection to this. They continued their search, without finding anything else of any significance. Neither the hat nor any suspicious object was to be found in any of the rooms of the house. And then Jimmy suggested that he would like to interview Mr Slater before leaving.
Mr Slater was discovered sitting in front of the drawing-room fire, apparently quite oblivious to the ransacking of his dwelling. He seemed to regard the proceedings of the police much as he regarded spring-cleaning—a necessary evil to be borne with as much fortitude as possible. He answered Jimmy’s questions readily enough. His daughter-in-law’s absence on the Thursday evening was easily explained and had nothing to do with Mr Knott’s visit. She belonged to a bridge circle which met every Thursday evening throughout the winter. It could have been predicted with certainty that Mrs Slater would be out during the whole of that particular evening. She had apologised to Mr Knott for going out and he had accepted her apology with the utmost readiness.
There was nothing more to be done here. Jimmy and the superintendent left the house and paid a second visit to Mrs Puddlecombe. Her previous experience of the police had chastened her considerably, and her answers on this occasion were obviously truthful. Her husband had brought home the suitcase exactly as he had found it, and had opened it in her presence. She was ready to swear that it had contained nothing beyond the articles which she had taken to the pawnbroker’s. She agreed that her husband would have kept anything that could have been of any use to him. But since he had found nothing of the sort, he had thought it best to realise what he could on his finds. The cottage was small and was not adapted to the concealment of anything. Jimmy very soon satisfied himself that it contained none of Mr Knott’s clothes.
They returned to the police station.
‘I’m still curious about that tin you found in Gavin Slater’s room,’ the superintendent remarked.
Jimmy smiled. ‘That’s rather a long story, sir,’ he replied. ‘I’ll give you the outline of it, if it won’t bore you to listen.’ He gave a brief account of the death of Victor Harleston, and of the tin of nicotine which was missing from his half-brother’s store. ‘And the queer thing about it is, sir,’ he concluded, ‘that unless I’m very much mistaken this tin contains nicotine.’
‘That seems to establish some connection between the death of this man Harleston and that of Mr Knott,’ the superintendent remarked shrewdly.
‘I fancy it does, sir, but if this is the missing tin, it’s rather a puzzle how Gavin Slater can have come by it. Has he got a car?’
‘His father owns a car which both Gavin and his wife drive. There’s no reason why one of them shouldn’t have driven to this place Lassingford, and fetched the tin.’
This seemed reasonable enough, but Jimmy was not altogether satisfied. ‘If Gavin Slater used the nicotine to poison Victor Harleston, why didn’t he get rid of the stuff when it had served his purpose?’ he asked. ‘It was incredibly stupid of him to keep it when he might so easily have thrown it into the sea. By Jove, though, I wonder! That’s another question we might have asked Lizzie. Do you think one of your men could bring her round here, sir?’
‘Certainly,’ replied the superintendent. He gave the necessary instructions and then resumed the conversation. ‘You ask why Gavin Slater kept the tin of nicotine,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s a matter of experience that even the most accomplished criminal nearly always commits some grave blunder. You’ll find the fact laid down in every book on criminal investigation. He proceeds with the utmost ingenuity up to a point and then makes the one fatal mistake. Keeping this tin may have been Gavin Slater’s blunder. I’m inclined to think that we ought to get him here and detain him. I expect there are a whole lot of questions you would like to ask him?’
Jimmy agreed that this would be the most satisfactory course. They discussed the question until Lizzie’s arrival was announced. She was ushered into their presence looking rather awestruck. The superintendent reassured her in a few words. ‘It’s all right, Lizzie,’ he said. ‘We want to ask you one or two questions and we didn’t want to disturb Mr Slater’s privacy again. Had Mr Gavin Slater returned to the house when you left?’
‘No, sir, he hadn’t come back then,’ she replied.
‘Well, never mind. Now, just pay attention to Inspector Waghorn. He wants to talk to you, I think.’
‘It’s only a small point, Lizzie,’ said Jimmy. ‘You told us that when you tidied up the studio after Mr Knott’s visit you found a glass lying broken on the floor. Where was the other glass?’
‘There was no other glass, sir,’ Lizzie replied promptly. ‘I wondered at the time what could have become of it.’
‘You expected to find another glass, then?’ Jimmy said quietly.
‘Yes, I did that, sir. You see, it was like this. I always put out a tray on the sideboard in the dining-room before dinner. On it I put a siphon of soda and one or two glasses. Usually I only put one, because neither Mr Slater nor Mrs Slater ever touch anything after dinner. But on the night that Mr Knott was staying in the house I put out two glasses.’
‘And next morning you found the tray which you had put out in the studio?’
‘That’s right
, sir. The siphon with a little soda was still on it. And there was a decanter of whisky nearly empty which Mr Gavin must have brought in. But there were no glasses and the only one I could find I picked up in pieces from the floor.’
‘You are quite sure that there were two glasses on the tray when it was taken into the studio?’
‘Quite sure, sir. Mr Gavin took the tray from the dining-room while I was there and I saw then that it had two glasses on it.’
‘You haven’t found the glass or any bits of it lying about the house anywhere?’
‘No, sir. And it isn’t in the pantry, for there are two glasses missing from the dozen we used to have. And I know they were all there when I took out the two glasses on Thursday evening.’
Lizzie was dismissed and the superintendent smiled. ‘Things seem to disappear from that house in the most amazing way,’ he said. ‘What’s your idea?’
‘I’m wondering what became of that second glass, sir,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Gavin broke one of them to create the impression that he was very drunk that evening. That was probably the one he had used himself. Where is the one used by Mr Knott?’
The superintendent shrugged his shoulders. ‘Thrown into the sea with the body, I dare say. I don’t see that it’s of very great importance, though.’
‘It may not be, sir. But I’ve got this at the back of my mind. Suppose that Gavin Slater kept that tin of nicotine after he had used it to poison Mr Harleston because he meant to try the same trick on Mr Knott?’
‘Well, if he did, he seems to have thought better of it. It seems pretty clear that he stabbed Mr Knott with that knife you found.’
‘That may have been the last resort, sir. His original plan may have been to have put nicotine in Mr Knott’s whisky. But that plan failed, for some reason or another. Mr Knott may have smelt the stuff and refused to drink it. But the glass would remain and would have to be disposed of. Gavin Slater probably threw it into the sea in case anybody should ask questions. What I can’t understand is why he didn’t throw away the tin as well.’