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 writer and reader. At this game, Knox excelled. Of all his contemporaries in detective fiction’s Golden Age, as Evelyn Waugh noted, “None was more ingenious than Knox, more scrupulous in the provision of clues, more logically complete in his solutions.” Originally published in 1927 and the first of Knox’s Miles Bredon novels, The Three Taps confirms Waugh’s words: as a mystery, it is undeniably ingenious; as a game, it is delightfully intriguing.  The skill of the detective author consists in being able to produce his clues and flourish them defiantly in our faces: “There!” he says. “What do you make of that?”—and we make nothing. (Ronald Knox) * * * Ronald Knox (1888–1957) was an English Catholic priest, theologian, and author, and one of the most prominent twentieth-century converts from Anglicanism to Catholicism. Best known for his contemporary English translation of the Scriptures (the “Knox Bible”), he wrote numerous works of apologetics and collections of sermons, retreat conferences, and lectures, as well as six detective novels. Paperback: 244pp. ISBN: 978-1685954208