Guilt Edged
Published in 1971
(Later Wycliffe and the Guilt-Edged Alibi)
From the dust jacket:
What a complex and fascinating character Detective Superintendent Wycliffe is. W. J. Burley has already established this West Country detective in Three-Toed Pussy and To Kill a Cat, and in this latest thriller he allows Wycliffe full scope to reveal his enigmatic personality. The Superintendent is the despair of his colleagues on the force: he does nothing by the book, he is rarely where he's expected to be, he turns a blind eye to inconvenient instructions from above, he unnerves his subordinates with his ruminative stare, he thinks intuitively rather than logically, he broods upon life in general as much as on the case in hand. And the case he is now called in to solve is one that admirably suits his special talents.
It's a murder in the little West Country town of Treen. A river divides East from West Treen, a ferry links the two sides, and it's the ferryman who fishes the body of a girl out of the water. She had been killed by a blow on the head some time before being dumped in the river, and her family are among the most important people in Treen. They own half the town—harbour installations, coal company, timber yard, cannery. There's a quarrel in the family, currently, about a takeover offer, and there are many intricate cross-currents of love and hate, which adds up to plenty of motive; but of course Wycliffe has to concern himself with how the killing was done, as well as why.
From the back cover (Corgi 1994 reprint):
Caroline Bryce came from the top of the social register in the tranquil town of Treen. So it was quite a scandal when her body was dragged from the bottom of the river.
Who would want to kill the beautiful Mrs Bryce? Was it a lover's quarrel? A family feud? A long-smouldering resentment that exploded in a moment of madness?
Superintendent Wycliffe has to unravel the intricate cross-currents of love and hate to find a psychotic killer who feels no guilt...and will not hesitate to strike again.
Location: Looe. Originally two towns, one on each bank of the River Looe, the harbour and busy shopping centre are on the east side while the more sedate west side has hotels and restaurants. A bridge across the river links the two sides. There is no ferry at Looe although a chain-hauled car ferry is to be found nearby, linking Bodinnick to Fowey.
“The estuary of the Treen River divides East from West Treen, but the two are linked by a car and passenger ferry, a floating platform with a ramp at each end and a hut-like superstructure on each side. The hut on one side houses the diesel engine and the one on the other provides shelter for foot passengers when it rains. The engine drives sprocket wheels which, as they rotate, pick up a pair of chains from the bed of the river and haul the craft from shore to shore and back again. Sailings are at half-hour intervals from June to August inclusive, but less frequent at other times.”
Do visit the Looe website www.looe.org or you can go straight to the page that covers local ferries: www.looe.org/ferries.html.
John Burley would also have been familiar with the King Harry Ferry, which crosses the River Fal near Truro. The earliest ferry here dates from 1888 and was in service until 1913 when it was replaced by Ferry No. 2 which ran for about 37 years. The current ferry is No. 6 and has been in service since 1974. The photographs below were contributed by Tim Light, MD of the King Harry Ferry Company.
Ferry No. 5
Ferry No. 6
There's more at www.kingharryferry.co.uk/ferryindex.html
Method of Working: Wycliffe “hated having to explain himself, not because he was modest but because he was ashamed of the vagueness of his mental processes. Some of his colleagues were only too anxious to expose the rational processes by which they had reached certain (correct) conclusions but Wycliffe had never indulged himself. Often after arriving at some decision he found himself trying to rationalize it to satisfy others.”
Wycliffe’s No.2: Chief Inspector James Gill. "Gill was young for a chief inspector, rugged and tough. While strangers were invariably surprised to learn that Wycliffe was a policeman, Gill would never raise any eyebrows on that score.Wycliffe liked him and the two men got on, largely because their temperaments were complementary."
Pathologist: "It was Franks, the pathologist, breezy as ever."
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