Crime at Guildford Read online

  ‘Suppose we go over to Minter’s office?’ he suggested. ‘You’ll see better there what’s to be done.’

  Sir Ralph agreed and Norne led the way.

  ‘You’ve met Pendlebury, haven’t you?’ Norne said as they walked down the corridor.

  ‘I don’t know that I have,’ Sir Ralph answered. ‘I don’t remember doing so.’

  ‘Then I’ll introduce him. You’ll find him a good chap to work with.’

  Norne pushed open a door marked ‘Private,’ which led into a medium sized office containing three desks. At the desks men were working. They looked up as the others entered, and one of them, a smallish man with a square dependable face and a pleasant expression, rose to his feet. All three looked excited, but the man who rose was obviously anxious and upset as well.

  ‘This is Pendlebury,’ said Norne. ‘I’ve told him just what has happened. Sir Ralph Osenden, Pendlebury.’

  ‘How do you do?’ said Osenden, holding out his hand.

  The man came forward and shook hands. ‘Very tragic affair this, Sir Ralph,’ he said. ‘We’re all—’ he included his companions with a glance—‘very sorry indeed about Mr Minter.’

  He spoke with such obvious sincerity that Sir Ralph warmed to him. ‘So are we all,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Indeed, we were absolutely horrified yesterday morning when he didn’t come down and we learnt what had happened.’

  ‘Mr Minter was a pleasant man to work for,’ Pendlebury went on. ‘Always recognised anything that was done and stood up for his men when he could.’

  Sir Ralph was sure of it. He could tell Pendlebury that he had always had the highest opinion of the late accountant, and that this was fully shared by all his colleagues.

  Norne agreed politely, then went on with the immediate business. ‘I’ve explained to Pendlebury that you will be taking Minter’s place temporarily. I’m sure he’ll give you all the help he can.’

  ‘I shall be only too glad, sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sir Ralph, ‘but I’m afraid you’ll have to do most of the work yourself. However, between us we’ll keep things going till something permanent is settled.’

  ‘Well, it’s you two for it,’ Norne answered and with a short nod left the room.

  ‘Will you come into the private office, Sir Ralph?’ said Pendlebury when he had gone.

  ‘Certainly,’ Sir Ralph agreed. ‘But first, won’t you introduce me?’ He pointed to the other two. ‘Are these men not in the department?’

  All three of the clerks were gratified and showed it. A few kindly remarks, and Sir Ralph felt he had made three friends. This important business over, he allowed Pendlebury to convoy him next door to what had been Minter’s private office.

  It was small and comfortably, though not elaborately, furnished, in which Sir Ralph thought it reflected the character of its late occupant. There was a table-desk, a small bookcase of technical works, a letter filing cabinet painted green, a couple of armchairs and a small built-in safe.

  ‘The first thing is to get the books out of the safe,’ Pendlebury began. ‘I suppose, sir, you have Mr Minter’s keys?’

  Sir Ralph produced the keys and opened the safe. The ledgers were taken out and work began. As Sir Ralph had supposed, there was not a great deal that he was able to do, but he quickly saw that Pendlebury did not need his assistance.

  They had not settled down for more than a few minutes when the desk telephone rang. It was Norne, and he said he wanted to open the large safe and would Sir Ralph go round and assist him? Sir Ralph accordingly left Pendlebury working and walked back to Norne’s office.

  This was a somewhat larger and more ornately furnished than that he had just left. The table-desk was similar in design, but was bigger and covered with a more expensive leather. The armchairs were deeper, the carpet softer, and there were more books, filling a greater number of sectional bookcases. The file cabinet was identical in each room, as were also the lamps, radiators and other fittings.

  The great difference between the offices lay in the safes. While that in the accountant’s was of moderate size, Norne’s was a veritable giant. It was built in so that its door projected only a few inches from the wall and was of modern design, and the work of a first-class firm.

  In the office with Norne was an elderly man with a clean-shaven dependable face and an alert though rather bad-tempered expression. This was Miles, the foreman of the works department. Sir Ralph had met him before, but he did not know much about him except that he was supposed to be a good man at his job. Sir Ralph wished him good morning.

  ‘Sorry for asking you to come along, Osenden,’ Norne apologised, ‘but Miles wants to get some stones for making up, and I therefore have to open the safe. Will you help me?’

  The two directors inserted their keys and turned them, one after another. Each of these enabled the main handle to be rotated through a certain arc, releasing the door bolts. With a little effort Norne swung the great door open.

  ‘Here are what you want, Miles,’ he said; ‘on Shelf B.’

  Sir Ralph looked in as the door opened and was interested to see the array of little drawers and boxes, presumably containing stones, as well as the masses of papers and books, all stacked tidily and labelled with green card labels. What an accumulation of power was there! The power not only of sheer wealth, but the almost more potent force of knowledge! If the papers in that safe were published, what ruin might not follow; what skeletons in cupboards might not become revealed! How many old family jewels were there, which were believed by fond husbands to be in the jewel-cases of their wives! How many were there, believed by fond wives to be in the safes of their husbands! Sir Ralph was thrilled as he wondered how far the picture he had conjured up represented the facts—

  A moment later, in stepping back to give place to Miles, he happened to glance at Norne’s face. What he saw froze him stiff.

  A very startling change had come over the managing-director’s expression. For a moment it was slightly mystified, as if Norne were trying to account for some unusual and puzzling spectacle. But only for a moment. Mild mystification quickly gave place to amazement, amazement to consternation, and consternation to actual dread. It was evident that Miles was equally moved.

  For some moments the three men stood transfixed. Then Norne suddenly became galvanised into furious life. Madly he seized drawer after drawer, pulled them out, glanced in, and slammed them shut again.

  Sir Ralph moved as if coming out of a trance. ‘For heaven’s sake, Norne,’ he gasped, ‘what’s the matter? What are you looking for?’

  For some moments Norne continued his wild search. Then he stopped, and turning round, faced the others with an expression of positive horror. ‘The stones!’ he cried in a small voice, suddenly gone hoarse. ‘The stones! Our entire stock! They’re gone!’

  Sir Ralph stared incredulously. ‘Norne, do you know what you’re saying?’ he stammered, while Miles gave vent to a slow and lurid oath.

  Norne for a moment seemed paralysed. Then slowly he regained some of his normal self-control. Looking white and scared, he once again took charge.

  ‘Lock the door, will you, Miles, and then come and give me a hand. We’ll go through all these drawers and make quite sure.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Sir Ralph declared helplessly.

  ‘We’ll soon know. Come on, Miles. I’ll open them one by one and you look in with me. Osenden, will you take notes of anything we find?’

  With grave faces the three men got to work and soon the entire safe had been gone over. Norne looked blankly at the others.

  ‘All the stones are gone,’ he said in a choked voice; ‘all that are any good. The whole of that half million’s worth! All gone!’

  Looking already ten years older he returned to his desk and caught up the telephone. ‘Whitehall, one two, one two,’ he said urgently … ‘Is that Scotland Yard? … I am the managing-director of Nornes Limited, the working jewellers, of Ronder Lane, Kingsway. There has
been a very big robbery of precious stones here. Will you put me through to someone in authority!’

  4

  Enter the Yard

  At the moment when Norne put through his call it happened that Chief-Inspector Joseph French was seated in his room in New Scotland Yard, trying to decide upon the means to be employed in the further pursuit of a particularly elusive burglar. The man had been traced from the Clifton house at which his crime was committed to Temple, Meads Station in Bristol and from there to Paddington. But at Paddington he had vanished, and French and those working under his orders were at a complete loss as to their next step.

  It happened also that on this Monday morning it was French’s turn to receive reports of fresh crimes and to allocate their preliminary investigation to such officers as were available. Therefore, when the local exchange received Norne’s call, it was to him that it was put through.

  He listened with close attention to the concise statement made by Norne. Here, it was evident, was the opening of what would almost certainly prove a very important case. He knew Nornes Limited by reputation, as one of the largest firms of working jewellers in London. If it were true that jewellery valued at the enormous sum of half a million sterling had been stolen, it would rank as one of the major thefts of the century.

  In such cases of theft, time was usually of the first importance. The turning of the stolen jewels into money could not be carried out in a moment, and the sooner the usual sources of disposal were watched, the better. French decided that it would be quickest if he himself were to go to the firm’s offices and get full particulars at first hand. He therefore replied accordingly, asking Norne to say nothing in the meantime of what had happened.

  Norne rang off and French quickly made a number of other calls. Firstly he repeated the story in an even more condensed form to Sir Mortimer Ellison, the Assistant Commissioner under whose supervision he worked, and obtained his approval for his giving the case his personal attention. Next he instructed his assistant, Sergeant Carter, to be ready to accompany him. Two more calls secured the services of a finger-print expert and a photographer, while a fifth requisitioned a fast car. Then picking up his emergency case, which always stood packed with apparatus likely to be used in preliminary investigations, French hurried from his room. Within six minutes of the receipt of Norne’s call, the little party turned out of the Yard gates on to the Embankment.

  Joseph French had by this time quite got over the novelty of his promotion, and life as a chief-inspector had become to him the normal mode of existence. He had had a busy time since that case of the launch explosion off Cowes, in which the unhappy partners of the Chayle cement works had lost their lives. That case, though at first it had seemed one of the most unsatisfactory he had ever tackled, had in the end added considerably to his reputation. When at first failure had stared him in the face, he had imagined his superiors had regretted his promotion, but on his final success he was given to understand they were satisfied.

  With two small exceptions, however, that case had represented the last occasion on which he had worked outside his room at the Yard. The first was that of a smash and grab raid in Nottingham. It was believed to be the work of a London gang, and he spent a couple of days in the Midland city co-ordinating the local efforts to find the men with those of his colleagues at the Yard. His part in the second case was also that of liaison officer between local and metropolitan workers. It was a murder case, the particularly brutal murder of a girl in a deserted bungalow near Dover. In this instance the combined efforts of the Dover police and the Yard were successful. A former lover was found, arrested, proved guilty, and hanged. But in the smash and grab case, to French’s bitter disappointment, the raiders got clean away.

  French, whose heart was in the country, wished constantly that he could get another out-of-Town job. His interest in this new robbery was, therefore, tinged with disappointment, in that he foresaw another period of Town working. What he longed for was green grass and trees, and better still, stretches of water. As far as the matter of surroundings went, the Southampton Water case had reached his ideal.

  His mind was brought back to the present by a question from Carter. ‘What is it this time, sir?’ the sergeant asked, after an explorative glance at his superior’s face.

  ‘Safe robbery,’ French returned. ‘Nornes Limited, the jewellers. Half a million worth of stones gone over the weekend.’

  Carter expressed his interest and surprise by an oath of judicious moderation. ‘Half a million!’ he repeated. ‘Anything to go on?’

  ‘Not so far. Guarded statement from Norne, the managing-director. Probably a son or nephew of the founder’s.’

  ‘Half a million’s a tidy bit of money,’ the photographer essayed. ‘Was the stuff insured, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said French, ‘but I should think so; though probably not to its full value.’

  As he spoke, the car turned from Kingsway into Ronder Lane and pulled up at the block containing the Norne premises. A moment later French and Carter had reached the public office, the other two men being told to wait in the car till called on.

  ‘Mr French and Mr Carter to see Mr Norne,’ French explained to the young man who came forward.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the clerk answered, ‘Mr Norne’s expecting you. Will you come this way?’

  French looked keenly at the youth. There was a certain excitement in his manner, and this same excitement was reflected in the bearing of such other employees as were to be seen along the corridors they traversed. French was slightly puzzled. It could scarcely be due to news of the robbery having leaked out, because he felt certain that such intelligence would have produced a much greater effect. Some other unusual event must also have taken place. French took a mental note to find it out.

  His suspicions were strengthened when they came to Norne’s anteroom and were handed over to Miss Barber, the pretty secretary. She also seemed upset, as if from some minor misfortune. However, she announced the visitors at once, and French had no chance of talking to her.

  ‘Mr Norne?’ French began, handing over his professional card. ‘I took your message, and I thought in view of the seriousness of your statement I had better come along myself. This is my assistant, Sergeant Carter.’

  Norne shook hands, then introduced Sir Ralph and Miles. ‘We’ve only just made the discovery, chief-inspector, and we’ve done what you asked us about not mentioning it.’

  ‘It’s often wise in cases of this kind,’ French returned. ‘Now, sir, suppose you let me know the circumstances in your own words. I can ask questions later if I want to.’

  The little party sat down, French and Carter opposite Norne at his desk and Sir Ralph and Miles in the armchairs. French and Carter laid open notebooks before them. It was Carter’s business to take complete shorthand notes of the interview, while French made a practice of jotting down any points which struck him as suggestive.

  ‘The facts,’ began Norne, ‘are very simple and very disastrous. You know, chief-inspector, what our business consists of? Perhaps I should tell you very generally?’

  ‘If you please, sir.’

  ‘We are not only manufacturing jewellers, but dealers in jewellery, both in cut and uncut single stones and in assembled pieces. We actually cut stones ourselves, and we mount them and build up complete articles of jewellery. We also buy made-up sets for resale or for breaking up and re-modelling. Finally we make temporary cash advances on the security of jewellery deposited with us. So that you will see that our business is many sided, and I may tell you that it is pretty large also: indeed, it is practically world wide.’

  ‘I know it has that reputation, sir.’

  ‘You will understand that to carry on such a business it is necessary for us to keep a large collection of stones and jewellery on the premises. We have been in the habit of storing it in that safe which you see. The safe was put in about twelve years ago, our former one being somewhat antiquated, and it was then the best that money c
ould buy.’

  French glanced round at the huge green door and nodded.

  ‘It happened through a variety of causes that we have lately been carrying an unusually large quantity of stuff—approximately half a million pounds’ worth. I had occasion to open the safe on Saturday morning and everything was then in order. While, of course, I didn’t go through every drawer, I’m positive that nothing had been disturbed.

  ‘This morning I again had to open the safe. I did it in the presence of these gentlemen. Instantly I saw that there had been a robbery. Several valuable made-up sets which had been stacked on trays were gone, and when I pulled open drawers at random I saw that they also had been emptied.

  ‘I immediately got Mr Miles to help me to make an examination. We found that practically everything worth taking has gone. Instantly I telephoned to the Yard.’

  ‘I follow. Was the stuff insured?’

  Norne made a grimace. ‘Only partially, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I shall want details of that,’ French declared. ‘You are, of course, satisfied that the safe was securely locked when you left it on Saturday?’

  ‘Absolutely. Both the accountant and I tried it, and besides the handle couldn’t have been turned to the locked position until at least the first key was turned.’

  ‘The first key? Then there are two?’

  ‘Yes, two.’

  ‘Just explain the method of opening, will you?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ Norne got up and went to the safe, followed by French and Sir Ralph. ‘Now the handle is fastened.’ He shook it to demonstrate. ‘I put in and turn my key. That enables the handle to be moved through a certain arc. I take out my key and Sir Ralph puts in the second, into the same keyhole—as you see there is only one. When Sir Ralph turns his key, the locking is altered. The handle cannot now be put back through its first arc, but it can be moved on through a farther arc, and when it is so moved the door is unlocked.’

  ‘That’s clear, sir. And in locking?’