The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye by Brian Flynn

Brigadier-General Sir Austin Mostyn Kemble, K. C. V. O., D. S. O., turned sharply in his revolving chair in his room at New Scotland Yard and spoke somewhat peremptorily. The post of Commissioner of Police is never a sinecure and very seldom a bed of roses. At the present moment he was being subjected to a good deal of Press pin-pricking and generally hostile criticism relative to the failure of his department in the matter of the Seabourne mystery. It can readily be imagined, therefore, that a temper habitually none too good was at this particular time showing certain but unmistakable signs of severe strain. Several of his subordinates needed no imagination to notice this fact. Three weeks had elapsed since Ronald Branston had so dramatically discovered Sheila Delaney's body in his surgery and despite the widely-circulated news in the columns of the Press that Scotland Yard were on the point of a solution and that an arrest was imminent-the murder or murderers still remained at large. It had become apparent to the thoughtful that the Police Authorities were completely baffled. On the morning in question the "Daily Bugle," ready as usual to criticise destructively, had published a most scathing article by a novelist possessed of a most valuable copyright on the "Supine and Decadent Condition of New Scotland Yard. Its Causes and Remedy."

The chief point of the article in question had been the oft-recurring statement that the "Seabourne Mystery" was the fifth unsolved murder since Sir Austin Kemble had assumed the cares of office. Incessant attention had been drawn to the fact that on three of these occasions Scotland Yard had been called in almost at once and that the old and threadbare excuse that the scent had been allowed to get cold prior to expert advice being taken could in no way be urged. In respect of the "Wokingham Wheelbarrow" murder, where the body of the murdered farm-labourer had been discovered lying across a wheel-barrow, in the instance of the crippled Polish moneylender, whose body had been found in a hedge upon the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard battered to death in horrible fashion by his own crutch, and now in this last murder at Seabourne, it was pointed out relentlessly that Scotland Yard had been there "when the tapes went up. " But glaringly unavailingly. Its ineptitude was colossal! The article concluded with an impassioned appeal that the higher reaches of the Police and Detective professions should be radically re-organised and flung open as attractive propositions to the best brains of the country. Then and not until then could the country reasonably hope for better things!