This juggies a formula for here the successful killer, because of his utter ineptness, is never permitted recognition. Norval, stigmatized as a failure, does kill his wife but the police chief ignores him; he kills again, and again is discarded as a suspect; his legal confession, before his third kill is scrambled so that he dies a hero rather than a man of "" mulacity"". Humdrum rather than clever as it might have been.