Freeman Crofts – Inspector French’s Greatest Case (страница 9)
That evening, when French had dined and had settled himself before the fire in his sitting room with a pipe between his lips and his notebook on the table at his elbow, he set himself to take mental stock of his position and get a clear grasp of his new problem.
In the first place, it was obvious that this Charles Gething had been murdered for the sake of the diamonds in Mr Duke’s safe. It was certain from the position of the wound that it could not have been accidental, nor could it by any chance have been self-inflicted. Moreover, a planned robbery was indicated by the cutting of the duplicate key. But the stones were not on old Gething’s body. It therefore followed that someone else had taken them, though whether Gething had abstracted them from the safe in the first instance was not clear.
So far French had no trouble in marshalling his facts, but when he attempted to go further he found himself in difficulties.
There was first of all Gething’s poverty. Though his salary was not unreasonable for his position, the drain of his wife’s illness had kept him continually struggling to make ends meet. French let his imagination dwell on the wearing nature of such a struggle. To obtain relief a man would risk a good deal. Then there was his knowledge of the wealth which lay within his reach, provided only that he made a spirited effort to obtain it. Had the man fallen before the temptation?
That he had had something on his mind for two or three weeks before his death was obvious, and it was equally clear that this was something secret. When Mr Duke inquired as to the cause of the trouble, Gething had mentioned family matters and his wife’s health, but when his daughter had asked the same question he had said it was due to business worries. The old man had therefore carried his efforts at concealment to direct lying to one or other.
It seemed evident also that this worry or trouble had become intensified on the evening of his death. He had told his daughter that special business required his presence at the office. But Mr Duke knew of no such business, nor was any record of it obtainable.
But all these mysterious contradictions fell into line and became comprehensible if some two or three weeks back Gething had decided to rob the safe, and his special agitation on the evening of his death was accounted for if that were the date he had selected to make the attempt.
On the other hand, several considerations did not support such a view. The first was the man’s known character. He had worked for the firm for over twenty years, and after all that experience of him Mr Duke absolutely refused to believe in his guilt. His daughters also evidently had the warmest feelings towards him, and from what French had seen of the latter he felt that would have been impossible had Gething been a man of bad or weak character. Such other evidence as French had been able to obtain tended in the same direction.
Next, there was the open way in which Gething returned to the office. Had he intended to burgle the safe, would he not have kept the fact of his visit a secret? Yet he told the office boy he was returning when instructing him to keep up the fire in the inner office, and he also mentioned it to his daughter when discussing her proposed choir meeting.
Further, there was this matter of the fire in the private office. If Gething was going to rob the safe, what was the fire for? It was not merely that he had instructed the office boy to keep it up. He had himself afterwards put coal on, as was evidenced by his finger marks on the handle of the shovel. The robbing of the safe would have been a matter of minutes only. Did the episode of the fire not look as if Gething really was employed at some exceptional work, as he had stated to his daughter?
On the whole, French thought, the evidence for Gething’s guilt was stronger than that against it, and he began to form a tentative theory somewhat as follows: That Gething, finding the conditions of his home life onerous beyond further endurance, and realising the unusually valuable deposit in the safe, had decided to help himself, probably to a quite small portion, knowing that the loss would fall, not on Mr Duke, but on the insurance company; that he had obtained an impression of the key from which he had had a duplicate made; that he had invented the business in the office as a safeguard should he be accidentally found there during the evening; that he
This theory seemed to meet at least most of the facts. French was not pleased with it, but it was the best he could produce, and he decided to adopt it as a working hypothesis. At the same time he kept an open mind, recognising that the discovery of some fresh fact might put a different complexion on the whole affair.
Next morning he put some obvious investigations in train. By astute indirect inquiries, he satisfied himself that neither Mr Gething nor any other worker in the Duke & Peabody office had the technical skill to have cut the key, and he put a man on to try and trace the professional who had done it. He issued a description of the stolen diamonds to the British and Dutch police, as well as to certain dealers from whom he hoped to obtain information of attempted sales. He saw that a general advice was sent to the banks as to the missing notes, and he searched, unsuccessfully, for any person who might have known of the treasure and who was unable satisfactorily to account for his movements on the night of the murder.
But as the days slipped by without bringing any news, French grew seriously uneasy and redoubled his efforts. He suspected everyone he could think of, including the typist, the office boy, and even Mr Duke himself, but still without result. The typist proved she was at home all the evening, Billy Newton was undoubtedly at a Boy Scouts’ Rally, while guarded inquiries at the principal’s club and home proved that his statement as to how he had passed his evening was correct in every particular. Stanley Harrington’s movements he had already investigated, and though the young man’s alibi could not be absolutely established he could find nothing to incriminate him.
Baffled in every direction, French began to lose heart, while his superiors asked more and more insistent and unpleasant questions.
About ten o’clock on the morning of the tenth day after the murder of Charles Gething, Inspector French sat in his room at New Scotland Yard wondering for the thousandth time if there was no clue in the affair which he had overlooked, no line of research which he had omitted to follow up.
He had seldom found himself up against so baffling a problem. Though from the nature of the case, as he told himself with exasperation, a solution should be easily reached, yet he could find nothing to go on. The clues he had obtained looked promising enough, but—they led nowhere. None of the stolen notes had reached the bank, nor had any of the diamonds come on the market; no one in whom he was interested had become suddenly rich, and all his possible suspects were able more or less satisfactorily to account for their time on the fatal evening.
French had just taken up his pen to write out a statement of what he had done, in the hope of discovering some omission, when his telephone rang. Absent-mindedly he took up the receiver.
‘I want to speak to Inspector French,’ he heard in a familiar voice. ‘Say that Mr Duke of Duke & Peabody is on the ’phone.’
There was a suggestion of eagerness in the voice that instantly roused the inspector’s interest.
‘Inspector French speaking,’ he answered promptly. ‘Good-morning, Mr Duke. I hope you have some news for me?’
‘I have some news,’ the distant voice returned, ‘but I don’t know whether it bears on our quest. I have just had a letter from Schoofs, you remember, the manager of our Amsterdam branch, and from what he tells me it looks as if Vanderkemp had disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’ French echoed. ‘How? Since when?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I am having the files looked up to try and settle dates. It appears that he has been absent from the Amsterdam office for several days, and Schoofs thought he was over here. But we’ve not seen him. I don’t understand the matter. Perhaps if you’re not too busy you could come round and I’ll show you Schoofs’ letter.’
‘I’ll come at once.’
Half an hour later French was mounting the stairs of the Hatton Garden office. With a face wreathed in smiles, Billy Newton ushered him into the private office. Mr Duke seemed nervous and a trifle excited as he shook hands.
‘The more I think over this affair, Inspector, the less I like it,’ he began immediately. ‘I do hope there is nothing wrong. I will tell you all I know, but before I show you Schoofs’ letter I had better explain how it came to be written.’