A Press of Suspects by Andrew Garve

Author:Andrew Garve [Garve, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447215325
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Chapter Eighteen

By the evening, Edgar Jessop had made his choice and knew whom he was going to kill next. A method had come to him as a revelation during that half-hour in the Reporters’ Room, and the method had suggested the victim. It was, he felt, an appropriate stroke of justice that cyanide which had originally been intended for the liquidation of defenceless creatures should now be used in the same manner to destroy a man who had been put in a position of authority. He was happy about the choice. All that remained was to work out the details.

The difficulties were formidable, but Jessop took them as a challenge. As he sat in the Foreign Room after supper, his opus temporarily laid aside for this more pressing business, he had no doubt that he would be guided to overcome them. Probably he was the only man who could overcome them. His exhaustive knowledge of office routine and his familiarity with the old building would serve him well.

He dissected the problem with the patient cunning of the paranoiac. He must get the stuff into position without being seen. He couldn’t do that to-morrow, because there’d be too many vigilant eyes watching. But he couldn’t do it right away either, because if he did the cleaners would find it when they came in the morning. No, the poison must be laid after the cleaners had been, and before the staff began to arrive. It would be necessary, he saw, for him to spend the night in the office. There shouldn’t be any difficulty about that—he had done it plenty of times before. Fortunately he had an old razor in his drawer, so he would be able to make himself presentable after the job was done. Then he would only have to wait and mingle with the incoming staff and once again his identity would be lost in the crowd. That was the plan in broad outline. By the time the boy arrived with the first edition of the paper, Jessop had not only gone over the main plan in his mind but he was satisfied with the details as well. He felt sure he had overlooked nothing.

The artistic perfection of the scheme gave him real creative pleasure. He would enjoy carrying it out. The confidence of obsession surged through him. The faint misgivings which he had experienced during his talk with Haines were forgotten. It had been unfortunate that Iredale should have interposed himself, unwittingly, between plan and performance on the first occasion, but nothing like that could happen this time. Haines would never get on the right track—he would have nothing at all to go on. Jessop picked up the paper that had just been brought in, and contemptuously scanned the few lines about the progress of the Hind case. The report had dwindled to a couple of sticks. Routine phrases, through which failure stared. The story was as dead as Hind himself. The police wouldn’t admit it, of course, but they had reached the inevitable impasse.

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