Mystery at Lynden Sands

the Fordingbridges are at the hotel, Cargill is detached there to keep an eye on them. Thus they need a go-between; and Billingford is brought down to serve that purpose. Also, as soon as the claimant makes his first move there will be sure to be a lot of gossip in the village, anecdotes of the claimant’s history floating round, and so forth; and Billingford will be able to pick them up and report them to the rest of the gang. They’d have been safer to leave Staveley and Aird in London; but I suppose they were afraid something might be sprung on them and they wanted their references handy.

“Peter Hay, I suspect, they fastened on as being the most dangerous witness. Probably Aird made an appointment for the claimant, and they called at the poor old chap’s cottage at night. He evidently refused to have anything to do with them; and he was too dangerous to leave alive; so they killed him. Then they went after the diary⁠—probably Aird knew about that, or else Peter may have let the information out somehow⁠—and they took Hay’s keys to get into Foxhills. The silver plant was an obvious muddle. They hadn’t Cargill at the back of them at the time, and they made that mistake on the spur of the moment.

“By that time they’d got in touch with Miss Fordingbridge. Aird would know all about her spiritualistic leanings, and they played on that string. But soon they learned they were up against Paul Fordingbridge; and they began to see that it would be easiest to put him out of their road.

“Meanwhile Staveley took it into his head to work on his own by trying to blackmail the Fleetwoods. And you know what came of that. The rest of the gang thought they could kill two birds with one stone⁠—at least, the gang minus Billingford, for really I don’t think Billingford was much more than a tool.

“Now, inspector, how far does that square with all the confidences you extracted last night from that precious pair of scoundrels? Do I get a box of chocolates or only a clay pipe in this competition?”

The inspector made no attempt to suppress the admiration in his tone.

“It’s wonderfully accurate, sir. You’re right on every point of importance⁠—even down to what happened in the war.”

“That’s a relief,” the chief constable admitted with a laugh. “I was rather afraid that I’d

… Summed it so well that it came to far more
Than the witnesses ever had said!

And now I think I’ll go back to the hotel and try to make my peace with the Fleetwoods. I like them, and I’d hate to leave a false impression of my character on their minds. Care to come along, squire?”

Endnotes

1. See diagram here. ↩

List of Illustrations

1. A diagram of various sets of footmarks.

2. A diagram of three sets of footmarks.

Colophon

Mystery at Lynden Sands
was published in 1928 by
J. J. Connington.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Ron Stewart,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2024 by
Brian Raiter
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
HathiTrust Digital Library.

The cover page is adapted from
Hove Beach,
a painting completed in 1920 by
George Percy Jacomb-Hood.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 16, 2025, 4:38 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/j-j-connington/mystery-at-lynden-sands.

The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.

Uncopyright

May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

Copyright pages exist to tell you that you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission.

Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you’re not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States.

Non-authorship activities performed on items that are in the public domain⁠—so-called “sweat of the brow” work⁠—don’t create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.