The Barker's Dozen - Reminiscences of an Early Police Dog (29 page)

‘I think that if Mr MacDonald’s account can be verified we can safely say that the Honourable Sebastian had a powerful incentive to ensure his father’s continued good health, at least for two days.’

‘I intend to see the Honourable Sebastian and hear his account for myself. We will then go out to see Mr MacDonald. Sergeant, could you arrange for our accommodation at the Red Lion as I expect to be in that area for at least two days. I will arrange for us to see the Honourable Sebastian early tomorrow and we can travel down in the afternoon.’

‘Are we going to visit the prison en route to the station?’ Sergeant Allen asked, obviously already planning the trip in his head.

‘No Sergeant,’ my master replied with a smile. ‘I am going to have the Honourable Sebastian brought here. I think that we might learn more if we treat him like a gentleman. He fully expects to go on trial for his life in another month or two and it will be interesting to see what happens when he is questioned as a potentially innocent witness rather than a villain awaiting the formality of conviction.’

‘Bowman’s statement was that bad, Sir?’ Sergeant Allen asked. ‘Are you sure that the prisoner is innocent?’

‘I don’t honestly know Sergeant. As far as I know he could be guilty, but I think we should presume innocence until we have the evidence to secure a fair conviction.’

‘That’s one of the things I like about working with you, Sir,’ Sergeant Allen paused on his way out of the office. ‘You won’t put a man on trial for his life unless you are convinced beyond all reasonable doubt. I will, however, arrange for a burly constable to take down the gentleman’s statement, just in case he actually is a pitiless killer.’

The following morning we reached the office earlier than usual and your uncle spent some time preparing for the planned interview, almost as if he was preparing a stage for a play. In many ways a detective is like a great actor. In order to extract the information he needs he often has to play a part. The greatest detectives are capable of extemporising a part so well that the people talking to them believe the role implicitly.  To give you a quick example, sometimes we have to interview really awful criminals but in order to get them to talk my master has to suppress his anger and revulsion. I know he is acting because my nose tells me his true emotions while my ears and eyes show me the role.

It was obvious to me that my master wanted Sebastian to feel relaxed and with friends rather than being interviewed by a noted detective. Sergeant Allen’s suggestion of a burly constable was rejected by your uncle who told him that he wanted the interview to be conversational rather than confrontational.

‘Mr Lloyd-Carney,’ my master said as Sergeant Allen escorted the prisoner into the office. ‘I am Inspector Richard Thompson and I have been asked to look into your case. Please take a seat and I will ring for some tea.’

I looked carefully at the Honourable Sebastian as he walked to the proffered chair. He proved to be a reasonably built and quite good looking man somewhere in his middle twenties. I found it hard to make a precise estimate of his age because his face was very drawn with large black bags under his eyes. It was obvious that he was neither eating nor sleeping properly.

I watched the Honourable Sebastian as he was served tea by Sergeant Allen. As he was handed a cup and saucer a faint smile crossed his lips and I saw a lightening of his features. A hopeless man had, I thought, suddenly realised that perhaps all was not lost. I decided in my own mind that this was not the face of a patricide but that of a decent man; a conclusion that was quickly reinforced when he gave me some of his cake.

‘Inspector, how do you want to proceed?’ the Honourable Sebastian asked, as he finished his tea.

‘I would like you to tell me exactly what happened,’ my master replied with an encouraging tone. ‘I would like you to start by describing what your role is in the family business. When you finish I will raise any points that I feel need clarification.’

The Honourable Sebastian smiled and relaxed more comfortably into his chair. He was silent for a few moments as he collected his thoughts and then he began.

‘Thank you for reviewing my case, Inspector Thompson, I cannot tell you how relieved I am to be asked to tell my side of the story as Inspector Bowman spent his time telling me not only what I had done but why I had supposedly murdered my father. I do hope that my testimony helps to identify my father’s killer.

‘About three years ago my father suffered from a stroke and went, in an instant, from an active, intense man to an invalid confined to a bath chair. It was a devastating blow and although he gradually made a partial recovery he was no longer healthy. His doctor was of the opinion that it was the stresses of managing the family’s business interests that had led to his collapse and told my father that he must retire.

‘The family business was more than just work for father, in some ways it was his abiding passion being both a career and a hobby. My father was a talented chess player and viewed his international business interests as being another game of strategy. It occurred to me that father could continue to enjoy the high level direction of the business if someone else managed the simpler work. To this end I volunteered to take over the more mundane tasks.

‘Most of our business was done with our factors in the Far East and we regularly hired cargo space on the same vessels. My father also liked to speculate and every so often he would trade in items outside our usual inventory. Often these cargoes would be traded through ports where we did not have a factor and we hired local agents to handle the actual trading.

‘When we were shipping these special cargoes we always used B. Arrat and Sons as a shipping agent as they were very good at obtaining the cargo space we needed at very advantageous rates.

‘I believed that B. Arrat’s association with my family was purely one of business, although very good as the two companies had been trading together for several years to our mutual benefit. I was later to discover that Bartholomew Arrat was actually a close friend of Lord Barke, my brother-in-law. It was my misunderstanding of the relationship between these two men that has led, I believe, to my current unfortunate predicament.

‘During the first few months of my running the business I was extremely gratified to receive a lot of help and advice from Mr Arrat who would meet with me regularly to explain how the business worked.

‘I have inherited my father’s love of games like chess and soon began to realise that trading is the best game of all. I was, I knew, only a novice and would have to study diligently before I could really repay my father’s trust. In order to broaden my knowledge I began frequenting the places used by other merchants and listening to their comments and general conversation.

‘I was very fortunate to meet a young man of almost my own age called Ian O’Brien. We soon became fast friends and would often meet in the evenings for supper and a few drinks. 

‘Those first two and a half years were the best of my life. I had matured from a moneyed and rather aimless youth into a man of purpose with a highly enjoyable occupation. I tried several small ventures of my own and had received my father’s whole hearted praise when my instincts had proved to be correct. It was into this happy existence that the worm of doubt crawled.

‘I was looking over the accounts one afternoon when I noticed a worrying pattern. Every trading company expects to encounter some bad luck and we insure ourselves against ship wreck and other calamities. A certain amount of damage, caused by bad weather and clumsy handling we just write off as it is almost impossible to insure against minor mishaps. The interesting thing was that our regular cargoes, which go to ports where we employ a factor, were suffering much the same levels of loss as they had for the last decade or so. The special ventures which B. Arrat and Sons handled, however, showed a much higher wastage with sometimes as much as half the cargo being affected.

‘I started paying more attention to that aspect of the business and after a few more months started to become convinced that a fraud was being perpetuated on my family.  In the end I took my figures and suspicions to Mr O’Brien and asked his opinion.  I half wanted to be told that I was imagining things but there was no such comfort. My friend agreed with me and pointed out several other features of the business that I had missed.

‘O’Brien suggested that I took the evidence to my father and when I had satisfied him about the fraud transferred our business from B. Arrat to another agency. He suggested that we should use Connors and I had some initial discussions with this firm.

‘In mid-August I went to see my father and presented the facts to him. Naturally he was shocked and refused initially to agree with my findings, putting them down to a product of my inexperience.  However, when I was able to show that the increased pattern of losses started soon after his stroke and only affected the special ventures, he decided that he would have Sir William Barke look over the figures.

‘Imagine my chagrin when my father, making one of his rare trips to the city, came into my office and rather than complimenting me for my astuteness accused me of attempting to defraud the family. To my great shock I learnt that Sir William had told him that not only was my interpretation of the figures wrong but I was deliberately trying to find a reason for dropping B. Arrat and using a broker of my choice.

‘With righteous indignation I asked my father why I would do something so devious only to be told that I had apparently been offered a bribe, money which, my father said, I needed to pay off non-existent gambling debts. As you can imagine a lot of things were said that reflect no honour on either of us. I came close to leaving the office in a rage but realised that if I did I would be leaving my father to the mercy of my brother in law, who I was convinced was a part of the conspiracy.

‘I was ordered to always use Arrat’s and had to submit to Sir William occasionally checking-up on my decisions. I accepted that I was powerless so I swallowed my pride and decided to wait for an opportunity to prove that I was right.

‘They were trying weeks but gradually Sir William seemed to accept that I had been cowed and I only had to suffer very obvious and demeaning remarks from Arrat. It was not until late October that I acted openly and thus set in train the tragic events that bring me here.

‘I had gone down to the docks to check a very special cargo that my father was sending to Ceylon which B. Arrat’s had booked onto a vessel called the
Gordon and Prudence
which was, in my opinion, so very badly maintained as to be hardly seaworthy.

‘I took my concerns about the ship to my friend O’Brien and asked him for his advice. He told me to go back to my office and wait while he made some inquiries. It was about
nine o’clock at night when he came to see me and I could tell at a glance that the news was bad.

‘To cut the matter short it appeared that the
Gordon and Prudence
was due to sail on the morning tide with only half the crew that she needed for the long voyage to Ceylon. O’Brian had discovered that the owners had increased the insurance cover on both the ship and the cargo. The conclusion was obvious; the ship was going to be lost at sea, a victim of barratry.

‘I was trying to decide how I could possibly persuade my father that my suspicions were correct in time to save the venture. O’Brien told me that the time had come for action and if I needed them he had a dozen good men waiting in a dockside tavern and spare cargo space on his family’s ship, the
Ranee of Bengal
, which was due to sail early the following day.’

The Honourable Sebastian paused for a moment in his narrative and my master offered him a fresh cup of tea. Our prisoner accepted it gratefully and after a few sips continued with his narrative.

‘I will not deny, Inspector, that I enjoyed that night. We surged aboard the
Gordon and Prudence
and defying Captain Brown, the master, removed my father’s cargo, all the time listening firstly to the captain’s threats and then those of Bartholomew Arrat who came running along the dock as fast as his fat legs could carry him. I knew that there was going to be trouble as a result of that night’s work but I knew that I was acting correctly.

‘There was something very satisfying about watching the cargo being loaded onto the
Ranee
and then seeing the ship warping away from the dock. I understood the excitement that sailors must feel when seizing a prize from the enemy.

‘I wrote a long account of my actions and posted it to my father and waited for him either to come up to
London or for a summons to go and see him. I knew that he would be quite annoyed but thought I could prove my good intentions, especially as the cargo space on the
Ranee of Bengal
was costing us significantly less than that on the
Gordon and Prudence
. You can imagine my feelings when I received a letter from the family solicitor that stated bluntly that I had been dismissed from my position, disinherited by my father and banned from the family estate.

‘The following morning I caught the train home and spent the journey reviewing the facts. I felt that I could prove that I had acted in a reasonable manner and I knew that although my father was sometimes a choleric old gentleman he was fundamentally a fair man.  I carefully rehearsed my opening statements knowing that I had to strike the right note.