King shrugged in his turn. ‘You’ll have to get a chemist,’ he said sullenly. ‘I can’t be made to suffer for your ignorance.’
‘Quite reasonable, Mr King,’ French admitted smoothly. ‘Perhaps however we can get some confirmation in another way. These experiments required certain chemicals?’
‘Of course they required chemicals.’
‘Then how did you get the chemicals?’
‘How? Why, in the ordinary way in which I got anything I wanted. I ordered them.’
French picked up the Joymount order book. ‘Then,’ he said with an air of triumph, ‘if you ordered them, you should be able to turn up the orders.’
‘Of course I can turn them up,’ King answered scornfully. ‘Show me the book.’
French looked considerably crestfallen as he handed it over. King ran through the pages and pointed to block after block. ‘There you are,’ he declared.
‘That good enough for you?’
It was not quite good enough for French. He insisted on going into the experiments one by one, and getting King to point out the actual order issued to supply the chemicals used in each experiment. When he made him write down and sign this information, it really did look as if he were getting the proof he had asked for.
This detailed work took a good deal of time. However, it was finished at last, and then French asked his victim to continue his statement.
King, believing that he had scored on the question of the experiments, was more truculent and self-assured than ever. He went on to tell that he had reported his success to his board and that they had instructed him to go ahead with the making of the new cement.
‘Did that require any alterations in your plant?’ French asked.
This opened a further line of enquiry and here again French was very thorough. He got King to produce his drawings and then to show him the orders he had issued for the parts of the various machines.
Up till now French had been a little doubtful as to whether his idea would work out as he had hoped. But now with this further statement from King, he saw that he had the unhappy man in his hands. Unwittingly King had committed himself beyond hope of recovery.
French paused for a moment to choose his words, then went on slowly. ‘Now, Mr King, your statement is this: you were instructed to try to find the process: you did so by means of certain chemical experiments which you have described: you then reported to your board: they instructed you to have the necessary machinery made: you did so. Now is that correct? Is that what you want to stick to?’
King signified that that was his statement, that it was the truth, and that the Chief-Inspector could take it or leave it as he liked.
‘Very well,’ went on French even more slowly, and watching the other keenly. ‘Now look at the significance of these dates. On Sunday night, the 29th of July, the Chayle Works are burgled, and the watchman comes by his death. On the following Wednesday, the 1st of August, the board meeting takes place at which you report that you have discovered the process. You spend—’
King shuffled uneasily on his chair. ‘That’s not fair, Chief-Inspector,’ he burst out. ‘I can’t help the coincidence of the dates.’
French held up his hand. ‘Let me finish,’ he said. ‘After the board meeting you spend ten days in making your designs for the machinery—you said it took you ten days. Then you order the machinery. The order blocks support your statement and these dates. That correct?’
Now puzzled and uneasy, King admitted that it was.
‘Very good,’ went on French. ‘Now I suppose you carried out the experiments which led you to discover the process before the board meeting on the 1st of August?’
For the first time King hesitated. A look of doubt, changing immediately to fear, appeared in his eyes. But he bluffed on. ‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘The experiments were carried out during the month previous to that meeting.’
French looked at him for some seconds without speaking. Then he shook his head.
‘Then how, Mr King,’ he asked, ‘do you account for the orders for the chemicals used in those experiments not having been issued until after those for the machinery?’
It was a knock-out blow. King began to mumble something about a mistake in the dates. But he didn’t complete his sentence. He had proved the dates too completely. His voice died out. French went on.
‘The dates are pretty clear, you know. You obtained the process from the safe in Haviland’s room at Chayle on the night that Clay died. Then you designed your plant and ordered your machines. As soon as that was off your mind you thought you must be able to prove that you learned the secret by experiment, and you ordered the necessary chemicals. Do you wish to say anything more on that point?’
King still sat staring. He did not try to answer. French shrugged slightly.
‘I’m afraid, King,’ he said not unkindly, ‘the game’s up. The man who made the gramophone record will swear to you. And we know all about the fixing of the cyclometer. Tell me now, is there anything more you wish to say?’
King moved with an effort. ‘Only,’ he said unsteadily, ‘that Clay’s death was an accident.’
‘Yes,’ said French. ‘I’m prepared to take your word for that. But you should have reported the affair instead of faking that car business.’
King was utterly broken down. ‘I was afraid I shouldn’t be believed.’ Once more he paused. ‘I’d like to say, Chief-Inspector, that Brand was not in this thing. He was in it, but quite innocently. He didn’t realise what I was doing.’
French nodded. ‘I had come to that conclusion already, Mr King, but I’m glad to hear you say it. Your statement will be reported to the proper quarter.’
From further enquiries and the examination of the documents of all concerned, the remaining details of the case were built up. In his speech at the opening of the trial, counsel for the prosecution outlined the affair as it was then understood by the police.
The first point was the fall in the Joymount profits and the resultant commission to King to investigate the cause. King was a protégé of Tasker’s, and Tasker had given him this job because he rightly believed him to be by far the most able man on the staff. King had justified his trust. Enquiry had told him of Chayle’s rebates, analysis of their new cement, and deduction of their secret process.
To his report Tasker, who knew his King, had replied that the secret must be discovered if possible by fair means, but if not, by foul. Very early in the game King saw that he was unlikely to succeed by the first method, and Tasker then suggested a nocturnal visit to Chayle. If King could learn what he wanted by inspection, so much the better, but learned the secret must be, and methods of obtaining the Chayle keys and robbing the safes were discussed. It was Tasker who suggested the drugging of Haviland in the train which King afterwards carried out.
One of the chief obstacles in the way of the conspirators was the alertness and the conscientiousness of Brand. In his work Brand took nothing for granted. He looked so carefully into every phase of the business that neither Tasker nor King believed they could carry their plan through without arousing his suspicions. And once his suspicions were aroused, Brand would unquestionably report to the directors.
To meet this difficulty, Tasker proposed a wily scheme. Brand was himself to be involved. He was to be led into a mild breach of the law, so that if and when he discovered the truth, his tongue would be tied. He would not, of course, be trusted with anything serious, but if he did learn the real facts, he would be unable to use his knowledge.
Matters then took their prearranged course. Radcliff and Endicott were engaged, and Brand’s voluntary aid was accepted, to carry out useless experiments as a blind to cover the real activities. On their alleged failure Brand was inveigled into assisting King to have a look into the Chayle works. He did not know King’s real object.
Then occurred the Clay disaster—wholly unintentional and unforeseen. That night, on getting the body to Joymount, King had rung up Tasker, and
the two men had met and spent the night in working out the trick with the car. Here again Brand was to be involved, so as to close his mouth effectually about the whole affair.
As time passed and the police made no move, Tasker and King began to breathe more freely. Gradually they came to believe their future assured, a future of wealth, independence and security.
Then came the knock-out blow of the visit of Haviland and Mairs, and at once these rosy dreams were dispelled. Instead of the wealth they had been counting on, there would be for them existence on a pittance; instead of security there would be the haunting fear that they might at any time be betrayed to prison or even death; and instead of independence there would be servitude under the orders of their Chayle masters.
They didn’t know that Haviland was bluffing when he dictated his terms; that he suspected what had happened, but couldn’t prove it. But even if they had, it would probably have made little difference. The disappointment was too overwhelming. Neither Tasker nor King could look forward to spending the remainder of their lives under such conditions. Better, they thought, to make a fight for it, even at the risk of losing, than to settle down to a poverty and a dread which might last their whole lives. The knowledge which was destroying their happiness was confined to Haviland, Mairs and Samson. If these three men were eliminated, the Joymount men’s rosy dreams would become a reality …
From that time the idea of destroying the three Chayle representatives seldom left the minds of Tasker and King, though for a while they did not see how the murders could be carried out with safety to themselves.
Then Tasker thought of the launch explosion. Both men believed that the launch and all aboard it would simply disappear, and that no suspicion of foul play would arise. If, however, they did fall under suspicion, they were satisfied that they could overwhelmingly prove their innocence.
Tasker had, of course, deliberately typed only one copy of the agreement, so that should any of the Chayle bodies be recovered, the incriminating clauses six and seven should not be found on them. Similarly he had spaced the typescript to end the first five clauses on sheet one, so that this single sheet could afterwards be shown to the police as the whole agreement which had been negotiated. Had Haviland not played into his hands by proposing separate agreements to cover each sheet, he would himself have made the suggestion.
On this occasion when deliberate murder was contemplated, King declined to shoulder all the responsibility, and joint action was therefore decided on. Tasker was to obtain a gelignite cartridge and detonator from the company’s quarry, and also to buy the cyclometer and battery, while King, who had secretly visited the Chayle boathouse to make sure it would fit, was to plant his apparatus in Samson’s launch. In this Brand was again to be used. Unknown to himself, he was to be furnished with evidence of his colleagues’ innocence, so that his statements to the police should be made in good faith, and therefore be convincing.
To Tasker and King the escape of Samson came as an appalling catastrophe. They saw at once that Samson would be bound to suspect them, but they hoped against hope that he would be unable to back his suspicion up with evidence. Samson, indeed, admitted later that he had suspected them at first, but their guilt had seemed so impossible that he had afterwards dismissed the idea from his mind.
Having thus outlined the case he hoped to make, counsel for the prosecution proceeded to call his witnesses. The evidence against each prisoner was slightly different. Against King the following facts were proved:
The note of the Chayle process found in his safe was exactly similar to that in the Chayle office. In several cases different phrases could have been used to describe certain details, but in all these the wording was identical. In one instance, in fact, there was an error in the Chayle document, where the obviously intended phrase ‘solution should be mixed’ was written ‘solution should mixed’, and this error was repeated in King’s note. It was clear, therefore, that one document was a copy of the other.
That King had stolen the process was also proved by the dates already mentioned, which showed that he had ordered the machines immediately after the death of Clay, and before he had made the experiments by which he stated he discovered the secret.
Brand’s evidence, and King’s own admission to the police, proved that King had been the principal figure in the burnt car fake.
But King was not being tried for stealing the process and faking the car accident. He was tried for murdering Haviland and Mairs, and for that only. The evidence against him was overwhelming.
In the first place the motive was established beyond question. An account of the blackmailing of Joymount was given by Brand and admitted by Samson. Both these witnesses swore to the suppressed second sheet of the draft agreement, which, indeed, was found in Tasker’s safe.
Next, the discovery of the electric circuit operated by the cyclometer proved that the explosion had been deliberately prearranged. Further, French’s deduction from the cyclometer reading was accepted as showing the apparatus must have been placed in the launch at Joymount.
The possibility that King had placed it was established by French, who swore that he had tried the experiment of leaving King’s office window by means of a rope ladder, going to the west end of the wharf, there getting into a boat and floating down beneath the wharf to the steps, getting on to the steps, waiting three minutes and returning to the office, and that he had been able to do all this in eleven minutes. As the time King was supposed to be alone in his office was estimated at from twelve to fifteen minutes, this would have allowed him ample time.
Lastly, that King had actually placed it was proved from the early statements of King himself, Tasker, Brand and Samson. All four stated that certain definite sounds had come from King’s office during the time that he had retired there during the last conference between the two firms. The Etna Gramophone Company’s representative swore that he had made records reproducing those very sounds, and that King was the man for whom he had made them. On the suggestion of the prosecution he produced a gramophone and copies of the records, and they were played in court. The defence were unable to offer any suggestion as to what these records could have been for, other than to allow King to leave his office secretly.
The proof against Tasker consisted of four main items. First there was the consideration that without his general help King could not have carried out the crime. Second, there was proof of motive, same as in the case of King. Third, the gramophone fraud could not have been put through without Tasker’s active co-operation, particularly in the answer to the gramophone question, which must have been rehearsed. Last, there was the purchase of the cyclometer, for which the defence could give no satisfactory explanation.
After brilliant speeches on both sides, and a long and impartial summing up, the jury found both men guilty of wilful murder. Appeals failed, and the dreadful sentence that murder brings was carried out.
Before their deaths both men admitted their guilt, their story being substantially as suggested by French and outlined in the opening speech of prosecuting counsel. Brand was specifically cleared by both, at least so far as guilty intention was concerned.
In the end no case was preferred against Brand, Samson absolutely declining to prosecute. Samson, indeed, asked Brand to join him in partnership, but Brand had had enough of the locality, and departed for South America, where he was afterwards understood to have made good in a new life.
As for French, his holiday from the monotony of work in London, coupled with a brief word of congratulation from the Assistant Commissioner, was his reward for the successful issue of a particularly long and tedious case.
About the Author
Freeman Wills Crofts (1879–1957), the son of an army doctor who died before he was born, was raised in Northern Ireland and became a civil engineer on the railways. His first book, The Cask, written in 1919 during a long illness, was published in the summer of 1920, immediately establishing him as a new master of detective fiction. Regular
ly outselling Agatha Christie, it was with his fifth book that Crofts introduced his iconic Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Joseph French, who would feature in no less than thirty books over the next three decades. He was a founder member of the Detection Club and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1939. Continually praised for his ingenious plotting and meticulous attention to detail—including the intricacies of railway timetables—Crofts was once dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’ and described by Raymond Chandler as ‘the soundest builder of them all’.
Also in this series
Inspector French’s Greatest Case
Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery
Inspector French and the Starvel Hollow Tragedy
Inspector French and the Sea Mystery
Inspector French and the Box Office Murders
Inspector French and Sir John Magill’s Last Journey
Inspector French: Sudden Death
Inspector French: Death on the Way
Inspector French and the Mystery on Southampton Water
Inspector French and the Crime at Guildford
Inspector French and the Loss of the ‘Jane Vosper’
Inspector French: Man Overboard!
By the same author
The Cask
The Ponson Case
The Pit-Prop Syndicate
The Groote Park Murder
Six Against the Yard*
The Anatomy of Murder*
*with other Detection Club authors
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
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www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
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Mystery on Southampton Water Page 29