Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/67

 he had first gone to Miss Tandy's flat. And to him, as a man of experience, he laid bare all that he himself now knew, including the details of the name Mortover on the cover of the manuscript brought by John Wraypoole to Miss Tandy for immediate typing and the discovery of the loose diamond in the corner of the typist's parlour. The inspector listened in absorbed silence.

"Formed any theory on all this, Wedgwood?" he asked at last.

The detective allowed a minute or two to elapse before replying, and when he spoke his tone was that of a man who suggests rather than theorizes.

"I've felt all along that there was a lot—everything, perhaps—in the word or name Mortover," he answered. "The manuscript that John Wraypoole brought to Miss Tandy was labelled Mortover—just that one word. It disappeared during the quarter of an hour in which she was absent from her flat. Whoever killed John Wraypoole carried away the manuscript; probably he killed Wraypoole in order to possess himself of the manuscript."

"And—to silence him as regards what was in the manuscript?" suggested the inspector. "It was pretty evident that the murderer had struck to kill—those had been savage blows!