Death at Breakfast. John Rhode

at this confounded inquest.’

      That afternoon, Jimmy reached the coroner’s court before his superior. Not long after his arrival, Janet Harleston appeared, escorted by her brother Philip. Jimmy greeted her and drew her aside. ‘There are one or two questions I should like to ask you, Miss Harleston,’ he said. ‘To begin with, where did your brother shave yesterday morning?’

      ‘In the bathroom, I suppose, as he always did,’ she replied. ‘I put a jug of hot water in there for him, just after I had brought him his early tea.’

      ‘Did you visit the bathroom again before you left the house yesterday?’

      ‘No, I always tidied upstairs after Victor had gone to the office, but yesterday I hadn’t the chance.’

      ‘How many towels were there in the bathroom yesterday morning?’

      Janet smiled at the apparent absurdity of the question. ‘Well, there was Victor’s bath towel on the rail,’ she replied. ‘And a clean face towel, which I had put over the jug of hot water to keep it warm.’

      Jimmy pursued this subject no further. It was very remarkable that this face towel should so mysteriously have vanished. He went on to his next point.

      ‘Did your brother receive a package of any kind on Saturday?’ he inquired.

      Janet thought for a minute. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘A small parcel came for him in the morning after he had left the house. I gave it to him when he came back in the middle of the day and I don’t remember seeing it since.’

      ‘Have you any idea who sent him the parcel?’

      She shook her head. ‘Not the slightest. I didn’t take any particular notice. It was just an ordinary parcel, quite small, with a typewritten label on it.’

      ‘What did your brother do with the parcel when you gave it him?’

      ‘I went out of the room directly afterwards. He had picked up a knife and was cutting the string then.’

      ‘In which room was this?’

      ‘In the dining-room. Victor always came home to lunch on Saturdays. The table was laid before he came home and I went down to the kitchen to bring up the food.’

      All this sounded reasonable enough. ‘If your brother had opened the parcel what would he have done with the brown paper and string?’ Jimmy asked.

      ‘He would probably have put them in the wastepaper basket beside his desk. Now I come to think of it, I believe I remember seeing some crumpled brown paper and string in it when I emptied the basket on Sunday evening.’

      ‘What did you empty the waste-paper basket into, Miss Harleston?’

      ‘Why, into the dustbin, of course. Where else?’

      Jimmy smiled ingratiatingly. ‘I’m sorry to be so persistent, Miss Harleston, but what became of the dustbin?’ he asked.

      ‘Why, I put it outside first thing on Monday morning for the dustman to empty. He’s always round between seven and eight, and when he has emptied it, I take the dustbin in again. And of course, he emptied it yesterday morning as usual. I took the dustbin in while I was getting breakfast.’

      The court was now about to open and Jimmy had no further opportunity for conversation. The inquest lasted no more than a few minutes. Merely formal evidence was taken and the coroner adjourned the proceedings for a fortnight. Jimmy returned to the Yard, deeply perplexed by the problem of the missing towel.

      He sat down to consider the mystery. Towels do not vanish of themselves. This particular towel must have been removed from the bathroom by human agency. Harleston might have removed it himself, certainly. But in that case what could he have done with it? He had not left the house between the time of his shaving and the time of his death. He could not have destroyed the towel without leaving some traces. The search had been so thorough that Jimmy felt convinced the towel must have been removed from the house. By whom? Perhaps by Janet when she went to fetch Dr Oldland. Perhaps by the mysterious man on the doorstep. But why should anyone have removed the towel? For the first time Jimmy saw clearly the answer to this question. Harleston had been poisoned by nicotine absorbed through the cut. He had probably dabbed the cut with the towel. Therefore the towel would show traces of the poison.

      This suggested to Jimmy a possible theory. Suppose the towel had been saturated with the nicotine and eau-de-Cologne mixture? As soon as Harleston cut himself he would naturally apply the towel to his face. This would account for the absorption of the poison by the cut. But how could it have been predicted that he would cut himself? Poisonous though nicotine might be, the mere dabbing of the unbroken skin with a solution of it would hardly be sufficient to cause death.

      This point set Jimmy’s mind afloat on a current of speculation. Nobody habitually cuts himself while shaving. He doesn’t come down to breakfast every morning of his life with a gash across his face. He either learns to keep the razor in its proper path or he grows a beard. Harleston was accustomed to shaving himself. His familiar safety razor probably performed its task without accident at least nine times out of ten. This was a very mild estimate of the chances against Harleston cutting himself on any particular morning. And it was ridiculous to suppose that he could be provided with a poisoned towel every morning on the off-chance that he would cut himself sooner or later.

      And yet there might have been a reason why Harleston should have cut himself on that particular morning. The odds against a man cutting himself with a familiar razor were pretty great. But suppose he were to use an unfamiliar razor for the first time? Every different make of razor requires a slight variation in the manner of its use. A man accustomed to one type might very easily make a slip with another. If Harleston had shaved himself with the razor so thoughtfully sent him by Novoshave Ltd., the odds against him cutting himself would have been considerably increased.

      But he hadn’t. That was just the trouble. The razor he had used was a Gillette which, judging by its appearance, was an old and trusty friend. How he had managed to cut himself with it was something of a mystery. Jimmy had heard the wound described in the course of the medical evidence at the inquest. It was a vertical cut, three-quarters of an inch long, on the right side of the face, close to the lobe of the ear. Now that Jimmy came to think of it, it seemed to him that it was rather a curious sort of cut to be sustained while shaving. In his experience, the cuts caused by razor blades were usually horizontal rather than vertical. That is to say, they were parallel to the edge of the blade. The reason for this being, no doubt, that they were caused by the blade not being properly secured in the holder. The edge of the blade was thus held at the wrong angle and cut the skin along a considerable proportion of its length. A vertical cut would appear to mean that only one point on the blade was out of adjustment, and that seemed to Jimmy rather extraordinary.

      Another perplexing point was this. What had become of the Novoshave razor and shaving cream? These had evidently arrived by post on Saturday morning in the parcel described by Janet Harleston. Victor Harleston had unpacked his parcel. He had done so in the dining-room. There, the only receptacle for objects was the desk. Jimmy, in the course of his search that morning, had examined the desk so thoroughly that he felt convinced that the razor and shaving cream were not in it now.

      What was Harleston likely to have done with them? Presumably he would neither have destroyed them nor given them away. His reputation for meanness suggested the alternative that he might have sold them. But when, and to whom? He had hardly had much opportunity before his death. On the whole, that alternative seemed most unlikely. They must be in the house somewhere. Unless, like the towel, they had disappeared. Things seemed to have an uncanny way of disappearing from that rather drab house in Matfield Street.

      Jimmy felt impelled to further search. He and Hanslet between them had already turned the house upside down. Still, there might be some obscure corner which he had overlooked. Jimmy went to the superintendent’s room.

      ‘Do you mind if I go and have another look over that house in Matfield Street?’ he asked.

      Hanslet looked up from some papers at which he