Ronald Arbuthnott Knox

“ In two years from now Mottram would have turned sixty-five and the half-million would have vanished into the air. Moreover, there was much to be said for haste: who could tell when Mottram might not take it into his head to draw up a new will? As it seemed to Simmonds, he had only to get rid of this lonely, crusty old bachelor by a painless death, and he, as the next of kin, would walk straight into five hundred thousand. ”

“ In Pullford, a large Midland town which you probably will never visit, men nudged one another and pointed to him as one of the wealthiest residents. In the anteroom of the Indescribable offices he looked, and perhaps felt, like a schoolboy waiting his turn for pocket-money. Yet even here he was a figure recognizable to the attendant who stood there smoothing out back numbers of the Actuaries’ and Bottomry Gazette. For this man, called Mottram by accident of birth and Jephthah through the bad taste of his parents, was the holder of a Euthanasia policy. ”

“ Don’t you see that Brinkman argued to himself like this: ‘If I leave an obviously faked clue lying about like this, Leyland will immediately think that it is a faked clue, used by one criminal to shove off the blame on another. Who the criminals are, or which is which, doesn’t matter. It will convince him that there has, after all, been a murder. And it will disguise from him the fact that it was suicide.’ Of course all that’s making Brinkman out to be a pretty smart lad. ”

“ By the time he had reached the ledge a new flash came and showed him, at the very end of the gorge, Brinkman running as if for his life. There was no more sense in concealment; he must mend his own pace too; and that was impossible, on this narrow shelf of rock, unless he lit his torch. Lighting it, he took one look at the ledge toward which Brinkman had been jumping, and, by reason of his superior height, saw without difficulty an envelope which looked as if it must be the explanation of Brinkman’s gesture. ”

“ This afternoon I shall have a game.”
“Miles, dear, not the game? You know you can’t play that and think of anything else at the same time. Mr. Eames, would you mind dropping your packs in the river? You see, it’s so bad for my husband; he sits down to an interminable game of patience, and forgets all about his work and everything.”
“You don’t understand, Angela; it clears the brain. When you’ve been puzzled over a thing, as I have been over this question of suicide, your brains get all stale and used up, and you must give them a fresh start. A game of patience will just do the trick. ”

“ I don’t think Brinky can have been such an unpleasant man, after all.”
“Believe me,” said Leyland earnestly, “there is no greater mistake than to suppose your criminal is a man lost to all human feelings. It is perfectly possible for Brinkman to have murdered his master, and have been prepared to run off with a car and a thousand pounds which didn’t belong to him, and yet to have shrunk from the prospect of leaving an honest woman like Mrs. Davis the poorer for his visit. We are men, you see, and we are not made all in one piece.” ”

“ No, I think it’s the bar parlour for me.”
Angela was far more enthusiastic than her husband over the proposed ambush. “You see, Brinky can’t really be a very nice man, or he wouldn’t have been listening at our keyhole. Just think, I might have been ticking you off about your table manners or something. No, if he will go and hide in the arras he must take what he gets, like Polonius. And, after all, if he does come to you afterward, and wants to sob on your bosom, you can always refuse to promise secrecy. The world would be such a much happier place if people wouldn’t make promises.” ”

“ But of all the company’s enterprises none can rival in importance or in popularity the so-called Euthanasia policy. One of the giant brains that organized the undertaking observed with compassion the doubtful lot of human kind, the lot which makes the business man sweat and labour and agonize, uncertain whether he himself will reap the fruits of his industry or whether they will pass to an heir in whom, on the whole, he is less interested. ”

“ Bredon asked himself. Could it be that Brinkman, after making up his mind to unbosom himself, was feeling embarrassed about making a start, was taking refuge in every other conceivable topic so as to put off the dreaded moment of confession? That seemed the only possible construction to put on his conversational vagaries. But how to give him a lead? “Very little, as a matter of fact. I suppose you went about a good deal with Mottram? I should think a fellow as rich as he was gets a grand chance of seeing the world. Funny his wanting to spend his holiday in a poky little place like this.” ”

“ Why, your moral theology must be as bad as poor Mottram’s.”
“It isn’t a question of theology,” replied Bredon, “it’s a question of fact. I am going to write to the Indescribable Company and tell them that Mottram died by accident, because that happens to be the truth.”
“Ah—h-h!” said Angela.
“Indeed?” said Mr. Eames.
“Not another mental perspective!” groaned Mr. Pulteney.
“That’s exactly what it is. I’m not a detective really; I can’t sit down and think things out. I see everything just as other people do, I share all their bewilderment. ”

“ The window, then, like the gas, had been deliberately arranged in an artificial position between Mottram’s death and the arrival of the rescue party. If the death had been accidental, the window would have been shut and remained shut all night. You do not leave a window half open, with nothing to fix it, on a windy night. If it had been a case of suicide, it is equally clear that the window would have remained shut all night. If you are proposing to gas yourself you do not take risks of the window blowing open and leaving you half-asphyxiated. ”

“ There is a sentimental streak in all our natures which warns us that a young man and a young woman sharing a railway carriage must be left to share it; and equally that a pair of lovers in a lane must be passed by as hastily as possible, with no inquisitive looks thrown in their direction. It is our instinct thus to propitiate the Paphian Queen. It was characteristic of Bredon that, as he passed one of these couples from behind, seeing their heads close together in earnest colloquy, he quickened his pace and never looked backward. ”

“ My discoveries of this morning put me on an entirely different track. There was one man in the world, and only one, whose interest bade him murder Mottram, and murder him in such a way that no suspicion of suicide could rest over the event. I mean, of course, young Simmonds. It was in his interest, as he must have thought, to murder Mottram, because if Mottram lived to be sixty-five the Euthanasia policy would run out. This was Simmonds’s last chance but one, assuming that Mottram’s yearly visits to Chilthorpe were the best chance of doing away with him. ”

“ But even as he breasted the level of the roadway, he saw a car climbing the hill, doubtless carrying Brinkman with it. He cried to the driver to stop, but a volley of thunder drowned his utterance. He turned impotently, and began running down the hill: in ten minutes or so, at this pace, he should be at the garage. But as he ran he took the envelope out of his pocket and scanned its superscription by the light of his torch. It read: “To His Lordship the Bishop of Pullford. Private and Confidential.” He thrust it away, wondering; but a short-winded man running has no taste for puzzles. ”

“ If you take out a Euthanasia policy you will pay very heavy premiums; that goes without saying. But you pay them with a sense of absolute security. If you should die before the age of sixty-five a fortune is immediately distributed to your heirs and assigns. If you outlive that crucial age you become thenceforward, until the decree of nature takes its tardy effect, the pensioner of the company; every faltering breath you draw in the last stages of senility is money to you ”

“ We have to deal with a murderer who is anxious to create the impression that the victim has died by his own hand. It was for this reason that he left a half-finished letter of Mottram’s on the table—a letter which Mottram had actually written downstairs; this would look like the regular suicide’s dodge of trying to cover up his tracks by leaving a half-finished document about. It would make a mind like Bredon’s suspect suicide at once. ”

“ People who have taken out a Euthanasia policy don’t want Tom, Dick and Harry to know—more particularly, they don’t want Miles Bredon to know—that they have committed suicide. They have the habit, as I know from experience, of trying to put up a little problem in detection for me, the brutes! ”

“ I believe that there is a future life of some kind, and that we shall all be judged according to our opportunities and the use we made of same. I believe that God is merciful, and will make allowances for the difficulties we had in knowing what was the right thing to do and in doing it. But I have been through some hard times, and maybe not always acted for the best. Being desirous, therefore, of making my peace with God, I have taken the liberty of devising some of the property of which I die possessed to your Lordship personally, to be used for the benefit of the diocese of Pullford. ”

“ Leyland had been an officer in the same battalion with Bredon for more than two years of the war. It was at a time when the authorities had perceived that there were not enough well-dressed young men in England to go round, and a Police Inspector who had already made a name for efficiency easily obtained commissioned rank; with equal ease he returned to the position of an Inspector when demobilized. Their memories of old comradeship promised to be so exhaustive and, to the lay mind, so exhausting, that Brinkman had gone downstairs and Angela Bredon to their room long before it was over ”

“ The police always drag the river if they can think of nothing else to do.”
“You’re staying at the inn, I gather?”
“I am the surviving guest. When you have tasted the coffee in the morning you will understand the temptation to suicide; but so far I have resisted it. You are not relatives, I hope, of the deceased?”
“No; I’m from the Indescribable. We insured him, you know.”
“It must be a privilege to die under such auspices. But I am afraid I have gone beyond my book: when I say poor Mottram committed suicide I am giving you theory not fact.” ”

“ Do you mean to tell me that a man who is going to commit suicide is going to let himself in for all that tiresome process of putting studs in before he goes to bed?”
“And do you mean to tell me that a man goes out fishing in a boiled shirt?”
“Yes, if he’s a successful manufacturer. The idea that one wears special clothes when one is going to take exercise is an upper-class theory. I tell you, I’ve seen a farmer getting in the hay in a dickey, merely to show that he was a farmer, not a farm labourer.” ”

“ Bredon thought, of course, that my suspicion of Simmonds could not survive the revelation. As a matter of fact, it all fitted in nicely. Well, it just shews that one should never waste time trying to puzzle out a problem until one’s sure that all the relevant facts have been collated. Here were you and I worrying our lives out over the difficulty, and all because we had never noticed that bit of paper lying on the floor—and might never have noticed it, if I hadn’t happened to go in with the undertaker. Now, there’s only Brinkman’s part of the business to settle. ”

“ Our mistake from the first has been that of not accepting the facts. We have tried to fit the facts into our scheme, instead of letting the facts themselves guide us. From the first we were faced with what seemed to be a hopeless contradiction. The locked door seemed to make it certain that Mottram was alone when he died. The fact that the gas was turned off seemed to make it clear that Mottram was not alone when he died. There was ground for suspecting either suicide or murder; the difficulty was to make the whole complex of facts fit into either view. ”

“ I changed my mind about going to the funeral, and made the excuse that I wanted to go fishing. I heard you gasp, Mr. Eames; but Brinkman knows nothing about fishing. Then, when you had started, I went off to the garage by myself. Fortunately, very fortunately for my purpose, it proved that there was nobody in. There are only two men, in any case, and they neglect their business a good deal. I had an excuse if one was needed, but when I found myself alone in the garage I flung caution to the winds. There was a cardcase inside which shewed me which was Mottram’s car. ”

“ I can hardly imagine a stronger case. There’s the motive present, and a good motive too, half a million pounds. There’s the disposition, a natural resentment against his uncle for treating him hardly, added to a conscientious objection to his great wealth and the means by which he made it. There’s the threat: that letter of ‘Brutus’ will tell in a law court, if I know anything of juries. There’s the occasion: the fact of Mottram happening to be down at Chilthorpe. ”

“ Mottram, please!” which reverberates so grimly through the dentist’s waiting-room. At the Indescribable the attendants come close to you and beckon you away with confidential whispers; it is part of the tradition. Mr. Mottram rose, and was gently sucked up by the lift to the first storey, where fresh attendants ushered him on into one of the few rooms that really mattered. Here he was met by a pleasant, rather languid young man, delicately dressed, university-bred, whose position in the complicated hierarchy of the Indescribable it is no business of ours to determine. ”

“ The strange situations, the mysterious situations, are not those which are most difficult to unravel. You can proceed in this case to look for the murderer in the certainty that he is some one who would stand to lose if a verdict of suicide were brought in. Puzzling it over last night I was unable to conceive such a person. Between you and me, I had been inclined to suspect Brinkman; but there did not seem to be any possible reason why he should want to murder Mottram; and, if he did, there was no conceivable reason why he should want to make it appear that Mottram did not commit suicide. ”

“ Of course my own feeling is that by the time a man has got to the state of nerves in which suicide seems the only way out he has generally got beyond the stage at which he can really sit down and argue whether it is right or wrong. At least one hopes so. I don’t think that a person who defends suicide in the abstract is any more the likely to commit suicide for that or vice versa. Apart from grace, of course. But it’s the absence of motive, Mr. ‘Brendan.’ Why should Mottram have wanted to take his own life? ”

“ There is but one way in which you can forfeit the manifest advantages of the scheme, and that is self-murder. So complex is our human fashioning that men even may be tempted to enrich their surviving relatives by such means; and you will find, accordingly, at the bottom of your Euthanasia policy, an ominous black hand directing attention to the fact that in the event of suicide no benefits are legally recoverable. ”