“Dartmouth?” French laughed. “That gives me a clue. You mean that cheery young optimist, Maxwell Cheyne? He is an ass right enough, but he’s not a bad soul at bottom. And the girl’s a stunner. How are they getting along?”
“Tip-top. He’s taken to writing tales. Doing quite well with them, too, I believe. They’re very popular down there, both of them.”
“Glad to hear it. Well, Superintendent, I must be getting along. Thanks for your help.”
French was full of an eager optimism as the result of these discoveries. The disappearance of the bicycle, added to the breakdown of the alibi, seemed definitely to prove his theory of Mrs. Berlyn’s complicity.
But when he considered the identity of the person whom Mrs. Berlyn had thus assisted, he had to admit himself staggered. That Berlyn had murdered Pyke had seemed an obvious theory. Now French was not so certain of it. The lady had undoubtedly been in love with Pyke. Surely it was too much to suppose she would help her husband to murder her lover?
Had it been the other way round, had Phyllis and Pyke conspired to kill Berlyn, the thing would have been easier to understand. Wife and lover against husband was a common enough combination. But the evidence against this idea was strong. Not only was there the identification of the clothes and birthmark, but there was the strong presumption that the man who disposed of the crate in Wales was Berlyn. At the same time this evidence of identification was not quite conclusive, and French determined to keep the possibility in view and test it rigorously as occasion offered.
And then another factor occurred to him, an extremely disturbing factor, which bade fair to change his whole view of the case. He saw that even if Pyke had murdered Berlyn it would not clear up the situation. In fact, this new idea suggested that it was impossible either that Pyke could have murdered Berlyn or that Berlyn could have murdered Pyke.
What, he asked himself, must have been the motive for such a crime? Certainly not merely to gratify a feeling of hate. The motive undoubtedly was to enable the survivor to claim Phyllis as his wife and to live with her in good social standing and without fear of his rival. But the crime, French reminded himself, had a peculiar feature. The staged accident on the moor involved the disappearance of both actors, the murderer as well as the victim. If, then, the murderer disappeared, he could not live with Phyllis. If either Berlyn or Pyke were guilty, therefore, he had carried out the crime in a way which robbed him of the very results for which he had committed it.
French saw that he was up against a puzzling dilemma. If Berlyn had murdered Pyke, it was unlikely that Mrs. Berlyn would have assisted. If, on the other hand, Pyke had murdered Berlyn, Mrs. Berlyn’s action was clear, but not Pyke’s, for Pyke could get nothing out of it.
French swore bitterly as he realised that in all probability his former view of the case was incorrect and that he was once again without any really satisfactory theory on which to work. Nor did some hours’ thought point the way to a solution of his problem.