Design For Murder: Based on ‘Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair’. Francis Durbridge

we heard the shot, Sally, as we stood at the front door. There’s no one else in the place, and no one came out.’

      ‘All right, darling,’ she agreed, with a little sigh. ‘It must be suicide. We’d better get the police, hadn’t we?’

      ‘I’d just like to take a last look round in there. You stay where you are; I won’t be five minutes.’

      He went into the scullery and closed the door.

      After methodically examining the room for some minutes his eye suddenly caught a scrap of white paper which was partly hidden by the dead man’s sleeve. Wyatt moved the arm slightly so that he could see the paper. The red ink was a trifle smudged, but he had no difficulty in deciphering the sentence:

      ‘With the compliments of Mr Rossiter.’

       CHAPTER IV

       Sir Donald Angus is Perturbed

      The subsequent police inquiries detained Wyatt and Sally until the late afternoon, so they were unable to catch the 3.45 from Whitby. Wyatt stayed to see that fingerprint impressions were taken in every likely place inside the cottage, and arranged for the photos to be sent to Scotland Yard by express delivery. The local police apparently had no suspicion of foul play, particularly when the only prints on the revolver proved to be Tyson’s own.

      Having caught a train in the early evening, it was just after one a.m. when Wyatt and Sally arrived at Paddington. Luckily they were able to get a room at the station hotel and enjoyed the seven hours’ sound sleep they badly needed. Sally refused to accompany her husband to the Yard that morning, pleading that she had some shopping to do, and would meet him for lunch.

      When Wyatt arrived at the Yard soon after ten that morning, Perivale and Lathom were busily engaged in reading the reports and examining the fingerprint impressions which had already reached them from Shorecombe. Perivale was looking more worried than ever, but Wyatt could see from the gleam in Lathom’s eye that he had already made up his mind about the Tyson affair.

      After Wyatt had given them a brief account of his trip to Shorecombe, Perivale paced up and down, then went over to the window and gazed unseeingly at the tugs ploughing past on the Thames below him.

      ‘I’m damned if I can make head or tail of it, Wyatt,’ he said at last.

      ‘I don’t understand it myself,’ declared Wyatt quite equably. ‘Maybe the inspector here has a theory.’ He could see that Lathom was bursting to expound.

      The inspector swung round towards his chief.

      ‘If you’ll forgive my saying so, Sir James, there’s quite obviously only one possible explanation,’ he announced. The Assistant Commissioner’s bushy eyebrows shot up.

      ‘Let’s have it, Lathom.’

      ‘When Mr and Mrs Wyatt went to the cottage, they saw no one leave after the shot had been fired.’

      ‘Of course no one escaped,’ snapped Perivale.

      ‘Exactly, sir. No one escaped for the very good reason that there was no one in the cottage except Tyson.’

      ‘In other words, you’re telling us that Tyson committed suicide.’

      ‘Of course,’ nodded Lathom confidently. Perivale was more irritated than ever.

      ‘My dear Inspector, I’m quite ready to believe that Tyson committed suicide; in fact, so far as I can see, there is no other possible explanation, but the point is, if Tyson killed himself, who put that note on the table? Who wrote the note? And why, in God’s name, did they take the trouble to write it immediately after Tyson died?’

      ‘Well, there’s only one possible explanation,’ began Lathom once more in his somewhat superior tone. ‘Tyson made up his mind to commit suicide, so he wrote the note first and then—’

      ‘You sit there and try to tell me he wrote that note himself!’ exclaimed Perivale, obviously quite staggered at the idea.

      ‘That’s what I said,’ maintained Lathom doggedly.

      ‘But, look here, Lathom,’ said Perivale, obviously trying to be patient. ‘We’ve proved quite conclusively that the note was written by the same person who sent notes to Maurice Knight and—’