Death Knocks Three Times

by Anthony Gilbert

  John Sherren, however, didn’t agree with him. He came to see Crook after his release, just to get some of the gaps filled in. As a practising realistic novelist he had the wit to know he was never likely to be involved in anything so dramatic again.

  “All grist to the mill,” Crook consoled him. “Think what a yarn you’ll be able to write now.”

  “That’s just what troubles me,” said John, round-eyed as an owl in his earnestness, “it’s the first suspicion I’ve had that I may be slipping.”

  “Slipping?” said Crook in polite mystification. “Make allowance for the old ‘uns. I can’t keep up with you.”

  “I pride myself on my knowledge of character,” said John. “I had met Miss Pettigrew, I had heard her views on murder. I saw her change the cups that night, and I couldn’t put two and two together to make it four till it was too late.”

  And while Crook, flummoxed for once, feeling he had received a major jolt in the solar plexus, choked for words, the novelist who couldn’t sell and the mathematician who couldn’t add, took up his exaggerated black Anthony Eden and exited like a tragedy clown.

  THE END