Inspector French and the Sea Mystery. Freeman Crofts Wills

      

      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,