The Great Skene Mystery by Bernard Capes — Read

Now, henceforth, I was to move on with a set and deadly purpose. Murder was in the air, and I was stalking it, a hooded falcon on my wrist. Though I knew only what the reader knows, I had the feeling that, were I once to loose the jess, some strange and unexpected quarry would be brought down from the skies. Mark is a significant name to the beasts of chase. In the meantime, awaiting the psychologic moment, I had reason to reflect that there is generally somewhere that flaw in the boldest criminal calculations which sooner or later will give the crime away. The wicked astute man thinks astuteness impossible to virtue -- one of those mistakes of generalising which lead to accidents. He estimates _all_ goodness at credulity, _all_ vice at subtlety. Yet both Solomon and Sancho Panza were good men. Now, if for twenty years Mr Churton's mouth had remained sealed from terror, why should that terror become suddenly inoperative in the twenty-first year?

It is just the contempt for providing against such unforeseen contingencies which constitutes the flaws. But it would have been quite possible to close Mr Churton's mouth at once and for ever at the beginning of things. Casual concessions to humanity are the weaknesses of all but Napoleonic criminals. Mr Dalston, then, it would appear, was not a Napoleonic criminal. He attached too much value, perhaps, to the mere terror of his personality.