d="ue662414a-ac40-5cac-9e87-578997a9594d">
FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS
Inspector French and Sir John Magill’s Last Journey
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 1930
Copyright © Estate of Freeman Wills Crofts 1930
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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008190736
Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780008190743
Version: 2017-01-23
TO MY MANY GOOD FRIENDS IN NORTHERN IRELAND
For the sake of verisimilitude the scenes of this story have been laid in real places. All the characters introduced, however, are wholly imaginary, and if the name of any living person has been used, this has been done inadvertently and no reference to such person is intended.
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Chapter 1: Scotland Yard
Chapter 2: Knightsbridge
Chapter 3: Belfast
Chapter 4: Belfast
Chapter 5: Lurigan
Chapter 6: Lurigan: London: Belfast
Chapter 7: Lurigan
Chapter 8: Belfast
Chapter 9: Stranraer
Chapter 10: Portpatrick
Chapter 11: London
Chapter 12: Scotland Yard
Chapter 13: London: Barrow: Newcastle
Chapter 14: Castle-Douglas
Chapter 15: Kirkandrews Bay
Chapter 16: Cumberland
Chapter 17: Glasgow
Chapter 18: Campbeltown
Chapter 19: London to Stranraer
Chapter 20: Stranraer
Chapter 21: London to Plymouth
Chapter 22: The Cave Hill
Footnote
About the Author
Also in this Series
About the Publisher
It was on Monday morning, the 7th of October, that Inspector French first heard the name of Sir John Magill. A commonplace name enough, certainly a name bearing no suggestion of exasperating mystery, still less of grim and hideous tragedy. All the same there came a time when French might well have said of it, as Queen Mary is supposed to have said of that of Calais, that when he died it would be found graven on his heart.
For the Sir John Magill Case proved perhaps the most terribly baffling of all the baffling cases French had tackled. Never had truth seemed so elusive, nor had he been put to such shifts to capture it, as during that long-drawn-out inquiry. Never had his conviction been stronger that crime, ugly and sinister, lurked behind the activities he was investigating, yet seldom had the proof that all was well seemed more convincing. In short, many times before the case dragged on to its inevitable and dramatic close French found himself wishing nothing so much as that he had never heard of the unfortunate man who gave it its name.
French had had a busy year. Since the night, now thirteen months past, when he and Sergeant Carter had fought for their lives and the life of Molly Moran on the deck of that spectral launch in Southampton Water, he had handled no less than five major cases. Moreover, four months of the time had been spent with a score of associates in trying to trace the author of one of those terrible series of sex murders which every now and then recall the shuddering days of Jack the Ripper. By the time this unhappy madman had been laid by the heels, September was well advanced, and then had come the blissful break of French’s
