BRITAIN'S DETECTIVE NO. I

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 297, 14 December 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

BRITAIN'S DETECTIVE NO. I

A COWMAN Frederick John Bryant was driven writhing from his farm cottage at Coombe, along narrow Dorset lanes to hospital at Sherborne. He was dying, and it looked like a case of poisoning. On Christmas Eve, 1936, tbe inquest was opened and adjourned. Organs from Bryant's body had been sent to London, to be examined by pathologist Roche Lynch. From Dorchester« C.T.D. an P.O.S. went to Scotland Yard. Chief Inspector Alec Bell was told to pee the New Year in by clearing up the mystery. This was Bell's first bi<? chance. A native of the Border Country, he had followed the Scot's well-trod path to

London, joined the Metropolitan Police, and reached a desk in the Criminal Investigation Deparment via divisional charges at Ealing, Golden* Green and seamy Vino Street. He had played a conspicuous part in the investigation of Dartmoor's Mutiny and London's sharepushing racket, had made a special study of criminal psychology. With an occasional dash up to London, Bell worked for a month at Sherborne. Bryant's cottage was cleared of furniture, the floorboards were ripped away, surrounding ground dug up. Flicking round every corner of the building with soft pa ipthruslics. the Inspector collected 156 heaps of dust.

Even the bottom of a pram and the pockets of a coat were swept. Forty of the samples were found to contain arsenic. Then Bell arrested Mrs. Charlotte Bryant, completed his dossier, handed it to the Director of Publio Prosecutions and returned to his chair I at the Yard. On his evidence, Mrs. Bryant went to the gallows. It was a classical piece of detection, and Inspector Bell was asked to wive lectures on how lie did it to a summer course for provincial and P'mpire chief constables at the Yard. For three years he built up his reputation as rightlet ud man to John Horwell, chief of the c.r.D. Uccently Superintendent. Bell got his reward. In succession to his old.chief (now transferred to the Provost Marshal's department of the K.A.F.) he was in-tailed as Chief Constable and head of the world's most famous C.1.1). Under him are 1000 picked men, of whom some 2SO are at his elbow at headquarters.