title: Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy
author:  Freeman Wills Crofts 
description: Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin in 1879 and died in 1957. He worked for a Northern Irish railway company as an engineer until 1929, before turning to detective fiction His plots reveal his mathematical training and he specialised in the seemingly unbreakable alibi, laying layer upon layer within his stories. He loved ships and trains and the intricacies of transport timetables feature in many of his stories. Crofts best-known character is Inspector Joseph French. French appears for the first time in Inspector Frenchs Greatest Case. He is a detective who achieves his results through dogged persistence.
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  # The Pit Prop Syndicate
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Freeman Wills Croft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### PART ONE. THE AMATEURS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER I. THE SAWMILL ON THE LESQUE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  Seymour Merriman was tired; tired of the jolting saddle of his motor
  
  
  bicycle, of the cramped position of his arms, of the chug of the
  
  
  engine, and most of all, of the dreary, barren country through which
  
  
  he was riding. Early that morning he had left Pau, and with the
  
  
  exception of an hour and a half at Bayonne, where he had lunched and
  
  
  paid a short business call, he had been at it ever since. It was now
  
  
  after five o'clock, and the last post he had noticed showed him he
  
  
  was still twenty-six kilometers from Bordeaux, where he intended to
  
  
  spend the night.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  "This confounded road has no end," he thought. "I really must
  
  
  stretch my legs a bit."
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  A short distance in front of him a hump in the white ribbon of the
  
  
  road with p