Freeman Crofts – Inspector French’s Greatest Case (страница 1)
Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollins
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1924
Copyright © Estate of Freeman Wills Crofts 1924
Introduction © Estate of Freeman Wills Crofts 1937
Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollins
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008190583
Ebook Edition © November 2016 ISBN: 9780008190590
Version: 2018-08-17
Contents
2. The Firm of Duke and Peabody
15. The House in St John’s Wood
I have been asked to tell you something about Chief-Inspector Joseph French of the Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard. I shall do my best, but I thought it would give you a better idea of him if I were to bring the man himself to the microphone. So with a good deal of trouble I have persuaded him to come, and he’ll speak to you himself. But I have put him in the next room for the moment, lest his ears should burn from my introduction.
As he’s not here, then, I may say that he’s really quite a good fellow at heart. He’s decent and he’s straight and he’s as kindly as his job will allow. He believes that if you treat people decently—you’ll be able to get more out of them; and he acts on his belief. Politeness is an obsession with him, and he has well earned his nickname of ‘Soapy Joe.’ He’s far from perfect, but I have known him now for many years, and I don’t wish for a better friend.
But I have to admit that he’s not very brilliant: in fact, many people call him dull. And here I’ll let you into secret history. Anyone about to perpetrate a detective novel must first decide whether his detective is to be brilliant and a ‘character,’ or a mere ordinary humdrum personality. When French came into being there seemed two good reasons for making him the second of these. One was that it represented a new departure; there were already plenty of ‘character’ detectives, the lineal descendants, most of them, of the great Sherlock. The other reason was much more important. Striking characteristics, consistently depicted, are very hard to do.
I tried therefore to make French a perfectly ordinary man, without peculiarities or mannerisms. Of course he had to have
From this it follows that he does not leap to his conclusions by brilliant intuition. He begins a case by going and looking for information in those places in which he thinks information is most likely to be found. When he gets the information he swots over it until he grinds out some sort of theory to account for the facts. Very often this turns out to be wrong, but if so, he simply tries again till he thinks of something better.
French I made an inspector of the Yard rather than a private detective because I hoped in this way to gain realism. But at once a horrible difficulty loomed up: I knew nothing about Scotland Yard or the C.I.D. What was to be done? The answer was simple. I built on the great rock which sustains so many of my profession: if I knew nothing of my subject, well, few of my readers would know any more.
As a matter of fact I have found this rock not quite so steadfast as I had hoped. It has been pointed out to me that French has at times done things which would make a real inspector of the Yard shudder. He has consistently travelled first-class on railways, particularly in sleeping-cars. He has borrowed bicycles from local police-officers without paying for their hire. He has undertaken country inquiries without his attendant sergeant. And many other evil things has he done. Fortunately, now that he has become a chief-inspector he is seeing the error of at least some of his ways and being more careful to live up to his great traditions.
French is a home bird, and nothing pleases him more than to get into his slippers before the fire and bury himself in some novel of sea adventure. He is married, but unlike Dr Watson he is the husband of only one wife. On occasion his Emily helps him with his cases. But this is only when he is more utterly stuck than usual. Otherwise he doesn’t think it decent—or perhaps worthwhile—to worry her with shop. I have been wondering whether he has children. It’s like a dream to me that in one book children were mentioned, and that in another their existence was denied. But as I can’t find either reference, I can only note the point as one to be avoided.
French’s job at the Yard is distinctly comfortable, particularly since he was made a chief-inspector. His promotion was decided on for a somewhat unusual reason. It was not because of his work or of what his superiors thought of him, but because so many people mentioned in letters that his promotion was long overdue. The customer, of course, is always right.
Not only, indeed, is French’s job at the Yard comfortable, but he enjoys very considerable advantages over his colleagues. Two in particular are so striking as to give him an almost unique position.
The first is that he must necessarily succeed in his cases. He may become utterly discouraged and pessimistic—indeed, he does so at regular intervals. This, however, is merely a concession to the reader, who must often be feeling equally bored and wearied. But if French is discouraged it is his own fault. He knows very well—or he would know if he applied his own methods of reasoning—that he wouldn’t have been put into a book if he were going to fail. Success does not come at once—the value of suspense in a book cannot be overlooked—but that it will come, and that not later than about page three hundred, he is well aware.
His second great advantage over his colleagues really arises out of the first. It is that definitely he will find all the clues that he wants. He is bound to find them, because they have been laid down specially for that purpose, and he is led up to them in such a way that he could not avoid seeing them even if he wished to. These clues which he will find, moreover, are exactly those which lead to the solution of his problem, though naturally he does not see this at first. A decent interval always occurs between the picking up of the clue and the realization of its significance. This is necessary, as otherwise the book would run out too short.
This plan of finding just the clues necessary to lead the investigator to the correct conclusion seems to me such an extraordinarily good way of conducting an inquiry that I offer the idea, quite freely, to the heads of Scotland Yard.
I said that French had two advantages over his colleagues at the Yard, but really he has three. He cannot be killed. He cannot even be seriously injured. The reason, of course, is that he will be wanted for the next book. So if anyone fills the room with petrol vapour and attempts to light it, as was done at Newhaven, French will, if he thinks hard, know that either the person will not light the petrol, or that if he does it won’t burn. If the criminal he is attempting to arrest withdraws the pin from a Mills’s bomb he is carrying he will know, again if he thinks, that either he will be able to hold the lever down, or that the bomb will prove a dud. Of course, under such distressing circumstances he never does think, as otherwise he couldn’t register the amount of terror which is the reader’s right and proper due.