Inspector French and the Sea Mystery

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  ‘No,’ said French. ‘Not until you explain why you denied having been out when Sergeant Daw asked you.’

  ‘That, as I have said, was a mistake. But you can surely understand my motive. When I heard the sergeant’s story I recognised at once that my having taken out the car was a very unfortunate thing for me. I felt sure that foul play would sooner or later be suggested and I thought I should be suspected. I couldn’t prove where I had been and I was afraid I should not be believed when I explained.’

  ‘I’m afraid that is not very clear. Why did you imagine that foul play would be suspected?’

  Domlio hesitated.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said at last, ‘things have gone so far there is no use in trying to keep anything back. I knew that there was bad blood between Berlyn and Pyke. The sergeant’s news at once suggested to me that the trouble might have come to a head. I hoped not, of course, but the idea occurred to me.’

  ‘Even yet I don’t understand. What was the cause of the bad blood between those two and how did you come to know of it?’

  ‘Surely,’ Domlio protested, ‘it is not necessary to go into that? I am only accounting for my own actions.’

  ‘It is necessary in order to account for your own actions.’

  Domlio squared his shoulders.

  ‘I don’t think I should tell you, only that, unfortunately, it is pretty well common property. I hate dragging in a lady’s name, though you have already done it, but the truth is that they had had a misunderstanding about Mrs Berlyn.’

  ‘About Mrs Berlyn?’

  ‘Yes. She and Pyke saw rather too much of each other. I don’t for a moment believe there was the slightest cause for jealousy, but Berlyn was a bit exacting and he probably made a mountain out of a molehill. I knew Mrs Berlyn pretty well myself and I am certain that Berlyn had no real cause for complaint.’

  ‘You haven’t explained how you came to know of the affair?’

  ‘It was common property. I don’t think I can tell you where I first heard of it.’

  French considered for a moment.

  ‘There is another thing, Colonel Domlio. You said that when you heard the sergeant’s story you suspected the trouble between the two men had come to a head?’

  ‘Might have come to a head. Yes.’

  ‘Suppose it had. Why, then, did you fear that the sergeant might have suspected you?’

  Again Domlio hesitated.

  ‘That is a nasty question, Inspector,’ he said at last, ‘but from what you asked me in my study you might guess the answer. As a matter of fact, I had myself seen a good deal of Mrs Berlyn for some time previously. About this, there was nothing in the slightest degree compromising. All through we were merely friends. Not only that, but Berlyn knew of our meetings and excursions. When he could he shared them and he had not the slightest objection to our intimacy. But Daw wouldn’t know that. For all I could tell, the excellent scandalmongers of the district had coupled Mrs Berlyn’s name with mine. Berlyn was dead and gone and he could not state his views. My word would not be believed nor Mrs Berlyn’s either, if she were dragged into it. I thought, at all events I had better keep secret a mysterious excursion which might easily be misunderstood.’

  Not very convincing, French thought, as he rapidly considered what the colonel had told him. However, it might be true. At all events he had no evidence to justify an arrest. He therefore pretended that he fully accepted the statement, and wishing the colonel a cheery good-evening, stood aside to let the car pass.

  As he cycled slowly into Ashburton he kept turning over in his mind the question of whether there was any way in which he could test the truth of Colonel Domlio’s statement. Frankly, he did not believe the story. But unbelief was no use to him. He must prove it true or false.

  All the evening he puzzled over the problem, then at last he saw that there was a line of research which, though it might not solve the point in question, yet bade fair to be of value to the inquiry as a whole.

  Once again it concerned a time-table—this time for Domlio’s presumed movements. Assume that Berlyn and Pyke reached the point at which the car was abandoned about 11.30 p.m. To convince Pyke of the bona fides of the breakdown, Berlyn would have to spend some time over the engine, say fifteen minutes. In the dark they could scarcely have reached Torview in less than another fifteen; say that by the time Domlio had admitted them it was close on midnight. Some time would then be consumed in explaining the situation and in getting out the car; in fact, the party could scarcely have left Torview before 12.10 a.m. Running to the works would have occupied the most of another half hour, say, arrive 12.40 a.m. Domlio reached his house about 2.10 a.m., which, allowing half an hour for the return journey, left an hour unaccounted for. In this hour Pyke’s murder must have been committed, the duplicator removed from the crate and the body substituted, the duplicator taken to pieces and the parts left in the store, fresh tea put into Gurney’s flask, Pyke’s clothes and the small parts of the duplicator got rid of and the magneto on Berlyn’s car changed.

  French wondered if all these things could have been done in the time. At last, after working out a detailed time-table, he came to the conclusion that they could, on one condition; that the clothes and duplicator parts were got rid of on the way to Torview, that is, if no time were lost in making a detour.

  Where, then, could this have been done?

  French took his map and considered the route. The Dart river was crossed three times and a part of the way lay through woods. But he believed that too many tourists strayed from the road for these to be safe hiding-places, though he realised that they might have to be searched later.

  There remained two places, either of which he thought more promising; the works and Domlio’s grounds.

  The fact that elaborate arrangements had been made to get Pyke’s body away from the works indicated that the disposal of it there was considered impossible. Nevertheless, French spent the next day, which was Sunday, prowling about the buildings, though without result.

  This left Domlio’s little estate, and early the following morning French borrowed the sergeant’s bicycle and rode out to his former hiding-place outside the gates. History repeated itself, for after waiting for nearly two hours he saw Domlio pass out towards Ashburton.

  As the car had not been heard by either Coombe or Mee on the night of the tragedy, it followed that it had almost certainly entered by the back drive. French now walked up this lane to the yard, looking out for hiding-places. But there were none.

  He did not see any of the servants about and he stood in the yard, pondering over his problem. Then his glance fell on the old well and it instantly occurred to him that here was the very kind of place he was seeking. There was an old wheel-pump beside it, rusty and dilapidated, working a rod to the plunger below. He imagined the well was not used, for on his last visit he had noticed a well-oiled force pump a hundred yards away at the kitchen door.

  The well was surrounded by a masonry wall about three feet high, coped with roughly-dressed stones. On the coping was a flat wooden grating, old and decaying. Ivy covered about half of the wall and grating.

  French crossed the yard, and leaning over the wall, glanced down. The sides were black with age and he could distinguish no details of the walls, but there was a tiny reflection from the water far below. Then suddenly he noticed a thing which once again set him off into a ferment of delight.

  The cross-bars of the grating were secured by mortar into niches cut in the stone. All of these bore signs of recent movements.

  Satisfied that he had at last solved his problem, French quietly left the yard, and recovering his bicycle, rode back to the police station at Ashburton.

  ‘I want your help, Sergeant,’ he said as Daw came forward. ‘Can you get some things together and come out with me to Colonel Domlio’s tonight?’

  ‘Of course, Mr French.’

  ‘Good. Then I want a strong fishing-line and some hooks and some twenty-five or thirty yards of s
trong cord. I want to try an experiment.’

  ‘I’ll have all those ready.’

  ‘I want to be there when there’s no one about; so as the colonel sits up very late, I think we’ll say three o’clock. That means we ought to leave here about one-fifteen. Can you borrow a second bicycle?’

  The sergeant looked completely mystified by these instructions, but he answered, ‘Certainly,’ without asking any questions. It was agreed that they should meet in the evening at his house, sitting up there until it was time to start.

  Having explained at the hotel that he had to go to Plymouth and would be away all night, French started out for a tramp on the moor. About eleven he turned up at Daw’s cottage and there the two men spent the next couple of hours, smoking and chatting.

  Shortly before three they reached Torview. They hid their bicycles in the brushwood and walked softly up the back drive to the yard. The night was fine and calm, but the sky was overcast and it was very dark. Not a sound broke the stillness.

  Silently they reached the well and French with his electric torch examined the wooden cover.

  ‘I think if we lift together we can get it up,’ he whispered. ‘Try at this side and use the ivy as a hinge.’

  They raised it easily and French propped it with a billet of wood.

  ‘Now, Sergeant, the fishing line.’

  At the sergeant’s cottage they had tied on a bunch of hooks and a weight. French now let these down, having passed the line through one of the holes in the grating to ensure its swinging free from the walls. Gradually he paid out the cord until a faint plop announced that the water had been reached. He continued lowering as long as the cord would run out, then he began jerking it slowly up and down.

  ‘Swing it from side to side, Sergeant, while I keep jerking it. If there’s anything there we should get it.’

  For twenty minutes they worked and then, just as French was coming to the conclusion that a daylight descent into the well would be necessary, the hooks caught. Something of fair weight was on the line.

  ‘Let it stay till it stops swinging, or else we shall lose the hooks in the wall, Mr French,’ the sergeant advised, now as keenly interested as was French himself.

  ‘Right, Sergeant. The water will soon steady it.’

  After a few seconds French began to pull slowly up, the drops from the attached object echoing loudly up the long funnel. And then came into the circle of the sergeant’s torch a man’s coat.

  It was black and sodden and shapeless from the water, and slimy to the touch. They lifted it round the well so that the wall should be between them and the house and examined it with their electric torches.

  In the breast pocket was a letter-case containing papers, but it was impossible to read anything they bore. A pipe, a tobacco-pouch, a box of matches and a handkerchief were in the other pockets.

  Fortunately for French there was a tailor’s tab sewn into the lining of the breast pocket and he was able to make out part of the legend: ‘R. Shrubsole & Co., Newton Abbot.’ Beneath was a smudge which had evidently been the owner’s name, but this was undecipherable.

  ‘We’ll get it from the tailor,’ French said. ‘Let’s try the hooks again.’

  Once again they lowered their line, but this time without luck.

  ‘No good,’ French declared at last. ‘We’ll have to pump it out. You might get the depth and then close up and leave it as we found it. We’d better bring a portable pump, for I don’t suppose that old thing will work.’

  They replaced the grating and the billet of wood, and stealing silently out of the yard, rode back to Ashburton.

  With the coat wrapped in paper and packed in his suit-case, French took an early ’bus to Newton Abbot. There he soon found Messrs Shrubsole’s establishment and asked for the proprietor.

  ‘It’s not easy to say whose it was,’ Mr Shrubsole declared when he had examined the coat. ‘You see, these labels of ours are printed; that is, our name and address. But the customer’s name is written and it would not last in the same way. I’m afraid I cannot read it.’

  ‘If it had been possible to read it I should not have come to you, Mr Shrubsole. I want you to get at it from the cloth and size and probable age and things of that kind. You can surely find out all those things by examination.’

  This appeared to be a new idea to Mr Shrubsole. He admitted that something of the kind might be done, and, calling an assistant, fell to scrutinising the garment.

  ‘It’s that brown tweed with the purple line that we sold so much of last year,’ the assistant declared. He produced a roll of cloth. ‘See, if we lift the lining here it shows clear enough.’

  ‘That’s right,’ his employer admitted. ‘Now can we get the measurements?’

  ‘Not so easy,’ said the assistant. ‘The thing will be all warped and shrunk from the water.’

  ‘Try,’ French urged with his pleasant smile.

  An orgy of measuring followed, with a subsequent recourse to the books and much low-voiced conversation. Finally, Mr Shrubsole announced the result.

  ‘It’s not possible to say for sure, Mr French. You see, the coat is shrunk out of all knowing. But we think it might belong to one of four men.’

  ‘I see your difficulty, Mr Shrubsole, but if you tell me the four it may help me.’

  ‘I hope so. We sold suits of about this size to Mr Albert Cunningham, of 27 Acacia Street, Newton Abbot; Mr John Booth, of Lyndhurst, Teignmouth; Mr Stanley Pyke, of East Street, Ashburton; and Mr George Hepworth, of Linda Lodge, Newton Abbot. Any of those any good to you?’ Mr Shrubsole’s expression suddenly changed. ‘By Jove! You’re not the gentleman that’s been making these discoveries about Mr Berlyn and Mr Pyke? We’ve heard some report that some Scotland Yard man was down and had found out that that tragedy was not all it was supposed to be. That it, sir?’

  ‘That’s it,’ French replied, feeling that it was impossible to keep his business private. ‘But I don’t want it talked about. Now, you see why I should like to be sure whether that was or was not Mr Pyke’s coat.’

  But in spite of the tailor’s manifest interest, he declared that the point could not be established. He was fairly sure that it belonged to one of the four, but more than that he could not say.

  But French had no doubt whatever, and well pleased with his progress, he left the shop and took the first ’bus back to Ashburton.

  15

  Blackmail

  ‘Have you been able to get the pump, Sergeant?’ asked French as he reached the police station that afternoon.

  ‘I’ve got the loan of one, Mr French, or at least I’ll get it first thing tomorrow. From a quarry close by. It’s a rotary hand-pump, and Mr Glenn, the manager, tells me that it will throw far faster than anything we’ll want.’

  ‘We shall have to fix it down in the well?’

  ‘Yes, the well’s forty-two feet deep. It’s thirty to the water and there’s twelve feet of water. But there’ll be no trouble about that. The beams that carry the old pump will take it too.’

  ‘You think they’re strong enough?’

  ‘We’ll just have to try them.’

  ‘What about ladders?’

  ‘I’ve got a fifty-foot length of rope ladder from the same quarry.’

  ‘Good. What time can we start tomorrow?’

  ‘I shall have the pump by half past eight.’

  ‘Then we should be at the colonel’s shortly after nine.’

  This time French thought it would be wise to have Domlio present at their experiment. He therefore rang him up and made an appointment for nine-thirty.

  Early next morning a heavily-loaded car left Ashburton. In addition to the driver it contained French, Daw, and two constables in plain clothes, as well as a low, squat pump with detachable handle, an immense coil of armoured hose, another huge coil of rope ladder, a candle lantern and several tools and small parts.

  ‘Another rush to Klondyke,’ said French, at which priceless pearl of humour Daw smiled and
the plain-clothes men guffawed heavily.

  ‘I should have thought that tailor could have fixed up the ownership of the coat,’ Daw remarked presently. ‘Shouldn’t you, sir?’

  ‘Of course, Sergeant. But we shall get it all right, even if we have to do all the work ourselves. I thought it wasn’t worth troubling about. It’s pretty certain the coat is not the only thing that was thrown into the well and we shall get our identification from something else.’

  The car was run into the yard, unloaded and dismissed, while French went to the hall door and asked for Colonel Domlio.

  ‘Sorry to trouble you at this hour, colonel, but I want you to be present at a small experiment I am carrying out.’ He watched the other keenly as he spoke. ‘Will you, please, come out into the yard, where I have left Sergeant Daw and some men?’

  Surprise showed on the colonel’s face, but not, so far as French could see, apprehension.

  ‘This is very interesting, Inspector. I’m glad I’m at least being informed of what is taking place on my own ground. I shall certainly see what you are doing.’

  As they turned the corner and the purpose of the visit became apparent to Domlio his surprise seemed to deepen, but still there was no appearance of uneasiness. The police had lifted the cover of the well and were getting the pump rigged. Coombe and Mee had joined the others and stood speechlessly regarding the preparations.

  ‘Ah, an invasion? I presume, Inspector, you have adequate authority for these somewhat unusual proceedings?’

  ‘I think you’ll find that’s all right, sir. With your permission, we’re going to pump out the well.’