Big Foot by Edgar Wallace

 From 1927

This one wasn’t bad, it was an interesting read. Not my favourite, but a nice police story, I liked it enough. 

Jim is like a district attorney or something, and he’s in love with Elfa Leigh who works for Gordon Cardew as his secretary. There’s also Hannah Shaw working for Gordon, something like a housekeeper, whatever; one weekend she goes to the beach house alone, and there she dies, she’s found dead.

Gordon’s neighbour Stephen Elson, scared, starts drinking. 

Gordon tells the police, meaning superintendent Minter aka Super, that someone wrote some threatening letters to Hannah, signed Big Foot, and then some big traces are found, as if made with big big feet. 

Hannah had sent a telegram to Elfa, asking her to come to the beach house, but Elfa arrives very very late because of an accident. 

Elfa rents an apartment to Seargeant Lattimer’s uncle, who is angry because someone keeps leaving eggs and flowers outside his door.

There’s more than one attempt on Super’s life. Super finally catches the homeless man who kept singing at night, and it’s Leigh, Elfa’s father that she thought dead at sea.

He was rather out of his mind, and he was the one leaving eggs and flowers because that was the place where they once lived together, and he didn’t want his little girl to starve…

There are now policemen guarding the clinic where Leigh is, for his own protection. He does receive a poisoned cake, delivered in Elfa’s name by homeless guy Sullivan. Jim finds him entirely by chance, and Super asks Gordon to interview him, so that with his intelligence and knowledge of psychology he might get somewhere… but then Gordon is found in his room, drugged with chloroform, with the bottle thrown out of the window… it really was no surprise to find out that it was Gordon himself, it was easy enough to throw the bottle out of the window. It was his excuse, to not meet Sullivan because the man could have recognized him.

Some time ago Gordon Cardew was full of debts, he had lost his clients’ money, he was ruined,  so he wrote a confession and wanted to commit suicide, but he got distracted by a bad accident at sea. He took his boat to rescue two men: one was Elson, an American running from the police, and the other was Leigh,  who was responsible for two boxes of money. So Elson hit him and threw him outside the boat, to die at sea, and the two men keep the money.

Hannah found his letter of confession, and she kept it, and they shared the money among the three of them. Now Hannah wants to marry him, she wants to be the mistress of the house, she loves him and wants to marry him no matter of his feelings. He does not love her, but she blackmails him with that letter. 

That night, he married her under another name, then they went together to Beach Cottage; he was hidden in the car, just in case someone was looking. He killed her and then he wore her hat and cape to go out and drive away. He himself had chosen that hat, no matter that it did not suit her, because it was big and could hide his face. He was the one to make those big foot tracks, to send the police off-track. He had used huge boots…

Elson is killed by Cardew, who shot him because Elson was getting too scared.

Sergeant Lattimer, who we saw take some money from Elson, was not a dirty cop at all. He was following Super’s orders, to keep around Elson, manipulating him for information, just as Super tried to manipulate Cardew, break him, and yet neither of them confessed. 

With Elson dead, Cardew tries to flee, he’s found out now but he almost manages to flee, but then Super thinks of the Thames, and that someone might use that way to escape, and so he finds Gordon’s boat and arrests him. 

ITA L’orma gigante