The Dartmoor Enigma by Basil Thomson

and get up meetings in the market-place on Sundays, but he had to give it up because the people said, ‘Why, it’s only Dick Pengelly,’ and they wouldn’t stop to listen to him. But I hear that his boss has fired him and he’s gone off to find another job.”
    â€œHe was a quarrelsome man, I suppose?”
    The inspector searched his memory. “No…no, I wouldn’t call him that. He was just an agitator because he was born that way.”
    â€œThank you, Inspector, that was all I wanted to ask you.”
    â€œVery good, sir. Perhaps I ought to tell you that in Sun Lane they’ve been saying that Pengelly was courting the Duke girl.” He stopped for a moment to see how this piece of intelligence was received, then turned on his heel and left the room.
    Sergeant Jago came in to know whether Richardson was ready for supper and bed at the hotel. As they walked down together, Jago inquired whether his chief had got anything useful out of Inspector Viggers of Moorstead.
    â€œNothing to speak of, except that in Sun Lane, where tongues run wild, Pengelly was believed to be paying court to Susie Duke.”
    â€œAh!” said Jago. “That’s why she wouldn’t tell us all she knew about his whereabouts. She was shielding him, which shows that he must have been guilty of something. And he had a motive for the murder.”
    â€œIt’s too early in the proceedings to be making up your mind against anyone, as I think you’ll find out before you’re much older.”
    Richardson had trained himself to dismiss his cases from his mind as soon as he got into bed, but that night he broke his good resolution and lay awake pondering. Pengelly was among the “possibles,” but would Pengelly, when on the tramp looking for work, be carrying a heavy walking-stick which obviously would have cost him something to buy? A “swanky” stick; and would a quarryman be carrying a walking-stick, anyhow? And then why would he be a quarter of a mile or more out of his way? Rowe’s Quarry lay on the road into Tavistock, which meant going right through Duketon, and if he wanted to waylay Dearborn he could have done it just as easily on the road between Moorstead and Duketon. It was a puzzle whichever way you looked at it. The first thing to be done was to locate that motor-lorry in Tavistock, and the second to find out whether Pengelly had applied to be taken on in Rowe’s Quarry. Perhaps it was this decision that brought sleep to Richardson’s eyelids, for beyond the Pengelly clue everything was cloudy and mysterious.
    When the two Scotland Yard officers met at their early breakfast-table next morning there was no change of plan. Sergeant Jago went off to arrange about the police car while Richardson smoked his pipe in the bar parlour. Twelve minutes after the car pulled up at the hotel door they were in Tavistock in Jago’s own hunting-ground, making the round of the repairing-shops. News flies fast among the garage hands in a little town, and Sergeant Jago was quickly directed to a little shop only recently opened. Beside a few derelict cars with dismantled engines there stood the tiniest of motor-lorries with a driving-seat and a flat platform behind it. A mechanic in blue overalls was stretched on the floor beneath it, tinkering with the brake bands. Hearing voices he protruded a head and blew his nose on an oily piece of cotton waste. Seeing possible customers he writhed out from under the car and asked what he could do for the visitors.
    â€œWe’ve looked in to see young Duke’s lorry from Moorstead,” explained Jago. “Is that it?”
    â€œYes, there she is, and I’m wondering how long she’s to be left here. She’s all ready for the road. I was just looking at her brakes when you come in.”
    â€œWho left her here?”
    â€œWhy, the young lady, Ernie Duke’s sister, and the bloke that was driving