The Sea Mystery · Chapter 7 (2/2)

“I want to find out how long the radiator took to cool on that night,” French said. “The point is whether the car would have done any further running, after its trip from here to the place where it was abandoned. If it takes three hours or more to cool, it couldn’t; if less, it might.”

“I follow, but I’m afraid that won’t be easy to find out.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it depends on the weather and specially the wind. I used to drive and I know something about it. If there’s a wind blowing into the radiator it’ll cool about twice as quickly as if the same wind was blowing from behind the car.”

“I can understand that,” French admitted. “How was the wind that night?”

“A very faint westerly breeze⁠—scarcely noticeable.”

“That would be behind the car. Then if we try it today in any pretty sheltered place we ought to get, roughly speaking, the same result? The temperature’s about the same today as it was that night, I should think?”

“That’s so, sir, the weather conditions are as good for a test as you’ll get. But even so, it will be only a rough guide.”

“We’ll try it, anyway. Park somewhere and we’ll go and have some lunch.”

They left the car in front of the fine old parish church while they lunched and explored the town. Then returning to the car, they sat down to wait. At intervals they felt the radiator, until, just three and a half hours after their arrival, the last sensation of warmth vanished.

“That’s three hours and thirty minutes,” Daw declared, “but I don’t think you would be wise to take that too literally. If you say something between three and four hours you won’t be far wrong.”

“I agree, Sergeant. That’s all we want. Let’s get home.”

That evening French sat down to write up his notes and to consider the facts he had learned.

The more he thought over these facts, the more dissatisfied he grew. It certainly did not look as if his effort to connect the Berlyn-Pyke tragedy with the crate affair was going to be successful. And if it failed it left him where he had started. He had no alternative theory on which to work.

He recalled the four points by which he had hoped to test the matter. On each of these he had now obtained information, but in each case the information tended against the theory he wished to establish.

First there was the breakdown of the car. Was that an accident or had it been prearranged?

Obviously, if it had been an accident it could not have been part of the criminal’s plan. Therefore, neither could the resulting disappearance of Berlyn and Pyke. Therefore, the murderer must have been out after some other victim whose disappearance he had masked so cleverly that it had not yet been discovered.

Now, Makepeace had stated definitely that the breakdown could not have been faked. Of course it would be necessary to have this opinion confirmed by the makers of the magneto. But Makepeace had seemed so sure that French did not doubt his statement.

The second point concerned the movements of the car on the fatal night. French began by asking himself the question: Assuming the murdered man was Pyke, how had his body been taken to the works?

He could only see one way⁠—in the car. Suppose the murder was committed on the way from Tavistock. What then? The murderer would drive to the works with the dead man in the car. This, French believed, would be possible without discovery, owing to the distance the works lay from the town. He would then in some way square the night watchman, unpack the duplicator, put the body in its place, load the duplicator into the back of the car, drive off, somehow get rid of the duplicator, return to the road near Colonel Domlio’s house, make the two lines of footprints and decamp.

At first sight this obvious explanation seemed encouraging to French. Then he wondered would there be time for all these operations?

Taking the results of the tests he had made and estimating times where he had no actual data, he set himself to produce a hypothetical timetable of the whole affair. It was a form of reconstruction which he had found valuable on many previous occasions. It read:

After leaving the works the murderer had to get rid of the duplicator. French could not estimate this item, as he had no idea how the thing could have been done. But it had certainly taken half an hour. That would make it 1:40 a.m. At least another half-hour would have been spent in returning to the site of the mock tragedy, bringing the time up to 2:00 a.m.

The engine and radiator had then gradually to cool, for there was no water on that part of the moor to cool them artificially. From his experiment French felt sure that this would have taken at least three hours. In other words, there would have been traces of heat up till about five o’clock. And that at the very earliest possible.

But the sergeant found the car at 3:35 and it was then cold. It was therefore impossible that it could have been used to carry the victim to the works as French had assumed. And if it had not been so used how could the body have been transported? There was no way without introducing an accomplice and another car, which on the face of it seemed improbable.

It would, he saw, have been possible to take the body to the works in the car if the vehicle had immediately returned to the moor. But this not only postulated an accomplice, but overlooked the duplicator. If the car had been used to dispose of the duplicator, it would have been warm when the sergeant found it.

The third point was the squaring of the night watchman. The more French thought over this, the more impossible it seemed. In an ordinary matter the man might easily have been corrupted, but unless he had some irresistible motive he would never have risked his neck by aiding and abetting a murder. And he could not have been deceived as to what was taking place. Even supposing that he had been at the time, next day’s discovery would have made clear what he had assisted in.

But even suppose he had been squared, it did not clear the matter up. In this case French did not believe he could have sustained his interrogation without giving himself away. He would have guessed what lay behind the questions and would have shown fear. No, French was satisfied the man had no suspicion of anything so grave as murder, and it seemed impossible that the body could have been put into the crate without making the terrible fact clear.

The fourth test point seemed equally convincing. If the body had been put into the crate in the works, where was the duplicator? It could not have been left in the works. The store-keeping methods would have revealed it long before this. Could it have been taken out?

French could not imagine any way in which it could have been done. The duplicator was a big machine and heavy. It could not have been lifted by less than three or four people. Of course there was the runway and differential, but even these would only have lifted it out of the crate on to a car or lorry. To have unloaded it secretly would involve the existence of a second differential in some place available only to the murderer, a far-fetched hypothesis, though no doubt possible.

But what finally convinced French was the consideration that if the murderer really had been able to dispose secretly of so bulky an object, he would surely have used this method to get rid of the body and thus have saved the whole complex business of the crate.

French felt deeply disappointed as he found himself forced to these conclusions. A promising theory had gone west and he was left as far from a solution of his problem as when he took it up. Moreover, up to the present at all events, the Yard had been unable to learn anything at the St. Pancras or Euston hotels of either “John F. Stewart” or “James S. Stephenson.” Evidently in this case, as in most others, there was no royal road to success. He must simply go on trying to amass information in the ordinary humdrum routine way, in the hope that sooner or later he might come on some fact which would throw the desired light on the affair.

Tired and not a little out of sorts, he turned in.