The 12.30 from Croydon (40 page)

‘Absolutely certain. The proof is even more convincing than in the case he was convicted on. If by any unlikely chance he had got off in the first case, we’d have had him over the Weatherup affair.’

‘Well, I shall be interested to hear about that,’ said Quilter.

‘And I,’ Byng added. ‘You’ll tell us, inspector?’

‘Certainly, sir. But I hadn’t quite come to that yet.’

‘Well, for heaven’s sake, carry on as you’re doing. This tale is just what I wanted.’

‘Yes, it’s making a good story,’ Heppenstall agreed. ‘I’m enjoying it.’

‘Well, gentlemen, as I say, I made a mistake in not arresting Swinburn at once. However, I thought he was safe and that all would be well, and I went on trying to get confirmatory evidence. I started with the handwriting. That was all right. Our expert seemed satisfied the poison-book entry was in Swinburn’s hand. Then I went on to the cruise. If Swinburn were guilty he would be on pins and needles all the time till Mr Crowther died, while, if he were innocent, he would be enjoying himself with an easy mind. I thought I’d try and find this out.

‘I went to the Purple Line people and learned that the
Jupiter
was cruising in the Mediterranean and was due three days later to call at Barcelona. So, with the advice of the chief, I went to Barcelona and had an interview with some of the officers. I found that when Swinburn got back on board from an excursion, his first care was to ask for letters. I found that when telegrams or radiograms were taken round the deck, he always hung about to make sure they were not for him. I got a note of his particular friends on board and followed them up. This brought me to Mrs Shearman, and you remember her evidence about his uneasy state of mind during the cruise. All this information helped to confirm the theory in my own mind. Then there was the date on which Swinburn had booked. That was more valuable.

‘The booking had come through Cook’s, and from them I got the dates. You remember the point? As soon as Swinburn decided he was going to commit the murder he saw he would want the alibi, so he obtained information about trips. Then directly he got the pill into his uncle’s bottle he phoned Cook’s to book on the first available cruise.’

‘There’s not such a lot in that, inspector,’ Heppenstall objected. ‘If he had been innocent he might still have acted exactly as he did.’

‘That’s true, sir. At the same time, it also worked in. The evidence was cumulative.’

‘I see your point.’

‘Well, gentlemen, when I got back from Barcelona I heard about Weatherup’s disappearance. It was obvious that there might be a connexion between this and the murder, so, after discussion, the super asked me to treat it as part of the same case and look into it also.’

French paused; then, as no one spoke, went on again.

‘There is just one other matter connected with the Crowther murder which I might perhaps mention at this stage, though, as a matter of fact, it was not until after Swinburn’s arrest that I dealt with it. Do you mind if I take it out of chronological sequence?’

‘By all means take it now,’ Byng invited.

‘Very well. After Swinburn’s arrest I searched the study in his house. As a matter of ordinary routine I took away the blotter on his desk and photographed the blottings. Among them I found some addresses. These I followed up, but without learning anything important. But there was one address I couldn’t read. It ended in W.C.2, which suggested something in the nature of business, and I thought I should try to find it. The full address, so far as I could reconstruct it, was this.’

French took a paper from his pocket and handed it across. The others crowded over it. It read:

‘The writing where standing alone was quite clear,’ French resumed. ‘It was where it was covered by other blottings that it became illegible. The first thing was to get the lengths of the lines. This, of course, was approximate, and I reached it in the following way.

‘“Messrs J” was clear, and the length of the following name was clear, though not the letters. The lengths of none of the other words could be seen, but I estimated them as follows:

‘The last line obviously began with “London”. I wrote in the “Lo”, spacing it as correctly as I could. Then I drew a straight line from the “M” of “Messrs” to the “L” of “London” and assumed that this would give me roughly where the second and third lines started. This gave me a length for the third line, which would just make “Strand”, and as “Strand” was the only third line I could think of of that length ending in a “d”, I took it I was right so far.’

‘Very good,’ Quilter commented.

‘No, sir, it was quite easy,’ French declared. ‘This reconstruction, then, gave me a new problem: to complete the following.’ He handed over a second sheet on which was written:

‘I spent long enough trying to get the name of a street with about a dozen letters, and that just shows the stupid things one’ll do. Fortunately, I couldn’t find it, because it would have been wrong if I had.’

‘Forgot the number?’ Heppenstall queried.

‘It’s just what I did,’ French admitted. ‘When I allowed for the number, it cut down the length to six or eight letters. This covered a lot of streets – Bedford Street, Surrey Street, Norfolk Street, Arundel Street, and a lot more. There was nothing, then, for it but to get a directory and to go through all these possible streets, noting all names which began with “Messrs. J”. It didn’t take so long as you might think, and it only gave seven possibles. You see, not only had I the “Messrs J”, but I had also the approximate length of the name.’

‘Quite,’ said Byng. ‘I’ve got that.’

‘I looked down the seven in the hope of learning something from their various businesses. There was a publisher, an artists’ supplies shop, two solicitors, a pawnbroker of a highly superior type, a chemist and a shoemaker. The pawnbroker seemed to be the most likely, and I tried them first. They were Messrs Jamieson and Truelove. I had no difficulty in getting answers to my questions. I had struck oil; it was with this firm that Swinburn had dealt. It seemed that he had pawned fourteen pictures at the same time that he bought the poison, saying he wanted the money for about six months. They were worth about three thousand, and Messrs Jamieson and Truelove had advanced him two thousand one hundred. Shortly after the Crowther inquest, on the 6th of October, Swinburn had redeemed them. From a paper in his desk I found that on the previous day, the 5th, he had approached Messrs Spiller and Morgan, of Bedford Street, the moneylenders, and borrowed five thousand on the strength of his expectations. With part of this money he had evidently redeemed the pictures, and his reason was obvious. He didn’t want the pictures to be missed from his house, as it would show he had been harder up than he wished to be known.

‘You see how all this works in. He is on his beam ends before the murder. He decides on the murder as his only chance of keeping above water. Once his uncle’s will is known he will be all right. But he hasn’t enough ready money to keep him going even till his uncle dies. He therefore pledged the pictures. That gets him two thousand of cash, which carries him on until the death takes place. With his prospects reasonably assured, he is able to borrow the £5,000, and thus to redeem the pictures.’

‘That,’ said Byng, ‘was the case you put up to the Crown? It’s no wonder they pulled it off. It left us no chance at all. What do you say, Heppenstall?’

‘I never thought we had any chance,’ Heppenstall declared.

‘Can’t make bricks without straw,’ Quilter pointed out cheerily.

‘Can’t make them without clay, at all events,’ Heppenstall returned. ‘Well, inspector, that’s very interesting about the Crowther case. Now we don’t want you to stop. We’re all interested in the Weatherup case also. What about it?’

‘A pause for refreshments seems indicated,’ Quilter suggested. He pushed the whisky over to French. ‘Help yourself, inspector. A bit of lubricant in the throat makes it work easier.’

Talk became general for a few moments, and then French resumed his story.

‘The first thing that occurred to us all on hearing that Weatherup had disappeared was to wonder whether or not the disappearance could be connected with the Crowther murder. You remember, super, that’s what you thought?’

Lucas drew slowly at his cigar. ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘it seemed not unlikely. I don’t say there was a definite reason for believing it, but it would have been a coincidence to have two cases occurring at the same time and place and among the same people unless there was some connexion between them.’

‘It was the obvious thing to think,’ Heppenstall declared, and Byng agreed with him.

‘Well, on the chance of a connexion, Superintendent Lucas asked me to have a look into the affair. I heard what Sergeant Bray had found out and then started off.

‘You remember, gentlemen, what he reported? Weatherup had disappeared, the desk in the study had been broken open and over a hundred pounds in notes had been stolen, and the key of the study french window was missing?’

‘Yes, that’s clear.’

‘The first question I considered,’ French resumed, ‘was the obvious one of whether Weatherup had or had not disappeared voluntarily, and with this I thought was connected the second question of whether he had or had not robbed the desk. There were two possibilities: either he had robbed the desk and vanished with the money, or a burglar had robbed the desk and he had tried to capture him and been prevented, and perhaps murdered.

‘I began then with the help of the super and his men the ordinary investigations usual under such circumstances, and I soon obtained information which seemed to settle this first question. Three items, in fact.

‘Of these, the first was that Weatherup had not taken his suit-case and belongings. These belongings, while perhaps not valuable intrinsically, would be an important item to a man in Weatherup’s position, and that he had left them suggested he did not mean to go for good.

‘But we found something a good deal more convincing than that. In a locked cash-box in his suit-case was a little hoard of money: fifty-three pounds in notes. Now, it was clear that if the man had intended to disappear he would not have left that money behind. That was the second item.

‘The third was not so convincing, but still it weighed. Detailed inquiries along the roads and at stations and of bus conductors and so on revealed no trace of him. He might, of course, have slipped out of the country without being seen, but it wasn’t likely.

‘For these three reasons, but particularly the second one, I concluded that the man had intended to return. Then had he stolen the money?’

‘It was possible, of course, that he had, and that he intended to say that he had found a burglar at the desk, had given chase, and that the burglar had got away. But it seemed to me more likely that this was the actual truth. It was, indeed, the only theory I could think of which would meet the facts.

‘This theory admittedly didn’t work in with our original idea that the Weatherup and Crowther cases were connected. That didn’t matter. I had been given the case and it was up to me to find out the truth, no matter what that was.

‘I thought over this idea of Weatherup giving chase to the burglar, and the more I did so the more sure I grew that if he had really done so he must have been murdered. If he was chasing the burglar he would not voluntarily disappear, and he could scarcely be kidnapped. Murder seemed the only solution.

‘You will understand that this idea of murder was largely guesswork. At the same time it was sufficiently likely to need going into.’

‘I don’t see what else you could do,’ Heppenstall agreed.

‘So I think,’ Quilter added. ‘The finding of that money in Weatherup’s room seems to me to prove it.’

‘If it was murder,’ French continued, ‘the murderer’s obvious difficulty would be to get rid of the body. Could I get him on this?

‘I considered all the places where it could have been hidden. First and most likely, it could have been buried. In the woods around The Moat there were places where no one might penetrate from year’s end to year’s end. This meant a search. We made it, but we could find no grave. Nor was there a quarry hole, well, mine, pit, or any other hiding-place that I could think of.

‘My thoughts naturally turned to the lake. If a body could be weighted and sunk the difficulty would be met.

‘A walk round the lake showed that it was so shallow at the edge that a body could not be hidden from the shore. A boat seemed indicated, and I had a look over the boat-house.

‘At once I saw that I was on the right track. There were two boats in the boat-house and two pairs of oars. On one boat and on one pair of oars there was a fairly thick coat of dust. On the other boat a great many patches had recently been wiped clean, and the same applied to the other pair of oars. Moreover, this second pair of oars was slightly damp.’

There was a little movement of appreciation among French’s audience.

‘Pretty conclusive,’ said Heppenstall warmly.

‘It was, sir, because inquiries showed that no boat had been taken out for legitimate reasons. There seemed nothing for it but to drag. The super arranged this, and as you know, we found the body.

‘With the body we learned three interesting facts. First, the stolen notes were not on it, second, the key of the study window was not on it, and third, Weatherup’s watch had stopped at two twenty-four.

‘These facts seemed to me suggestive. From the absence of the notes and key it seemed fair to conclude, firstly, that Weatherup was not the burglar, and secondly that the burglar was also the murderer. If not, it meant introducing a third person, which so far at least didn’t seem reasonable. But the hour at which the watch had stopped was more interesting still. It suggested the hour at which the murder took place, or rather the hour at which the body was thrown into the water – probably some little time later. But Mrs Morley had heard the desk being burst open about three. Therefore the murder had been committed before, not after, the burglary. Therefore my idea that Weatherup had heard the burglar and had been on his track was not the truth, and I had to form some other theory.’