Freeman Crofts - Inspector French - Sir John Magill’s Last Journey

Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1930

Copyright © Estate of Freeman Wills Crofts 1930

Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollins Publishers 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.

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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

Cover

Title Page FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS Inspector French and Sir John Magill’s Last Journey

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 annual holidays.