Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (29 page)

“Seems quite sound, sir.”

“It may be sound or it may not,” Mitchell returned.

“All that I have been saying to you may be the merest nonsense. But it shows, I think, that the story these men told
may
be true. The chances of its being true are sufficiently great to warrant investigation before they are charged with theft. You agree with that?”

This time French felt no doubt.

“Oh, yes, sir, I agree with that certainly. The men could not be convicted without going into their story.”

The Chief Inspector nodded as if he had at last reached the goal for which he had so long been aiming.

“That’s it, French. Now will you start in and do it?”

French stared.

“Me, sir?” he exclaimed as if unable to believe his ears. “Do you wish me to take it up?”

The other smiled satirically.

“I don’t know any one who could do it better.”

“And drop my present case?”

“Only temporarily,” the Chief assured him. “A day or so will make little difference to your own affair, and I have no one else to send on this one. Look into it and try and find out if anyone dropped those rings off the bridge, and if so, who he was and why he did it. When you have done that you can go ahead again with the Starvel affair.”

French was completely puzzled. This was very unlike the line the Chief usually took.

“Of course, sir, it’s what you say; but do you not think it is very urgent that this bank-note business be followed up while the trail is warm? Every day that passes will make it more difficult to get the truth.”

“That applies even more strongly to this other affair. But it has the advantage of probably being a shorter inquiry. With luck you can finish it off to-morrow, and if so, that will delay the larger case only very slightly.”

French saw that whatever might be the Chief’s motive, he had made up his mind.

“Very good, sir,” he returned. “I’ll go down to Whitechapel at once and get started.”

“Right, I wish you would.”

French was conscious of not a little exasperation as he walked to Charing Cross and there took an eastward bound train. A few hours might make all the difference between success and failure in the Starvel case, and here he was turned on to this other business during the very period when it was most important he should be on his own job. He could not understand what was at the back of the Chief Inspector’s mind. Apparently he suspected a crime, though what crime he had in view French could not imagine. Marshall could have dealt with ordinary petty theft. But if Mr. Mitchell suspected a serious crime and if, as he said, no other officer was available to investigate the affair, his attitude would be explained.

But whether it were explained or not orders were orders, and French with an effort switched his mind off John Roper and on to lighter men and wedding rings. On arrival at Divisional Headquarters he saw Inspector Marshall and heard his account of the affair, which was almost word for word that of the Chief Inspector.

“I don’t know what the Chief’s got in his mind,” French grumbled. “Here was I on that Starvel case and on a hot scent, too, and why he should switch me off on to this affair I can’t see. He’s got some bee in his bonnet about it. He believes these fellows’ yarn and he wants me to find the man who threw the rings over.”

Marshall made noises indicative of surprise and sympathy. “I shouldn’t have thought the Chief Inspector would have stood for that dope,” he remarked. “What are you going to do about it?”

French didn’t exactly know. He supposed he had better hear the men’s story for himself, though, of course, after his colleague had examined them his doing so would be only a matter of form to satisfy the Chief. Then he would think over the affair and try to plan his next move.

But rather to his own surprise, French found himself considerably impressed by the two men’s personalities and the way they told their story. Both were heavy and slow-witted and, French judged, without any imagination at all, and both seemed reasonably honest. After he had questioned them he felt very much inclined to accept his Chief’s view and to believe the tale.

“You say you found the rings by the light of a hand lamp,” he went on presently. “Very good. Come along down with me to this boat of yours and we’ll have another look by daylight. Perhaps you missed a few.”

The men didn’t think so, but they were very willing to do anything which got them out of the police station. They led the two inspectors to the dirtiest wharf that French had ever seen, and there hailing a man in a wherry, the four were put aboard the Thames lighter
Fickle Jane
.

She was a long low craft more like a canal boat than a lighter. Nine-tenths of her was hold, but at one end there was a tiny fo’c’sle and at the other an equally diminutive engine-room. She was steered by a small wheel aft.

“Now,” French said to the “crew,” “go and stand just where you were when the rings came down.”

Fuller moved to the fo’c’sle and took up a position on the port side of the companion.

“And where did the rings strike?”

“Couldn’t just say to a foot, guv’ nor,” the man answered, “but abaht that there bolt ’ead or maybe a bit forra’d.”

The point he indicated was starboard of the companion and midway between it and the side of the boat. French saw that objects falling at that point might scatter in any direction, and he began a careful search for further rings.

In less than a minute he found one. It had rolled down along the strip of deck at the side of the hold and jammed itself in a crack of the coaming timbers.

This discovery seemed to French to prove the men’s story completely. He took their addresses and told them they were free and that if the owner of the rings could not be found they would be returned to them. He wanted them, however, to come up with him to the Tower Bridge and show him the exact point at which the incident had occurred, but for this they would be paid.

He was frankly puzzled as he stood looking over the parapet of the bridge after Gray and Fuller had gone. As far as he could see there was absolutely nothing in the nature of a clue to the person he sought. The rings were probably stolen, but not, he imagined, from a jeweller. Rather, he pictured some street row in which a hawker had been relieved of his stock-in-trade. Though, if this had been done, he could not imagine why the stock should have been thrown away.

There were, of course, some obvious steps to be taken, but French hesitated over them because he did not think any of them could bring in useful information. However, he couldn’t stand there all day, and he might as well get on with all the lines of inquiry that suggested themselves.

First, he called at the Yard and arranged that any constables who had been on patrol duty on or near the Tower Bridge at 8.30 the previous evening should be found and sent to him for interrogation. Then with the rings in his pocket he went to a small jeweller’s shop in the Strand, of which he knew the proprietor.

“I want your help, Mr. Alderdice,” he said as they shook hands in the little private room at the back of the shop. “I’m trying to find someone who amuses himself by throwing wedding rings into the Thames,” and he told his story, concluding: “Now I wondered if you could tell me anything about these rings which would help me. Have you heard of any thefts of rings? Is there any way of identifying or tracing these? Might they be sold by a hawker, or would they be more probably from a jeweller’s shop? Any information that you could give me would be most gratefully received.”

Mr. Alderdice, a precise, dried-up little man, rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“Well, you know, Mr. French,” he said, “I don’t believe that I can think of anything in my trade about which I could give you less help. There are, as you know, millions of wedding rings in this city alone, and they are all more or less alike. In fact, sir, you might as well try to identify a given nail in an ironmonger’s bin. I don’t think it’s possible. Needless to say though, I’ll do what I can. Let me see the rings.”

He took the bunch, nattily untied the knot on the cord which held them, and taking the rings one by one, examined each carefully.

“They are all of eighteen carat gold,” he said in the manner of an expert pronouncing a deliberate judgment. “They are fairly well the same size and thickness and would sell from thirty to thirty-five shillings each, according to weight. I do not know much about the hawkers you refer to, but I should imagine that they would content themselves with a rather inferior article, and that these rings were sold by reputable jewellers. I have not heard of any cases of robbery of such rings. I do not see how you or anyone else could trace their sales, but of course that is speaking from my point of view: you gentlemen from the Yard have a wonderful way of finding out things.”

French made a grimace. “I’m afraid my job’s not very hopeful,” he bewailed as he thanked his friend and took his leave.

He walked slowly back to the Yard, thinking intently. This was one of those hateful jobs in which you had to work from the general; to deal with the whole of the possible sources of information concerned. He would now have to apply to all the jeweller’s shops in London—a tremendous job. How much he preferred working from the particular! In that case, to complete the parallel, he would get a clue which would lead to the one shop or group of shops he required. But here the situation was reversed. He would have to deal with all jewellers, and he did not know exactly what he was to ask them.

He made several drafts and at last produced a circular which he considered satisfactory. In it he said that the Yard desired to trace a person who had got rid of forty wedding rings on the night of Monday, 6th December, of which the particulars were as followed, and that he would be obliged for any information which might help. In particular he wished to know whether any wedding rings had disappeared or been stolen recently. Failing that he would be grateful for the description, as far as it could be ascertained, of all persons who had bought wedding rings within the previous four days, with the date and approximate hour of the purchase. Replies, which would be treated as entirely confidential, were to be sent to Inspector French at New Scotland Yard.

He set some men to work with directories to find out the addresses of jewellers in London and made arrangements to have the necessary copies of his circular prepared and delivered. Then he organised a staff to deal with the replies when they came in. Finally, having cleared his conscience with regard to the rings episode, he returned to his work on the bank-note, case, picking up the thread at the point at which he had left off.

By next morning several hundred answers to his circular had been received and others were arriving continuously. Reluctantly he gave up the bank-note question and went to his office to have a look over them.

In accordance with his instructions, his staff had prepared a statement to which they added the information given in each reply. One column they had headed “Robberies and Disappearance of rings,” and a glance down this showed French that none such had occurred. In a number of other columns they had put information about purchasers. These columns were headed with certain details of appearance, such as estimated age—over or under thirty, forty-five and sixty; tall, medium and short, dark and fair, with and without glasses, and so on. By this means it became possible to determine whether the same person might have dealt in more than one shop.

There were a great many columns and comparatively few entries in each, and of those in the same column nearly all were distinguished by differences in other columns. Of course the vast number of the descriptions were vague and incomplete and most of the shops recorded purchases in connection with which the assistants could recall nothing of the purchaser. But this was only to be expected, and French worked with such results as he could get.

Of the 631 replies entered up, French gradually eliminated 625. The remaining six he examined more carefully, whistling gently as he did so. They were all under the general divisions, “Homburg hat,” “fawn coat,” “dark,” “with moustache,” and “with glasses.” But this in itself conveyed little. It merely indicated a possibility. But when he found that four of the six shops were in the same street and that the purchases in all four had been made on the same day and at almost the same hour, his interest suddenly quickened. French considered that the matter was worth a personal call, and leaving the Yard, he drove to the first of the six and asked to see the manager.

“We’re very sorry to have given you all this trouble,” he began as he produced the reply they had sent in, “but the matter is really important. This may be possibly the man we want. Could I see the assistant who attended to him?”

In a few seconds a Mr. Stanley was produced and French asked him to repeat his description of his customer.

“I remember the man quite clearly, sir,” Stanley answered. “He had very dark hair and a thick, dark moustache and dark glasses. He wore a soft, grey Homburg hat and a fawn-coloured coat.”

“It is a pleasure to deal with you, Mr. Stanley,” French smiled. “You are certainly very observant. Now tell me, how do you come to remember the man so clearly?”

“I don’t think there was any special reason, sir. Unless it was that I happened to look out of the window and saw him get out of a taxi, and that sort of fixed my attention on him. The taxi waited while he was in the shop and he got into it again and drove off when he had bought the ring.”

This was very satisfactory. If the customer was really the man French wanted, here was a clue and a valuable one. To find the taxi which had stopped at the shop at a given time on the previous day should not be difficult. He continued his questions.

“At what hour was that?”

“About half-past eleven,” the salesman said after some thought. “I couldn’t say for sure, but it was about an hour before I went for dinner and that was at half-past twelve.”

“He didn’t seem at all agitated, I suppose?”

“No, sir. Not more than most of them.” Stanley smiled knowingly, and French felt that only for the sobering presence of the manager a wink would have conveyed the man’s thought. “Most of them are a bit, shall we say, nervous. But this man was just the same as the rest. He gave a size and said he wanted a medium weight, and that was all that passed.”