The Starvel Hollow Tragedy

The Starvel Hollow Tragedy

By Freeman Wills Crofts.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Dedication
4. The Starvel Hollow Tragedy
   1. I: The Tragedy
   2. II: The Inquest
   3. III: Mr. Tarkington Develops a Theory
   4. IV: Inspector French Goes North
   5. V: French Picks Up a Clue
   6. VI: Talloires, Lac d’Annecy
   7. VII: Posthumous Evidence
   8. VIII: Dr. Philpot’s Story
   9. IX: The Value of Analysis
   10. X: Whymper Speaks at Last
   11. XI: A Startling Theory
   12. XII: A Somewhat Gruesome Chapter
   13. XIII: The Piece of Yellow Clay
   14. XIV: The Secret of the Moor
   15. XV: French Baits His Trap
   16. XVI: A Double Recall
   17. XVII: Concerning Wedding Rings
   18. XVIII: Cumulative Evidence
   19. XIX: The Last Lap
   20. XX: Conclusion
5. Colophon
6. Uncopyright

Imprint

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To
my wife
who suggested the idea
from which this story grew

The Starvel Hollow Tragedy

I

The Tragedy

Ruth Averill moved slowly across the drawing room at Starvel, and stood dejectedly at the window, looking out at the Scotch firs swaying in the wind and the sheets of rain driving across the untidy lawn before the house.

The view was even more depressing than usual on this gloomy autumn afternoon. Beyond the grass-grown drive and the broken-down paling of posts and wire which bounded the grounds, lay the open moor, wild and lonely and forbidding. A tumble of dun-coloured sedgy grass with darker smudges where rock outcropped, it stretched up, bleak and dreary, to the lip of the hollow in which the dilapidated old house had been built.

To the girl standing in the window with a brooding look of melancholy on her pretty features the outlook seemed symbolical of her life, for Ruth Averill was not one of those whose lives could be said to have fallen in pleasant places.

But, in spite of her unhappy expression, she was good to look at as she stood watching the storm. Though rather under medium height she had a charming figure and something of a presence. She was dark, as though in her veins might flow some admixture of Spanish or Italian blood. Her features were small and delicate, but her firmly rounded chin gave promise of character. She scarcely looked her twenty years of age.

But though she had the fresh vitality of youth, there was something old-fashioned in her appearance not out of accord with her surroundings. She wore her long dark hair piled up in great masses over her broad forehead. Her dress was of the plainest, and in the fashion of three years earlier. Though scrupulously neat, it was worn threadbare. Her shoes were cracked and her stockings showed careful darns.

For Ruth Averill was an orphan, dependent on the bounty of her uncle, Simon Averill, for every penny. And Simon Averill was a miser.

Ruth was born in Southern France, and she had dim recollections of a land of sun and warmth, of jolly people and bright colours. But since she had come to this gloomy old house in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors the joy had gone out of her life. Her companions during childhood had been the two not very prepossessing servants and the still less attractive gardener and outdoor man. With her uncle Simon she had nothing in common. Even at the time of her arrival he was elderly and morose, and every day he seemed to grow more self-centred and less approachable.

After some years a break had come in her life; she had been sent to a boarding school. But she had not been happy there, so that when she was “finished” she was almost glad to return to the dullness and loneliness of Starvel.

There she had found changes. Her uncle Simon was now an invalid, querulous and solitary, and living only for the accumulation of money. His passion took the form of collecting actual coins and notes and hoarding them in his safe. He made no attempt to cultivate the friendship of his niece, and had it not been that he required her to read to him once a day, she would have seen him but seldom.

At this time also the two old women servants and the gardener had gone, and their places had been taken by a comparatively young married couple called Roper. Though more efficient than their predecessors, Ruth did not take to either of the newcomers, with the result that the fourteen months which had passed since her return from school were lonelier than ever.

Had it not been that Ruth had developed an interest in flowers and gardening, she would have found herself hard put to it to fill her life. Gardening and her friendship with a semi-invalid entomologist who lived close by, together with