“I believe so. They say Mr. Berlyn left her everything.”
“You spoke of Mr. Pyke’s cousin. Who is he?”
“A Mr. Jefferson Pyke, a farmer in the Argentine. Rather like the late Mr. Pyke, that’s Mr. Stanley, in appearance, but a bit taller and broader. He was on a visit to England and was down here twice. First he came and stayed with Mr. Stanley for three or four days about a couple of months before the tragedy; that was when Mrs. Berlyn took them both out motoring. I wasn’t speaking to him then, but I saw him with Mr. and Mrs. Berlyn and Mr. Stanley in the car. Then the morning after the tragedy Mrs. Berlyn gave me his London address and told me to wire for him. I did so and he came down that evening. He stayed for three or four days in Torquay and came over to make enquiries and to look after Mr. Stanley’s affairs. A very nice gentleman I found him, and a good business man, too.”
French noted the London address and then asked what servants the Berlyns had.
“They had three—two house servants and the gardener.”
“Any of them available?”
“One of the girls, Lizzie Johnston, lives not far away. The others were strangers.”
French continued his inquisitions in his slow, painstaking way, making notes about everyone connected with the Berlyns and Pyke. But he learned nothing that confirmed his suspicions or suggested a line of research. It was true that in Mrs. Berlyn he had glimpsed a possible source of trouble between her husband and Pyke. All the essentials of a triangle drama were there—except the drama itself. Mrs. Berlyn might easily have hated her husband and loved one of these other men, but, unfortunately for theorising detectives, if not for moralists, there was no evidence that she had done so. However, it was a suggestive idea and one which could not be lost sight of.
As these thoughts passed through French’s mind a further consideration struck him, a consideration which he saw might not only prove a fifth test of the case he was trying to make, but which, if so, would undoubtedly be the most conclusive of them all. He turned once more to Daw.
“There’s a point which is worrying me rather, Sergeant,” he declared. “Suppose one of these two men murdered the other on that night. Now why would the murderer go to the trouble of getting the body into the works and sending it off in the crate? Could he not simply have thrown it into one of these mires?”