FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS
Inspector French and the Starvel Hollow Tragedy
Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1927
Copyright © Estate of Freeman Wills Crofts 1927
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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008190644
Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008190651
Version 2016-12-08
TO
MY WIFE
WHO SUGGESTED THE IDEA FROM WHICH
THIS STORY GREW
Table of Contents
Chapter 3: Mr Tarkington Develops a Theory
Chapter 4: Inspector French Goes North
Chapter 5: French Picks Up a Clue
Chapter 6: Talloires, Lac D’Annecy
Chapter 7: Posthumous Evidence
Chapter 9: The Value of Analysis
Chapter 10: Whymper Speaks at Last
Chapter 11: A Startling Theory
Chapter 12: A Somewhat Gruesome Chapter
Chapter 13: The Piece of Yellow Clay
Chapter 14: The Secret of the Moor
Chapter 15: French Baits his Trap
Chapter 17: Concerning Wedding Rings
Chapter 18: Cumulative Evidence
Ruth Averill moved slowly across the drawing room at Starvel, and stood dejectedly at the window, looking out at the Scotch firs swaying in the wind and the sheets of rain driving across the untidy lawn before the house.
The view was even more depressing than usual on this gloomy autumn afternoon. Beyond the grass-grown drive and the broken-down paling of posts and wire which bounded the grounds, lay the open moor, wild and lonely and forbidding. A tumble of dun-coloured sedgy grass with darker smudges where rock outcropped, it stretched up, bleak and dreary,