Inspector French’s Greatest Case

But if on a day of cheerful sunshine the outlook is thus melancholy, it was vastly more so at ten o’clock on a certain dreary evening in mid-November. A watery moon, only partially visible through a damp mist, lit up pallidly the squalid, shuttered fronts of the houses. The air was cold and raw, and the pavements showed dark from a fine rain which had fallen some time earlier, but which had now ceased. Few were abroad, and no one whose business permitted it remained out of doors.

Huckley Street, one of the narrowest and least inviting in the district, was, indeed, deserted save for a single figure. Though the higher and more ethical side of civilisation was not obtrusive, it was by no means absent. The figure represented Law and Order, in short, it was that of a policeman on his beat.

Constable James Alcorn moved slowly forward, glancing mechanically but with practised eye over the shuttered windows of the shops and the closed doors of the offices and warehouses in his purview. He was not imaginative, the constable, or he would have rebelled even more strongly than he did against the weariness and monotony of his job. A dog’s life, this of night patrol in the City, he thought, as he stopped at a cross roads, and looked down each one in turn of the four dingy and deserted lanes which radiated from the intersection. How deadly depressing it all was!

Scarcely had the camera been put away, when the proceedings were interrupted by a fresh arrival. Hurried steps were heard ascending the stairs, and a tall, thin, extremely well-dressed old gentleman entered the room. Though evidently on the wrong side of sixty, he was still a handsome man, with strong, well-formed features, white hair, and a good carriage. Under normal circumstances he would have presented a dignified and kindly appearance, but now his face was drawn into an expression of horror and distress, and his hasty movements also betokened his anxiety. On seeing so many strangers, he hesitated. The Inspector stepped forward.

“Mr. Duke, sir? I am Inspector French of the Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard. I very much regret to confirm the news which you have already heard, that your head clerk, Mr. Gething, has been murdered, and I fear also that your safe may have been burgled.”

It was evident that the old gentleman was experiencing strong emotion, but he controlled it and spoke quietly enough.

“This is terrible news, Inspector. I can hardly believe that poor old Gething is gone. I came at once when I heard. Tell me the details. Where did it happen?”

French pointed to the open door.

“In here, sir, in your private office. Everything is still exactly as it was found.”

Mr. Duke moved forward, then on seeing the body, stopped and gave a low cry of horror.

“I carried out the instructions in the letter,” Vanderkemp resumed. “The change of hours necessitated my leaving Amsterdam by the night train on the 24th, and I spent the following day at my hotel in London, and in doing a matinee. At 8:30, with my luggage, I reached Hatton Garden. I found the outer office was in darkness, but a light shone out of the doorway of the inner office. Mr. Gething was there alone. He told me to come in and shut the door, and I did so, and sat down in the clients’ armchair. Mr. Gething was seated at Mr. Duke’s desk, which was open.”

“Was the safe open?”

“No, nor was it opened while I was there. Mr. Gething told me that Mr. Duke had intended to be present to give me my instructions in person, but at the last moment he had been prevented coming down, and that he had asked him, Mr. Gething, to do it instead. It seemed that Mr. Duke had got information from a confidential agent at Constantinople that a member of the old Russian aristocracy had escaped with his family jewels from the clutches of the Bolsheviks, and that he now wished to dispose of the whole collection for what it would bring. He was at one time Duke Sergius of one of the Ural provinces⁠—I have the name in my book upstairs⁠—but was now passing himself off as a Pole under the name of Francisko Loth.

“I did not care to give details over the phone,” Mr. Williams explained. “You can never tell who overhears you. I once heard a girl declining what was evidently a proposal of marriage. The circumstances in this case are very simple. About six weeks ago a lady, giving her name as Mrs. Chauncey S. Root, and evidently an American, called and asked if she could see one of the principals of my firm. She was shown in to me, and she explained that she was the wife of a Mr. Chauncey S. Root, a rich steel manufacturer of Pittsburg. She had just crossed by the Olympic for a holiday in Europe, reaching London on the previous evening. She said a series of misfortunes had brought her into a somewhat awkward predicament, and she wondered if I could do anything to assist her. In the first place she had been foolish enough to get into a gambling set on the way over, and had lost, as she expressed it, ‘the hell of a lot of money.’ She spoke in a very racy and American way, but she gave me the impression of being thoroughly competent and efficient. Her losses ran into several hundred pounds⁠—she did not tell me the exact amount⁠—but all her ready money was gone and in addition she had given several I.O.U.s. This, however, she would not have thought twice about, as she had letters of credit for many times the amount, had it not been that a further calamity befell her in Southampton.

It was just her way. He therefore waited more or less hopefully, and when after a few minutes she began to question him, his hopes were strengthened.

“You say that Mrs. Root and those steamer people thought the woman was English?”

“That’s so.”

“There were quite a lot of them thought she was English?”

“Why, yes,” French agreed. “There was Mrs. Root and the doctor and the purser and her dinner steward and at least four stewardesses. They were all quite satisfied. And the other passengers and attendants must have been satisfied too, or the thing would have been talked about. But I don’t see exactly what you’re getting at.”

Mrs. French was not to be turned aside from her catechism.

“Well, do you think she was English?” she persisted.

French hesitated. Did he? He really was not sure. The evidence seemed strong, and yet it was just as strong, or stronger, for her being an American. Mr. Williams, for example, was⁠—

“You don’t know,” Mrs. French broke in. “Well, now, see here. Mr. Williams said she was American?”

“That’s it,” her husband rejoined. “He said⁠—”

“And that bank manager and his clerk, they thought she was American?”

“Yes, but⁠—”

“And the shops she bought and sold the jewellery at, and the Savoy, and the Southampton police, they all thought she was American?”

“Yes, but we don’t⁠—”

“Well, that ought surely to give you something.”

“That they were sisters? I thought of that, but the handwriting shows that they weren’t.”

“Of course I don’t mean sisters. Think again.”

French sat up sharply.

“What do you mean, Emily? I don’t follow what you’re after.”