Murder by the Seaside by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2022-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

‘I don’t believe Hutton came down here intending murder,’ Roger said, when the sobbing woman had been removed again.

‘But the chance meeting with Barton was too much for him. He certainly had murder in his mind when he left his lodgings on Friday morning, with the razor to cut off Barton’s moustache all ready in his pocket. (He ought to have shaved the chin too, by the way; that was what first made me smell a rat.) It was easy to deceive his wife into believing that both of them had got into difficulties in the water, and Barton had been accidentally drowned. Then he sprang the news of Field’s arrest on her and the warrant for his own, and pointed out that this was his one chance if she would identify the body as his. He taught her the description of Barton, and she learned it by heart. There wasn’t much risk, you see, in a place where he was a complete stranger; and as you know, it very nearly came off. Really, almost the only risk Hutton ran was in going up to Barton’s tent to get that blue suit. It was clever, and so simple. The life insurance Mrs Hutton was to claim may not be huge, but it would be a nice sum to begin—’

The telephone-bell cut him short.

The superintendent listened, expressed his satisfaction, and hung up. ‘They’ve got Hutton,’ he announced. ‘Just where she said he’d be. She gave him away properly, I’ll say.’

‘We caught her at the right moment,’ Roger commented. ‘Half an hour later, when the reaction set in, she might not have been so ready to give him away. By the way, what are you going to do with her?’

‘Do with her? Why, we shall—’

‘Exactly. What can you do? You can have her up for perjury, or conspiracy, or obstructing the police, but if she pleads coercion she’ll certainly get off. Why not let her go?’

The chief constable snorted indignantly. The woman had led them all down the garden path, and it had taken a confounded amateur to—

‘Let her go,’ repeated Roger.

They let her go.

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