Free The Dartmoor Enigma by Basil Thomson

this handwriting somewhere before, Miss Duke. Yes, and the same kind of spelling, too. I see you spell ‘business!’ ‘bisness!’”
    â€œLots of people do that,” said the girl defiantly.
    â€œYes. I’ve seen it spelt like that by someone who wrote to Scotland Yard. I have a photograph of the letter here.” He fumbled among the papers in his writing-case. “Here you are. You see, the letter has been photographed, and for the matter of that so has another anonymous letter addressed to the Superintendent of Police at Winterton. And now, almost by accident, I have the writer of both letters before me.”
    â€œI don’t know what you mean.”
    â€œThen let me make my meaning clearer. You were ready to tell untruths to the police when it was only a question of driving without a licence, but when it came to murder you didn’t want to see a murderer go unpunished. You couldn’t come forward openly, because you were afraid that the police might fix the crime on Dick Pengelly, since he had a legitimate grievance against the murdered man. Wasn’t that it?”
    The girl made no reply. She stared at the floor.
    â€œI think we understand each other now,” said Richardson, “and I feel sure that your best way to help Pengelly is to tell us the whole truth about what you saw that afternoon. Pengelly has already told us that he saw Mr. Dearborn’s car standing outside the Duchy Hotel. No doubt he pointed it out to you.”
    The bravado was not crushed out of her. “You think yourself very clever, don’t you? But there’s nothing to show that I wrote those letters.” She picked up the photograph of the letter addressed to the Chief Constable of Scotland Yard from Tavistock. “Why, look here, the writing in this letter is sloping backwards. The other isn’t.”
    â€œIt isn’t.”
    â€œWell then, how can you have the face to fix the writing on me?”
    â€œOnly because if you were to copy this letter in a hand sloping backwards, your writing would be just like this. People can’t disguise their handwriting by sloping words backwards. No, Miss Susie, you committed no offence by writing the letters; on the contrary you were doing your best to help the police. Why not help them a little further? You don’t want a murderer to get off, do you? You don’t want people to try to attribute the murder to Dick Pengelly. Why not tell us the whole story, exactly as it happened?”
    â€œI suppose you thought it was a clever game to trap me into making that written statement. All you wanted was to get a specimen of my handwriting. It was a dirty trick.”
    â€œWell you see, Miss Duke, we had to get evidence as to who wrote these anonymous letters because the writer, whoever she was, was likely to be an important witness in the case. You think that we are trying to fasten the guilt on to Dick Pengelly. You’re quite wrong. I, for one, don’t believe that he had anything to do with the murder and I’ll tell you why. The weapon used was a heavy walking-stick with a silver band round it—not the kind of stick that a quarryman would care to buy—and that rules out Pengelly as the man who struck Dearborn. As an eye-witness you are in a position to support my view, and so you ought not to hold anything back.”
    â€œMy! But aren’t you detectives clever to think of that walking-stick being a way of clearing Dick Pengelly!” There was real admiration in her voice now. “Very well, I’ll tell you the truth and you can believe it or not as you like. Dick didn’t want to drive through Duketon; the policeman there hasn’t enough to do and so he’s a busybody, always poking his nose into other people’s affairs.”
    â€œWhy did Pengelly drive the lorry at all if he hadn’t a licence?”
    â€œWell, you see, my brother was going to drive him into Tavistock with