Roger Bassington-ffrench murders Alan Carstairs and conceals his identity

Roger Bassington-ffrench and Alan Carstairs are joined not by a documented friendship but by an investigation that Roger decides to stop at any cost. When Carstairs traces the people and clues connecting Moira Nicholson to John Savage, Roger follows him, kills him in the mist, and manipulates the evidence so the dead man will not be recognized. Their relationship makes the case’s central danger stark: an attempt to uncover concealed identities becomes the occasion for another identity to be concealed.

Investigation and Exposure

Carstairs comes to investigate the business surrounding John Savage. His inquiry sharpens when visitors bring him to lunch and he sees a picture of Moira Nicholson on the piano. He recognizes her as the woman in the snapshot John Savage had sent him. The picture turns a suspicious connection into a lead he can pursue: Carstairs goes to Chipping Somerton to investigate further.

Roger says that he and Moira Nicholson became alarmed as Carstairs began to poke about. Carstairs’s inquiry threatens more than the immediate exposure of a name. Roger fears that Gladys Evans may recognize Moira Nicholson as the same woman who had used another identity, and he is unsure how much she knows after spending time in the house. He follows Carstairs to Chipping Somerton. Although Carstairs fails to trace Rose Chudleigh, he finds Gladys Evans, learns her married name, and sets off for Marchbolt. Roger understands that the investigation is advancing through separate pieces of evidence and witnesses, not merely through the photograph that first caught Carstairs’s attention.

The Murder

Roger concludes that Carstairs must be suppressed because his inquiries have become a serious nuisance. The mist gives Roger his opportunity: close behind Carstairs, he creeps nearer and pushes him. The account presents the killing as a sudden physical act, but the decision follows a mounting fear that Carstairs will connect Moira Nicholson’s identities and discover what Gladys Evans might disclose. The investigation and the murder are thus causally linked: Carstairs’s progress makes him dangerous to Roger, and Roger converts that danger into an attempt to silence him.

The murder does not end Roger’s problem. He does not know what incriminating material Carstairs may be carrying, so he takes advantage of a short interval alone with the body. He removes a photograph of Moira Nicholson that Carstairs had obtained from photographers, along with letters and other identifying material. He then plants a photograph of a member of the gang. The handling of the body is part of the crime’s design: Roger tries to redirect identification away from Carstairs and toward a false identity, making concealment a second stage of the attack.

False Identification and Its Failure

The substitution initially appears successful. A supposed sister and brother-in-law arrive and identify the body, and Roger believes the arrangement has gone satisfactorily. The false identification depends on more than the planted photograph: it also requires people to accept the claim made by those presenting themselves as relatives. In that interval, the body’s identity seems to have been settled by a combination of substituted evidence and fabricated kinship.

Bobby Jones disrupts that apparent success. He learns that Carstairs recovered consciousness before dying and had been saying things, including the name Evans. That name has immediate force because Gladys Evans is in service at the Marchbolt Vicarage. Carstairs may therefore have left behind a spoken clue even after Roger removed the material evidence from his body. Roger’s attempt to control what could be discovered fails at the point where the victim’s last words connect the investigation to a living witness.

Consequences and Significance

The failed concealment raises the danger for Roger and Moira Nicholson. They become rattled, and Moira insists that Bobby must also be put out of the way. After one plan fails, she goes to Marchbolt and slips morphia into Bobby’s beer while he is asleep; he does not succumb. This later attempt is not part of Roger’s attack on Carstairs itself, but it shows the consequence of the murder’s failure: the effort to silence one investigator leads the conspirators to target another when his actions threaten to reopen the case.

The connection between Roger and Carstairs therefore develops through a chain of investigation, violence, and attempted erasure. Carstairs’s recognition of the photograph and search for Gladys Evans give Roger a reason to act; Roger’s push kills him, and the removal and planting of photographs try to make the killing point to somebody else. Yet Carstairs’s survival long enough to speak leaves a clue that the altered body cannot erase. The episode makes identity itself a contested piece of evidence: a photograph can be switched and a relationship invented, but a witness may still connect the names Roger needs to keep apart.