"Bring him in, Johnson," said Mr. Cromering. He turned to Colwyn and
added: "When I received your telegram I telephoned to Galloway and asked
him to be here this afternoon. As he worked up the case against
Penreath, I thought it better that he should be present and hear what
you have to say. You have no objection, I suppose?"
"On the contrary, I shall be very glad for Galloway to hear what I have
to say."
The police constable returned, ushering in Superintendent Galloway, who
looked rather surprised when he saw his superior officer's visitors. He
nodded briefly to Colwyn, and looked inquiringly at the chief constable.
"Mr. Colwyn has discovered some fresh facts in the Glenthorpe murder,
Galloway," explained Mr. Cromering. "I sent for you in order that you
might hear what they are."
"What sort of facts?" asked Galloway, with a quick glance at the
detective.
"That is what Mr. Colwyn proposes to explain to us."
"I shall have to go back to the beginning of our investigations to do
so--to the day when we motored from Durrington to Flegne," said the
detective. "We went there with the strong presumption in our minds that
Penreath was the criminal, because of suspicious facts previously known
about him. He was short of money, he had concealed his right name when
registering at the hotel, and his behaviour at the breakfast table the
morning of his departure suggested an unbalanced temperament. It is a
legal axiom that men's minds are influenced by facts previously known or
believed, and we set out to investigate this case under the strong
presumption that Penreath, and none other, was the murderer.
"The evidence we found during our visit to the inn fitted in with this
theory, and inclined the police to shut out the possibility of any
alternative theory because of the number of concurrent points which
fitted in with the presumption that Penreath was the murderer. There
was, first, the fact that the murderer had entered through the window.
Penreath had been put to sleep in the room next the murdered man, in an
unoccupied part of the inn, and could easily have got from one window to
the other without being seen or heard. Next was the fact that the murder
had been committed with a knife with a round end. Penreath had used such
a knife when dining with Mr. Glenthorpe, and that knife was afterwards
missing. Next, we have him hurriedly departing from the inn soon after
daybreak, refusing to wait till his boots were cleaned, and paying his
bill with a Treasury note.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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