Crime at Guildford

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  This also was unexpected and French asked for further particulars. One man, the old fellow repeated, had seemed either ill or drunk—though able to walk, he was staggering—and the others had assisted him across the pavement into the car. One had got in behind with the sick man and the other in front. They had then driven off.

  This being all the old man could tell, French took his name and address, gave him another half-crown ‘for luck,’ and turned slowly away in the direction of his home.

  So Lyde had gone down with the other two, and his appearance at the Guildford by-pass bridge worked in after all!

  French swore slowly and comprehensively. If Lyde hadn’t left Town till eleven, who had murdered Minter at ten? Curse it all, was he on the wrong track from the beginning? Was there a fourth man in the thing? Perhaps Norne after all? Perhaps Osenden? French trudged blindly on, finding his way by instinct, escaping death in the traffic by a miracle, puzzling over this new turn in the case.

  The miracles persisted and he reached home in safety. In due course he went to bed, but not to sleep. The affair had taken a hold of him that he couldn’t break. The possibility of having to start again at the beginning seemed so terrible that he could scarcely contemplate it.

  The murderer must, he thought, be Norne. Norne must have killed the accountant when he visited him at ten. This after all was the likely thing, and it was simply due to Norne’s cleverness that he, French, had acquitted him in his mind. Well, on the following day he would look again into the case of Norne. Fortunately most of the data he would require had already been obtained.

  Then another idea flashed into French’s mind, gripping him as in a vice. Suppose he were wrong! Suppose it were not Norne. Instead, suppose …

  For a few moments he weighed the new idea. It looked promising, a real solution, a complete explanation of all these confusing facts. Then just as he was growing really excited, he saw he was wrong. There was a snag; an overwhelming snag. He quieted down again.

  But his brain was working feverishly and he could not rest. He had seemed so near a solution, was he really getting nowhere? For another hour he tossed backwards and forwards.

  Then suddenly he thought of something else and he wakened Mrs French with a yell of joy.

  ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it, my dear!’ he shouted in reply to her protests. ‘At last I’ve got the confounded thing! Bless my soul, that’s something like a relief: more than I would have believed!’

  For a while he was lyrical, then he turned over on his side and fell promptly asleep.

  And in the darkness Mrs French smiled at this great boy that was her husband.

  19

  Enter a Demonstration

  But in the sober light of day French’s new idea looked a great deal less rosy than it had during the more fevered hours of the night. He saw now—or thought he did—what had been done. He had achieved a theory which covered all the facts, with one exception. That exception did not in any way invalidate the theory, but it made him, French, much less happy about staking his reputation on it. It was the important point that he did not see why Minter had been murdered at all. Given the need for the accountant’s death, he could see how the unfortunate man had been killed. But he couldn’t see why.

  There was also the worrying fact that he couldn’t prove his theory. He felt convinced of its truth himself, but of direct proof he had none. With increasing bitterness he began to see that he was not so very much farther on after all.

  He was, moreover, at a loss as to what he should do. Should he see Sir Mortimer Ellison and put his theory before him? Or should he go down to Guildford and talk it over with Fenning? Or again should he keep his own counsel and work on alone?

  Finally he decided on a combination of the last two alternatives. He would go and have a talk with Fenning, but he would not give his theory away unless it seemed good at the time.

  After ringing Fenning up, he went down to Guildford. For a time the two men talked generalities, then French turned to his special business.

  ‘A couple of points have occurred to me, super,’ he began. ‘I wondered whether you’d gone into them. The first is the arrival of Sloley’s car at Norne’s house on the Saturday night. Was that checked up?’

  ‘No. I admit I didn’t inquire specially, but I’ve heard nothing of its having been seen.’

  ‘Well, it strikes me that it may be a pretty important matter. Could you have inquiries made?’

  ‘Of course. But this is new, chief. You didn’t say you were interested in that.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve got a new theory of the entire crime,’ French admitted. ‘If we could find out anything about that car it might show me whether I’m right or wrong.’

  ‘You’re not saying what the theory is, are you?’

  French grinned. ‘I’d rather wait, if you don’t mind. If you get something in the nature of a surprise about the car, then I’ll know I’m right and I’ll put the whole thing before you.’

  ‘I’ll have it gone into at once. Anything else?’

  ‘There is one other point, but I don’t hope for anything from it. Where are the clothes and contents of the pockets of the deceased?’

  ‘I have them next door. We held them till the adjourned inquest should be finished. Now since the case has become one of murder, I suppose we’ll hold them till it’s complete too.’

  ‘Good,’ said French. ‘Then do you mind my having another look at them?’

  Superintendent Fenning led the way into an adjoining store room, and unlocking a cupboard, pointed to a heap of clothes and small objects such as a watch, money, fountain pen and handkerchief.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ French went on, eyeing the collection with a frown, ‘we’ll not get anything here. They’ve all been handled, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, yes, they have. Why not?’

  ‘Only that I had half-hoped we might get some prints on them.’

  ‘Prints? We might have got Minter’s, but what good would they have been?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, of course. Still, super, I’d very much like to try.’

  Fenning was obviously sceptical, but as obviously he wanted to be polite. He produced powders and the two men began dusting them on everything which might possibly bear finger-prints. They were soon rewarded. The prints had remained better than French could have believed possible. The watch and the smooth parts of the other hard objects were covered with impressions.

  ‘That’s a bit surprising, super,’ French remarked.

  ‘I’ve noticed it before about things stored here,’ Fenning returned. ‘I can’t explain it—unless it is that this place is damp and may prevent the moisture of the prints drying up.’

  ‘I expect you’ve hit it,’ French agreed. ‘Lucky for me anyway. Can you get these checked up?’

  Fenning went to have the necessary arrangements made. The two men had concentrated on objects taken from the pockets, but now French turned to the clothes.

  The clothes were more difficult to deal with. Thoughtfully French turned them over. No chance of prints on these! There were, indeed, only two possibilities, the shoes, of smooth black calf, and the collar, a wing collar of stiff well-laundered linen. Minter was somewhat old-fashioned in his sartorial ideas, and usually wore a black coat and waistcoat, dark grey striped trousers, this wing collar and a black bow tie.

  French tried the shoes and collar. On the shoes he got nothing, the prints had evidently dried off. But there were several on the collar. French placed it with the others.

  ‘Take a bit of time to go through all those,’ Fenning remarked, returning. ‘They’ll have to be photographed and enlarged, then all our own men’s prints taken and checked off. But I needn’t tell you.’

  For answer French took a photograph of a set of finger-prints from his pocket-book. ‘Perhaps we could save some of that trouble,’ he said. ‘It’s these prints I’m really interested in. Can we see if they’re present on any of these objects? If we’re sure they’
re not, I don’t want anything further. Any possibilities I’d like photographed and checked up properly.’

  Fenning agreed that this might be possible and they set to work. Object after object was examined with a lens and dismissed. French’s photographs showed clearly marked whorls, and it was easy to dismiss prints on which no such appeared:

  At last everything from the pockets had been rejected and there remained only the collar. As Fenning picked it up, French’s eagerness, which had been gradually getting keener, grew much more marked. He watched Fenning almost with excitement. Fenning took longer over the collar. He turned it backwards and forwards and scrutinised it carefully with a lens.

  ‘’Pon my soul, chief-inspector,’ he remarked at last, ‘I believe you’ve got a bull’s eye this time. There are prints here uncommonly like your photographs.’

  ‘I hope to heaven you’re right, super. Let me see.’

  French took the collar and lens and began slowly and systematically to compare. Yes, the prints were the same! His idea had been right, rather marvellously right! A long shot, but seemingly it had got the bull! It was on the collar that he had hoped to make the find. But he had doubted whether the prints would have remained so long. Was this at last really all the proof he required?

  ‘You’ll get them photographed and checked up, won’t you, super? And for heaven’s sake let someone do it who knows his job. It’s your murder case that’s at stake.’

  Fenning stared. ‘Then whose are the prints?’ he demanded.

  ‘Lyde’s!’ French answered dramatically. ‘Do you see where that leads you?’

  Fenning continued to stare. ‘Lyde’s?’ he repeated. Then after a pause, ‘Gosh!’

  For a moment silence reigned. Then Fenning went on: ‘But I don’t see even now. Are you suggesting this proves Lyde is the murderer?’

  French shook his head. ‘No, not quite,’ he returned. ‘Don’t ask me yet, super. If you’ve any luck about the car, you see the whole thing.’

  ‘You’re darned mysterious, I will say,’ declared the puzzled superintendent. ‘May I at least ask if this is your case or mine you’re on to?’

  French laughed. ‘Dash it, it’s yours!’ he said. ‘I know how the safe was opened and I know who opened it, but I’m doubtful of my proof. And I know who murdered Minter and how it was done, but I can get no motive. So there you are, super. This print will help, but we’re not out of the wood yet.’

  ‘But damn it all, how were the jobs done? I’m afraid you’ve gone too far, chief, not to go the whole way.’

  ‘I suppose I have,’ French agreed. ‘Since finding the print I don’t mind. Come and sit down in your room and I’ll tell you.’

  They went back to Fenning’s room and settled themselves as comfortably as the strictly utilitarian chairs would allow. Fenning held out a box of cigarettes, but French, who smoked cigarettes and a pipe as the humour took him, and cigars when he could get them, said that on this occasion he preferred a pipe. The super grunted and rang his bell, and when a constable appeared he gave orders that they were not to be disturbed.

  ‘Now, for heaven’s sake let’s hear what’s in your mind,’ he went on.

  ‘I’m not going through the case as a whole,’ French began. ‘You know it as well as I do, and we’re both, I expect, equally sick of it. But I must just refer to a few matters in order to get the sequence of ideas.’

  ‘What I’d like,’ Fenning returned, ‘is that you’d give the whole thing as you would in a report.’

  ‘I’ll do so as far as my theory is concerned. And it would be a help for that report when it comes, if you’d stop me if I’m not quite clear about anything.’

  ‘No fear about that,’ Fenning said with conviction.

  ‘Well,’ went on French, ‘first of all we have the death of Minter. You are called in and the doctor says he is not satisfied about the affair. You have a postmortem, which shows the man was murdered by suffocation. You make inquiries and you find out all about the firm’s difficulties and the meeting that was to be held on that Sunday. I needn’t surely go over that?’

  ‘No, we’ll take that as read.’

  ‘Then there’s the discovery of the robbery, which for my sins brings me into the affair. I ask, I suppose, much the same questions as you, and find out about the firm’s condition, the directors’ meeting, and so on. When I hear about Minter’s death I wonder if the crimes are connected. You are wondering the same thing. I come down and we talk it over and agree to work together as far as possible.’

  ‘I’m glad we did,’ Fenning exclaimed between two great puffs of smoke.

  ‘So am I. Apart from it being a wise thing, we know now the crimes are connected, and we’d have to have got together sooner or later. The first thing we both saw was the obvious motive for the theft, but we noted further that the members of the firm had a stronger motive than outsiders. They would not only get immense wealth if they pulled off the robbery, but—and this was to my mind a much stronger consideration—they would avoid the ruin which was threatening them. A man might not want to be very much richer than he is, but he certainly will do his utmost not to be poorer.’

  ‘I agree, of course. That already threw the balance of suspicion on someone in the Norne firm.’

  ‘Yes, and there were other indications pointing in the same direction. There was the question of the keys, for example. It was difficult to see how an outsider could have got hold of the keys and cut new ones from their impressions, as at first we supposed had been done. Then the whole crime showed familiarity with the office and the working of the firm. It wasn’t quite certain, but as you say, the probabilities pointed to someone connected with the concern. Add to that the facts that Minter was a member of the staff, and that the others in the house at the time of his death were connected with the business, and the entire case seems what I might call a Nornes Limited case.’

  ‘Agreed. That was clear from the start.’

  ‘Well, we both started from that, and we both went aside on blind issues, or at least, I did. I’m not going into that. Firstly, we thought Norne was guilty, then we thought he wasn’t. We dabbled with the idea of Minter’s being the thief. We suspected Sloley and Sheen, and cleared them in our minds. I thought Ricardo was our man, and found he wasn’t. And so on. I’ll not mention any of that.’

  ‘It is, so to speak, a page of history that’s best forgotten.’

  ‘That’s right. Then I’ll come straight on to what I actually got. I know now that Sloley, Sheen and Lyde stole the stones jointly. They were all in it: those three and no one else.’

  ‘I gathered that, and I’ve a notion how you proved it. What I want to know about is the murder.’

  ‘I’m coming to that, but I must touch on the robbery first because some of the details of the murder hinge on it.’

  Fenning nodded without speaking and French went on. ‘The first thing that really put me on the trail was that lineman turning up. And that I have to admit was sheer luck. That he should have happened to be at a place from which he could see into the window, just when two of those boys were focusing their camera, was a piece of very pretty luck.’

  Fenning moved uneasily. ‘That’s so, chief, in a way, but only in a way. In the first place, as you know yourself, things like that are always happening. Again and again a chance word overheard, or something seen quite by accident, has brought the solution of an otherwise baffling case. Look at the men who happened to be on the road in the middle of the night and saw Rouse after he had left his car. Just a chance, and it hanged Rouse.’

  ‘Well, likely or unlikely, it was a pretty useful hint to me. I thought over it and thought over it, wondering what these two could have been doing. I made a lot of wrong guesses, which I needn’t mention. But at last the idea of taking photographs of the keys shot into my mind and I believed I had it. I very soon saw that a single photograph wouldn’t be enough—there were two keys to be taken. Then a ciné camera occurred to me. This also would give pictu
res of the keys from slightly different angles as they were being pushed forward, which would make it easier to copy them.’

  ‘It was a good shot getting that, I will say,’ Fenning declared.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It came by elimination. Nothing else seemed possible. Incidentally I saw that if I was right, it enormously strengthened the argument that the guilty man was one of the firm. More than that, he must be in a high position. The photographing would have to be done while Norne and Minter were present, and to take a liberty like putting the despatch case on the letter file and standing over it while the safe was being opened, indicated a friend of Norne’s.

  ‘I, of course, made the obvious inquiries. I tried to check up the purchase of the camera. But that proved a wash-out, and I got my first bit of help from considering its disposal.’

  ‘You told me about that,’ Fenning interrupted. ‘You argued that they would not have dared to keep the camera, but would have tried to cut their losses by popping it.’

  ‘That’s right. I found a man like Minter in appearance had popped one of the special cameras which would have been most suitable for the purpose, and that it had been bought shortly before. I couldn’t actually connect the transactions with the affair, but the dates worked in so well that I thought I was probably on the right track. That at all events was Point No. 1.’

  ‘And a very good one too.’

  ‘Point No. 2 was better. I found out from Norne that Sloley had turned up in the office with a despatch case which he had put on the letter file, and had opened it and fumbled in it while the safe was being unlocked. That in itself was suggestive, but when I found that he had himself arranged for the safe to be opened at that time, I thought it was pretty nearly proof. But there was further evidence for it even than that. While he stood at the file he sang—a very unusual thing for him. In fact, he pretended to have taken a drop too much to account for it. That clinched the thing to me, though I still doubted I had enough evidence for court.’