The Counsellor
Page 29
“If you hand them out at half-price, plenty of people will do the distributing and be happy,” said The Counsellor. “So that young gentleman found, in actual practice. So it’s no good saying it can’t be done. It’s easy enough, if you go the right way about it.”
“The whole lot were in it,” interjected the inspector. “Whitgift turned out the stuff, and the Fairlawns crew help him with the distributing. When Trulock began running his Children of Light stunt, Whitgift spotted him as a wrong ’un, and took him in on the forgery side. That’s how they got into double harness.”
“But . . . murder!” protested Sandra. “Why did it get to that pitch?”
“Look at the conditions,” said The Counsellor. “Whitgift had to work in a hole and corner way at Longstoke House, hampered for time, and by having to produce some kind of honest results to justify the hours he spent in that locked room. But suppose he had control of the whole Press. That would give him a respectable cover for his other trade: old-established firm, well-known for good work in its special line. Nothing could be better as camouflage. That was why he was determined to get control of the company. And for all I know, there may have been a more urgent reason for clearing Treverton off the board.
“Meaning that the old man may have begun to suspect something?”
“It’s possible. We’re never likely to know for certain,” said The Counsellor. “But since Whitgift was content to get Helen Treverton kidnapped, I’m inclined to think that old Treverton got to know more than was good for Whitgift’s health and so . . .”
“And of course when you turned up out of the blue with your offer to buy the company, he’d one death on his hands already, and couldn’t be hanged twice. So he took the extra risk of polishing you off?” said Standish.
“That’s about it, no doubt,” The Counsellor agreed, cheerfully. “But he’ll find one hanging quite enough for his simple needs, I hope. Well, I’ve had one would-be suicide among my listeners. And now I’ve had a murderer. Really, it takes all sorts to make a world.”
THE END
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The Murder Room
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By J. J. Connington
Sir Clinton Driffield Mysteries
Murder in the Maze (1927)
Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (1927)
The Case with Nine Solutions (1928)
Mystery at Lynden Sands (1928)
Nemesis at Raynham Parva (1929)
(a.k.a. Grim Vengenace)
The Boathouse Riddle (1931)
The Sweepstake Murders (1931)
The Castleford Conundrum (1932)
The Ha-Ha Case (1934)
(a.k.a. The Brandon Case)
In Whose Dim Shadow (1935)
(a.k.a. The Tau Cross Mystery)
A Minor Operation (1937)
Murder Will Speak (1938)
Truth Comes Limping (1938)
The Twenty-One Clues (1941)
No Past is Dead (1942)
Jack-in-the-Box (1944)
Common Sense Is All You Need (1947)
Supt Ross Mysteries
The Eye in the Museum (1929)
The Two Tickets Puzzle (1930)
Novels
Death at Swaythling Court (1926)
The Dangerfield Talisman (1926)
Tom Tiddler’s Island (1933)
(a.k.a. Gold Brick Island)
The Counsellor (1939)
The Four Defences (1940)
J. J. Connington (1880–1947)
Alfred Walter Stewart, who wrote under the pen name J. J. Connington, was born in Glasgow, the youngest of three sons of Reverend Dr Stewart. He graduated from Glasgow University and pursued an academic career as a chemistry professor, working for the Admiralty during the First World War. Known for his ingenious and carefully worked-out puzzles and in-depth character development, he was admired by a host of his better-known contemporaries, including Dorothy L. Sayers and John Dickson Carr, who both paid tribute to his influence on their work. He married Jessie Lily Courts in 1916 and they had one daughter.
An Orion ebook
Copyright © The Professor A. W. Stewart Deceased Trust 1939, 2014
Introduction copyright © Curtis Evans 2013
The right of J. J. Connington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook first published in Great Britain in 2014
by Orion
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4719 0636 7
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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