Explore "The Templeton Case" by Victor L. Whitechurch on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The newspaper paragraphs about the murder at Marsh Quay dwindled in length. There were several scathing leading articles dealing with the inefficiency of the local police, and expounding the systems that ought to be put into force. One leader-writer produced an article conclusively proving that the Government was to blame. Writers of that peculiar terse and asterisked matter-the editor, it is presumed, puts in the asterisks in exchange for the copy he deletes-which adorns the "magazine" page of certain of our morning papers reaped a small crop of guineas. Thus one of them described the manufacture of cigar bands another epitomised half a dozen yacht tragedies, and a third gave a graphic sketch of how he himself had sailed in the Marsh Quay estuary.
The Sunday papers, of course, had their contributions. "An Expert in Crime" brilliantly reconstructed the whole murder, hinted at clues which the police ought to have found, and, without mentioning any names, left the impression on the mind of the reader that the two sailor-men, to wit, Jim Webb and Tom Gale, had acted in collusion, with the assistance of Mrs. Yates, who had countenanced a mysterious rendezvous at the "Mariner's Arms."