The Three Taps

By Ronald Knox The Euthanasia Policy is the premier offering of the Indescribable Insurance Company. Its premiums are high, but so too is the payout. If the holder should die before age sixty-five, his heirs receive a fortune; if he should outlive that age, he receives that fortune as an annuity for the remainder of his days. Only one means exists of forfeiting this legacy, and that is suicide. Hence the commotion at the death of Jephthah Mottram, a holder of the Euthanasia Policy. Cause of death was a gas leak—yet his hotel bedroom was securely locked from the inside and the gas taps themselves mysteriously turned off. Was this murder, or was it suicide? To prove the latter, and thus avoid the pending half-million-pound payout, the Indescribable dispatches the expert Miles Bredon, who quickly finds the case to be as foul and befogging as the air which sent Mottram to his death. Detective stories, Knox believed, differ essentially from all other fiction. They are a game, played between