Detective and mystery stories; Trent, Philip (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
My Dear Molloy:—This is in case I don’t find you at your office. I have
found out who killed Manderson, as this dispatch will show. This was my
problem; yours is to decide what use to make of it. It definitely
charges an unsuspected person with having a hand in the crime, and
practically accuses him of being the murderer, so I don’t suppose you
will publish it before his arrest, and I believe it is illegal to do so
afterwards until he has been tried and found guilty. You may decide to
publish it then; and you may find it possible to make some use or other
before then of the facts I have given. That is your affair. Meanwhile,
will you communicate with Scotland Yard, and let them see what I have
written? I have done with the Manderson mystery, and I wish to God I
had never touched it. Here follows my dispatch. P.T.
Marlstone, _June_ 16_th_.
I begin this, my third and probably my final dispatch to the _Record_
upon the Manderson murder, with conflicting feelings. I have a strong
sense of relief, because in my two previous dispatches I was obliged,
in the interests of justice, to withhold facts ascertained by me which
would, if published then, have put a certain person upon his guard and
possibly have led to his escape; for he is a man of no common boldness
and resource. These facts I shall now set forth. But I have, I confess,
no liking for the story of treachery and perverted cleverness which I
have to tell. It leaves an evil taste in the mouth, a savour of
something revolting in the deeper puzzle of motive underlying the
puzzle of the crime itself, which I believe I have solved.
It will be remembered that in my first dispatch I described the
situation as I found it on reaching this place early on Tuesday
morning. I told how the body was found, and in what state; dwelt upon
the complete mystery surrounding the crime, and mentioned one or two
local theories about it; gave some account of the dead man’s domestic
surroundings; and furnished a somewhat detailed description of his
movements on the evening before his death. I gave, too, a little fact
which may or may not have seemed irrelevant: that a quantity of whisky
much larger than Manderson habitually drank at night had disappeared
from his private decanter since the last time he was seen alive. On the
following day, the day of the inquest, I wired little more than an
abstract of the proceedings in the coroner’s court, of which a verbatim
report was made at my request by other representatives of the _Record_.
That day is not yet over as I write these lines; and I have now
completed an investigation which has led me directly to the man who
must be called upon to clear himself of the guilt of the death of
Manderson.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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