Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (28 page)

It was by no means the first of such recalls that French had received, though it was not usual to interrupt an officer who was actually engaged in investigating a case. The incident always bred a slight uneasiness. The possibility of having made some serious blunder was ever present. And French was aware that his most unhappy experiences had almost invariably followed periods of exaltation and self-satisfaction. Chief Inspector Mitchell was an exceedingly shrewd man and he had a perfectly uncanny way of delving to the bottom of problems and of seeing clues that other people missed. French earnestly hoped that it was not so in the present instance. He travelled up by the night train and early next morning reported at the Yard. There he found his fears were groundless. The Chief Inspector, so far from grumbling, was in a very good mood and almost complimented him on what he had done.

“Well, French, you’re up against it again, are you? What were you busy at when you got my wire?”

French explained.

“You can do something better. Read that.”

It was the typewritten note of a telephone conversation. It appeared that at four o’clock on the previous evening the manager of the Northern Shires Bank in Throgmorton Avenue had rung up to say that two twenty-pound notes bearing numbers on the list supplied in connection with the Starvel Hollow crime had been passed into the bank that afternoon. The cashier had just at that moment made the discovery, but unfortunately he was unable to remember from whom he had received them.

“By Jove, sir!” French exclaimed. “Then Roper is in town!”

“It looks like it if your theory is right,” the Chief Inspector admitted. “I sent Willis across at once and he saw the cashier. But the man couldn’t say where the notes had come from. Willis got him to prepare a list of all the lodgments he had received that day, intending, if you didn’t turn up, to go round the people to-day with Roper’s description. You had better see him and find out what he has done. I want you to take over from him at once as he is really on that Colchester burglary.”

“Very good, sir. Do you know if the notes were together: if they seemed to have come in from the same party?”

“Willis asked that. They were not near each other in the pile. Of course, the argument is not conclusive, but the suggestion is that they came in separately.”

“If that is so it looks as if Roper was changing them systematically.”

“Possibly. In that case we may expect more notes to come in. That’ll do, French. Go and see Willis and start right in.”

Inspector Willis was seated at the desk in his room, apparently trying to reduce to some sort of order the chaotic heap of papers which covered it.

“Hullo, French! Come in and take a pew,” he greeted his visitor. “I don’t know anyone I’d be better pleased to see. If you hadn’t turned up within another ten minutes I was going out about those blessed notes, but now I shall be able to get down to Colchester on the next train. I’m on that burglary at Brodrick’s, the jewellers. You heard about it?”

“The Chief mentioned it, but I have heard no details. Interesting case?”

“Nothing out of the way. The place was broken into from a lane at the back and the safe cut with a oxyacetylene jet. They got about six thousand pounds worth. It happened that Brodrick had just sent a lot of stuff to town, else they’d have cleared twice that.”

“Any line on the men?”

“It was Hot Alf and the Mummer, I believe. It was their style, and Alf was seen in the town two days before. But I’ve not got anything definite yet. There’s a fearful muck of stuff about it: look at all this.” He indicated the litter on the table.

“No finger-prints?”

“Nope. But I’ll get them through the fences. I’ve only to sit tight and they’ll give themselves away. But what about your do? I’ve got it finished, thank the Lord! There it is.” He pointed to a little heap of papers apart from the others. “There’s more in it, the Chief hinted, than stolen notes, but he didn’t say what it was.”

“There’s pretty well everything in it so far as I can see,” French rejoined. “Murder—quadruple murder—theft, arson and body-snatching.”

Willis whistled.

“Body-snatching? Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “You don’t often hear of that nowadays.”

“You don’t,” French admitted, “but this was not ordinary body-snatching. You remember the case: a fire at Starvel in which the three occupants of the house were supposed to be burned? Well, one wasn’t. He burgled the place and escaped with the swag: those notes that you were on to-day. But he had to have a body to represent himself, so he murdered a neighbour and burned his body in the house.”

“Lord, French! That’s quite a tale. It would make a novel, that would. How did you get on to it?”

French gave a somewhat sketchy resume of his activities and so led the conversation back to the notes. “The Chief said you would give me the details so as I could get ahead with it to-day.”

“Right-o. The Chief called me in about four yesterday afternoon and said he’d just had a ’phone from the Northern Shires Bank that two of the Starvel notes had been paid in, and as you weren’t there, I’d better take over. So I went and saw the teller. He couldn’t say who had given him the notes, as it was only when he was balancing his cash after the bank closed that he recognised the numbers. I got him to make me a list of the lodgments during the day. That took a bit of time, but he had it at last. Then I went through it with him and we eliminated all the entries at which he was sure that no twenty-pound note was handled. That left just under two hundred possibles. Then I brought the list home and went over it again, ticking off people or firms who do not usually take in cash from the public, like ship owners, manufacturers and wholesale dealers. Of course, these are possibles, but not so likely as the others. It was rough and ready, but I wanted to tackle the most probable first. You follow me?”

“Of course. I should have done the same.”

“I waited up until I had put the probables in location order, and here is the list ready for you.”

“Jolly good, Willis. I’m sorry you had so much trouble. I’ll carry on and hope for the best.”

“You’ll get it all right,” Willis opined as he settled down again to his work.

All that day and the next French, armed with the list and with Roper’s photograph and description, went from place to place interviewing managers and assistants in shops and business firms. But all to no purpose. Nowhere could he obtain any trace of the elusive twenty-pound notes, nor had any man answering to the description been seen. And then to his amazement he was taken off the inquiry.

Like other officers of the C.I.D., it was his habit to keep in as close touch with headquarters as possible while pursuing his investigations. At intervals therefore during these two days he called up the Yard and reported his whereabouts. It was during one of these communications that for the second time in two days he received an urgent recall.

In this case it was a summons which he could obey promptly, and twenty minutes after receiving the message he was knocking at the door of Chief Inspector Mitchell’s room.

One glance at the Chief’s face showed him that at least there was no trouble brewing, Mitchell greeting him with a half smile.

“Sit down, French,” he said, “and listen to me. I want to tell you a story.”

After glancing at a few papers which he took from a drawer, he began to speak.

“This morning about 10.30,” said the Chief Inspector, “we had a ’phone from Inspector Marshall of the Whitechapel District. He wanted to know whether we had had any recent reports of thefts of small jewellery, as he had come across some in connection with a scrap between two lightermen. It seems that about ten o’clock last night a constable on patrol heard cries coming from an entry off Cable Street, as if someone was being murdered. He ran down and found a man on the ground with another belabouring him furiously with his fists. The constable pulled the victor off, to find his opponent was little the worse. The fellow was really more frightened than hurt. The constable would have dismissed the affair with a good-humoured caution to both, had it not been that in the heat of the explanations the cause of the quarrel came out. The men had obtained some jewellery, which both claimed, and when the constable saw the stuff he didn’t wait for further discussion, but marched them both off to Divisional Headquarters. Marshall questioned them and reported their statements with his inquiry.

“The whole thing so far was purely commonplace, and if the jewellery had consisted of ordinary trinkets I should have thought no more about it. But the nature of the stuff tickled my fancy and I grew interested. You would hardly guess what they had. Wedding rings!”

“I certainly shouldn’t have guessed that, sir.”

“I don’t suppose you would. Well, that’s what they had. Thirty-nine wedding rings on a cord. They were all much of the same size and value. And there was not another thing. They were searched, but nothing else was found on them.”

“Marshall, of course, asked them where they got them, and their answer was more interesting still. It appeared that the victor, James Gray, was the skipper of a Thames lighter and the vanquished, William Fuller, was his ‘crew.’ A third man was on board who looked after the engine, but he didn’t come into the affair. Gray stated that about 8.30 that same evening they were working empty down the river. They had left a cargo of Belgian coal at an up-river works and were running down to their moorings for the night. They usually stopped about six, but trouble with their engine had delayed them on this occasion. It was rather a dirty night, raining and very dark and blowing a little. Gray, the skipper, was at the helm and Fuller was forward acting as look-out. The third man was below at the engines. Just as they began to emerge from beneath the Tower Bridge Fuller heard a smack on the deck beside him. He looked down and in the light of some of the shorelamps saw some bright objects rolling about on the planks. On picking one up he was astonished to find it was a wedding ring. He began to search and found several others, but the skipper swore at him for not minding his job, and he had to let the remainder lie. When they reached their moorings he tried again, but Gray was curious and came forward and found a ring himself. Then they had a proper look with lanterns and recovered the thirty-nine. Immediately, as might be expected, a row broke out. Both men wanted the rings. Fuller said they had fallen beside him and he had found all but one or two, but Gray held that he was skipper and that anything that came on the ship was his. They had to bury the hatchet temporarily so as not to give away the secret to their engineer, but the quarrel broke out again ashore, Fuller’s cries attracting our man. What do you think of that, French? A good story, isn’t it?”

“Like a book, sir. Just a bit humorous, too, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

There was a twinkle in Chief Inspector Mitchell’s eye as he continued:

“Oh, you think so, do you? Well, anyhow, as I say, I was interested. The men’s mentality I found quite intriguing. I wondered how much imagination they had between them. Marshall described them as slow, unintelligent, bovine fellows. Now, such men could never have invented a tale like that. If they had been making it up they would have said they found a bag of rings in the street. The idea of wedding rings having been thrown over the parapet of the Tower Bridge just as they were passing beneath would only occur to men of imagination, and to have got all the details right would have involved a very considerable gift of invention as well. Do you see what I’m getting at, French? Their story shows too much imagination for their intelligences as described by Marshall, and therefore I am disposed to accept it.”

Chief Inspector Mitchell paused and looked at French as if expecting a comment.

“I follow you all right, sir, and what you say sounds reasonable to me. And yet it’s not very likely that anyone would throw thirty-nine wedding rings into the Thames off the Tower Bridge, for I take it it was into the river and not on to the boat they were intended to go.”

“I should say undoubtedly,” Mitchell sat for a moment drumming with his fingers on his desk and looking thoughtfully out of the window. “You think the whole thing’s unlikely, do you? Perhaps you are right. And yet I don’t know, I think I can imagine circumstances in which a man might be very anxious to get rid of thirty-nine wedding rings. And what’s more, to throw them over the parapet of the Tower Bridge at 8.30 in the evening seems to me a jolly good way of getting rid of them. How would you have done it, French?”

French glanced at his superior in some surprise. He could not understand the other’s interest in this commonplace story of stolen rings. Still less could he understand why he had been interrupted in his useful and important work to come and listen to it. However, he realised that it would be tactless to say so.

“I don’t know, sir,” he answered slowly. “I suppose to throw ’em in the river would be the best way. But he should have seen there was nothing passing underneath.”

“Ah, now that is an interesting point also. But first, does anything else strike you?”

French looked wary.

“Just in what way, sir?”

“This. Suppose you want to throw a package into the river and you want to do it absolutely unobserved. Where will you do it?”

“I see what you mean, sir. That bridge at that time of night is about as deserted as any of the London bridges.”

“Exactly, that’s what I mean. There is evidence there of selection which would never strike a man like these bargees. But you say he ought to have seen the boat. Why should our unknown not have looked out for passing boats? I’ll tell you, I think. Though the bridge is
comparatively
deserted, it is
not
deserted. To look over the parapet far enough to see the water below would have attracted attention. A suicide might have been feared. Some officious person might have come forward. No, the unknown would simply chuck his parcel over without even turning his head, secure in the belief that even if by some miracle it was found, the contents would never be traced to him. Do you agree?”