Inspector French and the Sea Mystery Read online

  FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS

  Inspector French and the Sea Mystery

  Copyright

  Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1928

  Copyright © Estate of Freeman Wills Crofts 1928

  Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008190675

  Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008190682

  Version 2016-12-09

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1: Mr Morgan Meets Tragedy

  Chapter 2: Inspector French Gets Busy

  Chapter 3: Experimental Detection

  Chapter 4: A Change of Venue

  Chapter 5: Messrs Berlyn and Pyke

  Chapter 6: The Despatch of the Crate

  Chapter 7: Dartmoor

  Chapter 8: A Fresh Start

  Chapter 9: A Step Forward

  Chapter 10: London’s Further Contribution

  Chapter 11: John Gurney, Night Watchman

  Chapter 12: The Duplicator

  Chapter 13: The Accomplice?

  Chapter 14: French Turns Fisherman

  Chapter 15: Blackmail

  Chapter 16: Certainty at Last

  Chapter 17: ‘Danger!’

  Chapter 18: On Hampstead Heath

  Chapter 19: The Bitterness of Death

  Chapter 20: Conclusion

  About the Author

  Also in this Series

  About the Publisher

  1

  Mr Morgan Meets Tragedy

  The Burry Inlet, on the south coast of Wales, looks its best from the sea. At least so thought Mr Morgan, as he sat in the sternsheets of his boat, a fishing line between his fingers, while his son, Evan, pulled lazily over the still water.

  In truth the prospect on this pleasant autumn evening would have pleased a man less biased by pride of fatherland than Mr Morgan. The Inlet at full tide forms a wide sheet of water, penetrating in an easterly direction some ten miles into the land, with the county of Carmarthen to the north and the Gower Peninsula to the south. The shores are flat, but rounded hills rise inland which merge to form an undulating horizon of high ground. Here and there along the coast are sand-dunes, whose greys and yellows show up in contrast to the green of the grasslands and the woods beyond.

  To the south-east, over by Salthouse Point and Penclawdd, Mr Morgan could see every detail of house and sand-dune, tree and meadow, lit up with a shining radiance, but the north-west hills behind Burry Port were black and solid against a setting sun. Immediately north lay Llanelly, with its dingy coloured buildings, its numberless chimneys, and the masts and funnels of the steamers in its harbour.

  It was a perfect evening in late September, the close of a perfect day. Not a cloud appeared in the sky, and scarcely a ripple stirred the surface of the sea. The air was warm and balmy, and all nature seemed drowsing in languorous content. Save for the muffled noise of the Llanelly mills, borne over the water, and the slow, rhythmic creak of the oars, no sound disturbed the sleepy quiet.

  Mr Morgan was a small, clean-shaven man in a worn and baggy Norfolk suit, which was the bane of Mrs Morgan’s existence, but in which the soul of her lord and master delighted as an emblem of freedom from the servitude of the office. He leaned back in the sternsheets, gazing out dreamily on the broad sweep of the Inlet and the lengthening shadows ashore. At times his eyes and thoughts turned to his son, Evan, the fourteen-year-old boy who was rowing. A good boy, thought Mr Morgan, and big for his age. Though he had been away at school for nearly three years he was still his father’s best pal. As Mr Morgan thought of the relations between some of his friends and their sons, he felt a wave of profound thankfulness sweep over him.

  Presently the boy stopped rowing.

  ‘Say, Dad, we’ve not had our usual luck today,’ he remarked, glancing disgustedly at the two tiny mackerel which represented their afternoon’s sport.

  Mr Morgan roused himself.

  ‘No, old man, those aren’t much to boast about. And I’m afraid we shall have to go in now. The tide’s beginning to run, and I expect we could both do with a bit of supper. Let’s change places and you have a go at the lines while I pull in.’

  To anyone attempting navigation in the Burry Inlet the tides are a factor of the first importance. With a rise and fall at top springs of something like twenty-five feet, the placid estuary of high water becomes a little later a place of fierce currents and swirling eddies. The Inlet is shallow also. At low tide by far the greater portion of its area is uncovered, and this, by confining the rushing waters to narrow channels, still further increases their speed. As the tide falls the great Llanrhidian Sands appear, stretching out northwards from the Gower Peninsula, while an estuary nearly four miles wide contracts to a river racing between mud banks five hundred yards apart.

  Mr Morgan took the paddles, and heading the boat for the northern coast, began to pull slowly shorewards. He was the manager of a large tinplate works at Burry Port and lived on the outskirts of the little town. Usually a hard worker, he had taken advantage of a slack afternoon to make a last fishing excursion with his son before the latter’s return to school. The two had left Burry Port on a flowing tide and had drifted up the Inlet to above Llanelly. Now the tide was ebbing, and they were being carried swiftly down again. Mr Morgan reckoned that by the time they were opposite Burry Port they should be far enough inshore to make the harbour.

  Gradually the long line of the Llanelly houses and chimneys slipped by. Evan had clambered aft and at intervals he felt with the hand of an expert the weighted lines which were trailing astern. He frowned as he glanced again at the two mackerel. He had had a good many fishing trips with his father during the holidays and never before had they had such a miserable catch. How he wished he could have a couple of good bites before they had to give up!

  The thought had scarcely passed through his mind when the line he was holding tightened suddenly and began to run out through his fingers. At the same moment the next line, which was made fast round the after thwart, also grew taut, strained for a second, then with a jerk slackened and lay dead. Evan leaped to his feet and screamed out in excitement:

  ‘Hold, Daddy, hold! Backwater, quick! I’ve got something big!’

  The line continued to run out until Mr Morgan, by rowing against the tide, brought the boat relatively to a standstill. Then the line stopped as if anchored to something below, twitching indeed from the current, but not giving the thrilling chucks and snatches for which the boy was hoping.

  ‘Oh, blow!’ he cried disgust
edly. ‘It’s not a fish. We’ve got a stone or some seaweed. See, this one caught it too.’

  He dropped the line he was holding and pulled in the other. Its hooks were missing.

  ‘See,’ he repeated. ‘What did I tell you? We shall probably lose the hooks of this one too. It’s caught fast.’

  ‘Steady, old man. Take the oars and let me feel it.’

  Mr Morgan moved into the stern and pulled the resisting line, but without effect.

  ‘Rather curious, this,’ he said. ‘All this stretch is sand. I once saw it uncovered at very low springs. Keep rowing till I feel round the thing with the grappling, and see if I can find out what it is.’

  Evan passed the small three-pronged anchor aft and his father let it down beside the line. Soon it touched bottom.

  ‘About three and a half fathoms: say twenty feet,’ Mr Morgan remarked. ‘Keep her steady while I feel about.’

  He raised the grappling and, moving it a few inches to one side, lowered it again. Four times it went down to the same depth; on the fifth trial it stopped three feet short.

  ‘By Jove!’ he exclaimed, ‘there’s something there right enough.’ He danced the grappling up and down. ‘And it’s certainly not seaweed. Treasure trove, Evan, eh?’

  ‘Try round a bit and see how big it is,’ Evan suggested, now thoroughly interested.

  Mr Morgan ‘tried round.’ Had he been by himself he would have dismissed the incident with a muttered imprecation at the loss of his hooks. But for the sake of the boy he wished to make it as much of an adventure as possible.

  ‘Curious,’ he therefore commented again. ‘I’m afraid we shall not be able to save our hooks. But let’s take bearings so that we may be able to ask about it ashore.’ He looked round. ‘See, there’s a good nor’-west bearing: that signal post on the railway is just in line with the west gable of the large white house on the hill. See it? Now for a cross bearing. Suppose we take that tall mill chimney; the tallest of that bunch. It’s just in line with the pier head beacon. What about those?’

  ‘Fine, I think. What can the thing be, Dad?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps something drifted in from a wreck. We’ll ask Coastguard Manners. Now I’ll pull in the grappling and then the line, and if the hooks go I can’t help it.’

  The little anchor had been lying on the bottom while they talked. Mr Morgan now seized the rope and began to pull. But he had not drawn in more than two feet when it tightened and remained immovable.

  ‘By Jove, the grappling’s caught now,’ he exclaimed. ‘A nuisance, that. We don’t want to lose our grappling.’

  ‘Let’s pull up. Perhaps it will come clear.’

  Evan put down the oars and joined his father in the stern. Both pulled steadily with all their strength. For a time nothing happened, then suddenly the rope began to yield. It did not come away clear, but gave slowly, as if the object to which it was attached was lifting also.

  ‘By Jove!’ Mr Morgan exclaimed again. ‘We shall get our hooks after all. The whole thing’s coming up.’

  Slowly the rope came in foot by foot. The object, whatever it was, was heavy, and it was all they could do to raise it. Mr Morgan pulled in sudden heaves, while Evan took a turn with the line round a thwart, so as to hold the weight while his father rested.

  At last the end of the rope was reached and the shank of the grappling appeared. Then dimly beneath the surface Mr Morgan was able to see the object hooked. It was a large wooden packing case or crate.

  Round the sides were cross pieces, holding the sheeting boards in place. Two of the sharp flukes of the grappling had caught beneath one of these, and, of course, the greater the pull on them, the more firmly they became fixed.

  To raise the crate while submerged and displacing its own volume of water had been just possible. To lift it aboard was out of the question. For a time the two considered the problem of getting it ashore, then Mr Morgan said:

  ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll make the rope fast and row in with the crate hanging to our stern. Then we’ll beach it on the lifeboat slip and when the tide falls it will be left high and dry. We can examine it then and get our hooks.’

  Evan approving of the plan, they proceeded to carry it out. They made the rope fast round the after thwart, then taking the oars, pulled slowly in shore. As they drew nearer the current lessened, until off Burry Port they were in almost still water. Slowly they glided past a line of sandhills which presently gave place first to houses and works and then to a great deposit of copper slag like a stream of lava which had overflowed into the sea. Finally rounding the east mole, they entered Burry Port harbour.

  Having manœuvred the boat over the lifeboat slip, they cast off the rope and the crate settled down in five feet of water. Then with a bight of the rope, they made the boat fast.

  ‘Now for that supper,’ Mr Morgan suggested. ‘By the time we’ve had it our treasure trove will be high and dry, and we can come down and see what it is.’

  An hour later father and son were retracing their steps to the harbour. Mr Morgan looked business-like with a hammer, a cold chisel, and a large electric torch. It was still a lovely evening, but in a few minutes it would be dark.

  As Mr Morgan had foretold, the crate was high and dry, and they examined it with interest in the light of the torch. It was a strongly made wooden box about three feet by two by two. All round at top and bottom were strengthening cross pieces, and it was beneath the upper of these that the two flukes of the grappling had caught.

  ‘Well and truly hooked,’ Mr Morgan remarked. ‘We must have drifted across the thing, and when we pulled up the grappling it slid up the side till it caught the cross piece. It’s a good job for us, for now we shall get our grappling and our hooks as well.’

  Evan fidgeted impatiently.

  ‘Don’t mind about them, Dad; we can unfasten them later. Open the box. I want to see what’s in it.’

  Mr Morgan put his cold chisel to the joint of the lid and began to hammer.

  ‘Strictly speaking, we shouldn’t do this,’ he declared as he worked. ‘We should have handed the thing over to Manners. It’s a job for the coastguards. However, here goes!’

  The crate was strongly made, and though Mr Morgan was a good amateur carpenter, it took him several minutes to open it. But at last one of the top boards was prized up. Instantly both became conscious of a heavy, nauseating smell.

  ‘A case of South American meat or something gone west,’ Mr Morgan commented. ‘I don’t know that I’m so keen on going on with this job. Perhaps we can see what it is without opening it up further.’

  Holding his breath, he put his eye to the slit and shone in a beam from the electric torch. Then with a sharp intaking of the breath, he rose.

  ‘It’s a disgusting smell,’ he said in rather shaky tones. ‘Let’s go round and ask Manners to finish the job.’

  ‘Let me look in, Dad.’

  ‘Right, old man. But come round with me first to see Manners.’

  With some difficulty Mr Morgan drew his son away. He was feeling sick and shaken. For beneath that well-fitting lid and sticking up out of the water which still remained in the crate, was a gruesome and terrible object—the bent head and crouching body of a man dressed in under clothes only and in an advanced state of decomposition!

  It was all Mr Morgan could do to crush down the horror which possessed him and to pretend to the boy that nothing was amiss. Evan must not be allowed to see that ghastly sight! It would haunt his young mind for weeks. Mr Morgan led the way round the harbour, across the dock gates and towards the road leading to the town.

  ‘But aren’t we going to Manners?’ Evan queried, hanging back.

  ‘Not tonight, if you don’t mind, old chap. That smell has made me rather sick. We can go down in the morning. The tide should be right after breakfast.’

  Evan demurred, suggesting that he alone should interview the coastguard. But he was what Mr Morgan called ‘biddable,’ and when his father showe
d that he was in earnest he allowed the subject to drop.

  In due course they reached home. Discreet suggestion having resulted in Evan’s settling down with his meccano, Mr Morgan felt himself at liberty. He explained casually that he wanted to drop into the club for an hour, and left the house. In ten minutes he was at the police station.

  ‘I’ve made a discovery this evening, sergeant, which, I’m afraid, points to something pretty seriously wrong,’ he explained, and he told the officer in charge about the hooking of the crate. ‘I didn’t want my son to see the body—he’s rather young for that sort of thing—so we went home without my saying anything about it. But I’ve come back now to report to you. I suppose you, and not Manners, will deal with it?’

  Sergeant Nield bore a good reputation in Burry Port as an efficient and obliging officer, as well as a man of some reading and culture. He listened to Mr Morgan’s recital with close attention and quietly took charge.

  ‘Manners would deal with it at first, Mr Morgan,’ he answered, ‘but he would hand over to us when he saw what the object was. I think we’ll call for him on the way down, and that will put the thing in order. Can you come down now, sir?’

  ‘Certainly, that’s what I intended.’

  ‘Then we’ll get away at once. Just let me get my bicycle lamp.’ He turned to a constable. ‘Williams, you and Smith get another light and take the handcart down to the lifeboat slip. Watson, take charge in my absence. Now, Mr Morgan, if you are ready.’

  It was quite dark as the two men turned towards the harbour. Later there would be a quarter moon, but it had not yet risen. The night was calm and fine, but a little sharpness was creeping into the air. Except for the occasional rush of a motor passing on the road and sounds of shunting from the docks, everything was very still.