The Loss of the Jane Vosper Read online

  French delivered his usual opening address and asked for all details possible about Sutton and about the transit of the cases.

  Keene seemed slightly bored, but answered without objection, though sparing his words. He had heard of Sutton, but had not met him. The detective had rung him up on the Wednesday – the day he disappeared, French noted – asking could he see him that afternoon if he were to call. Keene had enquired at what hour, and Sutton answered 4.30, if that would suit. It had suited Keene, and he had noted the engagement. But Sutton had not turned up, nor had he sent any message of apology or explanation.

  ‘At what hour did he telephone?’ French enquired.

  ‘Let’s see,’ the manager hesitated. ‘Some time about the middle of the morning. About eleven, I think.’

  French took a note to try to trace the sending of that call and asked Keene to proceed.

  ‘That’s all I know about Sutton,’ he said. ‘You also want to know about our handling of the Weaver Bannister cases? I can tell you that in a few words.

  ‘For some time we have been anxious to develop our business, and I have been paying personal calls on likely firms to try to obtain their custom. Messrs Weaver Bannister was one of these firms. I called there about a month ago, and they promised us a trial order. For some time they made no move, then we received a request for a quotation for conveying these 350 cases from the LMS depot at Haydon Square to the Southern Ocean boat Jane Vosper in the London Docks.

  ‘We knew we should be up against the cartage departments of both the railway and the steamer companies, so we quoted a very low rate. In fact, I may say it didn’t pay us. But we got the order.

  ‘In due course we received the advice from Haydon Square that the cases were beginning to come in, and I arranged for two of our 5-ton lorries to start the job immediately. They worked -’ He broke off and pressed a button on his desk. ‘I’m not sure how long it took them, but I’ll get the sheets.’

  A clerk brought the papers and Keene passed them over.

  ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘these are the timesheets of the lorrymen in question, Joseph Grey and William Henty. They began to cart on Saturday, 14th September, and continued on the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Four days they were at it. Perhaps you would like to see the correspondence and the receipts from the Southern Ocean people?’

  French hesitated. He would like to see the documents, but he could not claim that it was essential to his case. ‘I should, if convenient,’ he said.

  ‘It’s convenient enough, though I don’t know that I understand how it’s going to help you to find Sutton,’ Keene responded. ‘However, that is your affair.’

  He rang for a file and passed it across. All the papers he had referred to were there, the original request for a quotation, the quotation itself, its acceptance, a note from Weaver Bannister saying that loading of the cases would begin on the Friday, a note from the goods depot that they were beginning to come in, the number of cases carried by each carter on each load, and the steamer people’s receipts for these. It was all very complete and satisfying.

  French indeed was strongly tempted to accept this mass of evidence without further enquiry as covering the carting transaction. But training, habit and experience all urged him to be thorough, not to accept any evidence without first obtaining all the checks upon it that were possible.

  Accordingly, when he had extracted what he wanted from the papers he asked if he could complete his job by a word with the two carters.

  ‘You can with one of them,’ Keene answered, ‘if you like to wait till he comes in. The other I’m afraid has left, and I don’t know that I can give you his address. They were temporary men, those two, taken on to cover a sudden rush of work. Grey has left, as I said, and Henty will be leaving in a day or two, as the rush is now over.’

  Once more Keene rang for his long-suffering clerk. ‘Take these gentlemen to the yard,’ he directed, ‘and find Henty. They wish to speak to him. Also look up and see if you can find Grey’s address – you know, the lorryman who left recently.’ He turned to French. ‘If you go with Mr Paine, he’ll do what he can for you.’

  French expressed his thanks and he and Carter followed the clerk. The latter asked them to wait at the entrance to the yard, vanishing instantly among the mass of vehicles.

  ‘Seems to me we’ve overshot the mark,’ French remarked as they moved out of the way of a lorry which had just turned in from the street. ‘Sutton hadn’t got as far as this in his enquiry.’

  ‘He’s heard something,’ Carter returned. ‘Something about the Southern Ocean, I should say. He’s given away what he’s heard to the wrong parties, and so-’ Carter made a significant gesture.

  ‘I dare say you’re right,’ French admitted. ‘All this part of the business looks correct to me. However, I’m going to make certain. I’m not going to leave a loophole for error.’

  ‘It’s the best way, sir; then you’re sure.’

  French glanced suspiciously at his sergeant, but the clerk returning at that moment, the conversation ceased.

  ‘Henty has just come in, gentlemen,’ said Paine. ‘Just this moment. Lucky for you, for if he had gone out again you mightn’t have seen him for hours. This is Henty. Would you like to come into the office?’

  French said that, for all he wanted, where they were would do very well, and thanked the clerk with a gesture of obvious dismissal. Then, turning to the lorryman, he bade him good afternoon.

  Henty was a man of ordinary qualifications. Of medium height and middle age, he was neither thin nor stout, nor remarkable looking in any way. But his jaw was firm and he looked intelligent.

  French briefly explained his business. ‘It’s simply about the carting of those cases from Haydon Square to the Jane Vosper,’ he went on. ‘You and another man were on the job?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Henty answered. ‘Grey it was. ’E’s left. Tempor’ry men, we was took on as, both of us.’

  ‘Well, tell me just what you did?’

  Henty stared uncomprehendingly. ‘There ain’t nothing to tell,’ he returned. ‘We loaded up the cases at the goods depot and ran them to the quay – and that’s the ’ole story.’

  And so indeed it seemed to be. The loading was done by the railway staff, though he and Grey had given a hand. The unloading was carried out by the stevedores, and the cases were swung right from the lorries to the hold. The whole business was absolutely normal.

  ‘Very good,’ said French. ‘That’s all right.’ He fumbled ostentatiously in his pocket. ‘I want you to come to the goods depot and to the quay with me and point out the men who helped you to load and unload, and that’ll be all.’

  Henty, his eye on French’s hand, agreed without demur. ‘I’ll go ahead,’ French went on to Carter, ‘and you see if they can turn up that address.’

  The visits were uneventful. At each place Henty pointed out the men with whom he had dealt, and they in their turn recognized Henty as one of the lorrymen who had handled the cases. French thought he had perhaps been too meticulous in requiring the visits, but, after all, if they had done no good they had done no harm, and they had made his work all the more complete.

  Left standing on the quay, French could not resist a look round before proceeding with his investigation. Though – perhaps because – he knew little about it, the sea and all connected with it was to him a source of never-failing romance. This old dock in the heart of London was, he thought, one of those links connecting this stout little country of England with the great world beyond. It was a bottleneck or clearing house, stretching out its tentacles into the factories and shops of England on the one hand, and into all the globe on the other. Or, rather, it had been, for it was now able to take few but coasting vessels. The average modern ocean-going steamer had so grown that it now berthed on the South Side in the Surrey Commercial, or farther down the river. But French stood thinking of the congested little place as it once had been. The ships which had loaded so prosaically
along these quays had a few days or weeks later been sweltering in the Red Sea or the ports of India or China, the pitch bubbling from their seams and their crews languishing in the heat or, shrouded in ice, had been meeting furious seas off the Horn, that dreaded Cape Stiff where hurricane and blizzard reign supreme. How French longed for a year, for six months, to go and explore the world! Even to be scorched or frozen! How infinitely it would be worth it!

  But dreams of the Far East or the Remote South would not help him to find Sutton or to earn his bread and butter.

  With a tiny sigh he was moving away when he heard Carter’s voice behind him: ‘They can’t trace that man Grey’s address, sir.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. The other man was OK. Let’s go round now to the Southern Ocean office. In Fenchurch Street, isn’t it?’

  Stewart Clayton was engaged when they reached the head office, but, after keeping them waiting for half an hour, he saw them.

  ‘Well, chief-inspector, back again?’ he greeted them, his tone dry. ‘What can I do for you this time?’

  French explained the point upon which he was now working, and Clayton agreed to give him all available information. But it did not amount to a great deal in the end. Clayton explained the whole affair in detail: the intimation from the Weaver Bannister people that they had a consignment of sets for South American ports with a description of sets and packing; the sending of a quotation for the freight; enquiries from the Land and Sea Insurance Company as to the steamer, etc, the stuff was going by; the arrival of the cases at the dock and their stowage; the sailing of the Jane Vosper, the receipt of the news of her foundering: everything, indeed, that French asked. As he spoke Clayton backed up his statements with the documents concerned, the various letters which had passed, the accounts, waybills, vouchers, copies of the ship’s ‘papers’, in so far as they were relevant. French could not have desired more complete information.

  But this very expansiveness, coupled with Clayton’s straightforward manner, simply added to French’s bewilderment. It was certainly very hard to believe that this man had blown up one of his firm’s ships for its insurance money, or that he was party to such a crime. And French couldn’t imagine it being done on behalf of the firm without Clayton’s knowledge and co-operation. But if he hadn’t been party to it, and if the Weaver Bannister people hadn’t, as seemed even more certain, who had? Someone had! Who was it? And, more puzzling still, what had happened to Sutton?

  By the time they had finished with Clayton it was too late to do any more that night, and the two men returned to the Yard, lost in sombre imaginings. French in particular was a good deal discouraged. He had covered practically all the ground, and he was no further on than when he started. The net result of his researches up to the present was to prove that no one could have blown up the ship, and that no one could have wanted Sutton’s life. He shook his head. Somewhere he had gone badly wrong. But where? He could not see a single unexplored avenue remaining, or single explored one in which he could have reached any other conclusion than he had.

  Nor did he find any help at the Yard. Nothing had come in. None of the enquiries which were being made all over the country had produced any result whatever. The case seemed to grow more and more hopeless.

  ‘We’ll do those docks in the morning,’ French told Carter, as he turned to write up his notes.

  Next morning it was again fine, and as the two men emerged from Mark Lane Station and looked down over Tower Hill their spirits rose in unconscious reaction to the bright sunshine. Yesterday might not have been a very successful day, but then they couldn’t possibly expect success from their first efforts. Yesterday represented little more than the start of the enquiry. It also, French reminded himself, represented a lot of good work, conscientiously carried out. Good work, he had often told his subordinates, was never lost. Now he wondered if this were true. He hoped it was.

  ‘Ever been through?’ he asked in an effort to change the subject of his thoughts, nodding his head towards the great pile of the Tower.

  Carter, it seemed, having been brought up on Harrison Ainsworth, knew the Tower well. He interested French with his talk, and French, who had not been over it since he was a boy, vaguely determined to try Ainsworth himself and pay it another visit.

  They passed round the Tower and reached the entrance to the docks. A few enquiries led them to Harkness, the foreman stevedore who had loaded the Jane Vosper. Though busy, he made no difficulty about knocking off to answer French’s questions.

  He remembered Sutton. Sutton had been at the docks asking those very questions which French was now putting. And Harkness had given him all the information he could. French, however, was more lucky. For there was now in the dock another Southern Ocean steamer, the Kate Moxon, which, though not a sister ship to the Jane Vosper, was of very similar size and build. He would take French aboard and he could see for himself just how and where the crates had been stowed.

  They crossed a plank gangway to the forward well-deck and climbed down into the hold. French was amazed at the size of the space, because from the wharf the Kate Moxon looked a small ship. Four men were at work stowing the cargo, which came down in bunches at the end of a rope from the sky above, like gigantic spiders swinging on their webs. They came down on the floor of the hold, the rope slings were unhooked, the slings from the previous bundle were hung on to the hook instead, and as the hook vanished heavenwards, the goods were moved back into the hold and stowed securely.

  ‘That’s ’ow we stowed them there cases wot was mentioned at the enquiry,’ Harkness explained. ‘All over the floor; two layers there was.’

  ‘Put close together?’ asked French, who was watching the stowage of similar boxes.

  ‘You couldn’t ’ardly get a finger between them,’ Harkness returned. ‘They was tight packed. We ’as to, you know. You don’t want your cargo shifting in a gale.’

  This was a new and interesting point, and French seized on it. Did the foreman seriously mean that the cases had been packed so tightly that explosives could not have been dropped between them? If so, what about the edges, along the ship’s side?

  It seemed they were packed touching, side to side and end to end. There would have been room for nothing larger than a dagger between them. As to the sides, they were wedged up with packing, so that the cases couldn’t move, no matter how bad the sea.

  French interviewed the men who had done the actual stowing, and their statements confirmed that of Harkness. French could not but believe that the centre of the hold had been packed tight, though he was less convinced as to the continuity of the side packing. This side packing, however, did not matter. The evidence had been that the explosions came from the centre.

  Mentally French swore. Did this mean that the explosives had been in the Weaver Bannister consignments after all? Hang it all, they couldn’t have been! He didn’t know what to think.

  However, he completed his dock enquiry with his usual thoroughness. He saw everyone he could find who, he thought, might be able to give him any information. Then he obtained the names of the various night watchmen, went to their homes, and questioned each of them. But from no one did he learn anything further. He only became more firmly convinced than ever that no unauthorized person could have approached the hold, and that owing to the numbers present, none who had a right to be there had any opportunity of secretly planting bombs.

  Filled with disappointment and exasperation, French left the docks. He had now traced the petrol sets from their manufacture up to their stowage in the Jane Vosper, and indeed until the steamer sailed, and he was absolutely convinced that everything connected with their packing, dispatch, carriage and stowage was entirely normal and in order. Quite definitely the explosives had not been in the cases. But now these enquiries at the docks seemed to show they could have been nowhere else. Confound it all! It was damnably puzzling. What ghastly oversight had he made, to lead him to such a conclusion?

  And if his progress in connection with th
e blowing up of the ship had been poor, he had made none at all in his real enquiry: the fate of John Sutton. John Sutton had disappeared into the blue: vanished into thin air. He, French, had been called in, and after several days’ work with the entire resources of the Yard behind him he had learnt nothing. Nothing! It wouldn’t do. What was he to tell Sir Mortimer Ellison when he reached the Yard? Was he to make a complete confession of failure?

  French felt badly up against it, and Carter, to whom in the depths of his extremity he turned for sympathy, had but little to offer. In a moody silence the two men reached the Yard.

  -9-

  THE SHED IN REDLIFF LANE

  Scientists and philosophers alike tell us that the darkest hour is that preceding the dawn, and in a metaphorical sense French was to experience the truth of the adage on his arrival at the Yard. Again and again he had noticed that confidence and self-satisfaction were more often than not the prelude to disaster. The converse did not in his experience obtain so frequently, but occasionally a period of depression and a sense of failure did seem to end in a real step forward.

  It was so on this occasion. Returning to the Yard discouraged and bankrupt of ideas, he found that the first reply to his questionnaire had come in. The officer in charge of the Leman Street Police Station had something to tell him about Sutton, and had sent a message asking him to ring up as soon as convenient.

  French did not delay many seconds in doing so. His mood had suddenly changed. Instead of the hopeless baffled feeling he had been experiencing, he was now filled with optimism. Subconsciously he knew he was in for a stroke of luck. Or not luck – his reason countered – rather cause and effect. He had circulated an exhaustive questionnaire, and it would be a strange thing if his efforts did not meet with some success. What he was going to hear was simply the answer to some of the questions he himself had asked. There was no luck about it: only the result of his own thought and trouble.