The Loss of the Jane Vosper (18 page)

‘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 the 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.

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.

But when he heard the superintendent’s message his bubble of self-satisfaction was suddenly deflated. Not only was the so-called information not an answer to any of his questions, but it was, so far as he could see, entirely useless and extraneous. It was simply that on the Tuesday evening, the evening before his disappearance, Sutton had rung up one of the men in the station, a constable named Osborne, to ask if he knew anything about a firm of builders in his area. The name was Rice Brothers. Osborne had known the firm only by name, and had so replied. It had happened that the next morning Osborne had gone on sick leave, and he had only just returned. As soon as he had read of Sutton’s disappearance and the questionnaire sent out by the Yard, he had reported the incident to his superintendent. The superintendent passed on the report for what it was worth.

‘Not very much,’ French thought at first, but as he reconsidered the matter and recalled his complete bankruptcy of ideas in the case, he began to feel that even so unlikely a clue must not be neglected. ‘I’ll go down and see Osborne,’ he therefore replied. ‘Will you kindly keep him at the station till I arrive?’