the mutiny were scheduled to be released into the public domain by the National Archives, but the records of the Étaples Board of Enquiry have long since been destroyed. After the War In August 1918, Toplis's father died and soon afterwards Percy deserted from Blackpool. He was sentenced at Nottingham Assizes to six months in prison for fraud. When released in 1920, he joined the Royal Army Service Corps and was stationed at Bulford Camp. He was soon selling rationed fuel on the black market, forging false papers to steal other soldiers' salaries and wearing a colonel's uniform when he visited women in town. He often used a gold monocle as part of his disguise. Murder and pursuit Toplis went AWOL again on 24 April 1920. After 9:00 p.m., taxi driver Sidney George Spicer was found dead from a gunshot wound on Thruxton Down, near Andover. Toplis was seen in Bulford Camp around 11:00 p.m. The inquest into Spicer's death took place in a barn on Thruxton Down. The jury returned a verdict of "wilful murder" by Percy Toplis, foreshadowing the possibility of his execution when caught; it was the first British inquest in modern times to declare a man guilty of murder in his absence. Toplis spent the next couple of weeks in London posing as an officer. The police began to close in and he fled to Monmouth, Wales. According to the Dundee Courier of 7 May, a cap with the Toplis's name in it was found in Pontypool, just 11 miles from Ebbw Vale. A week later there was a sighting of Toplis at a prayer meeting at the Salem Baptist Chapel in Blaina, little more than a mile from Nantyglo, the birthplace of Jesse Robert Short, the only man known to have been executed for his role in the Étaples mutiny. A diary read at the inquest into his death suggests that Toplis arrived in Tomintoul, Scotland on 6 May. According to the People's Journal of 12 June, Toplis found work as a woodcutter on a forestry and shooting estate in Dunmaglass. The same report claims that on 11 May Toplis arrived at The Temperance Hotel in Central Inverness, signing his name in the hotel register, "G. Waters". According to the owner of the hotel, the stranger mixed freely with other guests, entertaining them on the piano and explaining he had been in Russia and was