The sea mystery : $b An Inspector French detective storyCrofts, Freeman Wills
General
The sea mystery : $b An Inspector French detective story
Crofts, Freeman Wills
Detective and mystery stories; French, Joseph (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Police -- Great Britain -- Fiction
In London he bought the second-hand typewriter and wrote the letters
ordering the duplicator and crane lorry on paper he had obtained from
the L. M. S. hotels. These letters he handed to the tobacconist,
Ganope, who for a consideration undertook to post them on the proper
dates. Neither he nor Phyllis was, therefore, in London when they were
sent out, though he called in person at the hotels for the replies. He
similarly obtained the duplicate magneto. This he handed to Phyllis
and she damaged it and ran it on the car until it gave up, then
replacing the original.
On the fatal night every movement of each conspirator was carefully
timed and cut and dry to the last detail. When near the works on the
return journey Stanley called out to Berlyn to stop, saying that he
had seen a man lying on the road. He jumped out and ran round the car,
and on Berlyn following him he slipped behind his victim and
sandbagged him. Hastily throwing the body into the car, he drove to
the works gate. There he was met by Phyllis, who had already drugged
Gurney’s tea in the way French had surmised.
At the works Phyllis helped Pyke to carry the body to the
packing-shed. After replacing Gurney’s drugged tea with fresh, she put
her bicycle in the tonneau of the car and drove out to the selected
spot on the moor. She changed the magneto and made the two lines of
footmarks by putting on shoes of Berlyn’s which she had brought for
the purpose. Then mounting her bicycle, she returned to the works. The
bicycle and the magneto she hid in a clump of shrubs, waiting until
Pyke came out to say that the ghastly job in the works was complete.
She then went home, silently let herself in, replaced Berlyn’s shoes
in his room, changed her clothes, wakened the maid and called up
Sergeant Daw.
In the meantime Stanley Pyke rode on the bicycle to Colonel Domlio’s,
dropped the clothes and other objects into the well, and continued on
his way to Plymouth. There he left the bicycle in a dark entry in the
lower part of the town, where he was sure it would speedily be found
and annexed. He took the first train to London, returning to Ashburton
in the character of Jefferson on receipt of Daw’s wire about the
tragedy.
Such was the plan, and, had the conspirators been sure their actions
would have remained unquestioned, they would have stopped there. But
both were afraid that in some unforeseen way suspicion might be
aroused and they took several other steps in the hope of turning such
possible suspicion on to other persons.
First they considered it necessary that, should the crate be
discovered, the body therein should be taken as Stanley Pyke’s. This
would effectually prevent a doubt arising as to Jefferson’s identity.
Pyke, therefore, changed his own underclothes with those of the dead
man and dropped his own suit down the well, while both he and Phyllis
stated that the birthmark on Berlyn’s arm was really on Pyke’s.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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