Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (19 page)

Mr. Theodore Averill had died on the 8th of September, 1910, his little four-year-old daughter then being sent to England.

So that was certainty at last. Roper was the evil genius behind all these involved happenings. He it was who had got Ruth away from the doomed house; he had sent Whymper off to pass the stolen notes so that he might learn if their numbers were known; he had murdered Simon Averill: he had stolen the notes from the safe; he had murdered his wife: he had burned the house. All was now clear—except the one point at which French, trembling with exasperation, was again brought up. What had happened to Roper? What blunder had he made? How had he died? And again; Where was the money? Was it hidden or was it destroyed?

As French went down to the police station to tell Sergeant Kent he might withdraw his observation on Whymper, he determined that next morning he would begin a meticulous and detailed search of the ground surrounding the ruins in the hope of finding the answer to his last question.

But next morning French instead found himself contemplating with a growing excitement a new idea which had leaped into his mind and which bade fair to change the whole future course of his investigation.

Inspector French’s change of plans was due to a new idea which suddenly, like the conventional bolt from the blue, flashed across the horizon of his vision.

For some reason he had been unable to sleep on that night on which he had completed his proof that the Whymper incident had been engineered by Roper. French, as a rule, was a sound sleeper: he was usually too tired on getting to bed to be anything else. But on the rare occasions when he remained wakeful he nearly always turned the circumstance to advantage by concentrating on the difficulty of the moment. His brain at such times seemed more active than normally, and more than one of his toughest problems had been solved during the hours of darkness. It was true that he frequently reached conclusions which in the sober light of day appeared fantastic and had to be abandoned, but valuable ideas had come so often that when up against a really difficult case he had thankfully welcomed a sleepless night in the hope of what it might bring forth.

On this occasion, when he had employed all the conventional aids to slumber without effect, he turned his attention to the one problem in the Starvel Hollow tragedy which up to now had baffled him: the cause of Roper’s fate. How had the man come to lose his life? What terrible mistake had he made? How had Nemesis overtaken him? French felt he could see the whole ghastly business taking place, excepting always this one point. And the more he thought of it, the more difficult it appeared. It seemed almost incredible that so clever a man should have blundered so appallingly.

He had asked himself these questions for the hundredth time when there leaped into his mind an idea so startling that for a moment he could only lie still and let his mind gradually absorb it. Roper’s death seemed the incredible feature of the case, but
was this a feature of the case at all? Had Roper died?
What if his death was a fake, arranged to free him from the attentions of the police so that he might enjoy without embarrassment the fruits of his crime?

French lay trying to recall the details of a paragraph he had read in the paper a year or two previously and wondering how he had failed up to the present to draw a parallel between it and the Starvel Hollow affair. It was the account of the burning of a house in New York. After the fire it was found that a lot of valuable property had disappeared and further search revealed the remains of two human bodies. Two servants were believed to have been in the house at the time, and these bodies were naturally assumed to have been theirs. Afterwards it was proved—French could not remember how—that the two left in the house had planned the whole affair so as to steal the valuables. They had visited a cemetery, robbed a grave of two bodies, conveyed these to the house, set the place on fire and made off with the swag. Had Roper seen this paragraph and determined to copy the Americans? Or had the same idea occurred to him independently?

How Roper might or might not have evolved his plan was, however, a minor point. The question was—had he evolved and carried out such a plan? Was he now alive and in possession of the money?

It was evident there were two possible lines of inquiry, either of which might give him his information.

The first was the definite identification of the body which had been found in the position of Roper’s bed. Was there any physical peculiarity about Roper which would enable a conclusion to be reached as to whether this body was or was not his? It was true that the remains had been examined by Dr. Emerson and unhesitatingly accepted as Roper’s, but the doctor had had no reason for doubt in the matter and might therefore have overlooked some small point which would have led to a contrary conclusion.

The second line of inquiry was more promising. If Roper had carried out such a fraud he must have provided a body to substitute for his own. Had he done so, and if he had, where had this body been obtained?

Here was an act which, French felt, could not have been done without leaving traces. Roper had proved himself a very skilful man, but the secret acquisition of a dead body in a country like England was an extraordinarily difficult undertaking, and of course the more difficult an action was to carry out, the greater were the chances of its discovery. Proof or disproof of his theory would be quickly forthcoming.

Hour after hour French lay pondering the matter, and when shortly before daylight he at last fell asleep, he had laid his plans for the prosecution of his new inquiry.

He began by calling on Dr. Emerson. The doctor was writing in his consulting room when French was shown in, and he rose to greet his visitor with old-fashioned courtesy.

“Sorry for troubling you again, doctor,” French began with his pleasant smile, “but I wanted to ask you a question. It won’t take five minutes.”

“My dear sir, there is no hurry. I’m quite at your disposal.”

“Very good of you, Dr. Emerson, I’m sure. It’s really a matter more of idle curiosity than a serious inquiry. I was thinking over that Starvel affair, and I wondered how you were able to identify the bodies. It was a phrase in the evidence that struck me. I gathered that you said that the bodies of each of the three occupants of the house were lying on the sites of their respective beds. I should like to ask if that was stated from definite identification of the remains, or if it was merely a reasonable and justifiable assumption?”

“If that is what you read, I am afraid I have not been correctly reported. I certainly never said that the body found at each bed was that of the owner of the bed. That they were so I have no doubt: from every point of view I think that is a reasonable and justifiable assumption, to use your own phrase. But actual identification was quite impossible. It is rather an unpleasant subject, but fire, especially such a furnace as must have raged at Starvel, destroys practically all physical characteristics.

“But you were able to tell the sex and age of the victims?”

“The sex and the approximate age, yes. Given a skeleton or even certain bones, that can be stated with certainty. But that is a very different thing from identification.”

“I thought I was right,” French declared. “I had always heard that was the result of fire, and therefore was puzzled. Identification of burnt remains has however been frequently established from rings or jewellery, has it not?”

“Certainly, though there was nothing of the kind in the instance in question. Indeed, such identification would have been almost impossible in any case. In that intense heat gold rings or settings would have melted and the stones themselves would have dropped out and would only be found by an extraordinarily lucky chance.”

French rose.

“Quite so. I agree. Well, I’m glad to know I was right. We Yard Inspectors are always on the look-out for first-hand information.”

So the first of the three lines of inquiry had petered out. The bodies were unidentifiable, and therefore so far as that was concerned, his theory might be true or it might not.

As he strolled slowly back to the hotel, French considered his second clue: the provision by Roper of a body to take the place of his own.

From the first the difficulty of such a feat had impressed French, and as he now thought of it in detail, this difficulty grew until it seemed almost insurmountable. Where could bodies be obtained? Only surely in one of three ways: from a medical institution, from a cemetery, and by means of murder.

With regard to the first of these three, it was true that bodies were used for medical purposes, for dissection, for the instruction of students. But they were not obtainable by outside individuals. French thought that it would be absolutely impossible for Roper to have secured what he wanted from such a source. So convinced of this was he that he felt he might dismiss the idea from his mind.

Could then the remains have been obtained from a cemetery?

Here again the difficulties, though not quite so overwhelming, were sufficiently great as almost to negative the suggestion. Of one thing French felt convinced; that neither Roper nor any other man in Roper’s position could have carried out such an enterprise singlehanded. One or more confederates would have been absolutely necessary. To mention a single point only, no one person would have had the physical strength to perform such a task. No one person, furthermore, could have taken the requisite precautions against surprise or discovery, nor could one person have carried out the needful transport arrangements between the cemetery and Starvel.

The whole subject, as French thought out the details, was indescribably gruesome and revolting. But so interested was he in its purely intellectual side—as a problem for which a solution must be found—that he overlooked the horror of the actual operations. For him the matter was one of pure reason. He did not consider the human emotions involved except in so far as these might influence the conduct of the actors in the terrible drama.

Assuming then that the remains had not been procured from a cemetery, there remained but one alternative— murder! Some unknown person must have been inveigled into that sinister house and there done to death, so as to provide the needful third body! If Roper were guilty of the Starvel crime as French now understood it, it looked as if he must have been guilty of a third murder, hitherto unsuspected.

Here was food for thought and opportunity for inquiry. Who had disappeared about the time of the tragedy? Was any one missing in the neighbourhood? Had any one let it be known that he was leaving the district or going abroad about that date? Instead of being at the end of his researches, French was rather appalled by the magnitude of the investigation which was opening out in front of him. To obtain the necessary information might require the prolonged activities of a large staff.

He was anxious not to give away the lines on which he was working. He decided therefore not to make his inquiries from Sergeant Kent at the local station, but to go to Leeds and have an interview with the Chief Constable.

Accordingly, unconsciously following the example of Oxley and Tarkington several weeks earlier, he took the 3.30 train that afternoon and two hours later was seated in Chief Constable Valentine’s room at police headquarters. The old gentleman received him very courteously, and for once French met some one who seemed likely to outdo him in suavity and charm of manner.

“I thought, sir, my case was over when I had cleared up the matter of the bank notes passed to Messrs. Cook in London,” French declared as he accepted a cigarette from the other’s case, “but one or two rather strange points have made me form a tentative theory which seems sufficiently probable to need going into. In short——” and he explained with business-like brevity his ideas about Roper with the facts from which they had sprung.

The Chief Constable was profoundly impressed by the recital, much more so than French would have believed possible.

“It’s a likely enough theory,” he admitted. “Your arguments seem unanswerable and I certainly agree that the idea is sufficiently promising to warrant investigation.”

“I’m glad, sir, that you think so. In my job, as you know, there is always the danger of being carried away by some theory that appeals because of its ingenuity, while overlooking some more commonplace explanation that is much more likely to be true.”

“I know that, and this may of course be an instance. I am glad, however, that you mentioned your theory to me. It is an idea which should be kept secret, and I shall set inquiries on foot without giving away the Starvel connection.”

“Then, sir, you can’t recall any disappearances about the time?”

“I can’t. And I don’t expect we shall find any. Do you?”

“Well, I was in hope that we might.”

Major Valentine shook his head.

“No, Inspector; there I think you’re wrong,” he said with decision. “If Roper really carried out these crimes, he’s far too clever to leave an obvious trail of that kind. We may be sure that if he inveigled some third person to the house and murdered him, a satisfactory explanation of the victim’s absence was provided. You suggested it yourself in your statement. The man will ostensibly have left his surroundings, never to return. If he was a native he will have gone to America or some other distant place. If he was a visitor, he will have left to return home. Somehow matters will have been arranged so that he will disappear without raising suspicion. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, sir, I certainly do. But it’s going to make it a hard job to trace him.”

“I know it is. If he lived in a large town it will be so hard that we probably shan’t succeed, but if he came from the country or a village the local men should have the information.”

“That is so, sir. Then I may leave the matter in your hands?”

“Yes, I’ll attend to it. By the way, where are you staying?”

French told him, and after some desultory discussion, took his leave and caught the last train back to Thirsby. He was partly pleased and partly disappointed by his interview. He had hoped for the co-operation of the Chief Constable, but Major Valentine had gone much further than this. He had really taken the immediate further prosecution of the investigation out of French’s hands. French was therefore temporarily out of a job. Moreover French had the contempt of the Londoner and the specialist for those whom he was pleased to think of as “provincial amateurs.” And yet he could not have acted otherwise than as he had. The organisation of the police with all its ramifications was needed for the job, and the Chief Constable controlled the organisation.