Inspector French and the Starvel Hollow Tragedy
From the Collins Crime Club archive, the third Inspector French novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’.THREE CORPSES FOR INSPECTOR FRENCHA chance invitation from friends saves Ruth Averill’s life on the night her uncle’s old house in Starvel Hollow is consumed by fire, killing him and incinerating the fortune he kept in cash. Dismissed at the inquest as a tragic accident, the case is closed – until Scotland Yard is alerted to the circulation of bank-notes supposedly destroyed in the inferno. Inspector Joseph French suspects that dark deeds were done in the Hollow that night and begins to uncover a brutal crime involving arson, murder and body snatching . . .
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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 authorâs 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
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 DâAnnecy
Chapter 7: Posthumous Evidence
Chapter 8: Dr Philpotâs Story
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
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, to the lip of the hollow in which the dilapidated old house had been built.
To the girl standing in the window with a brooding look of melancholy on her pretty features the outlook seemed symbolical of her life, for Ruth Averill was not one of those whose lives could be said to have fallen in pleasant places.
But, in spite of her unhappy expression, she was good to look at as she stood watching the storm. Though rather under medium height she had a charming figure and something of a presence. She was dark, as though in her veins might flow some admixture of Spanish or Italian blood. Her features were small and delicate, but her firmly rounded chin gave promise of character. She scarcely looked her twenty years of age.
But though she had the fresh vitality of youth, there was something old-fashioned in her appearance not out of accord with her surroundings. She wore her long dark hair piled up in great masses over her broad forehead. Her dress was of the plainest, and in the fashion of three years earlier. Though scrupulously neat, it was worn threadbare. Her shoes were cracked and her stockings showed careful darns.
For Ruth Averill was an orphan, dependent on the bounty of her uncle, Simon Averill, for every penny. And Simon Averill was a miser.
Ruth was born in Southern France, and she had dim recollections of a land of sun and warmth, of jolly people and bright colours. But since she had come to this gloomy old house in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors the joy had gone out of her life. Her companions during childhood had been the two not very prepossessing servants and the still less attractive gardener and outdoor man. With her uncle Simon she had nothing in common. Even at the time of her arrival he was elderly and morose, and every day he seemed to grow more self-centred and less approachable.
After some years a break had come in her life; she had been sent to a boarding school. But she had not been happy there, so that when she was âfinishedâ she was almost glad to return to the dullness and loneliness of Starvel.
There she had found changes. Her Uncle Simon was now an invalid, querulous and solitary, and living only for the accumulation of money. His passion took the form of collecting actual coins and notes and hoarding them in his safe. He made no attempt to cultivate the friendship of his niece, and had it not been that he required her to read to him once a day, she would have seen him but seldom.
