The Loss of the Jane Vosper (30 page)

The easiest way to go would, of course, be by air or sea. The journey across Europe was long and tiring. But if the visit were to be kept from the English police, overland would be the way chosen, because of its comparative secrecy. French thought that his enquiries should be first about direct sea. Air could be taken next, and rail if both these failed.

He rang up Lloyd’s, asking for a list of all steamers which had left for Russian ports during the period in question. There were twenty-seven, of which four had sailed from London. Of the latter, two were Russian and two British. French decided to try the Russian first.

But by sea he drew a blank. The most careful enquiries failed to reveal any trace of Cruttenden’s journey. Next he tried air. He put several men on the job, but without success. If the man had gone, he had done so by the ordinary rail and cross-Channel steamer route.

For a time he considered applying to the Soviet police, then he thought he would postpone this enquiry until he had something further to go on. A more immediate matter, he considered, was the safe in the Pinner house. He would have that opened and go through the contents before deciding on his next step.

Accordingly next morning, with Carter and a couple of experts armed with drills, an oxy-acetylene plant and other strange tools, he went out once again to Holywell Crescent. There a period of intensive activity ensued, resulting in the door of the safe swinging open. French pounced on the contents like a terrier on a rat.

A glance assured him that the neatly-stacked papers were indeed treasure trove. Quite apart from the sinking of the
Jane
Vosper
and the murder of John Sutton, to have obtained these papers alone would have been well worth all the labour he had put into the case.

His suspicions had been correct. Cruttenden was a systematic blackmailer. There was enough information here to get him a life sentence. French almost gasped as he saw some of the names on the man’s sinister list.

This was extraordinarily satisfactory. Even if the ship and the murder part of the affair should not work out so well as he hoped, this discovery was still a personal triumph for himself. Blackmailers were a pest whom the authorities were naturally anxious to exterminate, and this case would undoubtedly prove to be one of the most important dealt with for many years.

But the discovery would help on the
Jane
Vosper
and Sutton affairs also. Cruttenden was now an outlaw, a criminal to be hunted down and arrested at sight. The blackmailing charge would give all the opportunity which was required to investigate the man’s life. Now the bank manager could be made to disclose his books. And the same would apply to everyone with whom Cruttenden had had dealings.

Also enquiries might now be put through to Moscow. In fact, in every way the investigation had taken a most happy turn.

After reporting his discovery to Sir Mortimer, French drafted his Russian message.

But though French was delighted with his progress, he remained profoundly troubled by his inability to find a motive for Cruttenden in the
Jane
Vosper
case. What the man hoped to make out of it he could not imagine. His bank account showed that so far he had not done so, or, if he had, he was holding the money elsewhere. Obviously he was acting for someone else. But for whom? French could think only of the Southern Ocean Steam Navigation Company, but he simply could not see a company of the standing of this one putting themselves in the power of a man like Cruttenden. But then, again, if they had not done so, why had Cruttenden acted?

French was walking along the corridors at New Scotland Yard on his way to his room while these thoughts were passing through his mind. Suddenly, to the astonishment of a sergeant who was following him, he stopped dead in his tracks, an expression of incredulous amazement printed on his features.

The timber! Was it possible that in the timber lay the explanation of the whole confounded puzzle?

Staggered for a moment by the immensity of the vista this idea opened up, his body presently began to function once more and he resumed his walk to his room. There, throwing himself into his chair, he began to consider the matter with some degree of coherence.

The timber! What was the timber for? He had at first supposed it was for making forms for reinforced concrete work, then he had believed it was for shoring a tunnel, then once again he had thought of concrete forms. But was it for any of these things? No, it was for something quite different! And the concrete! Yes, he saw what that was for now!

What a fool he had been! How blind, how utterly blind! There for all these days, these weeks, almost, the clue to the affair had been in his hands, and he had failed to see it! Ah, yes, the timber was the crucial feature. For the first time he obtained a coherent view of what had unquestionably been done.

Like a man in a dream he picked up his notebook and turned over the leaves till he came to certain measurements. Then he looked in another place and found his note of the quantity of the timber which had been purchased. Lastly he began to calculate.

Mathematics was not French’s long suit, and he had to make three shots before he solved his problem. But when he did obtain the answer it was worth all his trouble.

Yes, the amount of timber ordered was just what would have been required for the job. It worked in so well that all doubt as to the correctness of his new theory vanished. At last he was down on bedrock fact! He knew!

At once the theory began to offer fresh lines of investigation. If Cruttenden and his friend who had helped with the carting were both skilful carpenters and had worked from morning to night all the time they had had the shed, they could never have done all the work which was required. They must have had help.

Then French remembered that workmen had been spoken of by various witnesses. These workmen! French saw that he had overlooked them in a disgraceful way. Any one of them could at any time have handed him the solution of his puzzle.

For the moment the problem of finding Cruttenden receded into the background and that of finding the tradesmen took its place. This at least should offer no serious difficulty. Enquiries at the neighbouring labour exchanges as to carpenters or joiners engaged by Rice Bros of Redliff Lane should obtain the required information.

To ring up the labour exchanges of the Redliff Lane district was a matter of a few minutes only. The first six calls produced no result, but at the seventh he received the information he wanted.

At this exchange, it seemed, Mr Rice of Rice Bros of the address mentioned, had called in person and had asked for six joiners for two or three weeks to do a special job. The men had been supplied. As soon as they had finished Mr Rice had taken six others, three concrete placers and three labourers. These he had kept about ten days. There had been nothing in any way out of the ordinary about the transaction.

The next step was automatic. French asked for a list of the names and addresses of the twelve men.

‘Any of them working now?’ he went on.

It appeared that eight were working, but two joiners and a concrete placer and his labourer were out of a job. These latter French determined to interview.

The first man he called on was at home. He was a joiner called Blenkinsop, and he was only too willing to tell all he knew about Cruttenden, the shed, and indeed any other subject to which French would listen. French did listen and with sympathy, realizing that the garrulousness came only from the desperate boredom of unemployment.

Apart from this, however, French felt that what he presently heard had been well worth waiting for. For the first essential question, ‘What was the job he set you to do?’ brought complete confirmation of French’s new theory of the crime, and showed him that at last definitely he was on the right track.

‘We was making boxes, sir,’ the joiner answered to this fundamental question. ‘There was a box there, a crate or case, you might call it reely, and we ’ad to make a lot of others the same.’

‘How many others?’ French went on, striving manfully to hide his delight.

‘I don’t know for sure, but I did ’ear there was three ’undred and forty-nine.’

It was the number French had in his mind. Three hundred and forty-nine copies and one original made three hundred and fifty. Three and fifty cases! French rubbed his hands. This was something like! At last he was getting his proof! He asked another question, knowing the answer he would receive.

‘’Ow big? Why, just four foot by two by two. Outside measurements.’

Yes, that was the size. It was 350 4 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet cases that the Weaver Bannister Engineering Company of Watford had filled with petrol sets and sent to the
Jane
Vosper
. 350 cases!

Leaving the joiner, to the latter’s evident disappointment, French went on to the address of the concrete placer. But this man, unfortunately, was out. However, at his next call, he had better luck. The last man’s labourer was sitting disconsolately over the fire, reading a two-day-old newspaper.

This man was also glad to see French. As soon as he realized that the call did not herald unpleasant consequences for himself, he showed enthusiasm. He had certainly worked for ten days for Rice Bros, and he would be glad to tell the chief-inspector anything he wanted to know about the job.

It was, as French had foreseen, the filling of wooden boxes with a weak mix of concrete – or, rather, the partial filling of them, for the concrete did not come up to the lid. The mix was one in twenty, good enough for the purpose, but not strong enough to make beams or other articles from which the timber would be stripped.

‘How many did you fill?’ French went on, profoundly satisfied with what he was hearing.

Like his colleague the joiner, this man did not know for sure. But he also had heard. Three hundred and forty-six, he had heard Mr Rice say.

Three hundred and forty-six? For a moment French was dashed. He had been expecting to hear three hundred and fifty. Then he could have kicked himself. Of course, it must have been three hundred and forty-six! Four would be filled by Cruttenden and his friend in secret. The labourers would scarcely be trusted with the placing of gelignite.

After the evidence of these workmen no doubt as to the main outline of the plot could remain. In the Redliff Lane shed Rice and his partner had prepared 350 cases, doubtless identical with those of the Weaver Bannister Company. They had filled them with concrete until they contained just the weight of the petrol-electric set. In four of them they had buried explosives with some means of detonating them. All these dummy cases had gone aboard the
Jane Vosper
. The
gelignite had exploded and the ship had sunk, so that the dummy cases should go to the bottom and the trick should remain undiscovered.

French wondered that Cruttenden should have dared to employ workmen on such a job. The least hint from one of them after the ship sank would have given away the whole affair.

‘What were these boxes of concrete for?’ he asked the labourer with an air of intelligent interest.

‘For a sea protection round a new sewage outfall,’ the man answered. ‘The boys was asking that very question and Mr Rice, ’e’eard them, and that’s wot ’e said. They was to throw on the sea side of the new work, to break the waves till the concrete ’ad set ’ard. They was wanted in wooden boxes so’s they could be lifted out again with a crane and used over and over again as the outfall was pushed forward.’

So that was it! Here was exhibited the same thought as was to be found elsewhere in this extraordinary case. An old but effective scheme had been adopted to disarm suspicion. As the real explanation of the work could not be given, another was dished up instead. Provided it was plausible, it would serve its purpose. It had indeed served its purpose. To these workmen it seemed so complete that it robbed the subject of any further interest.

And how plausible it was! How more than plausible! Darned good, French thought. Cubical blocks of concrete were normally used to protect sea works from wave damage. It was entirely reasonable that setting concrete should have a temporary cover of this kind, and it was equal common sense that the same blocks should be used several times over as new work was placed and as the old hardened. And if so much be granted, the retaining of the timber covering followed almost as a matter of course. If it were removed, the blocks might go to pieces. No wonder the men were satisfied!

French was more than delighted with his progress. With what he had now learned, the clearing up of the few points which were still obscure would be a matter of only a very short time.

He returned to the Yard to work out his plans for the next day.

If 350 dummy cases were sent on board the
Jane
Vosper
,
as now seemed certain, two fundamental questions stood out among the dozens which immediately arose. These were, first: How had the substitution of the dummy for the genuine cases been made? And second: What had been done with the genuine ones? There was a third, of course: Why had the substitution been made at all? But French thought he knew the answer to this.

However, the first thing to do was to answer the two main questions, and to this French now set himself. First, how had the substitution been made?

He turned up his notes on the tracing of the cases from the Weaver Bannister works to the ship. The sets had been packed in the sheds of the Watford works and had there been loaded into railway wagons. They had been run from the works siding to the goods depot at Haydon Square by LMS goods train. From the goods depot to the wharf they had been carted by Messrs Waterer & Reade, and the loading had been done under the supervision of the ship’s own first officer.

The whole journey certainly seemed straightforward and in order, and when French had gone into it he had been satisfied that nothing crooked had taken place. Now it appeared he had been wrong. At some point the substitution had been made. At what point?

About this there could be but little doubt. On the face of it nothing could have been done before the cases left the works, or during the journey to Haydon Square. Nor again after they reached the wharf. Obviously the weak link was that of the cartage between the goods depot and the docks.