Crime at Guildford Read online

  INSPECTOR FRENCH AND THE CRIME AT GUILDFORD

  Freeman Wills Crofts

  Copyright

  Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain for the Crime Club

  by Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1935

  Copyright © Estate of Freeman Wills Crofts 1935

  Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008393243

  Ebook Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008393250

  Version: 2020-07-16

  Dedication

  TO

  DR J. MORRIS WALKER

  In cordial acknowledgment of an idea suggested by him and developed in this book.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. The Stage is Set

  2. Enter Death

  3. Enter Crime

  4. Enter the Yard

  5. Enter Routine

  6. Enter the Borough Force

  7. A Change of Scene

  8. Enter Theory

  9. Enter Chemical Analysis

  10. Enter Medical Jurisprudence

  11. Enter Two Alibis

  12. Enter Intrigue

  13. Enter a Rope

  14. Enter a Yellow Box

  15. Enter the Unknown

  16. Enter a Passport

  17. Enter a Picture

  18. Enter Light

  19. Enter a Demonstration

  20. Exit Sloley

  21. Exeunt

  Footnotes

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  Also in this series

  About the Publisher

  1

  The Stage is Set

  Sir Ralph Osenden, of Brookhurst Lodge, Ryde, Isle of Wight, stepped briskly from the train at Waterloo Station and turned towards the nearest cab rank.

  He was a dapper little man in the late fifties, spruce in appearance, natty in dress, and precise, if not pedantic, in manner. His bow-tie was mathematically symmetrical, his spats, of a dazzling whiteness, fitted as if they were a part of himself, and the umbrella he carried hooked to his left forearm was rolled smooth as a steel tube.

  Sir Ralph did not now often honour Town with his presence. He had been a worker all his life, and having amassed a moderate fortune, had decided to sell his business and go in for certain artistic hobbies in which his soul delighted.

  He had not, however, given up all association with the City. He still retained his directorship of certain companies, and on their boards he proved himself a shrewd and helpful adviser. He was looked up to by those in the know and out of it, and his name stood a synonym for success, straight dealing and stability.

  Today he had come up to attend a regular though informal meeting of certain of the directors of Nornes Limited, a large firm of working jewellers which did business all over the world. It was by far the biggest firm with which he was connected, and had been one of the most prosperous. The depression, however, had hit it hard, and in spite of all that he and his fellow directors could do, profits had continued to shrink till now an adverse balance threatened. It was, indeed, to consider its very serious position that the present meeting had been called.

  The Company’s offices were situated on the upper two floors of a block of buildings in Ronder Lane, a cul-de-sac near the Aldwych end of Kingsway. Sir Ralph paid off his taxi, and crossing the marble entrance hall, was wafted upwards by one of the building’s six lifts. Reaching the eighth floor, he passed along a corridor, knocked at a door marked ‘Private’, pushed it open, and entered the room.

  A pretty girl seated before a typewriter smiled up at him.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Barber,’ said Sir Ralph. ‘Is Mr Norne disengaged?’

  ‘I think so, Sir Ralph. I’ll see.’

  She jumped up, went to a second door, and put her head into the adjoining room. Then she threw the door open. ‘Will you please go in?’

  Sir Ralph passed through into a larger and more ornately furnished office. A man sitting at the big table desk in the centre nodded.

  ‘Glad you were able to come, Osenden,’ he said. ‘Sloley and Ricardo are here. They’ll be in directly.’

  Sir Ralph carefully placed his hat and umbrella on a side table. ‘I suppose it’s still the same question, Norne?’ he asked as he moved to a chair.

  Claude Willington Norne was the managing-director of the firm and chairman of the board. He was a tall, athletic-looking man with features set in a hawklike mould, graying hair brushed back from his forehead, a brown skin due to years passed in the East, and the lightest of blue eyes. He was a man of great ability and force of character. In the City his keenness and efficiency were universally admired, though faith in his absolute straightness under all circumstances was not so strongly marked. Now he leant back in his chair.

  ‘Still the same,’ he answered dryly: ‘merely what we’re going to recommend at the next board. I think we should agree on our policy—if we can.’

  ‘We’ve got a fortnight to make up our minds.’

  ‘I know we have, but I’d rather settle it now than wait till the last moment.’

  ‘Does Sloley still want to borrow?’

  ‘So far as I know. He’s said nothing more to me.’

  Sir Ralph’s reply was interrupted by the entrance of two other men. Both were of middle-age and gave the impression of physical and mental fitness, though one was tall and fair and the other small and dark. These were two more of the directors, the Reginald Sloley and Anthony Ricardo who had been mentioned. They also were men of ability and force of character. These four dominated the policy of the Company. When difficult or controversial matters were coming before the board they invariably held a preliminary meeting to decide their policy. The present was one of these. If all four were agreed on a line of action, it seldom failed to go through.

  The newcomers nodded to Sir Ralph. ‘Thought you were going to Paris, Osenden?’ Ricardo remarked. Sloley flung himself into an armchair and lit a cigarette.

  ‘I’m going tomorrow, but only for a week. I’m going to fly—my first experience.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think of going any other way,’ Sloley remarked. ‘There’s no comparison.’ He turned to Norne. ‘Go ahead, Norne, like a good chap, will you? I’m going down to Brighton and I want to start as soon as may be.’

  Norne pushed some papers from before him, replaced them with a pencil and pad, and then leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Today,’ he began, ‘we have really only one question before us. I think all of you know as much about it as I do. This is Wednesday, and on this day fortnight we have our board. At that board a decision vital to our
entire future must be taken. I think we ought to be agreed as to our line of action. I may say, incidentally, that I arranged this meeting a week earlier than usual on account of Osenden going away.’

  ‘You say we know as much about the matter as you do,’ Ricardo interrupted, ‘and you may be right. At the same time, the whole question’s so important that I for one would like you to go over the facts once more, just to be quite satisfied I’ve got them all correct.’

  Sir Ralph nodded approval. ‘Yes, Norne,’ he urged, ‘I think that would be wise. There may be some small point overlooked by one of us, which would affect our judgment.’

  Norne glanced at Sloley, who also nodded. ‘Well,’ he agreed, ‘I can run over the facts easily enough. Unhappily, they’re only too simple. It’s when we come to consider the conclusions that we should draw from them that the difficulties begin to arise.’ He opened a drawer, took out a box of cigars, helped himself, and pushed the box towards the others. Then he went on.

  ‘The main fact is, as we all know, that owing to the depression and one thing and another which I needn’t mention again, our business has been going steadily down for over four years. I’ll not go into the figures, because you have them on the sheets before you. I need only say that from the normal twenty to twenty-five per cent dividends which we were accustomed to in prosperous times, our returns have dropped gradually until last year we were thankful to get three per cent. This year there will be no dividend at all, and if things go on as they’re doing, we shall end up with a pretty considerable adverse balance.’

  ‘Is there no improvement at all?’ Sloley put in. ‘No response to the general improvement in trade?’

  ‘There is,’ Norne answered, ‘so far as this country is concerned—a slight improvement. But as you know, Sloley, our foreign business is larger than our home, and abroad there’s very little improvement showing so far.’

  ‘Unemployment has gone down abroad, same as here,’ Sloley persisted.

  ‘The probable degree of prosperity to be expected at home and abroad is naturally one of the factors upon which we shall base our judgment,’ Norne agreed smoothly. ‘If we knew that we should have less difficulty in coming to a decision.’

  ‘Suppose you go ahead with your statement, Norne,’ Osenden suggested.

  ‘With regard to our present liabilities, as you can see from your sheets, we owe something like three-quarters of a million, of which, of course, the largest item is for stones. Then for the future there is the running of this office and the workshops, fresh purchases of stones, overhead, bad debts, and so on. I needn’t go into it?’

  ‘No,’ Osenden remarked. ‘We have all that before us.’

  ‘Of our assets the major item is our stock of stones. As you know, it’s extremely high—higher, I think, than ever before. We have in the safe there,’ he motioned with his head across the room, ‘over half a million’s worth of stuff. Then there our plant, goodwill, and so on, as you see.’

  Osenden moved uneasily. ‘Do you think we’re wise to keep all those stones in the safe?’ he asked. ‘Half a million sterling is a tidy bit of money.’

  ‘I’m not entirely happy about it,’ Norne admitted, ‘but we must have the stuff where it can be got at. The workshops are always wanting special stones. Besides, it’s a pity not to take the good stuff that’s coming cheap on the market.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Osenden.

  ‘Well, that’s a rough summary of things, and we may now turn to the object of our meeting. That is, quite briefly, whether the circumstances demand any special action, and if so, what?’

  ‘Just let me be sure of one point first,’ Ricardo interrupted. ‘We are now definitely solvent?’

  ‘At the present moment absolutely. It’s the future we’re concerned about.’

  ‘Right. I understand.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ continued Norne, ‘that we have a choice of four alternatives. The first is to carry on as we’re going.’

  ‘Which you think will lead us to bankruptcy?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Sloley moved impatiently. ‘You needn’t waste time over that. We’re all agreed we must do something.’

  Glancing at the other two men, Norne resumed:

  ‘The second is to shut down: to wind up the business. As you know, we’ve got a first-rate offer for our stock of stones. We’ll certainly never get a better. But that only stands open for a fortnight. If we closed with it, we should come out all square.’

  ‘But leaving nothing for ourselves and our staff?’

  ‘Practically nothing.’

  Osenden looked round. ‘We’ll have to keep that offer in our minds, of course, but I think we might leave it to the last. If we’re able to hang on till the depression’s over, I think we’ll get our dividends again.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Ricardo, ‘but, as you say, we mustn’t overlook the offer. I’d rather come out of the thing square now, even without a profit, than have to go into liquidation later.’

  ‘We’ll not go into liquidation,’ Sloley exclaimed roughly. ‘Go on to something practical, Norne.’

  ‘The other proposals are that we should either go into voluntary liquidation and reconstruct, or that we should issue more stock and carry on.’

  ‘But,’ Ricardo objected, ‘why should we go into voluntary liquidation if we’re all square? I don’t follow you there, Norne.’

  ‘It’s unhappily very simple. Put very crudely, if we meet our liabilities, we use up all our assets to do so. That leaves us with no capital to carry on, and we can’t carry on without capital.’

  Norne paused and surveyed his companions with a saturnine expression. None of them spoke, and he presently went on.

  ‘Unhappily we are not agreed as to which of these two last policies we should advocate. Osenden appears to favour the first and Sloley the second. If I’m right, I think we should get these two to put their views forward. Will you get on with it, Osenden?’

  Sir Ralph slowly drew his cigar up to redness. Then he began to speak.

  ‘I rather look at it like this. If we go into voluntary liquidation and reconstruct, there’s not a great deal of harm done. I don’t know what we could pay, but it would probably be fifteen or sixteen shillings in the pound. That would be a nasty loss for ourselves and our shareholders, but nobody’s ruined. If we carry on, it seems to me we’re heading for a crash and we may lose everything. Personally, I’d prefer a small loss now to a larger one in a year or two.’

  Sir Ralph paused and looked round his audience. Then, with some appearance of embarrassment, he continued:

  ‘There’s another thing which I want to say—without any intention of throwing mud.’ Again he glanced round with something of apology in his manner. ‘If we don’t go into liquidation and have a reconstruction, we must, of course, appeal to the public for more money—your last alternative, Norne. Now, if we go to the public for more money we can’t show them those figures which you, Norne, have just given us. We should therefore have to, shall I say, “select” the figures we publish. Now, I question the wisdom of that. In fact, it would in my judgment be getting perilously near the fraudulent balance-sheet. Not,’ Sir Ralph smiled crookedly across at the tall director, ‘that I’m accusing Sloley of advocating fraud. I just want to put up the point of view and see how he answers it.’

  ‘Not hard to do that,’ muttered Sloley.

  ‘Well, I’m open to conviction,’ Sir Ralph went on. ‘Then there’s the other more general point of view. Even supposing we could get the cash in a perfectly correct and legal way, I don’t know that it’s the game to take a lot of money from people unless we’re pretty sure we can pay them a dividend. That’s all I have to say.’

  Norne once again glanced round the three faces.

  ‘That’s straight enough, Osenden,’ he said, ‘and all the better for it. Now, Sloley?’

  ‘Apart from the pleasant suggestion that we’re a bunch of crooks,’ answered Sloley, grinning back at Sir R
alph, ‘I suggest that none of all that touches the point at issue. If this were a question of fraud versus straight dealing, there would be no more to be said. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple. I, for one, believe that some more capital might very well see us through. Trade’s bucking up, and that’s going to help us. I suggest that if we could carry on long enough—as we could if we issued more stock—things would right themselves.’

  Sloley paused to draw up his cigar.

  ‘If you want to consider the morality argument, here it is. Osenden wants to destroy part of our shareholders’ capital—20 or 30 or 40 per cent, or whatever the figure may be—without hope of return: for what? To save himself and us from the results of our bad management. I propose to offer them the chance of getting all square.’

  ‘Then you’re definitely for the issue of more stock?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And how would you answer Osenden’s argument of the fraudulent balance-sheet?’

  ‘It doesn’t arise. The whole thing depends on what we put down as estimated profits. I think the improvement in trade would justify us in putting out an attractive prospectus.’

  ‘And I don’t,’ Osenden put in. ‘That’s the difference between us in a nutshell.’

  Norne turned to Ricardo. ‘Well, Ricardo?’ he questioned.

  The small dark director moved uneasily.

  ‘Personally, I feel the question of a voluntary liquidation in connection with our Company is so horrible that I should be against it unless everything else had proved impossible. What do you say yourself, Norne? If we had some more capital, should we pull through?’

  Norne did not answer at once, and when he spoke it was deliberately, as if he was weighing every word. The others listened as to an oracle.

  ‘That really is what we’re here to discuss. Personally, I sympathise a lot with what both of you two say. I agree with Osenden—and I think we all agree—that unless we believe that the raising of fresh capital will see us out of our difficulties, we shouldn’t try to raise it. I agree with Sloley—and again I feel sure we all agree—that if we think raising the capital would save the Company, then we shouldn’t hesitate. The point on which we differ—whether or not extra capital would save us—is very difficult to decide. My own personal view is that if things continue as they are, we’d only be getting deeper into it. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, under present conditions we haven’t a dog’s chance. On the other hand, we all know that Sloley’s right when he says it depends on trade. If there was a boom we might get out of it all right.’