Death at Breakfast
Page 26
Knott was led away, seemingly in a kind of stupor. But next day he expressed the desire to make a statement. He was allowed to do so, and dictated a full and detailed confession.
He had planned and carried out the murder exactly as Dr Priestley had deducted. Harleston had requested a private interview with him just before Christmas. At that interview he had said that he had spent a considerable time calculating the profits of the firm. He had by chance seen the last two quarters’ cheques paid to Mr Slater. The amount of these cheques seemed unaccountably small and he proposed to suggest to Mr Slater that he should make investigations. But of course, if Mr Knott could satisfy his misgivings he would say no more about the matter.
The interview had lasted for some considerable time. In the end Knott had undertaken to secure for Harleston a bonus of £100 at once, and to pay him the sum of £20,000 less the £100 on January 21st. Knott confessed to Hanslet that he had never had the slightest intention of paying Harleston the money. The delay would enable him to consider how he could best be got rid of.
That evening, as it chanced, he saw a reference to the case of Count Bocarmé. Nicotine, administered with greater dexterity, seemed to him the very thing for his purpose. He bought a work upon toxicology and read up what he could about nicotine. And in the course of his reading he learnt that it was used for spraying fruit trees.
This piece of information seemed heaven-sent. Mr Slater had told him that Philip Harleston was the manager of a fruit farm. Next day he went to Lassingford and made very careful inquiries. He got into conversation with one of the men employed on Hart’s farm and learnt that nicotine was used and where it was kept. He also learnt that Philip was out all day. He then explored Philip’s cottage, and saw that the padlock of the store would be easy enough to open.
A couple of days later he returned to Lassingford. He had provided himself with a number of keys and with one of these he managed to open the padlock. He abstracted the tin of nicotine and drove back to London with it.
For the rest, his methods had been exactly as deduced by Dr Priestley. He had arranged that the parcel containing the razor and the shaving cream should reach Harleston on Saturday the 19th. He guessed that Harleston would try the experiment, if not on the following day at least very shortly. He had spent the greater part of Sunday morning hanging about Matfield Street, but nothing unusual appeared to happen in No. 8. On Monday morning he took up his post again. Very shortly after his arrival Janet had rushed hatless from the house. He had spoken to her and entered the house as she had left it.
There he had acted as swiftly as possible. His object had been to remove the damaging clues and substitute others. He had been unable to find the razor and dared not spend time looking for it. He did the best he could, left the house before Janet returned and went to his office.
But the crime once committed he had misgivings as to his own safety. The fact that he had not been able to recover the razor disturbed him. He feared that it might be found and somehow traced to him. He had already made his arrangements for the disappearance of Edward Knott, but he had not intended to put these arrangements in force so soon. Under the circumstances he now decided that Edward Knott should be murdered by Gavin Slater. Choice of Gavin Slater was based not only upon a profound personal dislike. During one of his previous visits to Torquay, Gavin Slater had tackled him upon the subject of his father’s income from the business. How was it that the profits were progressively decreasing? It occurred to Knott that Gavin Slater had his suspicions, and that if he could be hanged for murder these suspicions would go no further.
The curious point in his confession was that he declared that he had given no thought to the numbers of the notes which he had drawn. That the police would secure these numbers, and use them in their investigations, had not occurred to him. His reason for asking Gavin Slater to change one of them had not been that he wished him to be found in possession of the notes. He wished to establish beyond question that he had that large sum of money about him, since this would supply the motive for his murder. He had already impressed the fact upon Mr Slater. But Mr Slater was an old man and might well have forgotten the incident. He thought it better to impress the notes upon the mind of his son as well. And that had been his sole reason for producing the notes in the studio and asking Gavin to change one for him.
This explained his gigantic blunder, which had led to the identification of Stanley Fernside with Edward Knott. Not having considered that the numbers of the notes which he had drawn would have been known to the police, he had no hesitation in sending the greater part of them to the City & Suburban Bank. The letter to the manager had been merely to establish the fact that Stanley Fernside must have been attacked in his flat on the 26th. Actually the appearances had been produced on the 18th.
He was tried for the murder of Victor Harleston, sentenced and executed. Both Hanslet and Jimmy were congratulated upon the successful outcome of the difficult case. The latter, his faith in Janet being thus triumphantly justified, became a frequent visitor to Lassingford in his spare time.
Dr Priestley, discussing the arrest with Oldland, was inclined to be censorious. ‘A most disappointing criminal,’ he remarked. ‘He committed his crime with a skill and audacity worthy of a better cause. And then he allowed himself to become too clever. The staging of his own murder, was, as I thought at the time, far too melodramatic. It was too full of clues to be convincing. And the ridiculous affair at Fernside’s flat was a mistake. If Knott had been less anxious to secure his own safety, he would probably be at liberty at this moment. He sealed his own fate by attempting too much.’
‘You might add to that that he under-estimated the powers of logical deduction,’ replied Oldland slyly.
THE END
About the Author
John Rhode was a pseudonym for the author Cecil Street (1884–1964), who also wrote as Miles Burton and Cecil Waye. Having served in the British Army as an artillery officer during the First World War, rising to the rank of Major, he began writing non-fiction before turning to detective fiction, and produced four novels a year for thirty-seven years.
As his list of detective stories grew, so did the public’s appetite for his particular blending of humdrum everyday life with the startling appearance of the most curious kind of crimes. It was the Sunday Times who said of John Rhode that ‘he must hold the record for the invention of ingenious forms of murder’, and the Times Literary Supplement described him as ‘standing in the front rank of those who write detective fiction’.
Rhode’s first serial novel, The Paddington Mystery (1925), introduced Dr Lancelot Priestley, who went on to appear in 72 novels, many of them for Collins Crime Club. The Priestley books are classics of scientific detection, with the elderly Dr Priestley demonstrating how apparently impossible crimes have been carried out, and they are now highly sought after by collectors.
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